[The following article appeared in the May 25 issue of Bandiera Rossa, the fortnightly newspaper of the Gruppi Comunisti Rivoluzionari (Revolutionary Communist Groups, the Italian section of the Fourth International). The translation is by Intercontinental Press.]
The situation in Portugal following the elections and, in particular, the May 1 incidents and the relations between the PCP [Partido Comunista Português-Portuguese Communist party] and the PSP [Partido Socialista Português-Portuguese Socialist party] could not but impel groups in Italy also to take positions and to engage in debate. These questions have to be analyzed, if only briefly, to better clarify where the revolutionary Marxists of the Fourth International stand in the present discussion.
The simplest task, all in all, fell to the PSI [Partito Socialista Italiano-Italian Socialist party] The PSP's electoral victory could be presented as a victory for all socialists and the PCP's positions offered an easy target for polemical attacks. The PCI [Partito Comunista Italiano-Italian Communist party], on the other hand, ran into serious difficulties. The problem was not simply the PCP's modest vote. More serious was the fact that the PCP has developed an orientation that differs notably from that of the PCI on a whole series of questions. Moreover, in its full sweep, the revolutionary process taking form in Portugal has put to a severe test some of the cardinal tenets of the PCI leading group's ingrained reformism. And, despite its avowed support for "national roads to socialism," this group has never hidden its ambition to get the PCI experience accepted as an example rich in lessons for the workers movement in all of Western Europe.
But what is most interesting for us at this time is to note certain things (going back in part to what we have already said in previous articles) about the themes that have emerged in recent weeks in the publications of the centrist groups.
In the first place, wrong interpretations have appeared about the meaning of the elections. It is true that at least on paper the April 25 election results have created the possibility of a bloc between the PSP and the PPD [Partido Popular Democrático- Democratic People's party, a bourgeois party] representing an electoral majority, and for maneuvers by European capitalist and Social Democratic political forces to achieve a restabilization in Portugal based on this bloc. But, even aside from the fact that Soares has had to rule out this solution in the present situation, a fact that is by no means an accident, it certainly does not follow from this that the results in the Portuguese elections were another April 18' or that votes for the PSP were necessarily votes for a conservative solution. Trying to conjure away this problem by talking about the influence of the old anti-Communism, or Soares's opportunist tactics, or still worse, by labeling the PSP a bourgeois (or social fascist!) party, means refusing to take account of the real relationship of forces (which is reflected in a distorted way in elections but in a way not unrelated to the reality or falling into paternalistic and Stalinist conceptions of the struggle for power. A fact that cannot be ignored, in our opinion, is that a large part, perhaps the majority, of the working class has seen the PSP as the instrument of its struggle. This may be regarded-and correctly-as a result of the insufficient experience of the Portuguese workers with Social Democratic reformism and a lack of clarity about the roles actually played by the various formations in the workers movement. But, at the same time, it must be understood that the PSP has been able to take advantage of the revulsion of sections of the proletariat against the PCP's bureaucratic methods, its open opposition to a series of struggles, and its seizing the leading positions in the unions by maneuvers at the top. Moreover, the PSP has been able to take advantage of the general demand for the right of democratic expression, which, after all, is natural in a working class that has emerged from nearly a half century of dictatorship. Certainly at least some of the strata of the proletariat did not take favorably to the famous pact imposed by the MFA [Movimento das Forças Armadas- Armed Forces Movement], which made the Constituent Assembly virtually a dead letter.
On this question, the most "consistent" position was taken by the organ of Avanguardia Operaia [Quotidiano dei Lavoratori]. Not only has it to a large extent arrived at wrong interpretations of the election results, but it has said clearly-through its correspondent Renzo Rossellini-that the elections should not have been held and that holding them was the MFA's biggest toward paternalistic, authoritarian mistake. The inclination methods could not have been expressed more clearly. There is scarcely any need to note that the revolutionary Marxists make no fetish of elections of the bourgeois parliamentary type. We know that after winning power the Bolsheviks had to dissolve a constituent assembly, and we think they were correct to do so. But those who invoke this historical precedent forget one little detail. The Soviet government had a revolutionary legitimacy that the Portuguese government-which remains a coalition government with bourgeois forces-totally lacks. It is one thing to dissolve a constituent assembly, offering the alternative of an actually existing workers democracy based on workers and peasants councils that hold real power. It is quite another to say that elections should not have been held so as not to create problems for the MFA and its allies (and this is leaving aside a certain tone in Rossellini's remarks about parties in general and his underlying assumption about the immaturity of the broad masses; these are reminiscent of antipolitical reactionary populist demagogy).
There has also been a burgeoning of judgments that at least in flattering to the PCP. Let's quote Quotidiano dei part are Lavoratori again, not because it was alone in this but because once again it was the most explicit (see the article by Gamba in the May 8 issue and the one by A.D. in the May 11-12 issue, where the author went so far as to say that "with unheard-of dynamism, in these last months the CP has been carrying forward a coherently and rigorously anticapitalist line").
The Stalinist bureaucratic strong-arm methods of Cunhal and his associates have been mistaken for radicalism and intransigence, while the role the PCP and its myrmidons have played in holding back some of the most important struggles and the fact that the PCP strategy excludes a socialist, revolutionary dynamic are passed over in silence.
However, what stands out as the mainstay in all this, although there are undoubtedly various differences in emphasis and other nuances, is making the MFA the principal guarantor of the development of the revolutionary process in Portugal. In some more recent commentary, Lotta Continua seems to stress the role that could be played by the elements in the MFA that are considered to be the more advanced, such as Otelo de Carvalho or even Rosa Coutinho. As we have seen, Avanguardia Operaia is relying on the radicalism of the PCP itself, and it calls on the MFA to seek the support of "structures of people's power." Il Manifesto, building a little on imagination as usual, has outlined a plan for the most advanced section of the MFA based on "three levels of power-the armed forces; the parties and formal representative bodies, which are to serve as a catalyst of universal suffrage; and organs directly representing the grass roots."
If this plan is applied, the gradualist notion of winning power that Il Manifesto has conceived for Italy will get a practical test in Portugal, or to put it in Rossandian language, there will be a test of the ""processness' of the growth of a new historic bloc into a ruling class." Admitted or not, conscious or not, the implication of all these assessments is that the role that falls to the revolutionary party in the Leninist conception can be carried out—at least for an entire crucial phase-by the political-military force represented by the MFA. In the last analysis, this hypothesis is the decisive question.
There is no doubt that in many respects the MFA is a new phenomenon and should not be characterized hastily. It is an officers' movement that arose from the experience of a military defeat in a colonial war. In the international and domestic climate that prevailed after 1968, it took a direction different from, if not diametrically opposite to, other movements that have also emerged as a reflection of a defeat. It is clear that since September 28, and still more since March 11, the MFA has experienced a certain radicalization. As a result of this, it is no longer crystallized around the projected course that seemed to have been adopted after April 24, 1974, that is, a coalition government, preparation for a transition to a "normal" system of bourgeois democracy, "rationalization" of Portuguese capitalism and its integration into the Common Market, and so on.
Today, the MFA must take much more into account the mass movement; and must exploit the margin for maneuver internationally much more, seeking contacts and deals in every possible direction. The logic of self-defense and the logic of the balancing game it is playing has led it to strike blows against important sections of the bourgeoisie, to outline forms of participation from below, and to radicalize its own vaguely socialistic ideology. (It should be noted, by the way, that this ideology cannot be evaluated on the basis of episodic statements by one or another member of the MFA; the most important text to date is the pact that the parties were given to sign, which speaks in general terms of "building a real political, economic, and social democracy.")
All of this has not involved and does not involve breaking with the fundamental mechanisms of the capitalist economy or with the apparatus of the bourgeois state in the broad sense. The MFA's economic plans-of which the campaign for production is doubtless an important expression, along with the opposition to certain strikes—do not provide for any qualitative change from the structural standpoint, and furthermore by its very nature the pact intended to guarantee the political domination of the MFA for several years more excludes building a real revolutionary democratic government of the workers and peasants.
It will be said that the MFA can evolve. For our part, we are convinced that if the process of mass radicalization continues, this will have a series of repercussions in the MFA itself and that a part of it may even come to make common cause with the workers and the other exploited classes. But this is a different matter. The question raised by those who project a process of transition to socialism under the hegemony of the MFA is the possibility of a gradual transformation of the traditional army into a "people's army."
For us, however, such a hypothesis lacks any real foundation and this conception in reality means transferring reformist gradualism into this area also. In our opinion, the Portuguese army as such cannot "change its nature," not even under the impetus of a combination of exceptional factors. The possibility revolutionists must aim for is breaking up this army by organizing the soldiers and sailors in revolutionary democratic bodies, in councils of soldiers and sailors representatives elected and subject to immediate recall. Such bodies, moreover, must not be confused with those that the MFA has created or called for, in which soldiers constitute a minority and in which they are destined to remain a minority. The new army, the revolutionary army, can only be born from the ruins of the old. If some officers from the MFA or not from the MFA want to take part in building it, there is no reason in principle to oppose this (after all, many tsarist officers helped in the formation of the Red Army).
Similarly, the central axis of a revolutionary strategy in Portugal must lie in building-starting now, in the phase in which we are at the moment-organs of proletarian democracy, as the expression of the working class and the exploited peasants. Establishing and spreading such bodies, as well as linking them up through national coordination, must be the revolutionists' main concern. The real guarantee against other, inevitable coup attempts by the reaction, against all the maneuvers of local and international capitalism, lies in carrying out this task and not in reinforcing the authority and organs of the MFA. At the same time, the revolutionists must fight for the achievement of all the democratic demands raised by the broad masses. This means, in the first place, that the trade-union organizations must be thoroughly renovated, that the maximum possible democracy must prevail within them. And the election of the leaders and the right of expression for various orientations and various tendencies are two essential components of such democracy. It is on this basis, moreover, and that solid not some legal obligation, foundations can be laid for the trade-union unity of which the advocates.
revolutionists are the most convinced
The hypothesis that Portugal could move toward overthrowing capitalism thanks to the guarantee offered by a movement such as the MFA, without revolutionary democratic organization by the workers and peasants (other than in subordinate and secondary forms) and without a revolutionary party, may seduce some who do not accept the essential Leninist criteria and succumb to the lure of "processes."
However, the Portuguese proletariat cannot put its trust in such a game of chance.
Peking Signals Readiness to Soft-pedal Korean Struggle
Peking has indicated strongly in recent weeks that it opposes any efforts by its allies in Pyongyang to try to complete the American rout from the Asian mainland. In a Washington dispatch May 28, Bernard Gwertzman of the New York Times cited State Department officials as saying that the Chinese leaders left that impression "by underscoring their support for "peaceful reunification' of Korea and by their continued support for an American presence in Asia to counter the Russians."
Peking's "restraint" was welcomed by the Ford administration, which is concerned that the mounting popular opposition in South Korea to its puppet Park Chung Hee may lead to a new flare-up in the civil war. The Pentagon has nuclear weapons and 42,000 troops in South Korea.
Notes
1. The elections of April 18, 1948, in Italy, in which the CP went down to defeat, marked the completion of the restabilization of capitalism and the bourgeois parliamentary system in the country after the postwar crisis.—IP June 9, 1975
2. See in particular the article by Rossana Rossanda in the May 10 issue, which also contains some correct observations.