The debate that has opened up in the LCR and throughout the revolutionary far left on what electoral policy should have been followed in Portugal takes on a great interest once the question is not limited to merely calling for a vote for one candidate or another, which is a tactical problem, but rather when we try to understand the differences in the analysis of the Portu guese revolution and the currents that run through it.
From this broader standpoint, we think there are only secondary differences between those of us who felt that the thing to do was to call for a vote for Pato and Otelo, and those, including myself, who believed that the right thing to do was to vote for Otelo alone. On the other hand, our differences with those comrades who maintain that Pato represented the only possible class vote are of a different order. This latter position arises from a failure to understand the phenomena of radicalization that developed prior to the November 25 coup.
Correctly, at that time in the columns of Rouge, we pointed up the various exemplary actions carried out by the workers in the united fighting organizations that they built, that is, the workers commissions, neighborhood commissions, and soldiers committees. Tens of thousands of workers began to take their struggle into their own hands and carry out experiments in workers control. This wave of selforganization was not free from confusion and political weakness, since it developed in the country at a time when all the big national workers organizations, the CP, the SP, and Intersindical, were practicing a class-collaborationist policy, with one foot in the committees and the other in the bourgeois state apparatus. This contradiction led the revolutionary organizations to navigate between Scylla and Charybdis, turning more toward one pole or the other. The FUR at first was completely opportunist toward the CP; it may even have been attracted by the demagogy of the CP's left speeches. And then it fell into an ultrasectarian policy toward the big reformist parties, explaining that only the committees could carry the revolution to victory over the bodies of the CP and SP. This "nonparty" sentiment found a considerable echo in a section of the working class disgusted by these parties' policy of betrayal and division. However, the sectarianism of the far left helped to isolate the vanguard from the great mass of the workers. It prevented these committees from developing a united national structure and from developing a centralized leadership so that they could become a mass structure representing the working class and a possible alternative power to the bourgeois state.
The logical culmination of this course was November 25, that is, a rightist provocation designed to liquidate the process of self-organization, and which was facilitated by a desperate adventure by certain far-left groups and a section of the army.
The vanguard workers suffered a defeat on November 25. But they were not crushed; the bulk of them were not involved in the coup and did not fight.
It was inconceivable that two years of politicalization and revolutionary mobilization could be forgotten and wiped out overnight. It is this movement that we find today following Otelo, with the same hopes and the same confusion as before November 25. Two attitudes may be taken toward it.
One position, the dogmatic one, basing itself on the fact that Otelo is not a member of a workers party and does not seek to build a revolutionary party, places him in the camp of the bourgeoisie. From this standpoint, the shift of votes from the CP to Otelo is analyzed as a political regression, or even a reactionary vote. This position seems to me to be extremely dangerous inasmuch as it keeps us from understanding anything about the form the radicalization of the working class has taken in the Portuguese context.
On what bases was Otelo able to win in the strongholds of the CP?
Fundamentally, Otelo was able to do this by putting forward correct anticapitalist themes representing a position to the left of the CP-defense of the nationalizations, of the agrarian reform, of the workers committees. The personal prestige of the former Copcon [military security forces] chief and the artisan of April 25 certainly helped to bolster his popular support.
However, this prestige was effective only because Otelo identified himself with the themes we mentioned. The betrayal of the reformist parties and the impotence of the workers commissions explain, while of course they do not justify, the veritable cult around this personality. These parties have lost credibility to the benefit of the section of the working class that has taken refuge behind this personality. And, to be sure, it is in this problem of the personality cult that all the dangers lie. Otelo himself is responsible to no one, and may go off in any direction. Even if he is still under the pressure of the concerns of those who voted for him, this is an unorganized following in danger of being cruelly disillusioned tomorrow. The "nonparty" demagogy is dangerous. The CP and SP still have a broad following in the working class. With its tradition and its apparatus, the CP will be able to win back a part of those who voted for Otelo. To think that it is possible to advance to socialism while neglecting these two parties means starting down the same road of errors as before.
This said, in such an election, you cannot sit in your ivory tower and score points in the name of program. The candidacies of Otelo and Pato both created illusions but not the same ones. It was important that a massive vote appeared to the left of the CP for a candidate, what is more, who had no support from any bourgeois formation. Despite the confusion, Otelo's success will restore the confidence of a broad section of the working class and prepare them for future struggles. Those who voted for Otelo certainly represent the most radicalized wing of the workers movement (see, for example, results in Setúbal and Beja). By giving critical support to Otelo, the Portuguese revolutionary Marxists could have gained opportunities to more effectively expose the limitations and illusions of his campaign.
Notes
2. Frente de Unidade Revolucionaria, Front for Revolutionary Unity. This bloc originated in the August 25 demonstration in Lisbon in support of the Fifth Provisional Government of Vasco Gonçalves. It was originally called the August 25 Bloc and the Frente Unitaria Popular (People's United Front). The name was changed when the CP left the front after about two days. The CP's front organization for its petty-bourgeois periphery, the Portuguese Democratic Movement, however, remained in until after November 25. The bloc included all of the ultraleft and centrist organizations of any size, except the eclectic Maoist União Democrática do Povo (People's Democratic Union), which was in orbit around it. It was dominated by two formations. One was the Partido Revolucionário do Proletariado (Revolutionary party of the Proletariat), a group with an urban guerrilla history and anarchist political conceptions. The other was the Movimento de Esquerda Socialista (Movement of the Socialist Left), a centrist group with theories of rank-and-file organizing and combining parliamentarism and building "counterpower." Both adopted a position in favor of an immediate insurrection in the period before November 25, and thus played into the hands of the rightists.—IP