[Marxism] Nicaraguan Coffee

[DAVID MURRAY <dmurray@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

NF
At one point I took this up with Alistair Huillett, an IS member who
was a fairly well-known lefty musician in Sydney (now back in native
Scotland), and he said something like "well no we don't sell their
coffee", and I had to reply "well you don't do nuthin".
DM
geesus. does the DSP still sell nicaraguan coffee? I remember having some of it 
in my brief orbit of Resistance/DSP. The stuff tastes like kerosene, and this 
was some 7 or 8 years after the defeat (so I suspect it was well past its 
sell-by date). Seriously though, the selling of a nations exports is a strange 
phenomenon on the left. Personally I'd find buying coffee a complete turn-off 
in terms of supporting a revolution (obviously assuming I was a few years older 
etc) its one of those eccentric practices which really puts people off.
Which brings me to my last point, it was actually the failure to actually 
criticise  the backstabbing of Ortega regime by the USSR and Cuba, by the DSP 
which lead to the surprise factor for the DSP when the Sandinistas lost power, 
and subsequent surprise that they haven't been able to win the presidency for 
ortega. At this point (1988-91) the DSP was going through the Gorbachev phase, 
issues of Direct Action around that date included praise for Gorby, the 
European Greens (along with its mobilisations in the Australian Greens) and the 
Nicaraguan revolution (and in a limited way Castros cuba which later gained 
primacy in the DSP pathenon), which ended abruptly just in time for the 
introduction of Green Left Weekly.
David Murray
PS: I recently read a thriller novel, real crap, while I was on holiday last 
year, in one of its chapters there was a Labour (British) cabinet minister who 
still insisted on having Nicaraguan coffee. It was the typical story he was a 
left-wing leader of the South yorkshire county council who insisted on having 
Nicaraguan coffee, who while moving right wing still insisted on it in order to 
reminise. The kerosene discription in the novel certainly rings true.



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