(The following statement, signed by the editorial board, appeared in the June 21 issue of Avanzada Socialista, weekly newspaper of the Argentine Partido Socialista de los Trabajadores (PST-Socialist Workers party). The translation is by Intercontinental Press.]
Republica Is Gagged While the Reactionary
/ Press Continues
It could be argued that the Portuguese Socialist party takes reactionary positions. Later we will return to this question. But what totally invalidates such an argument is the fact that there are no obstacles whatsoever placed in the way of the publication and distribution of the reactionary, proimperialist bourgeois press.
This does not mean that we favor censorship of the right-wing press in Portugal. But it does make it clear that those who attack República do so not with the aim of censoring the reactionaries but with the aim of restricting the Socialist party's freedom of expression.
Thus it is evident that the República affair is an antidemocratic maneuver not aimed at strengthening the fight against reactionary conspiracies. Instead, inspired by the Portuguese Communist party, it is aimed at suppressing the SP's democratic rights in order to smooth the way for the policies of the MFA [Armed Forces Movement].
Some left groupings that capitulated to Peronism have spent more than twenty years reproaching our current for its opposition to the expropriation of the oligarchical daily La Prensa, which was carried out in 1951 by the government of General Perón in order to turn the paper over to the CGT [Confederación General del Trabajo- General Confederation of Labor]. At that time we pointed out that we favored expropriating the entire bourgeois press and placing it under the democratic control of the workers to guarantee unrestricted freedom of the press.
Revolutionary Marxists defend unrestricted freedom of expression for all currents, even bourgeois currents. We are not afraid of the confrontation of ideas and positions. We want to make it possible for all to have their positions read in the press, heard on the radio, seen and heard on television. We condemn the fact that the bourgeoisie limits such rights for the workers movementsometimes through direct government measures, always through the workers' limited economic resources.
What Sort of Government Is Acting Against República?
It is natural that the left internationally 1054
should take great interest in this question and discuss it attentively. The Portuguese revolutionary process is currently one of the most important, especially because it has become an entryway to Europe for the world revolution. The direction of events there is of very great importance for the furture of revolution everywhere.
In the course of this debate dangerous positions have been expressed, dangerous for what they mean in terms of capitulation to the Portuguese government and the antidemocratic maneuver it mounted along with the PCP.
For example, an ingenious expression has been coined-"public service"-to suggest that all paper companies, printshops, etc. should be nationalized and placed at the disposal of different sectors of society. This solution would be applicable not only to Portugal but even to France.
Such a solution leaves aside completely the fundamental question of who exercises control over the nationalized press. Marxists have no dogma about the nationalization of companies. In the case of the nationalization of the banks and insurance companies and of the CUF [Companhia União Fabril] and Champalimaud financial groups in Portugal, we hail them, because the nationalizations weaken the most powerful sections of the bourgeoisie and cut into the reactionaries' ability to maneuver.'
But the question of the mass media is very different, since it affects freedom of expression. A bourgeois press monopolized by the state is no better than a bourgeois press controlled by private enterprise. It is worse because (although it may not do so immediately) it gives the bourgeois state the weapons to shut the workers movement off from all access to the mass media.
This does not mean that in all cases revolutionary socialists should oppose nationalization of the press. For example, if the governments of the now independent Portuguese colonies or those in the process of obtaining their independence (Guinea- Bissau, Mozambique, Angola) decided to expropriate the imperialist press in order to decolonize their countries, we would have to support that measure even in the arena of the mass media.
But even in such a case, it is decisive to demand that the masses control the nationalized communications media.
The "public service" notion is extremely dangerous because the press, unlike electric. ity and running water, is not a purely economic question. It is a political problem and must be dealt with as such.
To demand that the bourgeois state (in France as in Portugal) nationalize "the paper industry, the printshops" without making workers control an essential condition of the nationalization is equivalent to turning over a decisive weapon to the enemy class.
The Portuguese government-over and above its vacillations, reversals, and demagogy-is a bourgeois government. It is the government of a bourgeois state, not the government of the organs of power of the workers movement and the peasantry. It has within it bourgeois parties and it defends (insofar as circumstances permit) the private property of the big bourgeoisie. Its aggressions against the press are a danger to all the working-class and left press.
This becomes clear above all if we take into account that this is a government that has banned two Maoist organizations for having a political line different from the official one. It is not our intention here to discuss the politics of those organizations, which we have criticized at appropriate times. But we do want to point out that their banning showed that the Portuguese government is not willing to respect the democratic rights of dissident left currents. A Dangerous Interpretation of a Text by Trotsky
This is not the only dangerous position that has been expressed in the República affair. On the basis of a 1938 article by Trotsky,? freedom of the press has been presented as an absolute, not subject to the oscillations of the class struggle. In reality the article in question cannot be understood apart from the concrete conditions in which and for which it was written. In Mexico in 1938 the Stalinists were demanding that the bourgeois government censor the rightist press. Trotsky pointed out, totally correctly, that such a demand was "suicidal," that the controls the state imposed on the reactionary press would later on be turned against the working-class and left press.
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Trotsky pointed out at the time that "only the greatest freedom of speech, of the press, and of assembly can create favorable conditions for the advance of the revolutionary movement of the working class," and that it was the duty of revolutionary socialists to defend those freedoms and fight for their extension.
However, it is obvious that by this he was not attempting to exempt freedom of the press from the real conditions of the class struggle. Faced with a current in the working class that was asking a bourgeois government and state to establish censorship, Trotsky defended the greatest freedom of the press. But, on the other hand, he voiced approval that the Petrograd Soviet "on March 5 [1917). . . confirmed this fact as follows: "The right press is closed and the issue of new papers will depend upon the decision of the Soviet.'
•.. The press does not stand above society: the conditions of its existence during a revolution reflect the progress of the revolution itself.... The Soviet was right when it wanted to retain control of the press." Trotsky held this position against the opportunist Sukhanov, who, in this case, was defending unrestricted freedom of the press.
3. The quotation is from Trotsky's History of the Russian Revolution, vol. I (London: Sphere Books, 1967), pp. 227-28. The text of the complete paragraph is as follows:
On the night of the 28th of February, the Executive Committee closed up the monarchist press and established a licensing system for newspapers. Protests were heard, those shouting the loudest who had been accustomed to stop the mouths of others. After a few days the Committee had to take up again the problem of a free press: to permit or not to permit the publication of reactionary papers? Disagreements arose. Doctrinaires of the type of Sukhanov stood for absolute freedom of the press. Cheidze at first disagreed: how can we leave weapons at the uncontrolled disposition of our mortal enemies? It occurred to nobody, by the way, to turn over the whole question to the decision of the government. Anyway, that would have been useless; the typographical workers took orders only from the Soviet. On March 5 the Executive Committee confirmed this fact as follows: "The right press is closed and the issue of new papers will depend upon the decision of the Soviet." But as early as the 10th, under pressure from bourgeois circles, that resolution was annulled. "They took only three days to come to their senses," exults Sukhanov. Ill-founded exultation! The press does not stand above society: the conditions of its existence during a revolution reflect the progress of the revolution itself. When the latter assumes, or may assume, the character of a civil war, not one of the warring camps will permit the existence of a hostile press within the sphere of its influence—no more than it will let escape from its control the arsenals, the railroads, the printing establishments. In a revolutionary struggle the press is only one kind of weapon. The right to speech is certainly not higher than the right to life. A revolution takes the latter too into its hands. We may lay this down as a law: Revolutionary governments are the more liberal, the more tolerant, the more "magnanimous" to the reaction, the shallower their programme, the more they are bound up with the past, the more conservative their rôle. And the converse: the more gigantic their tasks and the greater the number of vested rights and interests they are to destroy, the more concentrated will be the revolutionary power, the more naked its dictatorship. Whether this is a good thing or bad, it is by these roads that humanity has thus far moved forward. The Soviet was right when it wanted to retain control of the press. Why did it so easily give this up? Because in general it was refusing to make a serious fight. It remained silent about peace, about the land, even about a republic. Having turned over the power to the conservative bourgeoisie, it had neither a reason for fearing the July 21, 1975
Let's be clear. We are referring to the Soviet (that is, the totality of the workers delegates) with its petty-bourgeois and opportunist leadership. Not the government of the bourgeoisie. Some months later, this same Soviet leadership in the bourgeois government was to use the most implacable repression against the Bolshevik press.
We do not ignore the fact that the growing reactionary conspiracy in Portugal may require the suppression of the fascist press. But, for that, we place no confidence in the bourgeois state apparatus. Only a united front of the SP, CP, the Intersindical [the trade-union federation], and the other left parties can do the job.
To ask the bourgeois government to assume the task of eliminating the fascist press, which is serving the putschist conspiracy, is to give the government weapons, which at the first opportunity it will use against the workers press.
Returning to the example of the Portuguese colonies in Africa, their right to stamp out the colonialist press is undeniable. It would be absurd for Marxists, in the name of freedom of the press, to defend the right of imperialism to maintain one of its most important means of domination in countries liberated by the struggle of their peoples.
A year ago, when the Peruvian oligarchical press was the main link in the prepara tion for a proimperialist coup against the bourgeois nationalist government, the latter expropriated all the daily newspapers. Avanzada Socialista pointed out that this was a defensive step against a press that had always opposed the progressive reforms of the military government (agrarian reform, nationalizations, etc.) and that was now serving as the putschist spearhead. To defend the "freedom of expression" of the oligarchy and imperialism in that concrete situation would have constituted an extremely serious error. Nonetheless, we also made clear: "This does not mean that we offer unconditional support to Velasco Alvarado nor that we simply accept control of the daily papers by the bourgeois government, which does not represent the interests of the Peruvian workers and peasants and which hopes to take control of the press from the oligarchy for its own ends, which are not those of the oppressed masses." And we spelled out our position: "Control of the press must not remain in the hands of the bourgeois government. Instead it must be under the control of the workers, peasants, and people's organizations."
right press, nor a possibility of struggling against it. The government, on the other hand, began after a few months, with the support of the Soviet, to suppress ruthlessly the left press. The Bolshevik papers were shut down one after another.—IP
On the same occasion we commented: "Without control by the masses through their real, existing organizations, without a broad workers and people's mobilization, there will be no real freedom of expression and the daily papers will be as removed from the needs of the exploited as they were in the hands of the oligarchs."
In Mexico during the same period in which Trotsky wrote the article in question, the bourgeois nationalist government expropriated the imperialist oil monopolies. If a tremendous mass mobilization had proposed the expropriation of the press tied to those monopolies, we doubt very much that Trotsky would have opposed it in the name of freedom of the press. We do believe that he would have called on the masses not to trust the bourgeois state and to fight to win control of the expropriated daily newspapers.
Another quite categorical example is given by Gus Horowitz in the June 1975 International Socialist Review, page 8. Commenting on the workers mobilization against the rightist offensive that was to culminate in a big rally of the "silent majority" in Lisbon September 28, he mentions as an extremely positive act that the "typographers refused to print rally announcements for the rightists." We cannot imagine Horowitz telling the workers
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that they should respect freedom of the press. Peruvian revolutionary socialists, faced with the danger and preparation of a coup that was much more dangerous than a rightist rally, rightly proposed the same thing as the Lisbon typographers and formulated a slogan to express it: expropriation of the reactionary press under workers control.
Return República to the SP Now
No one offered the leaders of the Portuguese government, the CP, or even the printers of República the job of controlling the press in the name of all the Portuguese workers.
On the contrary, the SP is a workers party and the one that received the biggest vote in the April 25 elections. For that reason, not only does it have the right to continue editing República. It also has the right to have turned over to it a portion of all the Portuguese mass media, equal to the percentage of votes it got a month and a half ago.
This does not mean defending the policies of the SP. It is true that the SP is trying to form a popular front with bourgeois forces to serve European imperialism. It is true that it defends private property and that it is an obstacle to the taking of power by the working class.
But, unfortunately, its politics are not much different from those of the other numerically important workers party, the CP. The CP also is directing its efforts at the formation of a popular front to preserve private property and the bourgeois state. Here is what the American daily the Wall Street Journal said about its top leader, Alvaro Cunhal, on February 20:
"Sometimes Mr. Cunhal sounds so moderate that you have to recheck his history to make sure he doesn't belong to some middle-class party. He talks of seeing a place for private enterprise in Portugal's future. He discourages strikes, mutes any criticism of NATO, avoids vitriolic propaganda and extends a hand toward America.
"Moreover, he doesn't take a dogmatic position on the nationalization of industry.
It is true that the SP has taken advantage of the episode of the shutting down of the daily paper to launch an anti-Communist campaign, but it is no less true that the CP and the government initiated the series of provocations that today permits the SP leadership to take advantage of the democratic aspirations of thousands of Portuguese workers.
To defend the right of the SP (the party that got the greatest electoral support April 25) to have its own press does not mean to defend its politics. It means to nip in the bud any attempt (even with "leftist" pretexts) to muzzle currents in the workers movement that do not capitulate to the government or that do not adapt to the CP's aims to impose its own variant of reformism as opposed to the others.
Because it is definitely not difficult at all to slander opposition left currents as "reactionaries" in order to gag them in the same way the SP is being gagged today.
We will not bother with formal arguments used by defenders of the Portuguese government and the CP in this affair. We are referring to the argument that República is not an official organ of the SP and that the origin of the conflict was a trade-union dispute. Events have made it clear that it is a political question instigated by the CP and at least supported by the military government. To determine the political character of the newspaper, it is enough to take the statement of the SP leaders recognizing it as their own.
The immediate return of República to its editors is not merely the formal carrying out of an elementary democratic right.
Il also meets a grave danger for the development of the Portuguese revolution— that of annulling the democratic rights that permit discussion and conscious decisions by the masses on the steps to take. And there is also the danger that steps like the suppression of the press of the party that received the most votes from the workers and the people would throw many Portuguese into the arms of the reactionaries, who will not vacillate in raising deceptive banners in favor of "democracy.
banners in favor of democracy.
Notes
1. As of July 11, CUF and Champalimaud have not been nationalized, although some holdings of these groups have.—IP
2. For text of article, see Intercontinental Press, June 9, p. 799.-IP