GOVERNMENT FACES
WORKERS UPSURGE
PORTUGAL by A. UDRY. In the course of a television speech delivered February 20 General Gonçalves issued a warning "against the spread of extremist tendencies in the working class. "Concurrently, he stressed the process of institutionalization of the Armed Forces Movement (AFM) and its central role in relation to the new regime, which is supposed to emerge from the elections of April 12. A deepened crisis The provisional government, and more especially the AFM and the Junta of National Salvation, must deal with the conjunction of a deepened economic crisis and a proliferation of workers struggles that are the expression of a phase in the class struggle that is new since May 1974. Unemployment is spreoding rapidly. Present figures indicate that the threshold of 200,000 unemployed has been crossed. This unemployment is the result of various factors. First, emigration has slowed considerably. During the first three quarters of 1974 -that is, before the effects of the generalized recession really made themselves felt - emigration was down 36 percent compared with the first three quarters of 1973. To this must be added the return of Portuguese immigrants employed in France, Germany, Belgium, and Switzerland. (Between 1965 and 1973, one million Portuguese workers emigrated.) Second, the return of the colons and the reduction in the size of the army will increase the number of people without employment. Finally, the rapid rise of partial or complete layoffs and the acute crisis in the construction and tourist industries are contributing to swelling the army of unemployed, the official size of which does not include students who cannot get into universities, youth who have not yet gotten their first jobs, and the rural underemployed. The recession is combining with inflation. The latest figures show that the consumer price index for the city of Lisbon has increased 41 percent in one year. The balance of payments deficit is gigantic. It is estimated at 45, 000 million escudos (1 escudo = US$O.041). Traditionally, "invisible income" made it possible to offset the deficit in the balance of trade. Exports to Britain, which is the major export outlet for Portuguese capitalism, have tumbled, and exports to all the Common Market countries have declined. Moreover, exports to the former colonies, although their relative importance had already dropped, have shrunk considerably further. In view of the new relationship of forces that has been established in the factories (constitution of trade unions and the role of the workers commissions), English, German, Swedish, and even Portuguese capitalists, who had invested in order to profit from the very low "labor costs, " are withdrawing their investments or simply freezing them, especially since markets have contracted. Thus, although investment accelerated during 1974, during the first two months of 1975 the gross formation of capital has declined by more than 4 percent compared with 1974. Faced with such a situation, the provisional government, the AFM, and the junta are counting on a demobilization of the working class, and are restricting the right of trade-union activity (through the trade-union law) in order to create the preconditions for the establishment of an emergency economic plan. Development of workers struggles Since January 1975 a modification in the activity of the working masses has clearly occurred. The January 14 demonstration in Lisbon for "trade-union unity" reflected this change. Although the Portuguese Communist party and the Trade Union Federation wanted to center the demonstration (which drew 300,000 workers) on support for the AFM and the law on trade-union unity, a good number of the workers present turned it into a mobilization "against capitalist exploitation, " for their most important
3
PORTUGAL demands (minimum wages and employment security), and for the unity of the workers in struggle. The February 7 demonstration of the workers commissions, which drew more than 30,000 Lisbon workers from the major enterprises (Efacec-Intel, TAP, Lisnave, Setnave, Plessey, CTT, Timex, etc.), also expressed the development of workers combativity and the maturation of an anticapitalist consciousness among broad vanguard sections of the class. The call for this demonstration, issued by the general assembly of the Efacec-Intel workers, asserted: "Unemployment is the inevitable consequence of the system. It is up to the workers to destroy it and build a new world. " It must be stressed that this demonstration assembled 30, 000 workers in spite of the boycott and denunciation of it by the Portuguese Communist party and the leadership of the Trade Union Federation. The demonstration gathered in front of the Ministry of Labor, where the soldiers joined the workers in raising the slogan: "Soldiers and sailors are exploited too!" In combination with this type of mobilization there have been a large number of struggles that are taking such forms as factory occupations, prohibition of employers from entering the factory, etc. There is a rise in active strikes and in workers initiatives against economic sabotage by the employers. The Portuguese workers, almost spontaneously, have assimilated the most advanced forms of struggle of their French, Italian, and Spanish comrades. In the small and middle-sized enterprises the workers are often turning to their benefit the slogans that the reformists have raised but have not made the axes of struggle. Thus, during the occupations they are immediately demanding nationalization, especially in cases of obvious economic sabotage by the employers. To all this must be added the land occupations in Alentejo, in part with the support of the CP. To be sure, these struggles are still limited. They are not coordinated, and up to now the reformists (the CP) have managed to keep them relatively isolated. But two new factors are emerging. First, solidarity with these struggles is developing widely, and the increased capacity for intervention of centrist currents or of Maoists or of revolutionary
Marxists (as was the case during the occupation of
Nefil in Porto) is generating a rather wide response to these experiences among the whole working class. Second, an ever broader layer of workers now understands that it was not possible to win the demands advanced during the months of May and June 1974 through the strategy proposed by the reformists.
Consequently, with these experiences as the starting point, there exists a possibility of breaking the reformist grip over not inconsiderable sections of the working class. Gonçalves's attack against "left extremists" in the working class must be viewed in this overall context.
Since September 1974 the bourgeoisie has undeniably succeeded in reconstituting a political force in the form of the PPD (Popular Democratic party). Nevertheless, many bourgeois sectors seriously affected by the fall of fascism (sectors of the economy that survived thanks to the protectionism of the corporatist state; the sector linked exclusively to the colonies; the thousands of people who fed off the corportatist state apparatus) can find no alternative in the PPD. Hence, they manifest a certain autonomy with respect to the program of this key party of the bourgeoisie. The CDS (Democratic and Social Center) includes a part of these forces, which does not mean that various "putschist" currents are not continuing to assert themselves, although in a marginal manner, to be sure. Nevertheless, even if it assembles an electoral majority along with the Socialist party on April 12, the PPD does not command the necessary means to deal with the present crisis and the rise of the working class. Hence, the junta and the AFM are playing and will continue to play a decisive role. Within the AFM the offensive of the Spinolist nucleus (Fabio) is significant, but the balance between the left and right wings is still unstable. In this sense, the extension of the power of the Junta of National Salvation and the strengthening of the presence of the AFM in the provisional government (the nomination of Ribeiro and Jesuino) seem to be the only immediate ways of getting out of the present impasse. That could even create the groundwork for dealing with a delicate situation after the elections - if they take place - in the event that a PPD-SP electoral majority is not at all in position to effectively push through the economic and political project advocated by these two formations. Through the economic emergency plan, a document that has just received the total support of the Confederation of Portuguese Industries, the junta and the AFM are seeking to create conditions that on the one hand would compel the CP to collaborate for some time and on the other hand would permit the brakes to be put on the rise of workers struggles by proclaiming the necessity of national reconstruction. Gonçalves's speech asserted this option forcefully.
The capacity of the Portuguese workers to respond resolutely to all encroachments on their trade-union rights and their right to strike, to respond to the police attacks on factories occupied by the workers, and to generalize their struggles will decide the outcome of the present situation and will determine the level of confrontation during coming months.
But an external factor, the collapse of the fascist regime in Spain, may soon be added as an important element in Portugal's political evolution. •
FRANCE Creme ДВОр 75 PROCCO BE MINDSBOBBE KIDESP ES FE If you step back a little and take a look at what was making political news during the last half of 1974 and the beginning of 1975, you see very clearly that the army was at the center of political debates and that it was a field of essential struggle. We have often analyzed this phenomenon somewhat narrowly, limiting ourselves to the burning issues of the struggle of the draftees, without always grasping the more general implications of the movement now going on. Of course, all the positions that have been taken are explained and determined by the Appeal of the 100, the demonstrations at Draguignan and KarIsruhe, the massive movement of the draftees, and the flourishing of barracks committees. (*) But in order to work out their orientation today, revolutionary Marxists must try to understand how this movement fits into the general crisis of French society, and in particular, how it can find an expression in workers struggles and in the workers movement. * The Appeal of the 100 was drafted by enlisted men in the armed forces during the campaign leading up to the presidential elections in May 1974. It asked candidates to state their positions on a series of demands of enlisted men. (See INPRECOR, No. 9, October 3, 1974.) It has since been signed by thousands of soldiers. The demonstrations at Draguignan and Karlsruhe (the latter in West Germany) are the two best known mass actions by French soldiers in support of their demands.
the army