(The following article appeared in the May 16 issue of Rouge, the French Trotskyist weekly. The translation is by Intercontinental Press.]
The least one can say is that the Portuguese Socialist party's victory in the elections was not of modest proportions. Mário Soares held a news conference May 6. By all accounts, he went on the offensive with an eye to making full use of his electoral success.
He accused the Communist party of seeking to "minimize the results of the elections." At the same time, however, he stated his support for continuation of the coalition government, rejecting any effort to "marginalize" the PPD [Partido Popular Democrático-Democratic People's party]. He also proposed a series of conditions for future united relations with the CP.
Among these conditions was ending the CP's stranglehold on the mass media-the shift in editorial policy of the newspaper Diário de Noticias since the replacement of its editor and the way Radio Clube was managed were among the cases cited. Moreover, the SP left open the possibility of challenging the representativeness of certain union leaderships elected in the past year, as well as certain municipal councils set up during the process of purging former officials...
It is clear that for the Communist party, such a statement by Mário Soares must have seemed a provocation pure and simple
Unless it had other fish to fry.
The Battle for Production
By May 1, "the battle for production" had clearly been launched. Last week, the Council of the Revolution met with the parties in the coalition to study "the political conjuncture" and the social situation. It concluded by expressing its concern over the economic prospects and by appeal. ing to the sense of responsibility of the workers.
At the same time, the Central Committee of the Communist party published a ponder-
"the social ous communiqué.
Stressing deterioration of recent days, visibly linked to intense activity by the forces of reaction and other elements seeking to paralyze the revolutionary process," the CP denounced "the artificial escalation of the forms of June 23, 1975
struggle and the attempt to foment a big wave of simultaneous strikes."
The battle for production has some very clear consequences. The elections do not seem to have halted or even slowed down the forcefulness with which workers are pressing their demands. In recent weeks, workers in printing, the hotel industry, the fishing industry, and highway construction have gone on strike one after the other. Occupations and pickets continue, as at the Transval transport firm, either to demand a purge or to prevent threatened layoffs or bankruptcy, fraudulent or otherwise. Often the workers commissions are the initiators of these struggles.
Nevertheless, the battle for production is beginning to do its job of dividing the working class. The clearest case is that of the chemical workers. In this industry, negotiations on the collective labor contract have to go to arbitration before the minister of labor. To support their demands, chemical workers went on strike in the north of the country, including in the Oporto area.
On the other hand, in the name of the battle for production, union locals of the chemical workers in Lisbon and the south opposed the strike, arguing that "46 percent of national industry depends on the chemical sector" and that the strike would therefore do "considerable damage" to the whole Portuguese economy.
The Worst Thing Would Be to Stop Halfway
This situation poses a very real problem. It is clear that the workers can under no circumstances renounce their demands. Nor can they give up their struggle for the sake of an economy that remains capitalist, an economy in which private capital predominates and foreign capital has practically gone untouched. But it is true that the economic situation is precarious, that it has suffered from the combined effects of the countercoup, the international capitalist crisis, and the investors' lack of confidence in the Portuguese situation.
In face of these contradictions, the worst thing would be to stop halfway. The workers are correct to press their demands, to struggle against the high cost of living and unemployment. But they cannot stop there; they must give their own answer to the crisis. This means demanding nationalization under workers control and without compensation of the key sectors of the economy (foreign capital included); establishment of a state monopoly of foreign trade; creation of a single state bank; establishment of a planned socialist economy based on the extension and centralization of the committees of workers, tenants, and soldiers; the expulsion of the PPD from the government: and the formation of a the government; and the formation oi a government of workers organizations based on the committees.
The Need for a Political Perspective
If the question of a political solution is not raised in this situation, the struggles will sag under the weight of the appeals to reason and responsibility. The workers will be divided between those willing to fight intransigently for their interests and those susceptible to reformist arguments about the seriousness of the economic situationan estimate that is quite real—if no other solution than the battle for production is advanced.
More than ever the workers' struggles need a political perspective. That is our rejoinder in face of the battle for production, which is only the old bid for collaboration between exploiters and exploited, between capital and labor, that will continue as long as the system of exploitation and the bourgeois state endure.
23 French Physicists Call
For Halt to Nuclear Program
Twenty-three of France's leading physicists have called for "an immediate halt" to the government's nuclear-industry development program. Their appeal was issued in early May in a memorandum they sent to parliamentary deputies on the eve of a debate on nuclear policy.
The signers are members of the prestigious Collège de France, which has conducted much of the original research for the country's nuclear industry. They include the director of the physics laboratory, Marcel Froissart.
The physicists cite three factors in their position:
1. The effectiveness of the emergency cooling apparatus in the light water line of reactors has never been demonstrated.
2. Insufficient empirical research has been done into the means of preventing explosions in breeder reactors. "It is not impossible that a catastrophe without precedent might occur with this kind of reactor."
3. Insufficient account has been taken of the problem of disposing of radioactive wastes.
The twenty-three physicists were the initiators of an appeal to the population to support a moratorium on constructing nuclear power plants issued in February. (See Intercontinental Press, March 24, p. 403.)