What Went Wrong? The Nicaraguan Revolution

A Marxist Analysis

• Author(s): Dan La Botz,
• Publisher: BRILL
• Pages: 432
• ISBN_10: 9004291318
  ISBN_13: 9789004291317
  
• Language: en
• Categories: Political Science / Political Ideologies / Communism, Post-Communism & Socialism , History / Military / Revolutions & Wars of Independence , Political Science / Political Ideologies / General , Political Science / Political Freedom ,

Description:... This volume is a valuable re-assessment of the Nicaraguan Revolution by a Marxist historian of Latin American political history. It shows that the FSLN (‘the Sandinistas’), with politics principally shaped by Soviet and Cuban Communism, never had a commitment to genuine democracy either within the revolutionary movement or within society at large; that the FSLN’s lack of commitment to democracy was a key factor in the way that revolution was betrayed from the 1970s to the 1990s; and that the FSLN’s lack of rank-and-file democracy left all decision-making to the National Directorate and ultimately placed that power in the hands of Daniel Ortega. Pursuing his narrative into the present, La Botz shows that, once their would-be bureaucratic ruling class project was defeated, Ortega and the FSLN leadership turned to an alliance with the capitalist class.