The following greeting and political statement was sent to the recent National Convention of the Socialist Workers' Party of the USA, by the LCI, Portuguese sympathising group of the Fourth International.
I bring you the greetings and solidarity of the Internationalist Communist League (LCI), the sympathising organisation of the Fourth International in Portugal.
The Armed Forces Movement (AFM) appeared as a movement of captains several months before 25 April. Its goal was to defend the prestige of the army and to gain salary increases - all on a petty-bourgeois basis. In the course of the struggle and after linking up with Spinola, the AFM saw the need for establishing a bourgeois democ racy and the need to end the colonial war, although still on the basis of ill-defined positions. This later allowed for for the development of neo-colonialist positions.
BONAPARTIST
The bourgeoisie, lacking any mass bourgeois party, could onlv choose a bonapartist solution ov means of the AFM. But this could not be realised because of the extension of the mass movement in the factories and the barracks, and because of the penetration of the AFM by the working class parties. The coup of 25 April thus gave the masses the opportunity to struggle for an improvement of their economic situation. Hence we witnessed different struggles, some of them already on a national scale - for example, those among textile workers and post office workers in June 1974.
In unal period mere was no organised trade union apparatus, and the Stalinists of the Communist Party were any malent on demonstrating to the bourgeoisie tneir ability to control the workers movement and strengthening their position in the state apparatus. They had a systematic practice of denouncing all struggles, and accusing them of being tools of reaction. Given these facts, there appeared in this period - almost spontaneously WOLK ers' commissions whose purpose was to co-ordinate the Guns being distributed from the arsenal of the workers' militia in Barcelona during the Spanish Civil War - the workers' conmissions were already democratically elected by the workers, assembled in mass meetings or general assemblies of the factories Side by side with this, and without taking a position on the workers' commissions, the Stalinists began structuring trade unions by electing trade union leaderships without the participation of most workers. They hoped to channel struggles into them, and to control them better.
BROADENING
On the orner nand tne socialst Party nad to broaden its working class base, because when it was founded the SP was composed of intellectuals of the republican tradition. So in this period the SP supported some of the struggles, although it never actually organised the mobilisations or extended them.
After 11 March - after the defeat of the Spinolist sector of the army, and of the sectors of the bourgeoisie who supported Spinola - we witnessed an enormous surge of the mass movement on an already anti-capitalist basis.
In this period, the Communist Party took advantage of the role it had played on 11 March in stopping reaction to improve its positions in the state apparatus and in the AFM. in this period after the nationalisation of the banks, the workers began to demand the nationalisation of a very large number of companies which were closing down or whose bosses were carrying out an economic boycott.
Also in this period we saw the extension of the organisation of workers in their neighbourhoods around the right to decent housing. This led to the formation of the neighbourhood commissions - the comissoes de moradores. In several parts of Lisbon, Porto, Setubal, and some nearby towns, these neighbourhood commissions sprang up everywhere. Workers who lived in slums took over empty houses and those abandoned by the bourgeoisie. They then
The Cormon Market class not simply as an first step towards the ip; a multi-national e the working class of s in turn requires some ups of each state. The nd Portugal did not fit ome, were it not for lese inspire an intense a while their repressive und and prevent mass rtain point the oppression ble, their determination f repression, their creait repressive machine, he light of day - in an From the beginning around their necks. Faced with a cieep and deteriorating social crisis, they turned to their old ally the army (which had ushered in the era of dictatorship on their behalf 48 years earlier) to try to launch a new course But this was a gamble based on unsound assumptions. The Portuguese capitalists had overlooked the fact that capitalist democracy can only work to defuse the working class struggle for a new social order under certain circumstance: the capitalists must have some leeway so that they can make material concessions to the demands being raised by the working masses, there must be a privileged layer of the population prepared to underwrite the capitalist regime despite its class character, and there must be a bureaucratic leadership over the workers' movement prepared to sell out the interests of their class in exchange for the maintenance of special privileges. spain/portugal 7
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eptember 1975 om page 5)
d Spain - particularly tion unfolds