[nising that thị miner fan Line situation was…]

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nising that thị miner fan Line situation was not yet nipe for him to establish mis power. and..Lt:_L LiTwo years later, the labour movement had been totally disoriented by its failure lo act against the dictatorship. The anarchists had campaigned for prolotariat neutrality' towards the coup.

Such a criminally irresponsible position was not only a hetrayal of the whole class; it also virtually destroyed the anarchists as a political force - the anarchist-led CGT collapsed from 100,000 to 15,000 members. Co ing ser Prime Minister. It was only at this stage that a fascist party was formed in Portugal - the National Syndicalist Party led by Rolao Preto.

Modelled far more ciosely on the Italian and German parties, it proved a threat to Salazar's personal control of the fascist state.

Two years later, the Executive of the party accepted Salazar's "invitation' to join the National Union; when leading members opposed this, they were exiled immediately.

In September 1933, Salazar felt secure enough to declare the Estado Novo (New State). Under the National Statute of Labour, all strikes were banned, all trade unions declared illegal, and the apparatus of a corporate state erected.

GENERAL STRIKE

I he anarchists reacted by calling for a general strike; the C.P attacked all illegal activities as being 'in the interests of the fascists', and proposed a rejection of the new constitution by democratic parliamentary methods.

The spontaneous resistance and hostility of the working class far out-stripped the pathetic demands of both groups.

More than 60,000 workers participated in the demonstrations which developed from the general strike of January 1934 into a revolutionary upsurge.

A state of siege was imposed, and the armed resistance crushed by the Republican Guard and Public Security Police. Even in Marinha Grande (north of Lisbon), where a soviet had been declared the rising was defeated within five days. Fascism had come to power.

ISSUES pies of the Back issues containthe first two articles in this ies - Italy (2parts) and Germany parts) - are available for 10p plus Up &p from Socialist Press, 31, Dartmouth Park Hill, London NW5 1HR.

by Pluto Press. Price £4.80. members of the proletariat, are ultimately brought by social democracy to the point where they stand as the greatest obstacle to the progress of that proletariat for power. On the eve of a fascist putsch, the clean shaven SPD intellectual or the union bureaucrat can offer nothing but sympathy with the miseries of the starving unemployed workers. They suggest only rallying to the bourgeois dictatorship embodied in the putrid carcass of the Weimar republic. while hundreds of thousands of workers seek nothing more than principled revolutionary leadership:

"Oh, what an ecstatic philosophical breeze that Doctor of Laws could all of a sudden waft through the cold, hungry vigilant meeting! A cheap, miserable yet seductive hope that can fool no one and never yet has defended anyone but none the less crawls into a proletarian heart like a louse on the table only to be squashed by the iron fingernail of bourgeois dictatorship. And yet that traitor of a party rotting alive on the shoulders of the proletariat and poisoning it with its sugary ptomaine gets yet another chance to dodge the clear and simple fighting slogans of a break with the bourgeois government and for that hateful social revolution.

Just listen.

We are beaten. unarmed, unemployed and robbed by our vile bourgeoisie. This celebration can rightly be called the funeral repast of the revolution. But, dear proletarians, don't get upset or angry: time, history and social destiny are on our side. The wheel of history cannot be turned back and therefore, in spite of our complete unreadiness for battle, the fascists will not triumph: go in peace and don't be afraid of Ludendorff. The She still maintains beside this a brilliant emotional understanding of the conflicts of individual workers, and their emotions atter the suppression of the Rising.

Finally, in Hindenberg's Germany, Reissner presents a cold clear expose of the development of the demands of German imperialism, the Krupp magnates. They are the pioneers of the 20th century way-of-dcath, the basis for the advance of the German bourgeoisie into fully fledged capitalist production.

Reissner yet again combines an incredible 'feel for the situation and struggle, with recognition that only through the assistance of German Social Democracy could Krupp's restabilisation programme after the Great War, necessitating massive redundancies and lock outs, succeed She takes numerous instances in which wage labourers, male and female, young and old confront the degradation inflicted on them by the mode of production and increased to the extremes of endurance by the crisis of capitalism reflected in the chaos of Weimar Germany Reissner, always relating her argument to the individual proletarian in the actuality of his or her struggle, doesn't simply expose the SDP sell-outs.

Instead she lets the miners at the Ruhr coalfaces or the destroyed unemployed paupers swept into rotting barrack hulks on city fringes spcak their own condemnation in their own language of bitter experience Thus the Leninist cell, like the subterranean butterflies hovering above the embittered Ruhr faceworkers, 'cating the moisture and sipping the darkness together. is scen as the only possible direction coming to the aid of the coa miners: in this way they helped it metal workers betray ihe comrades so that to this day th treachery has not been forgotte among workers.

They whipped up discor so wing a caste hostility between ti different branches of labour, saltir and teasing this wound on the boc of the proletariat. Comrade T.. fo getting all caution, no longer spol but shouted at the top of his voic His coal-matted beard stuck fro his face like a stake.

"The Saar goes on strike but » work. Didn't you see? Hundreds ‹ trains ready at all the station They started to move as soon as t: strike in England began. They ex= called it "English coal' "

"I'm an old social democras ar these two here are honest worki men but together we were stra breakers. And our party urg workers to do the work traitors"."

Her greatest strengt * : ability to combine analysis of her subject i.= -: nition of the relation of kru: imperialism as a whole-: immense emotional unders:=of the doubts, fears, bitters=:: personal struggles of ::: workers ground down ?: **: stone of capitalism eme:*: Krupps.

This book, translates :: R:.:: Chappell, combines then the ea of what little work of Restre: at present in print. acne bibliography and several esse = poems about Reissne: - -that knew her pest.

By SIMON JACOBS

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