Tiny Tips (2026)

The Tiny Tips column from the August 2026 issue of the Socialist Standard

United Nations (UN) Secretary-General António Guterres says that 800 million people around the world are living in extreme poverty… [He] had previously stated that nearly three billion people are living in inadequate housing conditions.

[8am media]

In Shanxi, the province that sits at the heart of China’s coal-mining industry, there’s long been a saying: ‘Only go down a coal pit when you have no other way out’. For decades, life in these pits was intertwined with tragedy. It became so common that it gave rise to other sayings: about how miners were ‘exchanging their lives for money’ or ‘staking their lives for tomorrow’ when they ventured into underground tunnels where they died from gas explosions, flooding and shaft collapses. Over the past decade, safety reforms steadily erased the industry’s deadly reputation, and those days were thought to be behind China – until 22 May, when a blast at the Liushenyu coal mine in Shanxi killed 82 people and injured more than 120 others.

[BBC]

A leading Nicaraguan indigenous leader has died after being detained by the ruling authoritarian regime for nearly three years. Brooklyn Rivera, who founded the central American nation’s indigenous movement Yatama, died due to ‘physical and neurological deterioration’ linked to a Covid-19 infection, the Nicaraguan Ministry of Health stated on Sunday. The government, headed by President Daniel Ortega, took 15 hours to confirm the death and are refusing to release the 73-year-old’s body to his family, opposition media report. The Nicaraguan government is routinely accused of political oppression, and Rivera is one of a growing number of dissidents to die in custody. 

[BBC]

Greta Thunberg… has said little publicly about the recent protests in Iran. Similar criticisms have been directed at a number of prominent left-wing intellectuals and activists in Europe and North America, including Tariq Ali, Naomi Klein, Alain Badiou, Richard Falk, and others. The pattern extends beyond silence. Judith Butler, the American philosopher and feminist theorist, has previously expressed support for Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Palestine, describing them as progressive social movements that form part of a broader anti-imperialist struggle.

[International Policy Digest]

An elderly man spent days on the floor of his HMO while maggots infested wounds in his legs before he was discovered and later died, a report has found. The 69-year-old from Oldham, named ‘John’ in a safeguarding review, was discharged from hospital just two weeks before the fall that led to his death … The recently published report found the local authority and medical professionals at Royal Oldham Hospital ‘missed opportunities’ to support John. Prior to his death, John was treated for severe malnourishment and an acute kidney injury. At the time, he shared with staff that he ‘did not feel safe in his home’, as he lived in a HMO with five other people, all of whom had serious alcohol and substance abuse issues.

[Oldham Evening Chronicle]

 

(These links are provided for information and don’t necessarily represent our point of view.)

Bird’s Eye View: Neither God nor state (2022)

The Bird’s Eye View Column from the April 2022 issue of the Socialist Standard 

Neither God nor state

The 1st of this month is Iranian Islamic Republic Day. According to Ramin Mazaheri (greanvillepost.com, 6 February), ‘…after 43 years Iran’s revolution has become entrenched in global political history as the most successful political revolution of our contemporary era’ (bit.ly/356Z1Ka). Apparently the vast majority of the 99 percent (98.2 percent) of the electorate) voted for the establishment of an Islamic republic. Those who realise they were taken for April Fools include imprisoned trade unionists. Tragically, over 43 years many thousands of our class have been executed, including minors, under a theocratic dictatorship where those convicted of adultery, alcohol consumption, blasphemy, burglary, homosexuality, pornography and prostitution, along with, of course, political dissidence, as well as many other ‘crimes’, can pay the ultimate price. We must not forget the state-sanctioned use of juveniles as troops during the mass slaughter that was the Iran-Iraq war, or the oppression of women. Add chronic corruption, obvious class division and we can say that only assorted fundamentalists see the revolution as successful. And the suffering grows:

‘Iran has returned 820,000 doses of coronavirus vaccines donated by Poland because they were manufactured in the United States… TV quoted Mohammad Hashemi, an official in the country’s Health Ministry, as saying that Poland donated about a million doses of the British-Swedish AstraZeneca vaccine to Iran. ‘But when the vaccines arrived in Iran, we found out that 820,000 doses of them which were imported from Poland were from the United States,” he said. Hashemi said “after coordination with the Polish ambassador to Iran, it was decided that the vaccines would be returned.” Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who has final say on all state matters, in 2020 rejected any possibility of American or British vaccines entering the country, calling them “forbidden”‘ (whdh.com, 21 February).

Toll: more than 270,000 coronavirus-related deaths since the pandemic began.

Strange bedfellows

Fundamentalists are not limited to book-burning fakirs issuing fatuous yet often fatal fatwas. ‘…Republicans aren’t going to stop with abortion bans…’ (Cue ‘Handmaid’s Tale’: Michigan Republicans say 1965 Supreme Court decision legalizing birth control was wrong, alternet.org, 21 February). According to Planned Parenthood,

‘In 2006, Nicaragua enacted a complete abortion ban, including in cases of rape, incest, and when the life of the woman is at risk. Access to sexual and reproductive health information and services is seriously lacking, and the country now has the highest rate of teen pregnancy in Latin America.’

Recall, Ortega was returned to power in 2007 as the Catholic president of Nicaragua. He named his wife as Vice President and stated: ’This revolution – in which women have participated shoulder to shoulder – has opened the doors to the full participation of women in all spheres: political, social and economic (theweek.co.uk, 4 August, 2016) – nonsense only matched by that of another President Ronald Reagan, calling Nicaragua a beachhead of communism. Nicaragua is one of 24 countries in the world where abortion is totally illegal under any circumstances, including when the woman’s life or health is at risk. Maternal mortality is 98 per 100,000, 118th in the world. And leftist/nationalist fundamentalists claim that the empowerment of women in Nicaragua has been achieved.

Cannot see the wood for the trees

‘Conflict, climate change, and COVID-19 are having a clear impact on the global poor, in many cases having joint incidence upon those living in poverty, the World Bank’s report concludes’ (‘Inequality Kills One Person Every Four Seconds,’ipsnews.net, 14 February). The article’s conclusion echoes that of Dr. King, who focused famously on the ‘Triple Evils’ of poverty, racism and militarism, ie, symptoms rather than the underlying disease and one reason why Taylor Branch, the Pulitzer winning historian, could say of MLK that ‘all the issues that he raised toward the end of his life are as contemporary now as they were then’ (nytimes.com, 4 April 2018). Fundamentally idealistic, reformists eschew revolution in favour of another spin on the misery-go-round. Consider, capitalism causes the rivalries that lead to war in the modern world. Conflicts between states and within states can result from competition over markets, sources of raw materials, energy supplies, trade routes, exploitable populations and areas of strategic importance. ‘Russia’s president knows exactly what he wants, and it’s not eastern Ukraine. His interests are all about oil and gas and supply routes. The rest is smoke and mirrors’ (thedailybeast.com, 1 March 2015).

With regard to climate change, all enterprises and states seek to minimise costs and releasing greenhouse gases into the environment is a way of reducing monetary costs. Human and environmental needs always come second, if at all, in the profit system. Capitalism’s primary imperative is always to produce more and accumulate capital or otherwise lurch into economic crisis. ‘…companies are continuing to invest vast sums in exploration and new fields, which the IEA said last year could not be brought to fruition if the world was to limit global heating to 1.5C’ (theguardian.com, 11 February). Nearly six million deaths, twelve times that of the 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq war, due to Covid-19 have been confirmed worldwide. Given that the knowledge and resources exist to reduce the number of epidemics and minimise the possibility of them becoming pandemics, the vast majority of these deaths can be considered premature. Capitalism has eradicated rinderpest and smallpox, yet the driving force of capitalism is the pursuit of profit not health. According to March’s Scientific American, ‘Global billionaire wealth grew by $4.4 trillion between 2020 and 2021, and at the same time more than 100 million people fell below the poverty line’ (bit.ly/3BTn7nk). And ‘The poor, no matter where they live, will suffer the greatest lasting toll’ – until, that is, we organise as a class for the conquest of the earth and all its resources.

Is Nicaragua Socialist? (1987)

From the July 1987 issue of the Socialist Standard

In the midst of the Irangate scandal in which US President Ronald Reagan and his accomplices do their best to extricate themselves from the web of lies created to cover up their illegal funding of neo-fascist terrorists aiming to overthrow the government of Nicaragua, a seldom-asked question is, Who rules Nicaragua and what are the consequences for the working class? Conventional leftist wisdom is quite clear on the matter: the imperialist government of the USA is at war against the left-wing government of Nicaragua and therefore the Sandinista regime must be defended against all attacks. Of course, it is true that Nicaragua is the current victim of a campaign of destabilisation and outright terrorism by American imperialism but that in itself does not make the Nicaraguan government a regime to be supported. Struggles between rival capitalist governments are common and socialists do not take sides in the conflicts between robber forces.

In fact, the coming into being of the present Sandinista regime in Nicaragua was the product of a process of class struggle between various ruling factions which has gone on since the beginning of this century. In the early 1900s the British Empire controlled the Atlantic coast region and these imperialists were ousted, with US support, by José Santos Zelaya whose party represented the aspirations of local capitalists with interests in small business and farming. Having removed the British imperialists, Zelaya’s liberal capitalist government was put under pressure to act at the behest of US capitalists. When it failed to do so, refusing to remove restrictions on US capital investment or to allow the building of a trade canal connecting the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, the US imperialists responded in the time-honoured fashion: by sending in the Marines and toppling the Zelaya government.

Until 1926 the Marines kept Nicaragua under US imperial control with puppet governments assuring that the national economy served as a satellite of Wall Street. In 1926 the national capitalists, led by Cesar Augusto Sandino, attempted to oust the US imperialists as they had done with the British but national capitalist liberation (which is of no interest to the workers) was not achieved and instead the US established the regime of Anastasio Somoza Garcia, a man qualified by virtue of having been a second-hand car salesman in Philadelphia. The Somoza regime ruled as a dictatorship, using the National Guard to keep the wealth producers in their place. It was a corrupt, vicious and dynastic regime: Anastasio Somoza Debayle (the second Somoza leader) personally stole much of the money sent to Nicaragua in 1972 after the tragic earthquake and used extreme force in suppressing any opposition.

Politically the Somoza regime was discredited and, as time went on, it became economically incapable of winning any support: between 1970 and 1974, 35 per cent of all Nicaraguan factories closed down due to falling profits. The resident capitalists wanted change. It was this more than anything which led to the uprising in 1979 which brought down the Somoza regime. The uprising was a popular rebellion involving workers, peasants and local capitalists – it was in no sense a socialist revolution.

The leading political force in what became known as the Sandinista revolution was the Sandinista Front for National Liberation (FSLN) which was formed in 1961 and originally comprised mainly young pro-Moscow leftists. There is no doubt that after 1979 there were definite improvements both in the economic standard of living and in the degree of political freedom in Nicaragua. Both of these improvements proved to be short-lived and neither amounted to socialism or anything like it (which cannot be established in one country anyway).

The trouble with capitalism is that there are no “nice” ways of running it: capitalist governments can never be “goodies” because it is their job to administer the exploitation of the working class. A government which is loyal to the nation which it serves (and remember, the Sandinistas are nationalists) must ensure that the nation is performing profitably and that entails squeezing as much surplus value as possible out of the wealth-producing majority. That is precisely what has happened since 1979 in Nicaragua.

The FSLN has used its state power to run a form of state capitalism in which the workers are organised as a military force, expected to obey orders from above in the interest of the national economy. “The FSLN has translated its military structures to civil life – more by circumstance than intention – and as such the recently created mass organisations function with a totally hierarchical structure” (Notas Sobre Nicaragua y la Revolution Sandinista in Bicicleta, February 1981, p. 55). The FSLN controls the workforce, despite the pretence of workers’ participation at ranch and factory levels which are no more than a means of incorporating the workers into previously determined state plans.

Under Nicaraguan state capitalism the major features of the economy are under state control. Unlike in Russia and other “socialist economies” the Nicaraguan government does not directly own the means of wealth production and distribution but does monopolise the banks (which control agricultural credit) and all imports and exports, thus effectively appropriating profits from cotton, beef, sugar and coffee which constitute two thirds of the country’s exports. The state also controls the means of processing agricultural commodities, so that although most land used for cotton cultivation is privately owned most of the cotton processing factories are state-owned; although 70 per cent of cattle are owned by peasant farmers 80 per cent of slaughterhouses are state-owned. The state is under an obligation to use its power as a national capitalist to milk as much profit as it can out of the war-weary workers. This profit is needed firstly to pay the interest on the massive debt – in excess of $2.5 bn – which is owed to the big Western banks; secondly, to offset the massive flight of private capital which has taken place since 1979 – Nicaraguan capitalists quite understandably prefer to invest in safer economic regions than one under military attack by US imperialism; and thirdly, to pay for the destabilisation, which has been openly funded by the US Administration to the tune of $130 million in aid to the contras, added to which has been a US trade war against Nicaragua. Given these circumstances and given the imperative need for capital accumulation which is essential to an underdeveloped capitalist economy, the state as capitalist has no option but to act as a ruthless and exploitative boss.

As with the economy, so in national politics the FSLN monopolises power. Technically, power is vested in the Council of State. Epstein and Evans, writing in the radical US paper, In These Times, contend that the Council is “little more than a sounding board for the policies of the nine-man FSLN directorate” (11 January, 1983). The FSLN junta has suppressed opposition parties and newspapers and, as is the usual tendency when a vanguard party monopolises the state, the new bureaucratic elite has established for itself a privileged lifestyle:

  As the FSLN consolidates its hold over the government, its leaders inevitably gain access to the perquisites of power. Commandantes live in the wealthier districts of Managua, occupying mansions previously owned by the leading Somocistas. They are provided with chauffeur-driven cars, servants and bodyguards. Their government offices are air-conditioned, a most exclusive and important status symbol in tropical Managua. (“A Critical Look at the Sandinistas”, Changes, May 1982, p. 14).

One black marketeer quoted in The Toronto Star (12 April 1987) complains that “President Daniel Ortega and the nine commandantes are the only people in the country with money. The rest of us are dying of hunger”. No doubt this quotation is printed by a pro-US Canadian newspaper as part of the ideological war against the Sandinistas but it does probably reflect the resentment which is all too common in the so-called nationally liberated countries such as Cuba, Vietnam or Kampuchea where the beneficiaries of “liberation” are the small class of bureaucrats who control the national state. Of course, Leninist mythology has it that the state is being run by the bureaucrats on behalf of the working class: it is a dictatorship on behalf of the proletariat. So it was that Pedro Ortiz, head of the Sandinista Workers’ Central could tell Nicaraguan agricultural workers that

  For workers to conduct a strike against the state is to conduct a strike against themselves, because the land is now administered by the workers and campesinos (Volya, No. 3, p. 3)

This is similar to the instruction given by Trotsky to the Russian trade unionists after 1917. Indeed, the FSLN’s attitude to East European state capitalism is that of admiration: the FSLN newspaper, El Nuevo Diario, described East Germany as “a model society . . . organised on the basis of jobs for all, peace and justice”. In 1980 when ten million Polish workers resisted their state-capitalist masters and formed Solidarity, the head of the FSLN Propaganda Department, Frederico Lopez, lined up with the most reactionary forces worldwide in condemning such trade unionists as “counter-revolutionary elements which seek to place Poland into the hands of imperialism”. (FSLN memorandum, 23 December 1981, quoted in Nicaragua: Say Hello to the New Bosses, p.31. Published in No Middle Ground).

It is an irony of political history that many of the workers who nominally supported the Sandinista revolution in 1979 then went on to support Solidarity in 1980, only to discover that the FSLN, having established its role as a national capitalist in opposition to the idea of independent trade unions, now opposed the struggle of the Polish workers. In expressing such opposition the FSLN was only being consistent, for it has done its best to ignore or suppress independent unions in Nicaragua. The country’s two largest trade unions, the Sandinista Workers’ Central (CST) and the Association of Rural Workers (ATC) each have about 100,000 members. They are essentially company unions, run by and in the pay of the state bosses. It should be pointed out that Nicaragua is traditionally a badly unionised country: on the eve of the revolution in 1979 only 6 per cent of the workforce was unionised.

There are some unions which are not state-run, but these are either too small to be of significance or discriminated against by the state employer. They range from the very small People’s Action Movement (MAP) which characterises Nicaragua as well as Cuba, China and Russia as “state capitalist” (several of them are now locked in Nicaraguan prisons) to the 65,000-strong Nicaraguan Workers Confederation (CTN) whose manifesto asserts

  . . . the need to guarantee the development of a union movement that is democratic, independent, unified, revolutionary and class-conscious . . . so as to rebuff every effort to impose a single union hierarchy that would be totally subordinate to the party in power.

Despite its Catholic illusions – not dissimilar to those of Poland’s Solidarity – the CTN is the major force in Nicaragua with a chance of threatening the state’s stranglehold over labour.

Without doubt, the US-backed terrorism against Nicaragua is brutal in its disregard for life and hypocritical in its undemocratic tactics in the avowed interest of a perverse notion of democracy. In fact, the US terror is having the reverse effect to that intended: it is uniting Nicaraguans behind the Sandinistas in an act of national defence. Without a US war against it there is a much greater likelihood that Nicaraguan workers would be resisting the state. The US assumption that Nicaragua is “socialist” is utterly mistaken and so probably is the theory that Nicaragua is about to fall under the control of the Russian Empire, taking with it other Central American countries. In fact, it is only the US offensive which could make that feasible, if only as a last resort for a terrorised Sandinista regime.

Needless to say, the Socialist Party is hostile in every way to the contra terrorists and their backers. But the enemy of an enemy is not necessarily a friend (if it was, then socialists in Britain would have had to have defended Hitler in the last world war or the Galtieri junta in the Falklands war). Socialists do not support the state-capitalist government of Nicaragua and to the Nicaragua Solidarity Campaign which implores us to do so we respond that our only support is for workers of all lands in their struggle against the capitalists of all lands, be they imperial exploiters or native ones, left or right wing.

Steve Coleman

Rear View: Ortega, Somoza Mark II (2016)

The Rear View Column from the September 2016 issue of the Socialist Standard

Ortega, Somoza Mark II

Daniel is determined not to lose any more elections. Having ousted the previous dictator Somoza in 1979, he and the Sandinistas became the new darlings of the Left and used the inane slogan ‘between Christianity and socialism there is no  contradiction.’

Following a decade of dictatorship the Sandinista regime agreed to release some political prisoners and hold free elections in return for the closing of Contra bases in Honduras. He subsequently lost several elections before returning to power in 2007 as the Catholic president of Nicaragua, one of only five countries where abortion is totally illegal. ‘President Daniel Ortega has named his wife as his running mate in November’s elections, leading to accusations he is trying to found a political dynasty.

The former guerrilla fighter hopes to win a third consecutive term for the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) with his wife, Rosario Murillo, as his vice president. “This revolution – in which women have participated shoulder to shoulder – has opened the doors to the full participation of women in all spheres: political, social and economic,”’ he said’ (theweek.co.uk, 4 August). Such nonsense is only matched by that of another President, Ronald Reagan, calling Nicaragua a beachhead of communism.


Corbyn’s Commandments

‘Jeremy Corbyn will today set out ten pledges “to rebuild and transform Britain”. Speaking in London, the Labour leader will promise to ensure full employment as prime minister by creating one million jobs to build new infrastructure and call for an NHS free of  private-sector involvement. “We could all be living richer lives in a sustainable, more prosperous and more caring society,” he is to  say’ (theweek.co.uk, 4 August). These pledges include expanding wage slavery and a million new homes being built over five years. Yet no Labour government has ever left office with unemployment lower than when it started and after World War II (Labour has supported all wars since WWI – bang goes the peaceful foreign policy pledge!) Bevan promised to solve the housing problem.

Other pious pledges include ‘security at work’ (recall the use of troops as strike breakers against the dockworkers) and a secure NHS. Labour Minister Bevan felt more secure with his own private physician, and let us not forget he oversaw the introduction of charges for dental and optical services as well as prescription fees. Tuition fees? That was Labour too. Do not bank on the pledge for them to be reversed! The climate change pledge? That’s likely to be just hot air. Free transport? No, nothing more than the possibility of an expanded publically-controlled bus network. Apparently, FTSE 100 CEOs are now paid 183 times the wage of the average UK worker. Expect a redistribution of crumbs, nothing more. Emphasis on human rights? Your right to be exploited is guaranteed under Labour!


Socialism, the smart answer

‘If futurist, inventor, and Google executive Ray Kurzweil is right about the future, we’ll all be augmenting our brains with extra capacity in the cloud at some point in the future. Which sounds exciting, even if a little frightening. But this very advance could also pave the way for the rich to become thousands of times smarter than poor people, which would likely permanently solidify and even exacerbate current socioeconomic stratifications’ (venturebeat.com, 2 August). The rich do not need to become smarter – we work for them and run society from top to bottom. A member of the 1 percent does not need to be particularly smart to know if they have enough money in their Swiss bank account to purchase ‘a $22 million penthouse in Las Vegas’ and its ‘fast car, fine art and free tickets to sporting events’ (wsj.com, 1 August). A more likely scenario is that some of us would be augmented in order to develop new weapons, advertising campaigns, reality TV concepts, or discover why ‘homeowners in affluent neighbourhoods play host to more species of arthropods than their poorer counterparts’ (washingtonpost.com, 4 August). But just imagine for a moment how useful enhanced intelligence could be in a society where everyone of us could benefit. No pinko liberal enhancements on our watch!

Material World: Ortega – The new Somoza? (2018)

The Material World Column from the September 2018 issue of the Socialist Standard

There are those on the Left who view the protests in Nicaragua as instigated by US imperialism intent upon creating a compliant client state. Kevin Zeese, for instance, describes the disorder as an attempted coup: 

 'This unrest is a full-scale regime change operation carried out by media oligarchs, a network of NGOs funded by the U.S. government, armed elements of elite landholding families and the Catholic Church, and has opened the window for drug cartels and organized crime to gain a foothold in Nicaragua.'

A great number of the poor do support the Sandinista National Liberation Front, as it introduced free healthcare and education. Ortega reigns as a paternalistic 'caudillo' strongman with a grassroots loyalty to him as a party leader.

 There are others, however, who see recent events very differently. According to Dora María Téllez, founder of the Sandinista Renovation Movement:

 'The family of Ortega and Murillo have taken over the Sandinista National Liberation Front like a parasite, using their control to benefit their family. It is basically the same as what the Somozas did. He’s a representative of big capital. He and his family are now among the richest in Nicaragua. This is a profoundly corrupt system that completely betrays the principles of the Sandinista movement.'

Alejandro Bendana, Nicaraguan ambassador to the UN from 1979 to 1990, says about Ortega:

  'He embraced corporate capital in Nicaragua. He adopted the most retrograded positions of the church and entered into an alliance, and reached an understanding with the US, so that he was able to barely win the presidency in 2007. But by that time, he himself is no longer a Sandinista. Yes, the trappings, the colors are still there, but his entire government has been, in essence, neoliberal. Then it becomes authoritarian, repressive.'

Prof William Robinson, who worked with the Nicaragua News Agency and the Nicaragua Foreign Ministry in the 1980s, says:

 '... In Nicaragua, the Ortega government has presided over this new round of capitalist expansion, including a wave of transnational and local corporate investment in free-trade zones, agro-industry, mining, logging and tourism, spurred on by the government's tax breaks, land concessions and other policies that have been praised by neoliberal institutions such as the International Monetary Fund...the international left cannot seem to let go of the illusion that governments such as the FSLN in Nicaragua or the African National Congress in South Africa still represent a revolutionary process that advances the interests of the popular and working-class masses -- this, even as the new ruling castes turn to escalating repression to dispossess those masses, plunder the state and impose the interests of transnational capital...'

Ortega's own brother, Humberto, admitted that people shouldn't pay too much attention to the Sandinista government's anti-capitalist rhetoric, because 'one thing is discourse for the political clients, and another thing is what the reality shows you are doing.'

 The cause of the current unrest arose from an attempt to increase workers' contributions to their pensions while reducing the pension payments themselves. Ortega later cancelled his plans but the demonstrations had turned into a wider opposition against his government. Over 300 demonstrators have been murdered, thousands injured. 23,000 Nicaraguans have applied for political asylum in neigbouring Costa Rica since the unrest began.

 Robinson concluded:

'. . . The real tragedy of the April protests is not that they threaten a fictitious revolutionary process, but that the population is caught between the corrupt and repressive Ortega government and the traditional oligarchy, backed by the international right wing which has never been comfortable with the Sandinista monopoly of political power and wishes to hijack the revolt to recover that power for itself. . . '

 This was a view reflected by the anarchists of Crimethinc:

  'Doubtless, various capitalists and state actors have their own agendas for Nicaragua and they hope to take advantage of the uprising to implement them. But ordinary people have legitimate reasons to rise up. We should identify the participants in the uprising who are pursuing goals complementary to our vision of a world without capitalism and the state, in order to direct our solidarity towards them. Otherwise, as the Ortega government attempts to retain power by brute force, the revolt will likely be hijacked by right-wing and colonial interests.'

There exists a conflict between rival factions of Nicaragua's ruling class, a clique who possesses political power and an oligarchic elite who seek control of the state. Being few in number and too cowardly to fight themselves, both appeal to working people to act for them. Workers should understand that they are pawns in a power struggle and rather than become a tool for another class, they must democratically and independently organise with the object of placing their own interests at the forefront.

ALJO

Material World: Nicaragua - Truth Will Out (2014)

The Material World column from the March 2014 issue of the Socialist Standard

Many liberals, including the newly elected mayor of New York, Bill De Blasio, were inspired by the Sandinista government of Daniel Ortega in the 1980s. Indeed it was difficult for anyone not have some sympathy for the Sandinistas. After all, they were being confronted by the might of the United States who were not only sponsoring acts of terrorism against them but actually engaging in acts of war by mining Nicaragua’s ports, acts for which they were duly found guilty by the World Court (although they totally ignored the verdict). Nor could many help but admire their achievements in literacy and health-care.

Nevertheless, the Socialist Party could see through the false claims being presented that a Sandinista Nicaragua was in some way socialist. The Socialist Standard wrote at the time ‘Needless to say, the Socialist Party is hostile in every way to the Contra terrorists and their backers. But the enemy of an enemy is not necessarily a friend... Socialists do not support the state-capitalist government of Nicaragua and to the Nicaragua Solidarity Campaign which implores us to do so we respond that our only support is for workers of all lands in their struggle against the capitalists of all lands, be they imperial exploiters or native ones, left or right wing’ (July 1987).

Ortega may have been a Sandinista rebel who helped defeat the Somoza dictatorship but now he has managed to transform himself from 'revolutionary' leader to simply just another revolting capitalist ruler.

With the subsequent re-elections of Ortega’s FSLN our cautionary counsel has been proved wise. In November 2013, Nicaragua’s Foreign Minister visited the UK to promote his country’s stable economy, potential for growth, infrastructure development and favourable fiscal legislation to international investments. He underlined the political stability, attractive set of labour laws, tax incentives and the comparative advantage that his country offers to British and European investors.

Under the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas (ALBA), a trade and economic cooperation pact that includes Cuba, Bolivia, and Venezuela, Ortega, by presidential decree, established Councils of Citizen Power under the control of the Sandinista party to administer and distribute much of the social spending but which also provides an estimated $3 - 500 million in funds to be personally administered by Ortega with no public accountability.

Since being reconciled with the Catholic Church, Ortega has become a strident opponent of abortion. In a country where the population is 85 percent Catholic it is always helpful in elections to have the blessing of the Church even if it means supporting a ban on therapeutic abortions that has set back women's rights. Even a pregnancy that cannot possibly result in a viable baby – an anencephalic or ectopic one – has to be carried to term. A pregnant woman with cancer has to have the baby first, then treatment for the cancer, no matter what the risk to her chances of survival. A woman who gets pregnant through an act of rape or incest has to have the baby. In 2012 the government forced a 12-year old girl who had been raped and impregnated by her stepfather to remain under ‘state protection’ in a Managua hospital until she gave birth. Sonia Castro, Nicaragua’s Minister of Health, even anointed herself ‘protector-in-chief,’ making sure the child did not escape from the hospital.

The Independent wrote ‘Today in Nicaragua, two years after the Sandinistas' return to power, there is no idealism, no poetry, no romance. The regime over which President Ortega presides is an anthem to brute cynicism. Or a parable of human weakness, the old story of what happens with idealists, always and everywhere, once they have tasted power. It is Animal Farm all over again’ (21 Nov 2008).

The objective of socialists is to assist in the emancipation of the workers from our enslavement to the capitalist class. Ortega’s Sandinistas have not betrayed their core principles or ‘values’. Their socialist credentials were always weak and in fact made no claim to being socialist. The Sandinista movement was officially designated ‘a popular, democratic, and anti-imperialist revolution.’ How often have disillusioned left liberals cried ‘betrayal!’? It’s a simple matter of understanding economic systems. No one need be fooled by propaganda spin.

ALJO

Do You Remember the Sandinistas?

Latest post from the Socialism or Your Money Back blog.

The Sandinistas are back. Or are they? In any event, Daniel Ortega, who headed the revolutionary junta that took over after the overthrow of the Somoza dictatorship in 1979 and who was President of Nicaragua till he was voted out in 1990, has just been elected President again.

For those with short memories, in the 1980s the Sandinistas enjoyed the same prestige and support amongst Leftwing romantic revolutionaries as does Chavez today. “In 1979,” read the blurb on the back of Nicaragua: The Sandinist Revolution by Henri Weber that came out in 1981, “Nicaragua’s long-lived Somoza dictatorship fell before a mass insurrection led by the Sandinist movement, which has now established the first anti-capitalist power on the American mainland.”

Weber was then a prominent member of the French equivalent of the old IMG. Later he became a “Socialist” Party senator. Ortega’s political evolution has been in the same direction. While still an anti-yankee nationalist he now emphasises his Christian rather than any “Marxist” (read Leninist) credentials.

The Sandinistas were a guerrilla group inspired by the Cuban revolution (and named after a Nicaraguan nationalist who fought against US domination in the 1920s). At the beginning, in 1979, they shared power with the representatives of the liberal bourgeoisie, who were also against the Somoza dictatorship. But they soon came to monopolise power and attempted to transform Nicaragua into the same sort of state-capitalist regime as existed in Cuba, with the same “Marxist-Leninist” ideology: a minority vanguard would liberate the people through opposition to US imperialism, land redistribution, social reforms and a cultural revolution against capitalist influences which would create a “new man”.

The USA wasn’t having it and financed and armed the “contras” who waged a relentless guerrilla campaign against the Sandinista government, so weakening it that in the end it had to agree to abide by the outcome of internationally-monitored elections. Ortega lost, ironically to one of the representatives of the liberal bourgeoisie would had been a member of the original 1979 junta. Most people in Nicaragua were simply fed up with the civil war and the economic privations it and the failure of the Sandinistas’ economic policies had caused.

For the first time a self-appointed “Marxist-Leninist” vanguard had been voted out of office. In any event, even in the absence of the US-provoked civil war, the Sandinistas would have failed to establish socialism or even improve the position of the working class. Quite apart from the fact that, due to the already world nature of capitalism, socialism cannot be establishment in just one country, and certainly not in an economically backward one like Nicaragua (or Cuba), no minority can impose socialism on a majority that does not want and understand it.

Once in power that minority has no alternative but to work within the context of capitalism, but capitalism cannot be made to work in the interest of the class of wage and salary workers. Which was why even in their hey-day the Sandinista government was opposing strikes and urging workers to work harder. They had no alternative since, just to survive within world capitalism, they had to keep costs down so as to make a surplus (a profit) to pay for essential imports.

The Sandinistas’ failure was not that of “the first anti-capitalist power on the American mainland” but the failure of an attempt to establish a Leninist state-capitalist regime there.

Adam Buick