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From: tonyw@ubvax.UUCP (Tony Wuersch)
Newsgroups: net.politics
Subject: Re: Who is Tomas Borge?
Message-ID: <439@ubvax.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 12-Feb-86 21:23:25 EST
Article-I.D.: ubvax.439
Posted: Wed Feb 12 21:23:25 1986
Date-Received: Fri, 14-Feb-86 21:15:12 EST
References: <1697@bbncca.ARPA>
Reply-To: tonyw@ubvax.UUCP (Tony Wuersch)
Organization: Ungermann-Bass, Inc., Santa Clara, Ca.
Lines: 247

In article <1697@bbncca.ARPA> version B 2.10.3 alpha 4/15/85; site ubvax.UUCP version B 2.10 5/3/83; site bbncca.ARPA ubvax!cae780!amdcad!decwrl!decvax!wanginst!bbncca!rrizzo rrizzo@bbncca.ARPA (Ron Rizzo) writes:
><followup to Tony Wuersch: Tony, don't take any of this personally;
> there's just something about your political postings that loosens
> my tongue.>

I don't, at all.  Ron and I seem to read with different eyes and
different ears.  Which doesn't disturb me too much, since I've
always thought reality, to use Pinter's phrase, "isn't firm ground.
It's more like quicksand."


>STYLE VERSUS SUBSTANCE
>
>Tony Wuersch performs miracles I can't believe.  Like his earlier
>critique of Shirley Christian's NICARAGUA, in which he transformed
>a purported history of a revolution into an exercise in English
>Composition (he exposed Christian's rhetorical strategy & noted that
>some kinds of evidence -- such as interviews -- rather than others
>prevailed at certain points in the book, & thus disposed of its
>entire substance: a consideration of style replaced one of facts),

There were more important facts about Nicaragua, in my opinion, than
were contained in Shirley Christian's ideology.  I thought mentioning
that her account omitted these was a important point to make.  The
book had a facade of objectivity, and it's useful to note how these
facades get constructed.

>he converts the grim words & alleged crimes of a secret police
>chief into evidence for an open political system.  I can't accuse
>Tony of belaboring the obvious.

It turns on whether one thinks those words were essentially public
bull**** or were official enunciations of policy.   I think they
were bull****, Ron thinks they were serious.

I agree that if they were seriously capable of being implemented,
Borge's statements would be more worrysome, and my belief that
substantial debate does occur in Nicaragua would sound more like
Reagan's statement that the Philippines has a thriving 2-party system.

I believe Borge's words lack punch because first, as Americas Watch
points out, people are happy to denounce the regime and the entire
system for international press attribution -- doesn't say much
for the fear people have of Borge's KGB.  Second, because
Nicaragua is an itty bitty little country that has cut off all
the reasons its neighbors might have to tolerate it, to the point
where everybody is looking to see if Western gunslingers like Borge
really have any bullets.  If he does, they'll run him and his regime
out of Nicaragua.  So I conclude he doesn't.

>So let me lay bare Tony's underlying rhetoric & examine the kind
>of evidence, explicit & otherwise, that he adduces.
>
>Tony uses the language & assumptions of pluralism to describe, both
>inside & outside the FSLN, Nicaragua's current politics & to persuade
>us of its hopeful direction:  "competition", "attention" or publicity,
>implied interest groups, etc.  Yet despite the oft-declared place of
>"pluralism" in the junta's (phoney) trinity of accomodation with
>pesky democrats, & despite the strenuous efforts of Nicaragua's
>genuine opposition to retain even a toehold in the governing of the
>country, "pluralism" is hardly an appropriate model to explain the
>contemporary political scene:

The system's too young for me to give it a name like "pluralist".  I've
said in an article some time ago that one can't draw good long term
conclusions from governments in the middle of a war.  As far as genuine
opposition is concerned, the Sandinists have opposition from the left
and from the right, which didn't refuse to participate in the election,
which was given ample time on TV and in the press to campaign, and
which I don't think Ron should be calling non-genuine.

>The regime allows other political parties, but these are often
>heavily harassed; it permits independent newspapers, but heavily
>censors them, and controls the TV (radio, too?); it fixed the only
>national election in 1984; it has packed the junta and the now rubber-
>stamp National Assembly with its own creatures; and the army and
>the actual governing body of Nicaragua, the Sandinista National
>directorate, are appendages of the FSLN, and not public institutions.
>As for other sources of independent power -- labor, education, other
>voluntary associations, even part of the Church -- these are largely
>controlled and manipulated through Sandinista mass organizations,
>and perhaps also by the security police and paramilitary groups: but
>these latter means of control remain shadowy, that is to say, we have
>precious little information about them.  My article tried to suggest
>what may be happening.  Specific information on the actual means
>of physical repression is often among the last disclosures to be
>made in the exposure of a totalitarian regime; Cuba's a good example.

I think we've got lots of information about everything there.  Nicaraguans
of all stripes are all too willing to declare their hopes and fears to
foreigners, pro and anti Sandinista.  The government still controls
less of the economy than many Western European nations.  As far as
controls of the media were concerned, the government did not censor
the statements of candidates for elections.

>If Tony's implicit account of political diversity was meant to apply
>only within the FSLN, nevertheless pluralistic diversity hardly describes
>a power struggle between factions of an authoritarian revolutionary
>elite; the FSLN is not the GOP.  Tony draws a non sequitur when he
>assumes that such conflict parallels the diversity of an open political
>system by necessarily accruing to society's benefit.

Ron puts words in my mouth, since I don't think the Nicaraguan system
is completely open.  Just as the West German government feels fine in
banning the Nazi and Communist parties, the Nicaraguan government thinks
it should ban the contras, for the same reason as the West Germans:
these parties threaten the survival of the postwar state.  I don't
think the contras are the Nicaraguan form of the African National
Congress.

I also don't think the openness of a political system is the only measure
of how much conflict within a political system promotes its legitimacy.
The question to me is if the issues seriously discussed span a full range
of popular opinion.  I think they do in Nicaragua, more or less.

>To get specific:
>
>> Borge is the last surviving founder of the Sandinist movement.
>> He's a big symbol, and he knows this and plays on it.
>
>So Borge is a kind of harsh-spoken "old bolshevik", is unlike the other
>commandantes, & is a "symbol", larger than life; thus he's relatively
>harmless if nevertheless quaint.  But Borge is MUCH MORE than a symbol,
>& his very real power looms much larger than even his would-be legendary
>personage:  he is chief of the police & fire departments, of the secret
>police, of press censorship & customs, of the prisons, and of state
>intelligence and the Sandinista residential block committees.

Maybe Ron has a model of Sandinism where high Sandinists act like
warlords jealously defending their right to do anything they please
on their assigned turf.  My impression is that all significant decisions
are made by the Sandinist directorate as a whole.  The country is
small enough that substantial delegation to bureaucratic departments
such as those run by Borge is not necessary, and is not done.  The
very real power of Borge is his influence on the Sandinist directorate,
no more or less.  And there he is alone in his generation.

That's what collective leadership means.  No independent warlords.

>> I doubt his followers will get anywhere after his death, since
>> the Ortegas lean toward collective leadership.
>
>Borge may be the oldest commandante, but he's not that old.
>
>And why expect hardliners to fade once Borge dies?  In fact, of the
>3 most powerful commandantes, 2 are hardliners (Borge & Bayardo Arce,
>head of the army; Humberto Ortega's the 3rd).  Between them Borge &
>Arce monopolize the means of physical coercion, control most of the
>surveillance apparatus & some of the propaganda organs.

I do worry about Arce, and I expect a power struggle once the contra
war ends regarding his continued usefulness.

>> Borge is usually regarded as a hard-liner in that he likes to
>> contemplate repressive solutions out loud.
>
>The other commandantes do so silently? :=(  Given Borge's awesome
>powers, why treat even his public statements only as indications
>of aspirations & not also of current actions?  Would the Ortegas
>oppose such actions, or merely Borge's teasing public hints about
>them?  At times Tony himself seems to imply that junta members differ
>only in personal style & not in general aims & programs.
>
>> But saying what you want to do or what you think the state should
>> do out loud is a positive democratic action, even when what you
>> want sounds hard line.
>
>It ain't necessarily so!  The candor of a powerful comissar doesn't
>imply any freedom of speech or political openness.  And Borge's
>wishes don't merely "sound" hard line; they are hard line, if the
>phrase has any meaning.

Again, the comissar analogy is not valid, since Nicaragua is an itty
bitty country very sensitive about its public image.  As far as "if
the phrase has any meaning", the answer is it depends.

>> Borge's position is usually one of competing with the bourgeoisie
>> for public attention, and that's a positive democratic action.
>
>Who are the bourgeoisie?  La Prensa, the now powerless nonleftist
>political parties and business organizations?  They can no longer
>mount an opposition worth noticing.  Why would chief cop Borge need
>to compete against enfeebled opponents publicly, verbally?  If Borge
>competes against anyone, it's against the other commandantes.  If he
>plays to an audience, it's to international public opinion, as do the
>other junta members (whom he perhaps tries to upstage with his sardonic
>gallows humor): the Sandinistas have astutely realized its importance in 
>gaining for themselves the needed time and freedom to consolidate their
>power.  Borge may simply be sharp enough to realize that since early
>in the century a kind of knowing & candid cynicism has been fashionable
>on the left (eg, Trotsky), perhaps an extension to weak-kneed colleagues
>of "epater le bourgeoisie", and that such intellectual sadism appeals
>to a definite segment of left opinion & feeling; as an obvious sadist
>himself, he'd easily understand the psychological dynamics involved.

Nobody believes that "now powerless" means "forever powerless" in
Nicaragua.  It's not that stable -- I admit, this is another judgment.

>> Putting down opponents verbally is a sign that you recognize their
>> presence and you want to compete with them in public arenas.
>
>Or that you're targeting them ("recognize their presence") for destruc-
>tion ("compete....arenas")?  The soviets (Lenin, Stalin, etc.) have
>long recognized the importance of preceding physical attack with a
>verbal, ideological one.

The Soviet Union was not an itty bitty country sensitive about the
opinion of big mean nasty countries nearby.

>Lenin was always verbally aggressive & abusive toward opponents (except
>when in coalition with them), even when he was supreme:  such behavior
>was no index of his opponents' power.  (See Solzhenitsyn's GULAG and 
>LENIN IN ZURICH for Lenin's verbal violence.)

I agree with this judgment, since Lenin addressed few public forums,
but only those of his party.  (Citing Solzhenitsyn as "proof" ...?)
That's not the way things work in the Western press and world, and
that's not how things work yet in Nicaragua.  The USSR has left
Nicaragua officially to the US to handle, like the US leaves Poland
to the USSR.

>> Those who worry...like the Ortegas.  [Ie, devious bureaucrats like
>> the Ortegas are greater dangers to democracy than blatant hardliners.]
>
>Tony has it exactly backwards.  Borge & Arce have direct access to
>the means of suppression; the Ortegas don't.  Borge IS a successful
>politician, not because he's outspoken, but because he has real power:
>guns, cops, & prisons.

The warlord analogy again.  It's not so.

>In Tony's haste to "interpret" facts, that is, to deny them their
>obvious import, their weight, & see them only as expressions of
>institutional dynamics or the rhetorical situation of commandantes,
>Tony is blind to how the words & deeds of a powerful junta member
>actively shape, & not merely reflect (& then only obliquely), the
>character of the FSLN & thus the fate of Nicaragua.
>
>
>					Loquaciously yours,
>					Ron Rizzo

The simple, uninterpreted, truth is usually propaganda or rhetoric.
(here, maybe? )

Tony Wuersch
{amdcad!cae780,amd}!ubvax!tonyw