Problems of the Portuguese Revolution

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Soldiers, sailors and workers demonstrate in Lishon on August 25th.

John Docherty Each day now there are fresh reports of the further intensification of the revolutionary crisis in Portugal. Constantly there are new manifestations of the audacity and confidence of militant workers. revolutionary rank and file soldiers, and well-organised sections of farm. labourers, as each in turn come into conflict with the capitalist state and with all those who continue to maintain and support it. The compelling dynamic of the revolutionary process tests at each new turn all those who claim to speak for the interests of the masses.

It is hardly surprising that the issues raised by the great events in Portugal have provoked the most furious debates and splits within workers organisations in every part of the world. There have even been some pale reflections of this within the higher reaches of the international Stalinist and social democratic bureaucracies.

This is because the social convulsion now sweeping Portugal open the possibility for the first time for decades in Europe of the masses taking things into their own hands. This has a resounding effect on the balance of political calculations and class forces in every part of the world. Developments on the streets of Lisbon and Oporto, in the shipyards of Lisnave, the barracks of Coimbra or the fields of Alentejo are of no mere passing interest. They will soon be spilling out into all of Europe. The victories and defeats of the Portuguese masses are our victories and defeats also, and the issues they raise are of immediate and pressing importance to the workers in every part of the world.

SOARES

In a previous article we dealt with the lying hypocrisy of the leaders of the Portuguese Socialist Party. The warm reception accorded to the counter-revolutionary Soares by the Labour leaders fresh from their efforts to reduce the living standards of the British working class at Blackpool the other week is a clear confirmation of the real direction of the meaning of the 'Marxist' phrases that continue to come from the SP leaders. Recent reports indicate that there are fewer workers to be found on their demonstrations, but there can be no doubt that they continue to exercise a hold over important sections of the Portuguese working class.

One major explanation for this situation is the role of the Portuguese Communist Patty. This organisation emerged from the fascist period with a record of struggle against the dictatorship, and with the active support of major sections of workers, notably from among the heavy industries around Lisbon and the agricultural areas of the South.

In the early period after the coup the Communist Party had two main policies: to win as many positions as possible within the bourgeois state apparatus, the army, the press etc., and to hold back any challenge to capitalism arising from the militancy of the working class. As they took over the machinery of local government in the North, and stood foursquare with every twist and turn in the policies of the Armed Forces Movement and its successive governments. they became identified by. the peasants of the North with the inability of the new regime to develop policies to serve their interests.

As the CP denounced ones strike movement after another, they began to lose their control over sections of militant workers who have looked increasingly towards the various organisations to the left of them.

All of this brought about the increasing isolation of the CP during August, culminating in the overthrow of their champion Vasco Goncalves and his fifth provisional CP General Secretary, Cuhnal, a most consistent supporter of every form of Stalinist class collaboration in the past has been forced to make statements about the inimportance of electoral arithmetic and the need for 'revolutionary vigilance' by the working class. This has inevitably produced a great flurrying in the Stalinist dovecots of France and Italy, where electoral arithmetic is the only form of politics ever considered, and in Spain where alliance with neo-fascists appears to be quite acceptable.

For the Stalinists also it was thus a significant step to sign a document on 25th August together with various 'left' organisations including even the 'Trotskyists' of the LCI. This "unity" was in support of the 'COPCON document' largely drafted by the centrists of the PRP (the group linked to the British IS) and included even some criticisms of the CP itself.

We heard that at the meeting where the agreement was discussed, the CP representatives said nothing about what policies should be put into the document. They Just signed it. Their purposes was to try to break out of their isolation.

From the point of view of the CP, however, this tactic suffered an important set-back when the fifth provisional government was overthrown. In the weeks that followed the rank and file members of the CP were clearly looking for a determined policy.

Thus at the meeting held at the Campo Pacqueno in Lisbon on 16th Sêptember and the big demonstration two days later, despite valiant etforts by the marshalls, it was impossible to get the ordinary members and supporters to shout slogans with any enthusiasm in support of the bourgeois politicians.

The CP policy of opposing all strikes has also clearly had to be changed, as can be seen for their organisation of the one-day walkout in Alentejo on 17th September, and their support for the steel workers earlier this month.

These actions have been designer to reconcile the ordinary followers of the CP with the continued association of their party with the new sixth provisional government, which is clearly universally unpopular among militant workers, and likely to become more so as it moves in against any of the initiatives of rank and file soldiers with the kind of talk of the need to restore 'law and order' that is familiar throughout the world.

ATTACKS

The CP leaders even while members of the government are forced politically to attack it. But however different they appear, however much they adapt to the aspirations of the masses who still follow them, the CP will certainly continue to go to any possible length to deliver the working class hand and foot to the capitalist class and its state.

In the complex and fast changing political situation, it is inevitable that groups to the left of the CP will grow. At this stage, there can be seen the development of a whole series of centrist organisations, in some cases commanding fairly large followings in the working class. The main political essence of these groups is their inability to distinguish between the role of the various social classes in the revolutionary process, resulting in their subordination of the political independence of the working class, and their incapability of mobilising the class. on a revolutionary programme. But now many of their policies are being tried and tested we can assess how this is working out.

MAOISTS

The results of the reactionary 'social fascist' policies of the Maoist: can be seen daily. The view of the tiny 'official' pro-Chinese CPC-ML (who are also known as the AOC) is that the CP of Cunhal is a greater threat to the Portuguese working class than American imperialism. Such a conception leads them to direct virtually all their propaganda against the CP, and to North.

The MRPP (Revolutionary Mor ment for a Proletarian Party) group seems to have a similar view of the world, but they have played some part in the organising of soldiers. especially against going off to the colonial wars, and have won a few positions in the unions from the CP. They create an illusion of streng th by the number of enormous red and yellow paintings they have man aged to get up in Lisbon and elsewhere, mostly dating from their campaign to release their leader Arnaldo Matos from prison earlier this year.

PICTURES

Something of their style can be gathered from the pictures they put up showing Matos, with what can only be described as a beatific look on his face, leading an anonymous looking section of the masses into a garish Hollywood sunrise. These hardworking sectarians continue to build up their membership, and they managed to mount a rally of 5,000 on the same night as the CP in Central Lisbon on 16th September. It is unlikely, however, that they will have much further influence on events, and they are being outpaced by a number of other Maoist groups.

The most important of the othe self-appointed 'Marxist-Leninists' arr the UDP (Popular Democratic Union), who are said by the others to be 'lackies of Cunhal' because they refuse to place the struggle against alleged 'social fascism' at the top of their agenda. With some of the prestige of the Chinese revolution begind them, they have mangged to gain some support among committees of soldiers.

Their organisation, however, shows all the classic tendencies of a petty bourgeois centrist formation moving in to support the famous COPCON document, and then pulling out just as suddenly when the implications of alliance with the CP became obvious.

A number of other centris groupings were among the othes signatories of the 25th August aocord. The MES (Left Socialist More ment) is the most right wing of these. It unites left-wing Catholics, sections of the legal opposition from the old regime and disaffected members of the mass organisations into as well-intentioned a group of semi-liberals as you could hope to meet, and is likely to become increasingly ineffectual as time goes on.

"DIRECT ACTION"

The LUAR also consists of well-intentioned people who specialise in various forms of 'direct action'. Under fascism, this used to include plane hi-jacking, but recently there have been such activities as opening shoe shops abandoned by their owners and taking part in land occupations. Any directly political ole for this organisation is only a remote possibility.

The best-known of the centrist groupings is the PRP-BR (Proletarian Revolutionary Party (Red Brigades) which works closely with the British International Socialists. This is a particularly important and dangerous body because it has some support in the army and elsewhere and combines an apparently incurable romanticism Continued on Page 7 (bottom) demonstrations in the