Be hammer blow of the miners' strike. e referendum. In France the candidate with a big vote for the revolutionary the mass movement set off by the able to the defeat of capitalism since THE OVERTHROW of the Caetano Government unleashed forces totally beyond the control of all those who had masterminded the military coup.
The capitalists and Spinola had decided, when they plumped for the coup, to try and ride the crest of The mass movement, granting whatever concessions were necessary to head off the movement and lead it into a blind alley. But it is unlikely that they were prepared for the tidal divisions. wave of working class mass action that broke around them.
All across the country workers began to put forward their demands, and strikes and occupations sprung up in every industry: Students and leachers took over the running of the universities. Mass demonstrations united workers and students with rank-and-file soldiers and sailors in the streets, SOCIALIST REVOLUTION Once again the spirit of socialist revolution has appeared to haunt the European capitalist class, for many of the conditions for the des truction of capitalist class rule are present in Portugal to a greater degree than the continent has seen for many years:
1. The coup and the new political freedoms that it brought have inspired the masses with expectations of a transformation in their standard of living.
2. The ability of the ruling class to meet the demands of the masses is sinctly umited. The need to keep wages down in order to encourage foreign investors and preserve the competitiveness of Portuguese industry against European rivals will prevent any continuing flow of concessions.
3. The working class has a strong sense of its own strength and a determination to fight. It is rapidly building the organisations neceasary to lead such a fight: free trade unions, tactory committees, even national workers assemblies in some industries (eg. the railways).
4. The freshness of these workers' orgamsations means that there is no established bureaucracy which can readily rely on the machinery of the workers' own organisations to divide and defuse the struggle.
5. The close relationship between the struggle for economic improvements and for political gains has pushed the workers into fighting for wide-ranging demands that pose the question of who rules.
6. The old State machine has been discredited and weakened by its close association with the fascist order. Workers in almost every Government the purging of top officials, workers have on several occasions imposed thei control over the mass media (printworkers in Lisbon recently forced the resignation of the manager and editor of the capital's largest daily and one former Catholic radio station is virtually under workers" management), and demands for the sacking of managers closely associated with the old regime abound, 7. Mass pressure has forced the disbanding of all the specialised machinery of repression and "public order" - the political police, the riot police and the fascist militia.
8. The main prop of the capitalist state — the armed forces - is, from the ruling class's point of view, unreliable, It is infected with political ideas and riddled with political ARMED FORCES The politicisation of the armed forces is one of the most important features of the Portuguese upHeaval. At the top are the generals who make up the junta that stands behind the Government. They are politically conservative, and reliable supporters of capitalist rule.
the backbone of the Movement of the Armed Forces. They are liberal democrats, but quite capable of moving sharply to the right and into the same camp as their generals as the mass struggle mounts.
Next there are the conscript officers, often former students doing their compulsory military service, and influenced by the left. Because of the colonial wars they actually make up a majority of army officers.
Finally there are the rank-and-file. Those in the army are mostly conscripts and are very open to influence from the workers movement. The sailors reflect the strong "oppositionist political tradition of the navy, and have been in the forefront of mass actions alongside the people and the round-up of the former political police.
In the name of maintaming unity, the Portuguese Communist Party advises the Portuguese workers to have faith in the army an a whole. Their leader, Alvaro Cunhal, recently had these words of wisdom to offer: "As opposed to the Chilean army, the Portuguese unmy is in its majority progressive. This allows us to look on the future with confidence.
Cunhal is undoubtedly correct. But what he fails to mention is that the progressive majority of the army is mostly at the bottom, and the reactionury minority at the top. By talking about unity with the army as a whole the CP Jeaves the rank-andtie and the left-wing officers in the hands of their reactionary superiors, and ties its own hands when it comes to cumpaigning politically among the tank-and-tile and stimulating their independent self-organisation tirough soldiers committees, etc.
It is worth recalling that the Chilean CP also taught that their department have raised the demand for army was "in its majority" trustworthy. And indeed when the Popular Unity Government look power the majority faction in the armed forces were the liberals who wanted to bide their time and see what the new Government got up to. This taction was led by a general called Pinochet. partiesthe Socialist Party - in the Government.
new brand of miracle politics - it is forging an 'anti-monopoly alliance' with the monopoles themse ves as its principal ally! The CP has come out openly against further mass actions by the working class (branding those who take this cowse as fascist tools), and is counselling against further wage demands on the grounds that they will help the monopolies by driving their smaller competitors out of business.
That this argument can be put Then come the professional officers forward in what is probably the ly that the giant Lisnave shipyards need the help of their workers to drive small backyard workshops out of the market for 500,000 ton desperate the CP is to rationalise their class collaborationism, It is more than coineidence that wags need of the monopolies at the In its haste to preserve the "democratic gains by snugeling up to the monopolists the CP has even forgotten how to be consistent democrats. Its longstanding demand for a freelyelected constituent assembly has gone by the boards, in favour of the Junta's vague promise of elections "within a year'.
more reliable ally than the monopolists could ever have dreamed. By bolding back on the demand for clections - which would expose the majority of the present Government as nothing more than the personal - the CP is giving the ruling class of capitalist political tools to replace the discredited fascist ones, and reassert its control over the crucial instruments of class rule and the mass media ment wants protracted negotiations with the colonies. Its aim is to squeeze out important concessons ers - that can be used as bargaining counters with imperialism. It is also manoeuvring for political arringements that are the most favourable al' imperialist stranglehold over the colollies.
A mass campaign in Portugal immediate return of Portuguese OBSTACLES There are two big obstacles to the development of the socialist revolution in Portugal. The first is the participation of the main working class political - the Communist Party and The Portuguese CP is applying a authority' most monopolised capitalist coonomy in the work land it does seen unlikesuper-tankers) just goes to show how Traint is the principal economic The CP is proving to be an even agents of a tiny handful of capitalists foreign exchange.
every opportunity to forge a new sel colonies) and abroad. - the army COLONIAL QUESTION The CP is playing the same sole on the colonial question. The Governlike the abandonment of the strategically important Cape Verde islands to NATO by the Guinea liberation fightfor the maintenance of a 'neo-coloniagainst the colonial wars and for the soldiers would be a powerful biow to imperialism and the political strategy model, of the Portuguese monopolies. It would also provide an important political issue around which the struggles of the workers' movement, the students, the thousands of deserters, and the rank-and-file of the anned forces could be united. It would stop up the politicisation of the army and deal a crushing blow to the cupitalists plans to restore But such a course would cleurly Jeopardise the CP'S 'anti-monopoly allance with the monopolies. So there has not been a critical peep out of the CI's leaders about the Government's colonial policy. They have done nothing to encourage a mass movement against the wars. and instead have devoted all their energies to attacking and smearing the organisations of the revolution ary left who are trying to build such TRAGEDY - OR CRIME?
All this would be tragic if it had happened say ten years ago. It would mean that the CP was throwing away an opportunity to overturn capitalist class rule and instead bolstering up the flagging capitalist State, as it did tionist. across Western Europe after the Second World War. Now, as then, the likely upshot would be the expulsion of the CP from the Government in a few months and the restoration of 'normal capitalist democracy, bused upon a coalition of conservative capitalist parlies.
The Portuguese Communist and Socialist leaders, by failing to lead the working class in the struggle for power, have become Judas goats Jeading the masses to the slaughter.
This serves to highlight the second great obstacle to the socialist rey. olution in Portugal - the absence of a revolutionary party capable of dereloping the mass struggle and seizing the leadership of the mass movement from the hands of the reformists and Stalinists.
The International Communist League (LCI - Portuguese sympathising organisation of the Fourth Inter national) is a young organisation with very limited forces. But through its efforts to develop u mass movement against the colonial wars, its uncompromising agitation for the immediate election of a constituent assembly, its propagation of factory committees and workers' control in industry, it can rapidly become a force to be rockoned with, In close cooperation with other currents on the revolutionary left, it can begin to offer the Portuguese masses an alternative to the slippery slopes of class collabora But time is short. The efforts of the international revolutionary move ment must be placed behind the heroic struggle of the LC and other Portuguese revolutionaries to turn the tide. We must work together to make Portugal the first bridgehead of socialism in Western Europe.