What dual power means in Nicaragua

By Sam Marcy (March 15, 1990)
It is of course very heartening to progressive, working class and oppressed people to hear that the Sandinista leadership will resist all efforts to dismantle the People's Army, to liquidate its revolutionary mission, and to dismantle the progressive political and social institutions which have been built up by the sweat and blood of the workers and campesinos during this entire decade of war devastation.

Resistance against any infringement of the role of the People's Army is of course paramount. That is of the highest priority, for allowing any vacillation on this question would tend to lead to disaffection and demoralization among the ranks. Firmness of the leadership is the best guarantee for maintaining the revolutionary integrity of the armed forces and the security organizations.

The state, as we said in our article last week, consists in its essence of the bodies of armed men and women who defend the class in power. But it also embraces a whole complex of social and political institutions. In the case of a revolutionary workers' state, the popular institutions enable the masses to participate directly in the defense of the revolution.

In Nicaragua, this includes the Sandinista Workers Confederation, the Association of Agricultural Workers, the Nicaraguan Students Union, the Secondary Students Federation, the Federation of Health Workers, the National Confederation of Professionals and the National Teachers Union--all of which have been "key organizing units" for recent demonstrations in defense of the gains of the revolution.

Situation of dual power

It is still less than two weeks since the elections which so elevated the expectations of the counterrevolution, yet already there is talk from both sides in Nicaragua warning of civil war, chaos and anarchy. These expressions are typical of the language used when the main social forces find themselves in an irreconcilable struggle.

It is plain that a state of dual power has emerged in Nicaragua.

Dual power arises in situations of acute social crisis, when the antagonisms between the classes have matured to the point where each challenges the other for the sovereignty or leadership of the country. Such a condition of acute crisis cannot last for any considerable period. The kind of challenge which each has delivered to the other can only stem from irreconcilable class contradictions, and a resolution is generally possible only on the basis of the victory of one or the other.

Dual power has emerged in all the great revolutions of modern times. As we have pointed out in earlier articles, it appeared as long ago as the English Revolution--the King versus the Parliament. It was certainly true in the French Revolution--the Third Estate against the royal power. And it was eminently true in the Russian Revolution--the Soviets against the Kerensky regime. Kerensky had only the legal trappings of power after the downfall of the czar; in reality, power was in the hands of the Soviets, which were composed of workers', soldiers' and peasants' deputies. But it took the leadership of the Bolsheviks before the Soviets would actually exercise power in the interests of the workers and peasants.

There was dual power in the U.S. leading up to the Civil War. As the historian Charles Beard said, the conflict was irrepressible and couldn't be avoided, as much as both sides wanted to find a compromise. It was impossible because the North and South were based on different social systems, wage slavery versus chattel slavery. Chattel slavery was incompatible with capitalist production, which needed free labor to exploit.

More recently, dual power emerged in China--the People's Liberation Army against the Chiang Kai-shek forces. Vietnam, Korea, Cuba--in all cases there was a popular armed force that developed to the point of challenging the state power of the old ruling classes. And in Nicaragua itself the People's Army developed in the guerrilla war against the Somoza regime.

The peculiarity of dual power today in Nicaragua is that the film is in reverse. Here the counterrevolution, under the figleaf of bourgeois parliamentarism, is asserting legal and political authority for a small mercenary grouping, wholly in the pay of imperialism, which seeks control over the state of the workers and peasants and moreover over the People's Army. Such a situation cannot last for long.

The pro-imperialist Chamorro clique is in reality a shadow with no substance, but it has obtained legal status through the elections. The real substance of the counterrevolution lies in external factors, in the threat of imperialist brigandage which looms over Nicaragua at all times but has been successfully held at bay by the People's Army and revolutionary mass organizations.

Delaying tactics

The effort by the UNO pro-imperialist grouping to at this time circumnavigate around the economic infrastructure and the military and security forces instead of taking them head on is a threadbare, dilatory maneuver. It's a typical lawyer's trick to delay while gathering more forces, both economic, material and military, in order to overcome and destroy the revolutionary state of workers and peasants.

On the other side, after a momentary period of confusion, it now appears as of March 6 that there is a growing realization that what is at stake in any further conciliation with the enemy is the dismantling and liquidation of the state of the workers and peasants.

It is not a matter of being more flexible, of winning a concession here or there, or of mutual concessions in order to moderate the clash of class interests. What is involved is the destiny of the revolution, the destiny of the new social system. Embryonic though it may be in form, the revolutionary Nicaraguan state represents the essence of progress as against an enemy which, although cloaked in a democratic form for now, has as its essence nothing but the most brutal kind of colonial domination.

The transition talks are a mask while deliberate preparations go on for the next stage in an attempt to take over the state. Washington is constantly counseling its stooges to tread carefully, not to provoke a revolutionary response from the Sandinista government. But some of the contra leaders, this varied assortment of mountebanks, bandits, and outright indiscriminate killers, do not understand the delicacy of the situation. Hence Washington has sent down its proconsul, Harry W. Shlaudeman, a special consultant to the State Department, to explain it to them.

But disregarding this or that incident, this or that statement from either side, the issue is, does or does not dual power exist? Do there not exist two camps resting entirely on two different classes, the exploiters and the exploited? And can this be bridged by political manipulation in times of acute social crisis, times when the classes are poised on a razor's edge?



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