The Salazarist dictatorship in Portugal has collapsed under the deadly blows of the African national liberation fighters.
The background to the military coup that overthrew the decrepit and moth-eaten fascist regime of Caetano and company was the crisis within the bourgeoisie created by the development of a sector of finance capital that favors a neocolonialist solution in Guinea-Bissau, Mozambique, and Angola, a move toward the European Common Market, and a modernization of the country's economic and social structures. This sector is represented, for example, by the Portuguese banker António Champalinaud and by the Companhia Vinão Fabrol trust. Unlike the Spanish bourgeoisie, which fears even the slightest liberalization because of the degree of mobilization, organization, and combativity of the working class, important sections of the Portuguese big bourgeoisie considered it possible to open a bourgeois-democratic interlude "in order and discipline" without running the risk of revolution in the short term because of the (relative) political and organizational backwardness of the working class in Portugal.
For the moment, there is no doubt that the April 25 military coup has opened the way for a rapid and surprising mass upsurge that is threatening to transcend the limits set down by Spinola and the bourgeoisie. The lifting of the lead weight of fascism has released enormous quantities of energy that had been held back by half a century of dictatorship. The bourgeoisie was caught unawares. In the absence of any alternative political apparatus, it was obliged temporarily to cede the foreground of the political scene to the Communist and Socialist parties. Its reasoning is nearly the same as that of the Italian and French bourgeoisies after the fall of fascism in 1944. The intent is to neutralize and contain the mass movement by integrating the CP into coalition governments with the "democratic" bourgeoisie.
What role are the reformists playing in this situation? The Social Democrats, led by Mario Soares, are unconditionally supporting the government of "national union," which extends from the CP to the bourgeois liberals. The Portuguese CP, which because of its prestige in the antifascist resistance has hegemony within the working class, is also prepared to sacrifice everything on the altar of national unity and is avoiding any action that contradicts the junta's orientation. In its May 5 demonstration, for example, the CP did not say one word about independence for the colonies. Instead, it denounced "adventurism," going so far as to oppose the "illegal" overthrow of the fascist municipal governments that are still functioning (which is beginning to happen nearly everywhere, in spite of the CP). Both the SP and the CP are basing their whole policy on unity between the "people" (including the bourgeoisie) and the "armed forces" (as a whole).
One of the most important aspects of the Portuguese explosion has been the politicization and radicalization within the army. Several tendencies can be discerned within the officer corps:
1. The top hierarchy, fascist in the past, which is trying to quickly establish "order and discipline" while at the same time purging its most compromised elements. (A few days ago, dozens of generals and admirals were kicked out.) As the leading force in the Junta of National Salvation, the top hierarchy is issuing many warnings, appeals for order, and veiled threats, while at the same time giving ground in face of pressure from the young officers and the mass upsurge.
2. The career captains, advance guard of the April 25 movement, petty-bourgeois democrats who could move sharply to the right when confronted by a "red danger."
3. The "militia" captains (nonprofessionals), the numerical majority in the army, strongly influenced by the SP and the CP and even by far-left currents.
As for the soldiers and sailors, they were seen in the streets on May 1 marching arm in arm with the workers and students, with red banners bearing the hammer and sickle flying from their trucks. The radicalization was especially intense in the navy, where in 1936 there had been a red rebellion in favor of the Spanish republic. Attempts at self-organization are beginning in the barracks and on the ships.
The most pressing task and the most difficult one for the provisional government is ending the colonial war.
The revolt against the continuation of the war is practically unanimous among both the civilian population and the soldiers and sailors. That was the immediate cause of the fall of the Caetano regime. Now, soldiers are refusing to board ships headed for the colonies. Antiwar discontent is appearing among many young officers as well. Militants opposed to the war are no longer deserting but are instead organizing opposition in the barracks; and they are getting a good response.
The time has come for a revolutionary effort aimed at accelerating the disintegration of the bourgeois military apparatus. The continuation of the colonial war can create the conditions for a massive penetration of the army by revolutionaries calling for the formation of soldiers and sailors councils opposed to the war.
The bourgeoisie and the provisional government are fully conscious of the situation. What they fear above all is the total decomposition of the army, which would deprive them of their only political weapon of any effectiveness under the present circumstances. But they also know that granting immediate formal independence to the colonies could precipitate a revolt against this "policy of abandonment" by a section of the professional overseas army, supported by the colons of Mozambique and the racist regimes of South Africa and Rhodesia, and even by Franco. Furthermore, it is not at all certain that all the nationalist forces in the colonies would accept the neocolonialist solution that the sectors of the bourgeoisie backing Spinola are trying to bring about. That is why the provisional government is above all trying to gain time by proposing to the liberation forces fighting in the colonies a cease-fire followed by long negotiations. The bourgeoisie's aim is to obtain a broad consensus in favor of the neocolonial solution among the army and the Portuguese colons, as well as among the African fighters.
The other major difficulty confronting the provisional government is the aggravation of the economic situation, which is characterized by greater and greater inflation and by the refusal of the toiling masses to tolerate the conditions of superexploitation that existed under fascism, the only conditions under which accumulation of capital could have been carried out in Portugal during the past decade.
The powerful explosion of strikes, in spite of the frantic efforts of the CP to divert the masses toward class collaboration aimed at "national reconstruction," places on the agenda the tasks of winning the vitally needed minimum wage of 6,000 escudos [approximately US$250] a month, the forty-hour workweek, four-week vacations at full pay, and the establishment of the principle of equal pay for equal work for women and young workers. The unity of the workers' front and the establishment of a trade union movement strongly rooted in the factories and enjoying a solid foundation of workers' democracy will be forged through direct action for these unifying objectives.
The Portuguese revolutionary Marxists of the Liga Comunista Internacionalista (Internationalist Communist League), who have already played a role in raising and popularizing these demands, will fight resolutely to win them by means of larger and larger class actions culminating in generalized strikes and, if necessary, a general strike.
Clearly, the tasks of the hour are not limited to defending the immediate material interests of the toiling masses, however important that may be. For revolutionary Marxists, it is a matter of counterposing a total political orientation to the reformist projects of class collaboration and partial and timid reforms and to the shilly-shallying and vacillations of the CP and SP leaderships.
Against the provisional government's stalling maneuvers on the colonial question, revolutionary Marxists will fight to support the armed struggle of the liberation movements and for immediate, total, and unconditional independence for the colonies. Not one ship must sail for Africa! Not one soldier, not one penny, not one drop of blood for continuing the dirty colonial war! Immediate withdrawal of Portuguese troops from Africa!
Against attempts to postpone general elections and to keep power in the hands of the military junta, for which the provisional government is only a facade, the revolutionary Marxists will mobilize the masses especially around these slogans:
—Immediate liquidation of all fascist institutions and their replacement by democratically elected bodies.
—Punishment of all the executioners and fascist agents of the PIDE [secret police] and the other repressive bodies by popular courts elected by and responsible to the masses.
—Extradition of Caetano and Admiral Tomás so that they may be tried by the Portuguese toiling masses for the crimes they have committed against the people.
—Immediate repeal of the penal code and of all repressive legislation passed during the reign of the Salazar and Caetano regimes.
—Immediate and unconditional amnesty for all deserters, without their incorporation into the armed forces.
—Immediate and definitive repeal of all censorship of the press, radio, and television; unlimited right to strike for all wage earners with no legal restriction or arbitration; complete freedom of association, freedom to demonstrate, and freedom of the press.
—Immediate election—by universal suffrage of all men and women over eighteen living in Portugal—of a sovereign Constituent Assembly and the right of all organizations without restriction to participate in those elections. Revolutionary Marxists call on the CP and SP ministers to leave the government of "national union" and to struggle to replace the junta with what comes out of this Constituent Assembly.
—Creation of trade unions of all wage earners based on rank-and-file democratic assemblies in the factories and offices, and the federation of those unions in order to assure broad possibility of control and final decision-making by the rank-and-file organizations.
—Election of workers-control committees in the factories, workshops, banks, insurance companies, large-scale commercial institutions, and the transport system.
—Election of committees of soldiers and sailors who must immediately enjoy all democratic political rights.
—Application of a radical program of agrarian reform in order to cement the worker-peasant alliance.
In the contemporary epoch, there is no place whatever for a process of "democratic revolution" or for a "democratic stage" of the revolutionary process in Portugal. The urgent resolution of democratic tasks posed by the incomplete character of the old bourgeois revolution in the country and by the necessity of liquidating the remnants of fascism must be combined from the very beginning of the revolutionary process with the exacerbation of the class struggle and the pressing necessity of organizing the industrial and agricultural proletariat completely independently from the bourgeoisie and the bourgeois state in order to make it possible for the proletariat to fight to the end in defense of its immediate and historic interests.
What can unfold in Portugal is not a utopian "democratic revolution" but a process of permanent revolution; that is, a process that begins from the struggle for the immediate aspirations of the masses (as described above) and leads to a generalized test of strength, at the conclusion of which the proletariat, organized in its democratically elected councils and armed against the bourgeoisie's increasingly intense attempts at repression, destroys the bourgeois state apparatus and takes power. The outcome of this process will be determined by the growing intervention of the revolutionary vanguard, the modification of the relationship of forces between that vanguard and the reformist leadership that today still commands the allegiance of the majority of the workers, and the establishment of a powerful revolutionary party as the section of the Fourth International.
If this revolutionary process is not followed through to its ultimate conclusion, the danger of a right-wing counteroffensive will become increasingly real. Basing itself on the career officers in the army, who are already becoming ever more frightened by the mass upsurge, such a counteroffensive could take an especially violent and bloody form, since the bourgeoisie is concerned about preserving its power and privilege. The revolutionary Marxists, stressing the still fresh lessons of Chile, must solemnly warn the toiling masses against any illusion that "tolerance" or "goodwill" can be purchased from capitalist reaction at the price of pursuing a conciliatory course and of pushing aside the socialist objectives of their struggles. The danger of a forcible return to fascism will not be eliminated until all political and economic power has been seized from the hands of big capital.
The precipitous rise of the mass struggle in Portugal is being accompanied by a clearer and clearer polarization of class forces in several countries of capitalist Europe, notably France, Italy, and Great Britain. It is also being accompanied by a growing instability of the senile Francoist regime, whose fall it can accelerate. The Portuguese upsurge will stimulate all these tendencies and will itself receive fresh, powerful impulsions from them. The task of internationalist revolutionaries is to encourage with all their might the international extension of the hopes and battles of the Portuguese proletariat.
For active international solidarity of the workers of all countries with the Portuguese proletariat!
For internationalist socialist unity between the workers of Portugal and the colonies!
Long live the socialist revolution in Portugal and the colonies!
Long live the socialist united states of Europe!
For aid to and solidarity with the Liga Comunista Internacionalista of Portugal from all revolutionaries!