[The following editorial is from the January 9 issue of Combate Socialista, a fortnightly paper published in Lisbon. 1 The translation is by Intercontinental Press.]
The spectacular arrests of some capitalists staged by the MFA2 on December 13 seem to have been reduced in a few weeks to their real dimensions— a show. Once the scenario was over, everything returned to the "normality" desired by the monopolies and the "realist" parties of the bourgeoisie, such as the PPD3 and the CDS.4 The imprisoned speculators were released or their cases were turned over to the legal bureaucracy, where lawyers well paid with money stolen from the workers will find a way to "prove" their clients' innocence.
Once the scare was over, a lot of financiers regained their composure, while the international news agencies and the big capitalist press gratefully noted the Provisional Government's prudent and moderate attitude, as shown by its respect for the laws regulating the activities of businessmen.
In the last analysis, the Emergency Economic Plan reveals the same respect for capitalism's economic and legal "principles," that is, for the right of those who own the big factories and landed estates to maintain and continually increase their profits and their exploitation of the working masses. At best, this plan provides some measures for keeping a check on the capitalists and pressuring them that may make it possible for a time to mitigate some of the outrages and voraciousness of the monopolies. But, when all is said and done, these measures will not have any more teeth than the arrests of the exploiters, who did a brief tour of Caxias prison without losing their freedom to exploit us.
On many occasions, and especially in the recent period, representatives of the government and the MFA have tried to assume the role of arbiters or guardians standing "above" party and class conflicts. However, the fairness the government claims is not real. The fair play it advo cates is the rules of the game in this society based on the exploitation and oppression of the broad masses. And the social conflicts have been so great that the adjustments imposed from the top have not sufficed to halt the struggles.
The attacks the authorities have launched against the rights and gains of the student movement are symptomatic of this situation. The same government that has taken a vacillating attitude toward the capitalists, seeking deals with those who hold the "economic power," is inflexible toward a section of the mass movement fighting to defend objectives that are legitimate and help to mobilize the Portuguese masses in general against reaction.
Once again, we are seeing confirmation of the fact that the most elementary demands of the working class and the people cannot be won without definitively breaking the power of the exploiters by a mobilization of all the oppressed sectors in a victorious struggle for socialism.
The workers parties participating in the government are not only afraid to organize struggles to defend jobs, wages, and the right to education; they have gone so far as to launch an overt, slanderous attack on those who are really fighting. The leaders and parties that are denouncing the student movement today are the same ones that yesterday condemned or sold out the strikes in the CTT,5 at TAP,6 and at the Jornal do Comercio. These people are the ones who talk about socialism off in the distant future in order to hide their meek acceptance of capitalism today. It could not be otherwise. The alternative posed by the reality of the class struggle is a cate
Telegrafos e Telefonesachieved by the mass movement points up the urgent need for a broad and united counterattack by the working people. The strongest political and trade-union organizations of the working class have a duty to begin right away laying the groundwork for mobilizing the workers in a united front. The workers in the Socialist party, in the Communist party, and in the Intersindical have the right and the obligation to demand such unity in action. The starting point could be resistance to unemployment.
5. Correios, Mail, Telegraph, and Telephone, the state postal system.
No difference can justify sabotaging this essential united workers front against the attacks that affect all of us! For our part, we are convinced that wherever we begin, in building a united front and carrying out its tasks, we will have to immediately confront the fundamental problem facing us today. This means getting rid of the monopolies and the latifundia once and for all, breaking all ties with imperialism, and promoting a full development of workers and people's organizations in the factories, villages, and neighborhoods. In other words, we will have to fight for a workers and people's government capable of taking the anticapitalist steps the masses need and that will lead us to a socialist Portugal.
7. The national union federation dominated by the Communist party.
Rightists Blow Up Argentine Daily
The rightist murder gang that calls itself the Alianza Anticomunista Argentina (Argentine Anticommunist Alliance) blew up the presses of the major daily paper in Cordoba on January 23. The paper,
La Voz del Interior, Jonathan Kandell reported in the January 24 New York Times, has angered many policemen by detailing charges against 19 police officers accused of executing five farmers after mistaking them for leftist guerrillas in an incident exactly a year ago."
Employees of the paper told reporters that they recognized some of the goons as policemen.
The raiders rounded up the workers at gunpoint, shot up the premises with machine guns, and set off explosives. The managers estimated that it would take $600,000 and two months to repair the plant and replace the destroyed equipment. One explained: "Pieces of the roof were blown up to 100 meters away."
Notes
1. Subscriptions cost 18 escudos (about US$O.75) for six issues and 36 escudos for twelve. They can be obtained from the paper's temporary business office at Rua do Bom Jardim, no. 229, 3 andar-traseiras, Porto, Portugal.
2. Movimento das Forcas Armadas- Armed Forces Movement.
3. Partido Popular Democratico - People's Democratic party.
4. Centro Democratico Social- Social Democratic Center.
6. Transportes Aereos Portugueses — Portuguese Air Transport, the state airline.