[Marxism] A sectarian version of the lessons of Nicaragua

[Louis Proyect]

As somebody who was very involved with Nicaragua solidarity in the 
1980s, I was curious to see what Claudio Villas had to say in an article 
titled “Nicaragua: Lessons of a country that did not finish its 
revolution” that appears on the In Defense of Marxism website. For those 
who are not familiar with the Internationalist Marxist Tendency (IMT) 
that produces this website, a word or two of introduction might be 
necessary.

The IMT is a fairly orthodox Trotskyist grouping that is the result of a 
split in the so-called Militant Tendency, which is now led by Peter 
Taaffe. Both groups project themselves as the core members of a Fourth 
International that will supposedly vindicate Leon Trotsky’s political 
legacy. Neither group has shown the slightest interest in rethinking 
what the Bolshevik experience might mean in a context other than 
turn-of-the-century Czarist Russia, but the Grant-Woods tendency has 
demonstrated an enthusiasm for the Bolivarian revolution in Venezuela 
that does not fit exactly into the October 1917 template.

Villas states that his article studies “the lessons of the Nicaraguan 
Revolution” in order to help “understand the ongoing processes in 
Venezuela today.” As becomes obvious in no time at all, Nicaragua 
becomes one of those negative examples that the Trotskyist movement 
dotes on. Forever wagging its finger at the mass movement, it assumes 
that calling attention to a betrayal is conducive to correct 
revolutionary practice. This is what I call the subway preacher school 
of Marxism. Once a week or so, I get stuck on the number one train going 
up to Columbia University with a free-lance preacher who lectures the 
subway car about the perils of sin. Let me put it this way, preaching 
against sin or reformist betrayal might make the preacher feel good but 
it hardly changes people’s behavior.

I was struck by the similarities between Villas’s article and those I 
have read about Cuba in the Trotskyist press, which revolve around the 
incapacity and unwillingness of the guerrillas to link up to the working 
class. As one example, he writes, “For the first time, the workers in 
the cities mobilised in a massive and independent manner with their own 
political slogans. But because there was no revolutionary leadership of 
the workers’ movement this meant that all the attention and expectations 
of the working class became focused on the FSLN, in spite of the fact 
that the Sandinistas only had 500 armed guerrillas.”

Keeping in mind that the total population of Nicaragua in the 1970s was 
about 3 million, an army of 500 combatants would amount to something 
like 50,000 in a country the size of the USA. What are the chances that 
a rebel army this size could be put together without a massive and 
powerful movement in the cities? Next to zero, I would say.

full: 
http://louisproyect.wordpress.com/2008/01/18/a-sectarian-version-of-the-lessons-of-nicaragua/