4. Support for the poor peasants through the setting up of a system of credit and technical aid, with an agLCI political parties in the country.
parties, The pact is designed to give the Armed Forces Movement the authorBUSCOOT ity it needs to regulate the further development of the class struggle in Portugal, bring the workers' movement under control, and prevent any real fight for a workers state and a socialist Portugal According to its provisions the AFM will have equal voice with any elected body in drawing the President. The President will have sweeping powers, including that The Portuguese Armed Forces Movement (AFM), the effective ruling force in the country, scored a big victory last week in reaching agreement on its proposed pact with all the major This agreement, which effectively leaves political power in the hands of the military leaders for the next three to five years. has been accepted by both the capitalist parties, the Centre Democrats and Popular Democrats, the two mass reformist the Communist Party and the Socialist Party, and one group of the far left, the Popular Socialist Front.
Socialist Front.
ing up a new constitution and appoint- add up to one thing a class collaborreconstruction).
At the same time the AFM-appointand the right to authorise the President countries where left-wing military CLASS COLLABORATION is not accidental AFM will draw up, in conjunction with reconstruction. The nature of this streets. "platform' should be really something to see, since it will supposedly reflect the views of everyone ranging from the reactionaries of the Centre Democrats through to the advocates of 'socialism now' in the Popular In reality, whatever such a document may say on paper, it can only ationist scheme to block the growth of workers power and underwrite the continged existence of capitalist erploitation (tarted up as "national Some sections of the AFM want to carry this scheme even further und are now tulking about the fusion of different political parties into a single "broad front" which would provide civilian political support for the AFM. The resemblance of this pian to the set-up in many third world"
regimes have come to power talking about socialsin, only to direct their efforts to de railing the mass strugale, TROTSKYISTS The opposition to the AFM's class collaborationist pact has been led by the International Communist League (LCI), Portuguese sympathising organisation of the Fourth International. The LCI was the first of the parties to publicly announce its reliusul to go along with the pact, and it was at its press confercace that the contents of the plan, which until then had been kept sccret, were made avaliable to the Portuguese The LCI denounced the plact as an attempt to conceal, throuph an agreement beiween capitalist and workers' organisations, the contradictions which irreconcilably oppose the interests of the exploited to those of the exploiters on the political and economic scene." They pointed out that only a workers' government based on the organisations and parties of the working class can etfectively combat capitalist exploitation und the construcThe LCI called on the genwinely revolutionary elements in the Armed Forces Movement to reinforce their suppurt for the anti-capitalist move ment of the workers, to lake part in the alliance between workers and soldiers, and on lhis basis. not to oppose the independent organisation of rank-and-file soldiers, their democratic rights of assembly, discyssion and trade unionisation, and to refuse to repress the struggles ol the workers in the lactories and the GROUP EXCLUDED The 1CI has been joined in its stand by the rest of the organisations of the revolutionary lett, and atter initial hesitation by the most important "centrist' group (ie. one that puts forward revolutionary ideas but often compromises with the reformists in practice), the Movement of the Socialist Left (MES). I remains to be seen how the AFM will treat those who have refused to go along with Is plan, but an ominous sign is the denying to one of them, the Communist Electoral Front (an electoral federation of several Macist groups), the TV and radio time to which they are legally entitled.
In other areas the LCTs election campaign has been going well. They have organised public meetings all over the country, stressing the need for the unity of the working class and a workers government to carry the struggle for socialam forward. Al one meeting a militant soldier spoke from the platform to stress the need for the arming of the working class and called for the creation of armed pickets by the workers committees and armed detachments of the mass workers organisations In Lisbon a highly successful heeling took place in the Sports Pavilion on the theme For a Red Burope of the Working Class', with Ernest Mandel from the Fourth International, Several LCI candidutes for the Lisbon area spoke, including Rosa Norberto, a trade union delegate from the important Plessey factory Mandel closed his speech by saying To each blow which international reaction seeks to deliver Lo the Portuguese revolution, the European working cluss must respond with active solidarily. Despite being only a modest organisation, the Fourth International i ready to work towards promoting this solidarity with the Portuguese people today, as yesterday it orgunised solidarity with the people of indochina, and tomorrow will do so with the peopk of Spain."