independence?
ANGOLA: toward what A long road has been traveled since last June, when António Spínola was still able to assert: "We are . doing everything so that peace may return to overseas Portugal." Since then, the mobilization of the laboring masses of Angola and Mozambique has swept away Spínola's plan for a neocolonial federation. In Angola, where the "process of decolonization" appeared to be blocked by the extent of imperialist interests at stake, by the division among the nationalist movements, and by the putschist attempts of the white colons, we quickly saw a spectacular "reconciliation" of the liberation movements, the by E. CAZALS signing of the Alvor accords with the Portuguese government, and the establishment of a quadripartite government (composed of representatives of the three nationalist movements and of the Portuguese regime) charged with administering the country unfil independence, planned for November 1975. But above and beyond the "publicity" statements of the Portuguese leaders about their "genuine will to decolonize, "factors are building up to enable imperialism to maintain its hold over all southern Africa. For the import of the struggles in Angola extends well beyond the borders of the country itself. And it is clearly the defense of the general interests of imperialism in the region that are at issue when the "social-realist" Mario Soares indicates his desire to establish "friendly and normal relations between Lisbon and Kinshasa, " for "there is a 1, 250mile common border between Zaire and Angola. " That is known as "extending a hand" - in order to assure the best conditions for carrying out the neocolonial program. And the foreign policy of China, 12 which in the name of the "struggle against the two superpowers" has made the Soviet Union the main enemy and supports the sinister game of Mobutu by sending military advisers to train the FNLA (Frente Nacional de Libertação de Angola — National Liberation Front of Angola), contributes to this equally as much as the complicity of silence of the Portuguese reformists about the future of Portuguese and imperialist investments in Angola. Imperialism's «great maneuvers» in southern Africa The recent acceleration of the "process of decolonization" in Angola and Mozambique has given an impetus to the turn of imperialist policy throughout the region. For example, South Africa, the bastion of capitalism, is now adopting a "benevolent" attitude toward its new "neighbor" Mozambique, while in Rhodesia discussions have begun between lan Smith and the nationalists, unified in the African National Congress (ANC). To believe the commentators of the bourgeois press, the hour of "peace" and "detente" has sounded in southern Africa. The African neocolonial puppets are rejoicing to see dialogue (finally!) take the place of armed struggle in "settling the colonial question, " while the American secretary of state for "African affairs, " who is somewhat more adroit, recognizes that the interest of South Africa and the U.S. capital invested there) lies in "encouraging a rapid and ordered move toward achieving settlements in both Rhodesia and Namibia." In effect, the impossibility of indefinitely perpetuating the current conditions of capitalist exploitation in face of the rise of the liberation struggles,
the dangers of the conflict spreading throughout the region, and the progressive deterioration of the economic and political situation in Rhodesia have compelled the imperialists to seek solutions that would permit the beginning of a process of political stabilization throughout the region effected on the basis of diverting the struggles of the African masses in the bastions of neocolonialism. This is an objective to which the neocolonial African states fully subscribe, for they are all interested in containing the revolutionary dynamic of the mobilization of the masses of the region. This, then, is the twofold objective of imperialism's political reorientation in southem Africa: to limit the dynamic of the struggles and to reorganize the process of imperialist exploitation by assuring the transition to a new regional economic and political integration. Such a recasting of the economic and political physiognomy of the region is, however, heavy with social implications and with contradictions that herald social confrontations of great scope. In Angola, given the radicalization of the struggles of the workers in face of the racist barbarism of the white colons, a rapid solution had become necessary. Thus, under the aegis of Mobutu (deputy policeman of the region) and with the aid of the Portuguese government, an attempt was made to effect a rapprochement between Zaire and Angola (including, of course, the Angolan enclave of Cabinda with its oil in the form of an economic and political bloc (and why not a federation?) that would be both the embryo and mediator of a future central African economic community that would guarantee sufficient political stability to permit a simultaneous reconversion of the regimes in Rhodesia, Namibia, and, to a lesser extent, South Africa. A potential neocolony? The features most often mystified by the analyses of Portuguese reformists and by smug apologists for the "process of decolonization" - Angola's strategic position at the crossroads between central AFrica and the southern subcontinent, the importance of its economic wealth and exploitable potential, and the massive presence of imperialist investment - are nevertheless the fundamental premises for a neocolonial option. For in spite of the existence of an agricultural sector having a precapita list economy, and above and beyond the presence of significant colonial interests, Angola is a capitalist coun try largely dominated by imperialist capital. The imperialist presence in Angola dates back, parrially at least, to the granting of the first prospecting concessions to the Portuguese in the nineteenth century. The Anglo-South African company Diamang, for example, was able to prospect for diamonds throughout three-fourths of the territory of Angola beginning in 1920. But the systematic opening of the country to foreign capital, which followed the launching of the armed struggle by the MPLA (Movimento Popular de Libertação de Angola - People's Liberation Movement of Angola) in 1961, entailed the preponderant installation of American interests in the petroleum, mining, and banking sectors. At the present time, the United States is the largest customer and third-largest supplier of Angola, buying in particular 54.9% of Angola's coffee and 40.9% of its oil. This U.S. interest weighs heavily on the economic and polifical future of the future independent state, as has already been seen in the support extended by the Gulf Oil Corporation to the so-called Cabinda Liberation Front (the FLEC). In 1971 Gulf Oil, one of the most powerful of American trusts, took in the equivalent of $70 million by exploiting Cabinda's oil. This little trifle constitutes a serious "motivation" for maintaining the American economic grip! All the imperialist countries have "interests" in one or another sector of the Angolan economy, from the Belgian diamond companies to the French and South African oil companies (ELF-ERAP), not to mention English, German, and Japanese capital. The economic map of Angola today is a veritable checkerboard of multiple imperialist concessions. Portuguese capital still holds an important position in this race for profits. In fact, through association with foreign capital and through the colonial trade monopoly, a Portuguese finance capital has developed in symbiosis with the imperialist investments. These are the "grand families" like Mela (of the CUF - Companião União Fabril), Champalimaud, Espírito Santo, Borgês and Irmão, the recent nationalization of whose interests make the Portuguese government a "direct shareholder" in the imperialist exploitation of Angolo. Moreover, the expansion of the white colon population (which stood at 600,000 in 1973) and the swelling of profits drawn from the coffee plantations have stimulated the emergence of a small local manufacturing industry linked to satisfaction of the needs of the colonial market; this provides the basis of accumulation by the colonial bourgeoisie through the superexploitation of the Angolan proletariat. This process has led to a social differentiation within the colonial bourgeoisie itself, the linchpin of the ruling class in Angola and the major base of support for any reactionary project. The differentiation is threefold: *A big industrial, commercial, and landed bourgeoi-
13
ANGOLA sie (owners of small industries, large-scale traders, plantation owners, etc.), which controls the secondary economic sectors and is grouped around the Commercial and Industrial Association of Angola. Structurally tied to the Portuguese bourgeoisie, this layer commands only a weak degree of political independence and has rallied to the neocolonial project with the perspective of extending its field of activity (through expanding the internal market among the black population and through investment projects in the neighboring neocolonial countries) and of thus entering into close relations with Zaire and the right-wing nationalist movements, the FNLA and UNITA (União Nacional para Independência Total de Angola - National Union for the Total Independence of Angola). Thus, Mobutu made an overture to the owners of the coffee plantations, promising them guaranteed profits in Zaire if they would agree to support the FLA. *A middle bourgeoisie linked to the colonial administration (top managers and liberal professionals). *A commercial and administrative petty bourgeoisie. It is especially among this layer of "'small whites" that the most reactionary elements are found. With the aid of the Portuguese bourgeoisie and the racist regimes of South Africa and Rhodesia, these social forces have formed a number of reactionary organizations: * The FUA (Angolan United Front), led by the engineer Fernando Faleão, president of the Commercial and Industrial Association of Lobito, who protested against his exclusion from the Alvor negotiations. * The PCDA (Christian Democratic party of Angola), whose chief, Garcia Dongala, sees the FNLA and UNITA as "the real material and political strength of the country" and considers strikes to be "prejudicial" both to the workers and to the "national economy"!
The FRA (Resistance Front of Angola), a paramilitary formation of reactionary colons whose representatives openly compare it to the OAS (Organisation de P'Armée Secrète - Secret Army Organization, the reactionary terrorist organization of French colons in Algeria).
The opportunism of these parties, and their lack of political independence as well, has been revealed by their adoption of each of the various proposals successively advanced by the representatives of the
Portuguese bourgeoisie to settle the colonial problem. After first advocating the neocolonial federation and then "self-determination, " they now proclaim their support for independence and are ori-
14 enting toward a rapprochement with the FNLA, under the aegis of Mobutu. They thus indicate their progressive integration into the neocolonial plan to "destabilize" the transition government by strengthening the reactionary axis formed by the right-wing nationalist movements, Zaire, and the reactionary colonial parties. The rapprochement is being effected on the field of struggle, by means of denouncing strikes, exacerbating racism, and utilizing the sadly famous strategy of tension. Thus, Angola nearly experienced a "truckers' strike." At the end of November the truck owners announced the ir desire to go on strike against the "lack of security on the roads. " Not satisfied with being granted escorts, they demanded the resignation of Rosa Coutinho (head of the government junta), who was called a "communist" and nicknamed "the red admiral" just at the time that the FNLA was denouncing him as being pro-MPLA. The maneuver was crude, and the strike did not take place (because of its unpopularity and because of the defection of the small-scale truckers); but imperialism and its agents were already trying to create a Chilean-type situation. In face of the existence of such social and economic forces, it is necessary to analyze both the MPLA's dangerous illusions about "the unity of the Angolan nation" and the criminal silence of the reformists about the role of the colonial bourgeoisie in Angola. This also means that the debate on the obtaining of Angolan nationality is not a simple matter of "style" when approached in closs terms and that it is urgent to offer clearly anticapitalist perspectives to the growing mobilization of the Angolan toilers. The stakes in the struggle During the past several years the center of gravity of the struggle of the Angolan masses has shifted from the rural regions (within which the armed strug gle and liberated zones of the MPLA had been confined) to the urban centers, where workers combativity has asserted itself, particularly during the Luanda strike of September 1973. Even though the MPLA was experiencing serious difficulties (internal divisions, military problems, etc.), there appeared in the urban centers a young, heavily concentrated, and combative proletariat, the direct product of capitalist exploitation. This proletariat, while lacking organizational links to the armed struggle, was strongly affected by the prestige of the MPLA and entered the political scene by combining economic demands and an advanced anticolonial consciousness in its struggles, in spite of the colonial repression.
But the principal victory of the Angolan proletariat over the shilly-shallying of the Portuguese govern-
ment was the virtually spontaneous reaction of the laboring masses to the racist crimes committed by the colons. As was noted in Revolução Socialista, organ of the revolutionary Marxist militants of Luanda: "The struggle that was developed in the musseque (slums) of Luanda by the laboring masses, who burned out and expelled the merchants in response to the massacres committed by the most reactionary forces of the bourgeoisie - even though it was ill-organized and spontaneous (which resulted in the products of the pillage not being fairly redistributed to the most needy) - compelled the Portuguese bourgeoisie, which had wanted to end the colonial war while maintaining its colonialism by means of a federation after a referendum, to recognize the right of the peoples of the colonies to independence." To the reformists who deny the social role of the "small whites" of Angola and confine themselves to denouncing the "racism" of the black urban masses, we answer that the struggle of the urban masses against those who symbolize capitalist exploiration most directly in their eyes (small merchants, loan sharks) represents the first stage of a class reflex; further, whether these "emotional" reactions will avoid being wrecked on the reef of racism and instead fake on their full anticapitalist significance will depend on the emergence and organization of a revolutionary vanguard. Already, some advanced experiences in self-organization by the workers (the establishment of rank-and-file committees in the neighborhoods and factories) testify to the radicalizafion of the movement. At the very moment of the inauguration of the transition government, for example, the coordinating committee of these rank-and-file bodies in Luanda announced a "national week of action for people's power, "calling on "the progressive student organizations and the workers' commissions and associations" to solidarize with the initative and to discuss the slogan of "people's power" in general assemblies in the factories and neighborhoods. Vigorously denounced by the FNLA and UNITA, both of which saw this "pseudo people's power" as an incursion upon the competences of the coalition government and as "the germ of the breakup of Angolan society, " this week of action was concluded with a combative popular assembly of more than 100,000 people (chanting "Poder popular! ") and by a meeting of a national assembly of the rank-and-file committees. Thus, the question of the seizure of power by the toilers as the outlet for the current struggles has been posed by the development of the outlines of a situation of dual power. But the MPLA, which holds hegemony over the workers of the urban centers, fundamentally bases its policy on a strategy of making agreements at the top, of holding a "dialogue" with "all the parties, " and of placing all its bets on the future of the "democratic process"
in Portugal; the role assigned to the mobilization of the masses is that of "exerting pressure to influence the relationship of forces within the government." In face of the breadth and the dynamic of the mobilization, the MPLA has been constrained to adopt an ambiguous attitude. For example, Neto himself (the president of the MPLA) - who at Benguela supported the principle of "people's power" and in a popular meeting in Luanda denounced the "lackeys of imperialism" who want to prevent the "people from assuming power" - sanctioned the inclusion of the FNLA and UNITA in the transition government, stating that he desired the closest collaboration with them in the name of "the unity of the Angolan nation, " just at the moment when the provocations committed by the armed bands of the FNLA were the most violent. In this situation, the political response of the MPLA has been very insufficient. In its desire to be "realistic" so as to block the path of the ultras, the MPLA is preaching an alliance with the democratic sectors (an alliance that it already maintains with the MDA, the Angolan Democratic Movement), refusing to take up the tasks of preparing the masses for the inevitable confrontation with reaction, and thus tracing out a path of development leading toward the ebb of the mass mobilization under the blows of counterrevolutionary attacks. Mere tactical reference to "people's power" is not sufficient to open the road to the seizure of power by the laboring masses. Central anticapitalist perspectives are necessary in order to avoid the struggle's being eroded by localist retreats. This is all the more true in that the neocolonialist framework set by the Alvor accords is beginning to suffer the initial attacks of the masses, as is indicated by the demonstration of several tens of thousands of workers in Luanda against the government's decision to "militarize" labor in the port of the capital and by the proliferation of strikes affirming the workers will to get rid of racist employers and managers. Since it has placed itself within the strict framework of the agreements that have been reached, " the MPLA is finding itself torn between its link at the top with the reactionary forces within the government and the participation of its rank and file in the mobilization of the Ango lan toilers. Transition government - toward what independence? The Alvor accords with the Portuguese government, while silent on the future of imperialist capital, are quite explicit about the need to "respect the links and legitimate interests of Portuguese living in Angola." The transition government thus finds itself being the privileged instrument of a neocolo-
15
ANGOLA nial solution that is henceforth implicit in the facts of the situation. The exclusion from the government of direct representatives of the colonial bourgeoisie, of the Chipenda faction of the MPLA, and of the
FLEC of Cabinda appears to be a provisional measure aimed at staggering over time the implementation of the various elements of the neocolonial plan.
In fact, Chipenda has now joined the FNLA and it is envisaged that he will participate in the coalition government; meanwhile Neto (of the MPLA) is proposing to "discuss with those who want Cabinda to separate (from Angola)" and to "Find the best solution" (perhaps an Angola-Zaire-Cabinda "oil" federation?). For his part, Roberto Holden (president of the FNLA) is proposing a "nonexclusive dialogue" in the name of the "higher interests of the Angolan nation" (including all classes and all capital, of course). Thus, all the mediators of the neocolonial project were present at the negotiating table in Alver; behind them lurked the shadow of the capitalist interests in Angola. The role of the Portuguese government in all this is limited to that of intermediary defending the interests of the colons and of capitalist investment in Angola. For, as has been noted by Almeida Santos, the minister of "decolonization": "Portugal is not rich enough to nurture the slightest neocolonial inclination" (on its own, obviously!). The recent notionalization of the banks in Portugal nevertheless directly implicates the Portuguese government in the economic exploitation of Angola. The surest pawn in the imperialist strategy is the FNLA, whose links with imperialism through the aid it receives from Mobutu's Zaire (bastion of capitalist investment in central Africa) are obvious. Fundamentally, regionally based (in the Bakongo stronghold in the North) and rightist in character, this organization has created a veritable border army that today occupies the rich agricultural region of Uige in northern Angola, in close collaboration with the colonial planters. In Dalatando, capital of the Cuoza Norte district, the FNLA recently opened a "house of the people" and a hospital located in the very offices of the Santos Dinis coffee company, which amicably donated the facilifies. The return the firm receives in the form of the "moderating" role played by the FLNA in the struggles of the agricultural workers on the colonial plantations is easily imagined. Through the CAAT (African-American Labor Center), which includes the trade unions of Zaire, the FNLA is linked to the proimperialist trade-union outfit, the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions. As long ago as 1973 a seminar on trade-union training was held in Zaire organized by the CGTA (Gen16 eral Conference of Angolan Workers), the General League of Angolan Workers, and the FNLA, in collaboration with the CAAT. It is not surprising that the FNLA is now denouncing the "campaign for people's power" on the grounds that it is leading the country "to a people's dictatorship" and is claiming that "the people, who are believers, energetically reject atheistic communism, " and is opposing any unification of the trade unions. In face of the development of struggles, the FNLA is issuing manifold appeals for the "unity, respon-
NO to the neocolonialist solution! sibility, and discipline of all Angolans" and is denouncing "the campaigns of agitation, subversion, and ideological aggression being waged among the people." The FNLA is thus putting itself forward as the motor force of repression, resorting to the most violent provocations against the radicalized militants of the MPLA, as in Luanda, where about fifty militants were assassinated. At the same time, the FNLA's border army increasingly appears as the central pillar of the reactionary military potential. Last month, for example, an armed FNLA commando sacked the installations of the Luanda radio station, maltreating the workers and torturing an announcer close to the MPLA who was accused of giving too much play to the "campaign for people's power." Similarly, a motorized column of 500 FNLA troops has just set itself up in the capital, thus overturning the military relationship of forces with the MPLA in preparation for very violent social conflicts as independence approaches. The UNITA group, led by Jonas Savimbi (who came out of the FNLA), has long collaborated with Portuguese troops against the MPLA. Despite the support it received until 1970 from Peking (and now seems to be receiving again) and despite the support it has received from Mao-Stalinist groups in Europe (because of its Maoistic verbiage), UNITA appears to be a central piece in the neocolonial strategy. This is attested by the support it gets from certain white colons (especially Falco's FUA). Its current tactic in deceiving the Angolan masses consists in "playing down" its embarrassing contacts with the white colons and in affirming its will "to construct a socialist society, " for the Angolan people are "extremely intransigent" at the present time and are suspicious of organizations subject to "external influences." This organization claims that it is playing a "mediating role in the government alliance, " but the natural bent of rightist nationalism is pushing it into close collaboration with the FNLA. UNITA defines itself as a "force for union, peace, and harmony among the races and the various sectors and layers of the population"; it deploys its efforts "in the direction of maintaining order" (capitalist order, that is), as was expressed in Savimbi's behavior when he exhorted striking workers in Luanda to return to work and himself went to work in their place. In this context, the essential function of the transifion government is to prepare the neocolonial juridico-political framework for guaranteeing that when independence comes, there will be a transfer of power without any popular anticapita list mobilization of any scope. The initial measures taken last February perfectly attest to this concern. For example, after the clashes in Luanda "all popular assemblies" were prohibited, while the council of ministers called on "the workers and the trade-union bodies to suspend all strikes until the transition govemment takes the measures necessary for arranging to safeguard the rights of the laboring classes. As for the MPLA, which we do not place in the same category with the FNLA and UNITA, its heterogeneity, political weakness, and bureaucratic deviations are the factors serving to integrate it into the colonial process. Its acceptance of the Alvor "compromise" - an act that falls within the general lines of the opportunist decisions that have been bureaucratically made by the leadership under
17
ANGOLA the pressure of the neocolonial states - is the direct product of its political weaknesses (and secondarily of Stalinist influence). This iron collar prevents the MPLA as a whole from going beyond its present policy of strictly tactical reliance on the mass movement in the framework of a reformist project with only a narrowly national dimension. This is especially ominous in that a disquieting process of unification is going on among the FNLA, UNITA, and the most rightist elements of the MPLA around the denunciation of "strikes that place the national economy in danger" and around the call for collaboration with "the political formations that were not present at Alvor, "thus laying the basis for broadening the transition government to the right. This policy of the leadership of the MPLA, far from permitting the reduction of the intensity of the inevitable social clashes between the laboring masses and the various representatives of capitolist interests in Angola, instead lays the groundwork for a capitulation to those interests. For a revolutionary alternative Neverthe less, the mobilization on which the MPLA has been forced to base itself is engendering a dynamic of struggle that is entering into opposition with the leadership's opportunist policy toward the petty bourgeoisie and the "liberal" fraction of the colonial bourgeoisie, thus accentuating the internal contradictions of the movement. The bureaucratic practice of the leadership and the limits it has set on the mobilization of the workers are factors that permit the radicalization of rank-and-file militants who are in direct contact with the popular mobilization. Further, the MPLA's participation in the state apparatus intensifies the neocolonial pressures on the organization, while at the same time the leadership's political independence of the militant rank and file is growing. This organization is the object of a twofold evolution today: On the one hand, the Neto current is growing in strength and the other two tendencies that emerged at the last congress have been eliminated; on the other hand, there has begun a radicalization of the rank and file and a fragmenting within the local committees, which are permeated by many political currents. This twofold evolution was expressed in the latest decisions of the MPLA central committee (February 1975). While a reorganization was planned so that the MPLA "would follow a mass line more consistently" and so that "a close link between the rank and file and the top leadership" might be established, the MPLA's support for the transition government and its willingness to "collaborate with it closely" was reaffirmed. This organization, with its multiclassist aspirations, 18 has always hidden its lack of debate and internal democratic life behind the vague terms "real independence" or "national and democratic government" (and today, "people's power"). This absence of debate and democratic life within the organization is now being expressed in the organization's extreme heterogeneity and in the omnipotence of a political leadership representing a reformist nationalist current. The strengthening of the Neto current because of its "historic" prestige among the Angolan masses and because of the support if receives from local reformists is permitting the development of collaboration between the MPLA and the MDA (an organization with "liberal" conceptions, composed of lawyers and other members of the liberal professions; it is rather close to the Portuguese Communist party) and a recomposition of the internal political lineup of the MPLA. Thus, the discussions that have been initiated between the Neto leadership and Mario and Pinto de Andrade and Gentil Viana, representatives of the "active revolt" tendency, seem to be oriented toward an individual reintegration of these elements, as is indicated by the retention of Pinto de Andrade as vice-president of the MPLA. The heterogeneity of the "active revolt" tendency was, it is true, very great. But above and beyond the "Family regroupment" around the Andrades, Maoistic elements have organized and have denounced the "penetration (into the MPLA) of social imperialism through Neto." Having only an empirical grasp of the Stalinist pressure being exerted on the Neto leadership, these elements seem to have no future, as they are cut off from the mobilization of the workers and lack alternative perspectives. Moreover, a good number of these militants either have simply "dropped out" or have individually rejoined the MPLA. The case of Chipenda's "Revolt of the East" tendency is different; here the dispute was settled much more energetically. The MPLA launched a military operation against the representatives of this faction in Angola, who appeared more and more openly as a major element in a reactionary plan for civil war. In any case, this group is reported to have recently received arms and mercenaries trained in Brazil. But this "military operation, " undertaken in the absence of any appeal for the mobilization of the workers, was justified in an MPLA communiqué on the basis of imposing respect for the Alvor accords, which were presented os the "political and constitutional bases ... of the decolonization of our country"! And today it is through the FNLA (and soon through the government?) that Chipenda can integrate himself into the imperialist strategy, under the "cover" of the Alvor accords.
This policy of bargaining at the top and of constant reference to the Alvor accords (the disguised neocolonial framework) can only strengthen the aggressiveness of the reactionary forces and the cohesion of the rightist currents within the MPLA itself. In addition, it is above all outside the MPLA, in the local committees, that we are seeing the emergence in the urban centers of various political currents, among them small revolutionary Marxist nuclei, which still have indistinct outlines but which are trying to work out a strategy of anticapitalist struggle linking the battle of the Angolan masses to the struggle for the socialist revolution internationally: *The Amilcar Cabral committees, which are publishing a journal called Revolução Popular and some supplements under the title Libertação Nacional. The twofold title of their press is itself an indication of the stagist and Maoistic conceptions of these groups, which are struggling for "complete independence" and "people's democracy. " Their empirical comprehension of the embryonic development of a situation of dual power in Angola (a situation they see as opposing the "bourgeois regime of the palace" to the "popular regime of the country") does not enable them to offer alternative perspectives tracing out the road to the seizure of power by the toilers; they limit themselves to issuing general propaganda in favor of "the consolidation of people's power" and of "people's democracy." *The Unity committees, a creation of militants of the Portuguese Communist party; they include some members of the MPLA. *The Henda committees, named for one of the heroes of the armed struggle of the MPLA; they include Maoist militants influenced by the MRPP a Portuguese Maoist group); these committees appear to have a base in some of the slums of Luanda. Nevertheless, all of these groups remain within the framework of radical nationalism overlaid with gradualist Maoistic formulations. They restrict themselves to lining up behind the MPLA in a tail-endist manner and combine this with a warped notion of the "maximum program" reflected in propaganda in favor of "people's democracy." In face of the offirmation of the necessity of going beyond the MPLA with the perspective of a resolute struggle for the socialist revolution, these currents make an abstraction of the tasks of developing struggles of the laboring masses with the perspective of a revolutionary seizure of power; they cling to an almost "mora!" conception of the unity of the MPLA and thus deny the profound heterogeneity of this organization. *On the basis of the rapid spread of revolutionary
Marxist ideas in Portugal itself and of the new situafion created by the April 25, 1974, coup, a small revolutjonary Marxist nucleus has been formed in Luanda around the journal Revolução Socialista. In the editorial of its September 1974 issue, the journal explained the reasons for its existence this way: "Ango lan workers and toilers! "No, it is not yet another party cropping up! It is only a journal, one that owes its allegiance to the workers and is for the workers; it wants to be with them in their struggles and in their daily life, to help them overcome the obstacles on the road to a truly free Angola, to an absolutely complete independence in which any sort of exploitation will once and for all be banished from our territory, to a socialist Angola. "All power to the toilers! For an independent and socialist Angola!" The only journal to assert that the battle for the socialist revolution is on the agenda in Angola right now, Revolução Socialista supports the MPLA in its mass initiatives, on the basis of an analysis of the internal contradictions of this organization and of its relationship to the mass movement; at the same time, it asserts the maintenance of the political independence of its propaganda. Thus, the journal calls upon the militants of the MPLA and all the Angolan workers "to go beyond the phase of national democracy and to undertake the building of a revolutionary party, vanguard of the struggle of the toilers for the seizure of power, for the socialist revolution." In spite of its still limited theoretical and material strength, Revoluçao Socialista is fighting to clarify the stakes of the present struggles of the Angolan workers by carrying on propaganda for self-organizafion and self-defense, by popularizing exemplary workers strikes, by denouncing the reactionary parties and their collusion with the rightist nationalist movements, and by calling for the formation of class trade unions of the workers, the only social force capable of really carrying out the tasks of national liberation by going beyond them in the struggle for the power of the workers and peasants, by forging the "revolutionary union" of the Angolan proletariat and peasantry, and by ultimately integrating their struggle into the battle of the oppressed masses of the entire African continent for the socialist revolution.•
19
THE COMMON MARKET
BRITAIN
NO 10 THERE NO VOTE The first