[The following statement by the Liga Comunista Internacionalista (Internationalist Communist League, the sympathizing organization of the Fourth International in Portugal) was issued April 4. The state ment is preceded by an explanatory note which we have placed in parentheses. The translation is by Intercontinental Press.]
(In the sequence of contacts between the MFA [Movimento das Forças Armadas- Armed Forces Movement] and the various legal political parties, we were contacted and asked to give our opinion on the pact proposed to the recognized political parties.
(Since we believe that these questions concern all workers, since we consider that the workers movement as a whole must discuss all these questions, we cannot keep our reply secret.
(Working-class and revolutionary organizations cannot discuss behind the backs of the workers. This would mean failing to defend their interests, giving up the struggle to strengthen the offensive capacity of the working masses and to lead them to breaking with the legalistic illusions that today prevail among them. For this reason, we call on all workers to demand that their organizations make public their positions and all the commitments they may make.
(We, for our part, chose our road long ago. We will not stop urging the workers to mobilize, because in the face of the attacks of the bourgeoisie, this is the only way to offer a working-class response to the crisis of capitalism, the road of socialist revolution.)
The Liga Comunista Internacionalista was contacted by the Conselho da Revolu- ção [CR-Council of the Revolution] and asked to declare its position on a "public platform" to be established jointly between the MFA and the "parties involved in carrying out the principles of the MFA program and in consolidating and extending the democratic gains already made."
The MFA proposal claimed to have "taken into account the situation resulting from the suppression of the counterrevolutionary coup of March 11." It was said that this platform was intended "to make it possible to continue the economic and social revolution initiated on April 25 in the context of a political pluralism compatible with a socialistic road,"
and that "the
Armed Forces will be the guarantor and driving force in the revolutionary process leading to the construction of real social, political, and economic democracy."
should be made. The fact that the LCI, like other working-class and revolutionary organizations, was contacted by the CR and asked to sign this "pact" is objectively the result of a change in the relationship of forces brought about by the rise of the anticapitalist struggle of the masses and the reinforcement of the revolutionary organizations, in which the latter were able to win recognition as effective participants in the mass movement that defeated the reactionary coup of March 11.
2. In the same way, we cannot separate other questions from the objective role of this pact. Since it was proposed not only to the workers organizations (whose contribution was fundamental and decisive in crushing the reactionary capitalist putsch and in imposing and defending the nationalization of the banks and the insurance companies) but also to the parties of the capitalist right, including even the reactionaries and fascists of the CDS [Centro Democrático Social-Social Democratic Center], the objective function of this "pact" can only be to try to hide, by means of a deal between the bourgeois orgarizations and the workers organizations, the contradictions that exist on the social and political levels between the irreconcilable interests of the exploiters and the exploited.
orga Consisten ty se voluto at all rikers
Consistently revolutionary workers intransigently defend the immediate interests of the workers as well as the goals of their historic emancipation from capitalist exploitation and bourgeois political domination, cannot accept any pacts or historic compromises with the forces of capitalist reaction. To the contrary, such organizations must fight for the independence and unification of workers in struggle, to strengthen the united front of the working class as the only way of winning to its camp those social forces capable of identifying with its goals of liberation from the domination of the bourgeois exploiters. Only by closing ranks can the working class and its trade-union and political organizations advance the defense, consolidation, and extension of the economic, social, and political rights and conquests of the working masses. And only in this way can the middle strata of the population be saved from being manipulated by the reactionary forces of capital and all progressive forces be drawn into a consistent liberating struggle to eliminate capitalism and construct socialism.
4. The above is reason enough for the LCI to refuse to sign the pact proposed by the CR. This pact points to the continuation of a policy of class collaboration between the working-class parties and the bourgeois
parties, already shown (by the worsening living and working conditions of the working masses, the whittling down of their social and political gains, the attempts at economic sabotage, and reactionary attempted coups) to be incompatible with the defense of the rights and conquests of the working masses. The lessons of March 11- the involvement of big capital and sectors of the armed forces in the reactionary attempted coup, the nature and breadth of the response by workers (in uniform or out) to the coup attempts, the powerful mass demonstrations demanding that the capitalist government ministers be kicked out and that nationalizations be implemented-all prove the following:
a. Big capital, capitalist reaction, has not laid down its arms. It is ready to launch new frontal attacks on the rights and conquests of the workers and to agree to any truce, any pact with working-class political forces, in order to prepare new reactionary coups.
b. It must be recognized that the secret to defeating reaction lies in the close alliance between the workers struggling in the factories and streets with the workers in uniform (the soldiers) struggling in the barracks. The latter refuse to participate in reactionary putsches and make it possible
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to isolate reactionary officers.
c. All the measures limiting the economie and political power of big capital that "lead to the construction of true economic, political, and social democracy" can only be (and have only been!) imposed by the pressure of the struggles of the working masses, their independent organization, their combativity, and their growing political consciousness.
These measures, therefore, can only result from the deepening of the anticapitalist struggle of the masses. It is the workers, with their autonomous struggles and organizations, who are the only real "guarantor and driving force of the revolutionary process."
d. In conclusion, it will not be through collaboration with the bourgeoisie and the parties that objectively and subjectively paved the way economically and politically for the March 11 reactionary attempted coup (like the PPD [Partido Popular Democrático-People's Democratic party] and the CDS, for example that it will be possible to take new steps against the economic power of the capitalists themselves-such steps demanded by the workers as nationalization of big industrial and agricultural firms, and of foreign and wholesale trade; the land reform (giving the land to those who till it); the establishment of workers control over capitalist production and trade.
Consequently, only a workers government, a government of the working-class organizations and parties, based on the permanent mobilization and organization of the working masses will be able to combat reaction effectively and lay the basis for the abolition of capitalist exploitation and the construction of socialism.
5. The March 11 experience and what has followed it show the workers and the revolutionists that it is not possible to credit the armed forces and the MFA with the "role of guarantor and driving force in the revolutionary process," as the MFA's proposed pact puts it. The experience also demonstrates that we cannot hope for "the consolidation and extension of the democratic conquests already achieved" through such a pact. Finally, it shows that the parties really "pledged to such consolidation and extension" will be those that are based on the unity and independence of the workers' struggle for a socialist revolution, not on those practicing the route of class collaborationism.
6. Thus, more that stating our position on the content of the constitutional platform proposed by the MFA, we are concerned with making clear our principled position in the face of the compromise on the level of principles that was demanded from us.
But we do not want to pass over one concrete point-the preeminent central role 576
in political decision-making, according to the proposed pact, that the MFA and the CR are going to play in the constitutional structure of the country.
Regardless of the intentions of the authors of the MFA's and CR's institutionalization plan, regardless of the meaning that progressive elements of the MFA attach to such institutionalization or the results of such a process-insofar as it presupposes and is based on hiding the contradictions that irreconcilably pit the interests of the bourgeoisie against those of the proletariat, and on winning the working class and its organizations to the road of collaboration with the bourgeoisie (under the tutelage of the MFA)-the results of such a process sooner or later can only be the following:
MFA sanctioning of the regroupment and political reinforcement of capitalist reaction; the consequent recovery by the right of
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the reigns of government, which will permit them to more and more limit the gains of the workers and block the development of the revolutionary process.
7. Thus, while we refuse to sign a pact with capitalist political parties, we address all progressive elements in the MFA with an appeal to strengthen their adherence to the anticapitalist workers movement, to come over to the camp of the workers and soldiers alliance, and to support the autonomous organizations of the soldiers in the barracks, their democratic rights of assembly, discussion, and unionization; to refuse to repress the workers struggling in the factories and streets; to combat all reactionary attempts-begun either inside the armed forces or outside of them-to launch any new reactionary coup against the rights and conquests of the working masses.
James D. White: Historiography of the Russian Revolution in the Twenties
Notes
1. There is a preliminary observation that April 28, 1975