The "Gutless Stalinism" of the FSLN and FMLN

[Louis N Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Louis:

Carlos's attack on the FSLN and the FMLN is such an exercise in
ultraleft, sectarian mudslinging that I wouldn't even waste my time
trying to answer him.

Let me just make some brief points:

1) When I wrote about the FSLN and the FMLN, my main interest was trying
to point to alternative models of *organization* to the type of dead-end,
sectarian models of Maoism and Trotskyism that betrayed the possibilites
of a broad-based socialist movement in the United States in the 1960's
and 70's. Instead of having a massive socialist movement with the ability
to influence millions, we have groupuscles standing on the sidelines
competing with each other as to who can generate the most fiery rhetoric.

2) Carlos works with one of these tendencies on the Trotskyite left and
Walter Daum, a l*st member, is the grand vizier of the League for a
Revolutionary Party, a group that consists of Walter, his extended family
and the neighbors in his building on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. Neil,
our new union-hating arrival, is a fan of Carlos and Walter Daum's. They
richly deserve each other.

We, who are trying to construct an authentic non-sectarian socialism, should
thank our lucky stars for the efforts of such super-revolutionaries. Their
existence helps to guarantee that the occasional individual who is
constitutionally incapable of working in a broader mass movement will find
a proper home.

Better they should join up with Carlos, Neil or Walter than any movement
the rest of us "betrayers", "Stalinists" and "gutless" opportunists are
attemping to build. I insist on it.

3) To understand what happened in Central America in an accurate manner,
I recommend George Black's book on Nicaragua, "Triumph of the People" and
Robert Armstrong's book on El Salvador (don't recall the title), and a
subscription to the NACLA report. For information on the unfortunate retreat
of the revolutionary movement, I recommend Carlos Vilas's "Between
Earthquakes and Volcanos". Notice the contrast between his sober,
measured approach to the subject and the bombastic and reductionist
treatment afforded it by our l*st member Carlos/CEP.

"Fifteen years of armed confrontation did not deliver political victory
for popular demands for economic change and social justice. But the orgy
of repression, with its generous foreign funding, did not succeed in
silencing them, or keeping them at last from finding legitimate
expression in a more open political system. People have lost their fear
and have gained organizing experience. However much or however little
they have won, they won it through their direct participation. The very
change in the discourse of the ruling groups expresses a recognintion of
profound transformations in social consciousness. Socialism did not
replace capitalism, and it is U.S. hegenomy, not *patria libre*, that has
been consolidated. But the revolutionary asssault on the oligarchic
order, by action or reaction, led to the redefinition of political
regimes and of social relations, and finally the U.S. government was
forced to put aside its long-standing alliances and join in efforts to
reach peace. Revolutionaries were unable to eliminate illiteracy or
poverty, gender discrimination or ethnic oppression, unemployment or
agrarian dispossession, but they did away with resignation to them.
Central Americans know today that something else is possible, and the
power of collective action has not gone unnoticed. The consolidation of
U.S. hegemony, meanwhile, is a hemispheric phenomenon that owes much more
to the disappearance of the Soviet Union than to the Central American
revolutions' own failure."


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