Philosopher Donald Hodges writes insightful scholarly works on left-wing thought and revolutionary processes in Latin America. Individuals of all ideological persuasions can benefit by reading this highly original and well-conceived history of the intellectual foundations of the Nicaraguan Revolution.
Hodges debunks the myth that Augusto Sandino was a mental lightweight who dabbled in simplistic ideas, and demonstrates that Sandino had a coherent ideological and political program, which he derived from the thinking of European and Mexican anarchists. Sandino adhered to the beliefs that “property is theft” and that the workers’ struggle against capital is a matter of class interest and human justice. Hodges breaks new ground by characterizing Sandino as an anarchocommunist with a theosophy of liberation; one who couched his ideology in patriotism to attract followers. He shows that in Mexico Sandino became a member of the “Magnetic-Spiritual School of the Universal Commune,” which accepted spiritualism, and preferred Bolsheviks to social democratic compromisers.
Hodges depicts Sandino as a collectivist who advocated an advanced revolutionary nationalism that anticipated a workers’ revolution, ideas accepted by today’s Sandinistas. He notes that Sandino sought internationalism through a frontierless Latin America, and successfully challenged the Comintern’s claim to revolutionary hegemony in the hemisphere.
Nicaraguan intellectual Carlos Fonseca criticized Sandino for not institutionalizing the revolutionary process in Nicaragua, but he used elements of Sandino’s thought to formulate the FSLN program. FSLN theorist Ricardo Morales Avilés, who considered a Marxist political approach essential to sandinismo, but a Marxist world view expendable, adapted Antonio Gramsci’s theory of cultural and class hegemony and Mao Zedong’s concept of class contradictions to Nicaragua’s revolutionary ethos. Poet-priest Ernesto Cardenal added the idea that you overcome inequality by raising the cultural and material level of workers to that of professionals, which Hodges says equals “leveling downwards”—an anarchist component of Christian communism that Marxists reject. Cardenal also taught that culture, philosophy, and theology have one goal: the creation of the new revolutionary person and the fraternal equitable society envisioned by Christ. Hodges contends that attempts to establish the consistency of Christianity and Marxism are not convincing, but build ideological pluralism, and that the FSLN is the only revolutionary vanguard with a Christian wing that has effectively mobilized the masses.
Hodges analyzes superbly two sandinismos, one popular and folkloric, the other intellectual and systematic. He says that if you understand that the latter current does not contradict the former, you cannot give credence to the Contras’ claim that the Sandinistas “sold out” the revolution. He concludes that the Sandinistas are not doctrinaire Marxists, nor social democratic reformers, but represent Latin America’s New Left that has a splendid opportunity to replace Nicaragua’s tired liberalism.
