[The following interview with a leader of the left wing of the Portuguese Socialist party was given to Charles Michaloux. It appeared in the May 8 issue of Rouge, the daily newspaper of the Ligue Communiste Révolutionnaire
(LCR-Revolutionary
Communist League), French section of the Fourth International. The introduction is by Michaloux. The translation is by Intercontinental Press.]
Kalidas Barreto joined the Socialist party in May 1974 and was a deputy for the district of Leiria in the Constituent Assembly. He has been active in left politics for much longer. In 1969, he participated in the Leiria committee of the "Democratic Opposition," which included members and sympathizers of the SP and the PCP [Partido Comunista Português- Portuguese Communist party]. In 1970, in the underground, he helped to form a branch of Intersindical [now the CP- controlled national union federation, at that time a coordinating body of unions] in the textile industry at Castanheira de Pera in the Leiria region in central Portugal. Now he is the president of the wool-mill workers in that city and a member of the National Secretariat of the textile union federation, since its recent congress the first industrial union in Portugal.
Kalidas Barreto was not on the SP slate for the Assembly of the Republic elections on April 25, 1976. Was this a purge against the left in a party where you have to keep mado fron the quiet instead of making the kind of rousing speeches he often made from the podium of the Constituent Assembly? He replied, smiling: "I am more useful where I am."
Kalidas Barreto is forty-five years old. A large moustache covers part of his jovial face. He considers himself "a workingclass militant above all." And as such he agreed to answer the questions we asked him on behalf of Rouge, in particular, the question we think is decisive about the possibility of his running for the presidency of the republic.
Question. The election results for Portugal and the islands of Madeira and the Azores have just been published. What is your opinion about them?
Answer. Obviously I'm satisfied. First of all, because the Socialist party won.
Secondly, because they were a victory for the left, unquestionably. The right suffered a crushing defeat. It's going to have to junk its election slogans. The CDS [Centro Democrático Social-Social Democratic Center, the right-wing bourgeois party] claimed that it represented "the alternative for 1976." The PPD [Partido Popular Democrático-Democratic People's party] claimed,
"Portugal is with us." The country has shown to the contrary that it is for a socialist alternative. It has said that it doesn't want a return to fascism, and so it rejected the right.
The left already has 147 deputies out of 259 (106 for the SP, 40 for the PCP, and 1 for the UDP [União Democrática do Povo-People's Democratic Union, Maosyndicalist]). And when the émigré vote is tallied it may get 1 or 2 more;* it has a particularly good chance in Europe.
Q. You say that it was a victory for the left, but the SP leadership hasn't said very often in these past weeks that the PCP was part of the left.
A. It hasn't denied it either. It has said, it is true, that the PCP is not democratic. In fact, throughout the revolutionary process, the PCP has taken incorrect positions. It has assumed rigid and sectari. an attitudes that have greatly harmed the revolution. We were sure that after April 25, 1974, the conditions were favorable for transforming the country into a sort of
*Some 105,708 Portuguese living outside the country registered to vote. The émigré vote was divided into two distriets-Europe and else where. In Europe, where a total of 57,341 persons voted, the SP got 23,824 votes and won one seat. The PPD got 16,644 votes; the CP, 5,212; the CDS, 3,555; the UDP, 407; the Christian Democrats, 475; the Frente Socialista Popular, 183; the Movimento de Esquerda Socialista, 165; the Aliança Operária e Camponesa, 83; the Movimento Reorganizativo do Partido do Proletariado, 69; the Partido Popular Monarquieo, 52; and the Liga Comunista Internacionalista (sympathizing group of the Fourth International), 128.
In the district that included places outside Europe, the PPD got 21,317 out of a total of 48,367 votes. The CDS got 13,483; the SP, 2,571; the Christian Democrats, 1,277; the CP, 562; the UDP, 130; the Partido Popular Monarquico, 123; the Movimento de Esquerda Socialista, 36; the Aliança Operária e Camponesa, 21; and the LCI, democratic Paris Commune. But instead of presenting the kind of united front that would have made this possible, we offered the right the sad spectacle of constant drift and division.
Q. How do you explain this division?
A. SP workers were driven out of factories by members of the PCP, working the way they do in union meetings and factory assemblies. I had a chance many times to see how the PCP claques operated in assemblies, shouting and whistling to keep SP activists from speaking. And these purges, these sectarian attitudes, created reflexes that were just as sectarian among the most recently politicalized workers. The result is that real barriers were set up inside the working class itself.
Q. Is this irremediable?
A. No, the situation is changing, people's way of thinking is evolving. The attitude of the political leaderships is one thing, but unity by the workers against the common enemy is another. The workers feel more and more that such unity is indispensable for victory in their struggles. And so we see such unity developing in most day-to-day battles.
Q. But don't you think the SP shares the responsibility for this situation equally with the PCP?
A. Throughout the process some SP leaders have taken positions and initiatives with which, of course, I disagree completely. But in fact, these things have been overshadowed, one could almost say provoked, by what I would sum up as the "putschism" of the PCP.
Q. Putschism? Do you mean the barricades the PCP and Intersindical called for against the SP rallies in Oporto and Lisbon?
A. Exactly. I felt deeply insulted when a rally called by my party was termed a "march of reactionaries," for whatever reason. This explains the tens of thousands of personal reactions of SP workers. They didn't want unity with the PCP after that. When Mário Soares says that it is the ranks of the SP who reject an alliance with the PCP, that is not a falsehood.
Q. But what about Soares's condemnation last summer of a "parallel power" being set up against the "legal power" embodied in institutions such as the Constituent Assembly? That was a defense of the bourgeois state against the workers state that wos just beginning to emerge.
A. Personally, I'm for "people's power." In fact, we were the first ones to support the CIs [Comissões de Trabalhadores- Workers Commissions], when the PCP leadership was denouncing them and condemning the strikes at TAP [Portuguese national airline] and in the postal service at the end of 1974.
In this climate of division, obviously many criticisms can be made of the SP leadership. But, like it or not, the SP leaders have been elected democratically in a congress. Good or bad, our leadership was elected in a genuinely representative congress. I haven't seen anything like this at the congress of the PCP. This is why, if you want unity, you have to appeal to these leaders also; because in a certain way, they represent the ranks of the SP.
Q. To go back to the elections, what do you think their consequences are going to be on the governmental level?
A. I think the SP is going to form a minority government based on its 35 percent of the vote. If for the moment a formal alliance with the PCP is unrealizable, I think the PCP can support-and I don't mean sign a blank check-the formation of such a government and back all the measures it takes that favor the working class and the working people.
Q. And the measures that don't favor the workers, are they going to be supported by the PPD?
A. The SP alternative has nothing to do with the PPD. An SP government should not govern to suit capitalism. From my standpoint, the SP must be a left party that defends the interests of the workers. Under these conditions, it can be supported, at least tacitly, by the PCP. As for alliances, the situation can change later.
Q. An SP-PCP government nonetheless is the only solution today for the governmental crisis, which was heightened by the elections.
A. I agree. But in the period after April 25, 1974, this became more difficult. If the PCP had not tried to control everything bureaucratically in these last two years, the positions would not have become so hardened.
In the near future, this can change. If it doesn't, with the division that exists, it's hard to see how we can keep the country to the left.
Q. During the election campaign, Socialist party leaders said that the SP's governmental program doesn't involve destroying capitalism. On April 27, Soares said: "It has to be explained to the working class and their union leaders that they must limit their demands in accordance with realism." So, when is the socialism you are fighting for supposed to come about?
A. The collectivization of the major means of production is socialism. So, the SP's program is not socialism. But workers control over the management and operation of factories, the workers control that exists in some factories in this country, is a school for socialism. This is already an advance along the road to socialism, even if socialism has not been achieved yet. This is the situation we are in today.
Q. What about political power for the working class?
A. Everything depends on the mobilization of the workers, on their advances. As l see it, an SP government should favor this. If we support the nationalizations, workers control, and the agrarian reform, and if all the gains of the revolution are extended we will be able to go forward. Naturally, this is going to take time because the level of consciousness of the workers is still too uneven. The majority of workers have to be convinced that socialism will not mean poverty and restriction of freedoms. They have to be sure that socialism here will not be "Albanian-style socialism," you might say.
Q. The upcoming presidential elections raise this question in a forceful way. Is the workers movement, through its big parties, the PCP and SP, going to support a general, that is, a bourgeois candidate? Why not a civilian candidate?
A. Yes, that would be better. The best thing would be a candidate put forward by the workers movement.
Q. Some people think you would make a good presidential candidate.
A. Me? You think I could be president of the republic? I am more useful where I am, in the working class, as an activist doing everything he can to unite the class and assure its victory.
Q. But the emancipation of the workers doesn't depend on how well a president does his job in the formal sense. As a workers candidate, you could help to unite the workers for struggles more decisive than those in the electoral arena. Fundamentally, this isn't very different from your objectives in your trade-union work.
A. I don't think I have the abilities to be president. Those who are thinking about my being a candidate must not know about my many weak points. But I am a worker militant. The struggle can take different forms-pasting up posters, being active in a union, or doing political work such as that you mention. I agree. If I can help to consolidate the unity of the workers, 1 will be where I am needed. If people want me because they think I car be useful to that end, I would consider such a possibility. I am at the service of the working class. Above all, I want to promote the unity of the workers.
MPLA Seeks Tighter Control
Over Angolan Armed Forces
A plan published in the Angolan press May 21 called for the Central Committee of the Movimento Popular de Libertação de Angola (MPLA-People's Movement for the Liberation of Angola) to assume direct political control over the armed forces. The plan was distributed to the newspapers by Commander Bakaloff, the national political commissar of the armed forces.
Later in the day, President Agostinho Neto, who is also commander in chief of the armed forces, issued a statement canceling the report, saying it had been made public "precipitately and without my knowledge." He did not indicate, however, that he disagreed with the plan.
A few days earlier, Defense Minister Iko Carreira described some of the conditions within the armed forces that may have prompted the MPLA to consider instituting more direct control over the troops. Carreira said that there was a "certain anarchist feeling" in the armed forces and a "tendency for absolute egalitarianism" in which troops showed little respect for their commanders.
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Notes
3. The PPD got two seats for the émigré vote.-IP