Portugal Moves Dn to Revolution

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On every available inch of all space in Lisbon at the oment can be read the polical views of just about every assible shade of opinion ithin the working class and cialist movement. The post* the leaflets, the newspets, and the impassioned bates that surround them, ial with issues of daily conin for the Portuguese brking class.

As the Portuguese workers we opened a breach for the melopment of a new stage in the tropean revolution, an underinding of their problems and hievements is of fundamental ¡portance for those who will Itainly soon follow them. : Even in the most priest-ridden rts of Northern Portugal, lengthy scussions can be heard on the writs of different sections of arking class leadership. You can ty there as anywhere else all the assic works of Marxism which pre been kept from the Portuse people during generations of scist rule, and for which there now an enormous appetite.

In the southern agricultural zas, peasants occupying the dates of landlords who have now ed will tell you with considerable aviction how they will deal with • possible return of their former ipressors.

In each tiny event of day-to† life in Portugal today you can • the effects of the living mamic of a revolutionary struggle the sharpest struggle for leaderin the working class.

you go to buy a stamp in I new Post Office in central porto, you are liable to have wait until the counter clerks tre finished a noisy argument bout the relative merits of the Pand SP candidates in their forthAming union elections. Outside, ro teenage Maoists have drawn a ige crowd, who are certainly terested in the policies being put Iward to fight against a return i fascism and foreign intervention.

The crowd seems mostly to be ae up of supporters of the cialist Party, but they are -bious about the assertion that eir first enemy is something town as Soviet social imperdism'.

To see these things happening Portugal and to understand what by represent in a fast-moving litical process is to confront a tation that throws into question Ery assumption and tests every inciple derived from more peaceI and slow-moving times and aces.

In the developing reality of the Irtuguese revolution, not only is Ery organisation of the workers' ovement rent with the most *ter debate, but every betrayal ud every turning back is illum-l ated with a clarity that throws it to the sharpest possible relief.

Nowhere in the world today • you see Stalinists who are more Tvently tied to the defence of • bourgeois order than in *tugal today. In Portugal the mitorous role of social democracy • be seen most clearly, as it allies th and upens the door for every in of oppression and reaction.

There also, the centrists and infusionists of the workers movereveal most clearly where policies lead. In no other amstances could the sectarians eat more empty phrases or flail • arms more uselessly in the pty air.

The purpose of this article and as tbat will follow is not to a manded analysis of all the ess is ste = be develop but to say something about what has, been learnt from a number of recent visits to Portugal by members of the WSL, and in particular to indicate some of the main forces that are vying there for the leadership of the working class.

In this article we shall take up the position of the Socialist Party and describe some other important recent developments.

One point which should be made at the outset is to emphasise the extent to which the capitalist news media in this country has distorted and lied about the strength of the forces opposed to the revolution.

On the basis of such reports, we had expected to find on arrival in Portugal reactionary mobs on the march everywhere, with workers' organisations cowed and afraid to operate, their offices destroyed.

STRENGTH

Such an impression is quite wrong. In Lisbon itself evidence of the strength and confidence of the working class can be seen on every hand, with big meetings of workers an almost nightly occurance, and occupations, large meetings of soldiers and socialist organisations taking place all the time.

Even outside the big cities, it is not the case that the forces of reaction predominate. Although there have been right-wing riots organised in such towns as Leiria and Braga, there is no sign that the workers' organisations have been driven out.

At least one of the buildings which the world press claimed was burnt to the ground at Leiria, the head-quarters of the pro-stalinist MDP, can be seen standing in one of the main squares to this day without so much as a broken window. In all of these towns, offices of such left-wing organisations as the MES and the LCI can be seen in operation, Maoists give out their leaflets in the street and there are the same discussions on the same political issues that take place in Lisbon.

It is of course true that the peasants of the North are discontented with the effects on prices of the recent bountiful vine harvest and with the failure of the various governments set up since the overthrow of fascism to deal with their grievances. However, the agricultural labourers in the recently occupied and nationalised big estates in the south display quite a different attitude.

On Wednesday 17th. September for example, there was a general strike throughout the two provinces of Alentejo, which covers a large proportion of Southern Portugal, and include the towns of Evora and Beja. On that day, virtually unreported in the British press, a significant section of the agricultural workforce expressed their hatred of all the vestiges of the old fascist-landlord regime that still remain, and their determination te defend the gains which the revol ution has already brought them.

STANDSTILL

Travelling around the area it was clear that not a workshop was operating, not a field being tilled, and those few offices and shop that opened in the early morning sooil closed their doors. In Evora there was an enormous demonstration in support of the agricultural reforms where there was open talk of the need to kill off the few landlords still to be found in the area. A particular issue around which this display of the joint power of the urban and rural proletariat centred concerned the right to ownership of 103 cattle and 39 ries from an occupied estate in Portalegere, Spanish border.

The various efforts of a group of armed landlords to get back what they claimed fo be their property has filled the Portuguese press for a number of weeks now, and in some ways what has happened has been symptomatic of the forces operating in the revolution as a whole. At first the farmworkers looked to the local military commander to protect their rights to the newly-won animals, and were horrified when the military decision was to restore the animals to the former landlords.

Eventually, the bitter determination of the farmworkers, indicated not least by the 17th. September strike, forced the handing back of the cattle and pigs to the occupying farmworkers. However this may still not yet be the end of the story.

To describe the widespread and fervent support for the continued progress of the revolution is not of course to deny that the possibility of counter-revolution remains an ever present reality. In Lisbon one can see significant focus for such a movement in the 'retornados' back from the former colonial possessions who hang around in discontented groups on street corners, and who have adopted some of the methods of a movement they fear and misunderstand in order to draw attention to their grievances.

Thus they have hijacked buses to block a bridge across the River Tagus and have occupied the Bank of Angola, demanding that their worthless Angolan currency be changed into Portuguese denominations. Leaflets handed out to passers-by during these events called for an end to decolonisation and the return of Spinola.

However much the 'retornados place their confidence in such unworkable solutions as these, there can be no defence of their conditions by turning back the clock.

JOBS

Whatever efforts are made by the extreme right to emerge from the shadows by mobilising ex-colonials in alliance with the economically insecure peasants of the North, jobs will only be found for these people and a place in Portuguese society if there is a struggle for a government of the working class and peasantry based on the independent organs of workers' power.

The beginnings of such developments of independent workers' organisations can be seen on every hand in the big cities and in the agricultural regions of the South. In their form and purpose such bodies vary a great deal. In some cases their function is to set up a system of workers' management in an enterprise that has been taken away from an employer who has fled. Elsewhere, workers committees organise thes ano. have occupied empty properties.

These committees could be smashed or they could become the basis of a new society. Their direction will depend on the extent to which a leadership can be built within them that will develop them to challenge the bourgeois state and its instruments.

We spoke to the director of one section of the state TV system. He told us that of course there was a workers committee in his reorganised enterprise, though in theory this only existed to be consulted about management decisions. The committee, he thought, already exercised more power than it had on paper since its views were always a decisive influence. What happened next would of course depend on the strength of the working class as a whole, and on the overall political situation.

What is essential for the development and unification of such organs is to break them from the Armed Forces Movement and from supporting the present leaders of the working class, who will fight tooth and nail against any strengthening of the independent power of the class. If the position of the social democrats and the Stalinists in Portugal is not so deeply rooted by history as in other European countries, they show just as much ability to divert and betray the workers.

Both Stalinists and social democrats in Portugal work particularly closely in the international movement of which they are a part. Stalinist Cunhal relies heavily on the Soviet leadership whose faithful servant he has always been, and Soares desperately needs the kind of support he gains from his frequent visits to see his counterparts in Britain, Germany, Sweden and elsewhere.

Nor are these of course the only international contacts of Soares. He may deny that he has received financial subventions from the CIA, but such charges are widely believed in Portugal, and he has not been able to brush off the accusations of recent contacts with Spinola.

In any case was it not the hypocritical campaign of the SP leadership against the fourth government that provoked the reactionary violence of July and August? Whose interests did these serve other than those of capitalism and imperialism? In any case Soares talks at length to such bitterly anti-working class leaders as President Giscard of France, and advocates support for NATO and the EEC.

The SP is now working closely with the right-wing section of the Armed Forces Movement, and with them they dominate the new sixth provisional government.

"SOCIALIST"

Yet how is it that, despite all this, Soares is compelled to make statements about the need for a thoroughgoing socialist transformation in Portugal and to maintain that he is opposed to social democracy? The answer to this was made obvious in discussions we had with Socialist Party members in Lisbon on the night of the formation of the sixth government.

The politics of rank and file members of the SP was miles from the pro-capitalism of everything done by Soares. SP members were not happy about the undemocratic practices of the PCP, but they nevertheless considered themselves Marxists, and wanted the nationalisation of the foreign monopolies and the remaining sections of big domestic industry.

The statements of Soares have to take account of feelings of this kind to outflank the only openly pro-capitalist party left in Portugal now, the PPD who are busy proclaiming their adherence to what they call 'social democracy. The practice of the SP leadership however, clearly belies any of their 'revolutionary pretentions'.

The way in which the leadership of the SP is closely tied to the defence of capitalist private property comes out clearly in their policies. in the Republica affair.

It is certainly the duty of every socialist to support the rights of not the but the the whi not embraces Labour Party Secretary Ron Hayward different sections of the workers' movement to express their point of view. However it was not in defence of such a principle that Soares ran his campaign against the Republica workers, nor on such a basis did he win the support of all the other capitalist papers in Western Europe. His was a defence of the rights of the proprietor over his workers, of a fake 'democracy' and a so-called pluralism in which capitalist rule could continue to predominate.

There were many deliberate false impressions created by the hypocrisy of Soares and his associates on this issue. For instance, in the parallel take-over of the reactionary pro-clerical radio station Renascenca, the issue of workers' democracy did not arise so the workers' take-over was completely justified.

The workers at Republica did demand complete control of editorial policy of the paper. at first simply a statement to effect that the paper supported line of the Socialist Party with ch those who printed it were in agreement.

CENTRISTS

Their take-over was not part of a "Communist plot" as it was portrayed both by Soares and by sections of the left. It was under the leadership of centrists of the PRP and UDP whose general view can be found in the editorial columns of the paper that now appears.

The greatest danger of all in the take-over perhaps was the illusions of the workers involved that the capitalist state and the Armed Forces Movement would necessarily be on their side. These issues have largely been by-passea by events, however. There are still plenty of papers that reflect the views of the Socialist Party leadership, and they can be bought any day of the week on the streets of Lisbon or Oporto.

As for Republica itself, it is now in financial difficulties with the withdrawal of a government subsidy. In recent weeks the paper has been appealing for people to come to work on it for nothing. The collapse of the paper now might win the applause of the hypocrites in the leadership of the SP. It would certainly in no way be a victory for workers' democracy.

The real basis of the 'democratic' pretentions of Soares was revealed with the formation of the new government on 19th. September. After continual attacks on Vasco Goncalves and his fifth government on the grounds that it was elected by nobody and responsible only to a clique of officers the Socialist Party has now joined a government, in league with the openly pro-capitalist PPD, which has again been elected by nobody and which rests' simply on a different faction of the AFM.

This arrangement has inevitably produced dissention within the ranks of the SP, and also within the CP where the claim to have taken a minor portfolio simply to make the government slightly less reactionary than it actually is, rings very hollow indeed.

In the next article we will deal with the role of Stalinism in Port ugal and with those groups who claim to provide an alternative to its counter-revolutionary role.

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ESS, Wednesday October Ist 19;