How Fascists Took State Power: No3 the Rise of Salazar

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Some people called them "Terrorists" whose objective was to see that 'the last king would be strangled by the entrails of the last priest' But these "Terrorists' were the professionals and intellectuals of the Republican Party which had overturned the Portuguese monarchy in the almost bloodless revolution of 1910.

This bourgeois victory was achieved, as in most other European countries, only with the aid of the proletariat.

What terrified critics of this Portuguese revolution was the unanswered question of which part the proletariat would play in the Republic.

The new regime was petty bourgeois in character, but it was historically impossible for such class forces to control the state for any length of time.

VACILLATE

pressure from either the capitalist or the working class, before finally giving way to the dictatorship of the proletariat or of the bourgeoisie.

But the leadership of the Portuguese working class consistently failed to develop an understanding of the theory and process of permanent revolution.

The tragic consequences for the working class of such a failure were nowhere - not even in Spain -more starkly laid bare than in The early legislation of the Republic was typical of petty bourgeois radicalism, particularly in its attacks on the aristocracy and the Catholic church. Titles were abolished: the state was secularised; the church's property confiscated, and Afonso Costa, Prime Minister, declared that religion would be wiped out in two generations.

MEANINGLESS

The new Republic also granted the legal right to form trade unions and to strike, but the meaninglessness of this paper democracy soon became painfully obvious to the working class.

The Portuguese economy was in a state of apparently uncontrollable crisis. Shattered nearly a century before by the protracted wars against the Napolionic armies, and then by the loss of Brazil (a former colony), Portugal was barely able to exploit the remnants of its own empire.

Competition with the developed . anitalist nations seemed an impossmity Such stabilisation as the Republican government did achieve Early the capitalists. kes so bore the brunt of They necessity seize stat accompli Only six months after the Republic had been declared, a wave of strikes for higher wages and better conditions broke across Lisbon and spread rapidly throughout the industrial areas.

The bourgeois democratic government responded to these demands by smashing the strike with police violence and with the killing of workers by the Republican Guard.

DIVORCE

As a contemporary paper of the labour movement proclaimed: "13 March 1911 is the date that marks the divorce between the republic and the working class."

But there were no revolutionary forces in Portugal capable of drawing the lessons from this divorce. On the contrary, the policies followed by the various working class parties during the Republic were to lead directly to the establishment of fascism.

At this time, the industrial proletariat was dominated by the Socialist Party which had adopted a revolutionary Marxist programme as long ago as 1882.

Despite this, the party was divided between its revolutionary wing and a right-wing which constantly sought to enter into alliance with 'progressive' elements of the bourgeoisie, in the shape of the Republicans.

The Socialists had given ful support to the Republican coup.

They were completely unable to analise the inevitable inability of the regime to resolve the economic and political crisis.

SOCIALISM

failed to recognise the for the working class to • power and establish the lip of the proletariat. to ili the democratie tasks of When the Republic attacked the working class, the Socialists were paralysed. They had no alternative to continuing their policy of faith in the democratic intentions of the Industrial militancy continued, and in January 1912 the government smashed a Lisbon strike by declaring martial law and arresting over 1,000 workers.

The pattern had been established which was to be repeated during the 16 years of the Republic, when there were 158 general strikes in The bourgeoisie did not remain passive when threatened by this tide The Republican Party itself split into a radical wing led by Atonso Costa (the 'Democrats') and a rightwing group (the 'Evolutionists') which established close links with the officer caste of the army.

The persistent monarchists and other groups attempted a series of coups - there were 25 uprisings between 1910 and 1926, and 3 short-lived counter-revolutionary dictatorships.

But no single class proved strong enough to take state power. The national bourgcoisie was extremely Salazar with Rhodesian racist lan Smith weak - Portugal was an economic colony or brain. alu we mercoo -i Duitin and tha interacte of British capital had greatly restricted the development of Portuguese industry.

IMPOSSIBLE

Il became clear during the Republic that it was impossible for the bourgeoisie to establish its class rule over the workers through the apparatus of parliamentary democracy.

The working class had been able to hold the bourgeoisie in check:

hut historical stalemates cannot for long survive the pressure of class It the dictatorship of the proletanat was not established. then the .a-kin.r dictatorship.

There was every indication that the leadership of the working class would mislead and betray the workers into precisely this trap.

The industrial proletariat of Portugal was very small - only 2 per cent of the population. Although tightly organised, and in many respects at a high level of political development, it was incapable of accomplishing a revolution alone.

It was vital for the workers' parties to gain the allegiance of the peasants and other agricultural workers, and to do this it was necessary to advance a programme of land nationalisation and redistribution.

Gripped in the agricultural crisis, peasants were constantly being declassed to the status of landless labourers, while landless labourers were thrown off the land into unemployment.

This was the situation of the vast. majority of the population. To fail in the task of winning over these forces meant to risk the danger of these volatile elements moving over to support for the bourgeoisie, or at the least into an indifference fatal to the success of the proletarian struggles.

None of the workers' parties cook up a consistent fight for these demands. This failure alone was enough to ensure that the triumph of the bourgeoisie was only a matter of time, however heroic the resistance of the industrial workers might be.

In the meantime, the Republicans maintained a precarious existence as a Bonarpartist regime, balancing and tottering on the backs of the conflicting forces which it tried to reconcile in the name of 'democracy' In 1916, the Republic was pressured by the British government to enter the first imperialist world war. This move only aggrevated the economic crisis, which in turn sharpened the political tensions.

REFUSAL After the war, the Socialist Party continued to declare its refusal to support the Republican government in parliament, but Socialists actually entered the cabinets of the Republicans between 1919 and 1921.

This class collaboration opened the way for other forces to come forward and take the leadership of the working class.

From 1917 the anarcho-syndicalist Portuguese Maximalist Federation became increasingly important and won control of the major trade union, the CGT (Confederacao Geral do Trabalho - General Confederation of Labour).

The full, disastrous significance of this political development was to be revealed only with the overthrow of the Republic. In 1921, the Portuguese Communist Party was formed; two years later the party became effectively isolated from the mass of Portuguese workers as it pursued its ultra-left, sectarian policy of trying to build a 'red union While the revolutionary energies of the proletariat were wasted time and time again by the crimmal mistakes of its leadersher the 100050? Salazar with Queen Elizabeth Il of Great Britain Even in its most radical pha: the Republic had not attempted reform the army. Recruited fre the families of the ruling class, ! officer caste represented a maj conservative force.

Isolated groups of individi officers had staged coups in 1 past, but now a general moveme was developing to restore stabil with the rule of 'law and ord‹ The bourgeoisie grew confide that the working class could defeated, and within the pe took shapc.

CORPORATE STATE At the University of Coimt the CADC (Centro Academico Democracia Crista Acade! Centre of Christian Democrac with Antonio de Oliveira Salaz: prominent member, was develor the theory of corporate state fr those papal Encylicals which outlined a policy to entice entrap the working class.

In Lisbon, Marcello Cactan‹ law student, was editing magazine Orderi Nova (New Ord which defined itself as:

"An anti-modern, anti-libe antidemocratie anti-bourgeois. anti-bolshevik magaz revolutionary and action Catholic, Apostolic ar Ron monarchist, intolerant nd int sigent.' Despite the attem of

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of Hamburg at the Barricad s by Larissa Reissner, translated and edited by Ric in early pictur Awed by they turned consented to ernment, but CIAL 'ST PRESS. Heine 23 Ja. 1y CADC to build Catholic Workers' and Youth Associations, these groupings were completely unable to develop a following of any significance.

In conjunction with the army it was the forces of thesc apparently insignificant groups which were able to impose the corporate state on the defeated workers.

1926 saw yet another attempled military coup - but this time the coup was suceessful. The Republic ended, as it had begun, in a virtually peacetul transter of power.

The coup was in no sense fascist. The generals in command were representatives of the forces of rcaction which had fought to end the Republic.

They were right-wing, hostile to the working class, and in a general way determined to re-establish the authority of 'law and order' , church and family. But they had no specific loyalty to the bourgeoisie, and possessed no coherant politics.

= of CP leader Cunhal. the cconomic chaos, to Dr Salazar, who enter the new govsoon resigned, recogBut the other workers parties had offered no alternative perspective, and political bankruptcy on such a scale could lead only to widespread disulusionment and apathy in the class. Membership of the Socialist Party dwindled 2,500, and that of the CP to a mere seventy It was at this point that Salazar came back into office, on terins which secured his supremacy in the government. He then promptly announced:

"I know quite well what I want and what I am going... For the rest, let the country study, let it suggest, let it object, and let it discuss, but when the time comes for me to give orders, I shall expect it to obey "

CONSOLIDATE

Over the next six years, Salazar worked to consolidate his power. The dictatorship survived various struggles within the military hierarchy and provided him with solid support, while the church was restored to grace and welcomed him whole-hartedly.

In 1930, he announced the formation of the Uniao Nacional (National Union) as the country's only legal political association.

This had no similarities with the mass fascist parties of Italy and Germany; it was simply a structure Salazar's maintain the ideology of fascism, while at the same time it was claimed to be opposed to, and somehow above, the factional interests of political parties.

Although frustrated in all its efforts, the working class had not ceased to struggle against the dictatorship RISING The had moved increasingy into the leadership of the workers' movement, and in 1931 it led the class into temporary alliance with the Republicans (and the anti-clerical Freemasons) to overthrow Salazar. The rising in Lisbon was suppressed violently, and 40 workers were killed The next year, Salazar became Within these pages are collected some of the finest and yet least known pieces of twentieth century revolutionary writing.

Larissa Reissner was born in Poland in 1895 and died aged only 31 in 1926. In that short space of time she played an important role as a Bolshevik in numerous spheres of revolutionary action.

This book flows from the period she spent involved in the German proletarian struggles following World War 1.

Throughout her writing Reissner constantly combines brilliant description of the horrors of poverty under the Weimar regime with astute political analysis of the contradictions embodied in social democracy and the German republic.

In "Berlin October 1923" she examines the contemptible sell out of the SPD (Social Democratic Party) and the growing spirit of communism that many German workers came to see as their only solution.

Reissner shows vividly how trade union leaders and officials, initially A review history is on ours. Good night and until we meet again-not on the barricades but at the next jubilee which, with the aid of social providence, will tum out happier than today's."

In Hamburg at the Barricades itself, Reissner carefully records chronologically and then analyses the whole of the 60 hour Hamburg Rising of October 1923.

Coupled with maps and eye witness accounts she pieces together the extraordinary courage and organisation displayed by the Communist insurgents in the face of overwhelming odds.

The odds they confront include mass starvation, the Weimar state and the cancer of social democracy.

Reissner examines each moment of courage, each seizure of a police arsenal by a small unarmed band of communists and their supportersall the while waiting for the revolution that never came.

She never ceases to emphasise the scale of the task and the extent of the success embodied in the Rising, in the face of 50 years of pseudo-socialism dragging the proletariat into its quagmire of impotence.

Berlin, May Day 1922 the level of forcing German work: to break the strikes of their Eng:: counterpart.

"A man does not die from : the wounds he receives. Each of t miners had lost faith in socialis from one specific betrayal or ol single act of treachery. Here, ti old man had been poisoned by ti toxic gases of Vorwarts's articl against Russia; there the fragmen of a smashed strike had crippled ti young worker. A speech by Nos had burst like shrapnel over I! third. There are also very rece injuries, no more than a few days: weeks old.

For example the SPD wor who has standing on guard h been lost recently, in 1924, wh the unions broke the last big stri of Ruhr mineworkers only thr days prior to the verdict of z] conciliation commission, despi the feeling of the masses and nc the feeling of the masses and nc withstanding the fact that t strike has lasted twenty-five da and could have held out as lo: again. They smashed the mos transport workers, Preventing ti ment's solidarity,

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Inevitably, the government must constantly vacillate in response to

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SPD L. TEL