Mass Organizations in Nicaragua: A Reply

M A S S O R G A N IZA TIO N S by IN N IC A R A G U A : A R E P LY C arlo s V ilas In its December 1986 issue MR published a comment by William I. Robinson and Kent Norsworthy (R&N) on my article in the preceding (November) issue entitled "The Mass Organizations in Nicaragua: the Current Problematic and Perspectives for the Future." My impression is that R&N's comment is related more to their own suspicions than to my opinions; but since my name is part of the comment's title, I cannot help feeling involved. I have two basic disagreements with R&N. The first relates to content: in formulating their comments, R&N miss the explicit subject of my article-mass organizations and the tensions that war and institutional changes pose to them-and try to present it as dealing with different, although related, issues. The second disagreement-and complaint-has to do with style: to accomplish their objective, R&N are obliged to indulge themselves in distortions and ambiguities about the article, and insinuations about the author's intentions. Caricaturing implies distortion. I t is not the replacement of one issue by another but the deformation of the issue and the introduction of exaggerations that enable it to be ridiculed while still being recognized. It is in this sense that R&N present a complete caricature of my article. After doing so, they present a terrific criticism of the resulting product-which is obviously theirs, not mine. As stated in its title, my article deals with "the current problematic and perspectives for the future" of mass organizations in Nicaragua. Never mind! R&N decided that it deals with popular democracy, Carlos Vilas is research coordinator ofCIDCA, a research center concerned with Nicaragua's Atlantic Coast and the author of Sandinista R evolution (Monthly Review Press, 1986). 49 50 M ONTHLY R E V IE W I MARCH 1987 reducing this complex and multifaceted process to just one of its dimensions. "We take issue," they write, "with Vilas on the underlym ost are not stated ing assumptions and conclusions w hich-although outright-fram e the article. The term 'popular democracy' is not used, but, it seem s to us, is a key theme which underlies the article and which therefore frames our commentary." (p. 44, emphasis added) After changing my subject through this reductionist procedure (or, to use their terminology, taking the frame for the picture), they proceed to comment on my non-statements and arrive at the conclusion: "The mass organizations cannot be equated with popular democracy; they are but one form ." (p. 46, emphasis in the original) R&N continue: "The article seem s to w arn (w ithout stating outright) that the FSLN has potential anti-democratic tendencies .... " (p. 46, emphasis added) You see, the article neither warns nor doesn't warn, it just seems to, and even that without stating it outright. And, in order to heighten the ambiguity, it is not a tendency but a potential tendency-ambiguity raised to the third degree. So we are left wondering, is there or isn't there a warning? I assume that R&N are here distorting what I wrote in the first full paragraph on p. 30 of my article. But what the article explicitly says (or, to use R&N's terminology, "states outright"), is that the role of mass organizations must be analyzed with regard to the overall revolutionary strategy of national unity and mixed economy (i.e., a pluralistic and multiclass strategy) to which the FSLN is strongly committed. The article neither says nor implies anything else. Nevertheless, R&N insist on their ambiguities. "If the article is arguing-which we do not think it is-that the 'operative function' of the mass organizations is a result of coercion, then Vilas would have a basis for claiming the deterioration of popular democracy." (p. 47) Here we are offered a little jewel in the art of insinuation. If the authors "do not think," why do they mix their non-thinking with my article? Do they or don't they think that my article "argues" that popular participation was a product of coercion? It is impossible to know. And of course there is no place in the article where I discuss a "deterioration of popular democracy"! Frankly, I do not understand why R&N, who are so comfortable with militant phraseology, do not pay any attention to my discussion of the democratization ofmilitary power and production relations through the active and massive participation of youth in defense and production. The Sandinista revolution, like all popular revolutions devoted to social justice, national liberation, and democracy, is too important CORRESPONDENCE 51 a process to be dealt with as frivolously as R&N do in their comment. My article presents and tries to explain, very briefly, some of the problems and prospects of mass organizations. It deals with facts in their specific context. War, crisis, and institutional changes have created problems for the mass organizations. Some of them have responded more effectively than others. This does not affect, in principle, the construction of a democratic society, but it does affect the role of mass organizations in that society. The article discusses ways in which the FSLN has reacted to this situation. R&N's comment that the CDSs belong to the past is not a belief of the FSLN: as explained in the article, the FSLN has devised strategies for revitalizing the CDSs. Democracy can be a developing process. But it will progress only if the people involved can recognize limitations and contradictions in order to overcome them. There should be no incompatibility between the sympathy of social scientists for revolutions and their capacity to contribute to this process of development-and not merely by sitting in the cheering section. Moreover, recent (and current) developments in post-revolutionary societies as diverse as the USSR, China, and Cuba show how dynamic and controversial the process of continuing socialist democratization in fact is bound to be. Instead ofarguing in terms offacts and examples, R&N prefer to involve themselves in ambiguities, insinuations, distortions, and personallabellings. This is not the way concerned intellectuals should deal with social revolutions.