[Marxism] Venezuela

[Joaquin Bustelo]

Louis writes: "Within the revolutionary camp, there were landowners,
ranchers, small businessmen, etc. who were for national development but not
for socialism. While it would have been tempting to open up an assault on
them, this would have risked a loss of support from the West European social
democracy that was Nicaragua's primary source of material aid and diplomatic
support."

I would go further. The real problem with such an assault is that, if done
poorly or prematurely, it would have risked a loss of support from most
Nicaraguans. Nicaragua did not have a clearly differentiated working class
(clearly differentiated from small producers and merchants). Socialization
of the means of production and distribution would have depended on the
development of those social means of production and distribution. If
anything, the revolution was too "socialistic" in the countryside, not
giving land to small farmers to work individually but "prioritizing" in an
exclusive way state farms and cooperatives. This is NOT what the peasantry
wanted, they wanted THEIR OWN individual plot, and many of those who were
working for wages wanted the same thing too. In four years living in
Nicaragua, (1984-1988), I did not meet a single small farmer --NOT ONE!--
who had received a plot of land to work on his own thanks to the revolution.
And time and again, I interviewed peasants in cooperatives who said they
would have preferred to be working on their own account on their own plot. 

Had the revolution been able to survive the imperialist onslaught, it would
have needed to become MORE "petty bourgeois" and LESS "socialist." The
failure of the Sandinistas to understand the this aspect of what the masses
wanted from the revolution cost them dearly, for it facilitated the
development of a social base for the contra in the countryside, especially
in the area known as the agricultural frontier, leading to a prolonged
stalemate in the war which acquired the character of a civil war. The war
led to a prolonged and maddening economic crisis that led to the atomization
of the plebeian base of the revolution in the urban areas and especially
Managua, as the population was cast into a desperate day-to-day struggle to
find food and other necessities. 

That Sandinista economic policies maintained subsidies in the city at the
expense of the countryside, and tried to stop the peasants from trying to
obtain the full value of the commodities they produced on the market, made
things worse. Also damaging was the Sandinista decision to finance the war
by printing money, leading to a hyper-inflationary spiral and generalized
decapitalization of all families and firms. 

I think it was Tomas Borge who once remarked, we tried to make the law of
value disappear, but what actually disappeared were the fruits and
vegetables from the markets.

Be it said in defense of the Sandinistas that there was no economic policy
that could have reversed the crisis. And it may well be that the Nicaraguan
Revolution was doomed to fail, for there can be no real revolution in our
epoch that does not go beyond capitalism, but there was no material economic
basis for doing that in Nicaragua, only the political and social necessity
for such a revolution. Under those conditions, the "material basis" for
beginning socialist construction could only have come from the outside, from
the camp of "really existing socialism." But life would show, even before
the Sandinista were formally voted out of power, that the "socialism" of
Eastern Europe and the USSR was a completely empty shell devoid of any real
content.

As for material aid from Western Europe and especially social democratic
governments, it was very limited. The most important aspect of it was its
worth in the political-diplomatic fight to isolate the United States and
force it to cut off the contra. The multi-million dollar figures published
at the time, for example for shipments of powdered milk, were at best
misleading. These were (like U.S. food aid to populations of U.S. client
regimes) "surplus" commodities that if they were to be thrown on the market
would cause a ruinous collapse in prices. The only real cost involved to
Europe was shipping, and from this you'd need to subtract the cost of
destroying the goods in Europe. The actual NET olutlay was miniscule.

Similar things can be said about other forms of aid, including "technical"
aid. I saw several such projects up close while in Nicaragua. Most of the
money went to consulting firms and functionaries of the donor countries or
other imperialist countries. And even the part nominally spent "inside"
Nicaragua wound up outside, such as that spent on the purchase of the
ubiquitous Toyota Land Cruisers. Even a lot of direct outright unconditional
money donations to Nicaragua wound up that way, through a mechanism called
"fondos propios," i.e., hard currency that was not assigned by the state. I
remember the women's association AMNLAE had about a dozen
political/organizer positions, and a "Camioneta Comandante" (as the Land
Cruisers were called), complete with driver and gas rationing coupons, had
somehow become attached to each one of these positions. 

A lot of that was, of course, a symptom of the growing decomposition of the
Revolution under the impact of the war and the economic crisis, which in
turn was then reflected among its leading contingent. And, of course, part
of the capitalist foreign "aid" was aimed at pushing this process along.

*  *  *

Louis also writes "But keep in mind that Cuba was an island and could also
rely on the support of the USSR, which had not quite reached the openly
class-collaborationist status that it achieved under Gorbachev." 

I suspect Louis would probably agree with me on this, so this is more to
amplify his pithy one-sentence summary than to challenge it. The fundamental
objectives of Soviet foreign policy, which aimed at establishing a
live-and-let-live relationship with the imperialists at the expense of the
workers movement in the imperialist countries and especially progressive and
revolutionary movements in the Third World, was clearly established by the
mid-1930's and did not change. 

What did change were the circumstances under which those aims were pursued.

The Cuban Revolution happened at a moment when the USSR was rapidly growing
into "superpower" status but the U.S. was still refusing to deal with it on
those terms, seeking to go from containment to rollback. Those were the
years of the sharpest direct U.S.-Soviet confrontations in the Cold War, not
just the Caribbean Crisis (the "Cuban missile crisis" as it is called in the
U.S.), but also the crisis that led to the building of the Berlin Wall, the
shooting down of a U.S. U-2 spy plane over the Soviet Union, and others. 

Cuba came along just when the USSR was finally strong enough to really be
helpful, but still at a disadvantage in countering Washington's nuclear
forces, which made Cuba's location a very valuable strategic asset. Because
improvements in radars, anti-aircraft missiles and jet fighters had made the
bomber threat unreliable, at the time the agreement was made to deploy
Soviet missiles in Cuba, they represented perhaps half the total Soviet
retaliatory nuclear capacity.

That was rapidly changing in the early 60's, with the development of ICBM's
and the deployment of missile subs, which is why the USSR was willing to
withdraw the missiles in exchange for a similar U.S. withdrawal of missiles
from Turkey and a U.S. undertaking formally made to the UN Security Council
not to invade or attack Cuba or permit attacks to be mounted from U.S. soil.

But once it had made the commitment to Cuba, the USSR could not withdraw it
without disrupting its system of alliances and undermining its credibility
and prestige.

And while much was made of the supposed "Soviet subsidy" of Cuba in the
oil-for-sugar barter deals, the truth is it was a net GAIN for the USSR --
every pound of sugar imported from Cuba at an implicit price of 50 cents a
pound represented a pound of sugar the USSR did not have to produce from
beets at a cost of $1 a pound. 

Cuba could have gotten as much or more had it been allowed to sell in the
European market -- but on the contrary, Europe produced a surplus of sugar
at FIVE TIMES what it cost Cuba to produce it (60 cents a lb. versus 12
cents in Cuba) and then dumped the overproduction in the very thin world
sugar market (very thin because the overwhelming majority of sugar was
traded --and still is-- through bilateral agreements at much higher prices)
at a few cents on the dollar. 

Joaquín