[The following article appeared in the May issue of Cahiers de la Taupe, a French Trotskyist publication concerned with issues of interest to the labor movement. The translation is by Intercontinental Press.]
On January 27-30, 1977, the congress of the General Confederation of Portuguese Workers-Intersindical (CGTP-IN) was held in Lisbon, under the slogans of "workers unity" and "restructuring the Intersindical."
The "congress of all the unions," as its organizers called it, constituted an important event in the history of the Portuguese workers movement. In fact, there can be no doubt that from now on the CGTP-IN will be a united trade-union federation looked to for leadership by the overwhelming majority of Portuguese workers. This in itself is a major event, coming three years after the unfolding of the revolutionary crisis, in the course of which the Portuguese working class has often been deeply divided.
Under the Dictatorship
Between 1968 and 1970, the working class in the major European capitalist countries went through a process of radicalization. The dictatorial corporatist regime of Salazar and Caetano did not escape the effects of this, even though the radicalization took a much less striking form in Portugal.
From 1969 onward, there were numerous indications that the Portuguese workers were beginning to awaken after more than forty years of superexploitation, enforced by the terror of the PIDE hangmen, the bloody political police of the oldest dictatorship in Europe.
For the first time, thousands of bank workers went on strike to demand the signing of collective bargaining agreements; 5,000 government employees demonstrated in front of the government building to demand a forty-four-hour week.
In October 1970, the Ministry of Corporations responded by issuing a series of decrees putting further restrictions on the already tightly controlled activities of the craft unions under its supervision.
For several years, activists of the Christian left, and particularly the underground Portuguese Communist party [PCP], had been active in the unions. Their efforts had begun to bear fruit, and to combine with the radicalizing effect produced by the new measure.
On October 1, 1970, there was a meeting of leadership delegations, which were already controlled to one degree or another by members of left organizations. Representatives of metalworkers, textile workers, and bank and office workers unions in the Lisbon area held an initial national coordinating meeting.
At this meeting, three points were on the agenda-the decree-laws issued by the Ministry of Corporations, the length of the workweek, and the question of censorship and freedom of association. This meeting was referred to as the Intersindical, a name that was subsequently retained, although to the workers who gave their all to build it, it was known as the "Inter."
Despite a wave of repression against it, the "Inter" grew steadily. In 1973, it launched a big nationwide campaign in the plants for a minimum wage, culminating in several successful struggles. In the period preceding April 25, 1974, fifty union leaderships had joined Intersindical. Their work was coordinated by a secretariat with purely administrative functions. In this body, each delegation-representing one union from the north, center, and south, respectively-had one vote.
At the time of the captains' coup, the trade-union movement emerged from the underground, organizationally still very weak. Although it already constituted a significant force, it was in no way comparable to what the workers commissions in Spain represent today.
After April 25
The "Inter" grew rapidly. In the heady atmosphere that followed the fall of the dictatorship, the workers kicked out the fascist leaders who had held sway over the unions. The "Inter" was called upon from all sides to help in this gigantic effort.
The verticalization of the unions-that is, the assembling of scores of craft unions into industrial unions-gave the PCP leadership an opportunity to install its members at the head of the newly formed unions, without any kind of elections. Because of the euphoria and sense of unity arising from the newly won freedom, this situation caused some tension for a time but no dramatic explosions. This did not last long.
During this initial phase of the revolutionary process, the Socialist party had no organization whatever in the plants, and the far left had a very weak base. All this encouraged the CP leadership to believe that its grip on the embryonic trade-union apparatus that existed would enable it, within a short time, and without strong competition, to establish a de facto monopoly over the process of building the Portuguese workers movement.
The CP bureaucrats, who had little experience with public political activity and the pressures it generates for respecting the workers' democratic aspirations, wasted little time in converting the unions they influenced into appendages of the party, subject to the zigzags of its line.
When the first strikes broke out—in the CTT [Correios, Telégrafos e Telefones- Mail, Telegraph, and Telephone, the state postal system], TAP [Transportes Aéreos Portugueses-Portuguese Air Transport], the Lisnave shipyard, the Jornal do Comercio-the CP leadership took the lead in attacking the workers involved, who it claimed were "sabotaging the work of national reconstruction." In this way, it pitted the Intersindical against the workers in struggle, to the point of instigating physical attacks on the strikers.
For many worker militants, in whose eyes the party led by Alvaro Cunhal enjoyed tremendous prestige because of the courageous way its members had fought against the dictatorship, the CP's attitude to the strikes was like a dash of cold water. The SP leaders, who had just returned from exile, saw that there was an opportunity to be grasped. Even though the SP's orientation was no different from that of the Stalinist leadership, it deftly took advantage of the latter's demagogy in order to pose as a defender of workingclass struggles as against the CP's attempts to obstruct them.
It was for this reason that many workers turned to the SP, while simultaneously beginning to establish the workers commissions, frequently in opposition to the "Inter" apparatus, which strongly opposed such organizations. Since the SP used the workers commissions as its main propaganda weapon against the CP, the bureaucrats saw the workers commissions still more as a weapon against the unions.
March 11
The advance of the revolution, which began to gain momentum in the fall of 1974, forced the CP to change its orientation. Instead of opposing struggles outright, it now tried to win leadership of all struggles that took place, in both the workers commissions and in the unions, so as to be in a better position to channel them in a class-collaborationist direction.
The abortive coup of March 11, 1975, gave the Stalinists an opportunity to put this line into practice. The Intersindical took the lead in organizing the demonstrations that foiled the right-wing coup attempt led by Spinola. The disgrace of the monocle-wearing general, the butcher of Guinea, brought on a major political upheaval.
In the first place, the workers, propelled by the momentum of the struggles that had been spreading since the end of 1974 (and that had prompted the right to launch the March 11 adventure), occupied the plants and forced the initial nationalizations of the banks and insurance companies that hold large amounts of the capital of the major Portuguese corporations.
Secondly, the flight of Spinola and his followers heightened qualitatively the tension that already existed in Portuguese society. These pressures were even to be reflected in the MFA [Movimento das Forças Armadas-Armed Forces Movement], which, at the close of a stormy session, put General Vasco Gonçalves at the head of the Fourth Provisional Government. This general was surrounded by a team of officers strongly influenced by the CP. From then on, the CP leadership's entire policy consisted of using the struggles waged by the working class as a means of lobbying with the state apparatus and the military hierarchy, in order to increase its influence within these institutions.
The Intersindical was used in this way to get the MFA to go along with the tradeunion unity law proposed by the CP. By governmental decree, the "Inter" became the only legally recognized trade-union federation. The CP leadership also converted the Intersindical into its mouthpiece for the "battle for production" line, sung to the familiar tune of "work harder and better."
There seemed to be no limits to the arrogance of the CP bureaucracy at the time. It controlled a good portion of the press and mass media. In the unions, worker militants from other tendencies were pushed around, especially if they were in the SP.
The First Congress
The resignation of the Social Democratic cabinet ministers from the Fourth Provisional Government in June 1975 was the official opening of the political crisis in which an unprecedented working-class radicalization was to founder.
The CP leadership, relying on its control over the trade-union apparatus and what it believed was an unassailable position, responded to the bourgeois counteroffensive orchestrated by Soares and the Group of Nine (officers in the Revolutionary Council led by Melo Antunes) by adopting a line of all-out war against the SP, making no distinction between the leadership and the ranks. Once again, the Intersindical was used to do the dirty work.
This course reached its peak on June 18, when leaders of the "Inter" in the northern region called for a physical confrontation with demonstrators mobilized by the SP. Fortunately, this call was not heeded. The next day, in Lisbon, the "Inter" reissued the order to its activists-though in a less virulent form--to set up barricades on the access routes to the capital, "to stop the march of the reactionaries."
Under these conditions, it is not surprising that the Intersindical was seen by many activists, and not only those in the SP, as the tool of the CP's bureaucratic, sectarian, and divisive policy in the labor movement.
In July 1975, the Intersindical's first congress was called by the Secretariat for a date two weeks away, with no prior debate or discussion. In giving an ovation to the premier, "Companheiro Vasco," this congress sanctioned the CP's orientation of subordinating workers struggles to the MFA's maneuvers. In practice, it gave its blessing to the violent split in the workers movement. The split was in the interests of the two reformist leaderships, which were followed by a majority of the workers.
Throughout the crisis of the summer and fall of 1975, the CP leadership was preoccupied with finding the best way to keep from going too far, while continually seeking to extend its influence in the state apparatus, and particularly in the MFA. The MFA itself was already riven by the pressures building up throughout Portugal, which was in the throes of a genuine revolutionary crisis.
The Crisis
During the dizzying spiral of workingclass and popular mobilizations, from July to November, the trade unions were pushed into the background. The workers commissions increasingly became the forms of self-organization thrown up by the workers, and the CP concentrated on winning control of these bodies. Nevertheless, the trade-union apparatus was held in reserve, in view of the weak coordination of the workers commissions, to fill the need for centralization that the broad struggles shaking the country naturally came to require.
The "Inter" gave a kind of stamp of approval to the gains won by the workers organized in the workers commissions. It was the union leaderships, frequently unelected, who appeared on the scene to sign the contracts won by the metalworkers and the civil-construction workers in October and November, for example.
The workers felt the need to coordinate the massive strength that was being demonstrated everywhere, in order to offer a solution to the crisis of a system that they no longer wanted. The CP leaders cleverly responded to this widespread sentiment by setting up central bodies controlled by CP cadres and run in accordance with undemocratic norms of functioning.
It was in this way that the provisional secretariat of workers commissions of the Lisbon industrial belt (SPCTCIL), the SPCTCIS in Setubal, and the SPCTCIP in Oporto were constituted, on the initiative of the CP. Coordination with the "Inter" Secretariat, however, was quite well provided for—so well, in fact, that the roles of the two bodies were often interchangeable.
Still, the revolutionary upsurge had an impact. Cut off from the SP workers, and hard pressed by broad vanguard sectors that challenged its methods and orientation in practice, carrying their criticisms into the very ranks of the CP, the Stalinists had to make some tactical adjustments. Trade-union elections were held, with competing slates of candidates that reflected the views of the CP, SP, and the far left, as well as elements under rightist influence.
The results of the voting gave a clearer picture of the tendencies running through the Portuguese workers movement. The blue-collar unions were generally led by the CP and the far left, while the whitecollar unions had majority SP leaderships, sometimes flanked by a few members of the ultrasectarian Maoist-Stalinist MRPP [Movimento Reorganizativo do Partido do Proletariado-Movement to Reorganize the Proletarian Party].
There was a deep division, then, inside the workers movement. Furthermore, this division corresponded almost exactly to the different social layers and clearly defined geographical sectors. The role played by the "Inter" during these months of revolutionary upheaval was not unrelated to this.
However, under the impact of a growing combativity, the situation began to change. In the first place, the "Inter" bureaucrats were forced, in many cases, to shelve their hopes of turning the unions into mere transmission belts for their sacrosanct "people-MFA alliance." The workers' demands for democracy and hopes for unity compelled the bureaucrats, contrary to all their expressed ideas, to accept in practice the election of tradeunion leaderships on the basis of tendencies.
To be sure, the manner in which the elections were held, with their "party" slates, was like a caricature of parliamentarism. The demarcation should have been between political orientations, not just organizations. However, the precedent for representation of tendencies had been set, and this was a direct result of the rise in consciousness of broad sectors of the working class.
Secondly, the trade-union movement, even though it was not in the forefront of the revolutionary crisis—for good reason— began to play a real role.
Finally-this, of course, is the most positive development-the mobilizations of hundreds of thousands of workers side by side, from north to south, began to partially overcome the traumatic effect of the previous confrontation between CP and SP activists and sympathizers.
To be sure, after Admiral Pinheiro de Azevedo became premier in the Sixth Provisional Government, it was the SP leadership that began openly leading the attack on the workers. When this government was badly shaken by the huge mobilizations in November 1975, a large number of workers who sympathized with the SP were in the streets with their comrades. At the same time, Mário Soares and the SP cabinet ministers were on the balcony with the admiral, trying to call them back to "order." So by November 25, some of the objective conditions had been assembled pointing toward the possibility of building a united trade-union movement in Portugal.
November 25 and Its Aftermath
The second phase of the Portuguese revolutionary process opened with the military operation carried out by the Amadora Rangers on November 25, 1975. On that date, after nine months of paralysis, the bourgeoisie succeeded in regaining the political offensive, taking advantage of the pretext provided by the military left. Up until then, the workers had not run up against any resistance. Subsequently, they had to face a considerably reinforced state apparatus, even though this regime did not yet possess anywhere near the resources necessary for a full-scale offensive on the social level against the revolutionary gains and persistent combativity of the Portuguese workers. Once the initial confusion had been overcome, struggles resumed, beginning in January and February 1976. But this time, they had a defensive character-being directed against the wage restraints and the freeze on collective bargaining decreed by the government, as well as against the price hikes.
In January 1976, in response to a call issued jointly for the first time by the CP- and SP-dominated unions, trade-union rallies were held in Lisbon and Oporto. Even though the SP and CP trade-union leaderships did nothing to insure that these actions would lead to an organized response to the government's attacks, they still marked the beginning of a change in climate within the workers movement. The right wing's renewed arrogance, after the severe fright it experienced in the fall, also helped to bring about this different atmosphere.
The results of the legislative elections on April 25, 1976, helped advance the demand for unity. The workers parties' winning a majority of the seats in the Assembly of the Republic gave additional encouragement to the proletariat. For the bourgeoisie, which had counted its chickens before they were hatched, it was a clear indication that the game was not yet over.
On May 1, 1976, large workers rallies were held throughout the country. The SP and CP trade-union leaders spoke at these rallies, the former calling for a democratically organized trade-union congress to be held rapidly, the latter announcing that they were making a commitment to convene such a congress before the end of the year. In the euphoric atmosphere of the victory won by the left at the polls, and the united May Day demonstrations, it seemed that it was only a matter of months before a single trade-union federation would be established.
"Inter" and the Other Unions
According to figures released by the Intersindical Secretariat, 307 unions existed in 1976. This includes unions by industry and by region, such as the Lisbon-area bank workers, the northernregion metalworkers, and so on. However, a few craft unions were still in existence, because the process of "verticalization" had not been completed in all cases.
Of these 307 unions, the "Inter" claimed 190, representing about 1.5 million wage workers, most of whom were employed in industry.
The 177 unions not affiliated to the Intersindical at the beginning of 1976 included about 500,000 workers. Most of them were bank or office workers, or else blue-collar workers scattered throughout the tiny factories in the north and center of the country, which employ no more than twenty-five workers on the twenty to average.
The 190 unions affiliated to the "Inter" were practically all led by CP members, sometimes in alliance with a few members of far-left organizations; the others were mostly under SP leadership. The far left, which concentrated its activity in the previous period in the workers commissions, led or participated in the leadership of about fifteen unions, nearly all of which were members of the Intersindical.
Thus the division in the trade-union movement has paralleled the major political division in the workers movement, between two large blocs respectively under SP and CP influence.
The 'Open Letter'
On April 27, 1976, the representatives of twenty-nine trade-union leaderships met in Coimbra to draft an "open letter to the Intersindical Secretariat and to the Portuguese workers."
The "open letter," which became the nickname of the groups of trade-union leaders organized by SP activists, demanded "the convening of a genuine trade-union congress representing all Portuguese workers." To that end, the "open letter" group proposed that the National Secretariat of the Intersindical set up a parity commission to insure that the upcoming congress would be well organized and would have unquestionable authority. At this point, the first official contacts took place between SP and CP trade-union activists. These exchanges resulted in joint organization of May Day rallies and in the parallel positions outlined at these rallies by leaders of these two currents in the trade-union movement.
Contact was resumed after the presidential election campaign, in which both reformist parties encountered major internal problems-the CP because of Otelo de Carvalho's candidacy, which had a strong impact on its ranks; the SP because of General Eanes's candidacy, which was far from enthusiastically received by the SP workers. Contact continued regularly, culminating, on July 29, in a "general meeting of Intersindical-affiliated and nonaffiliated unions," attended by 144 trade-union leaderships from all over the country.
In an August 5 communiqué, the leadership of the bank workers union of the southern region and the islands (dominated by the SP) gave the following account of the meeting:
The aim of the meeting was not to make any decisions, but to discuss the draft of the rules of procedure in preparation for the congress, presented by the National Secretariat of the Intersindical. It was agreed that this draft would serve as a working document, to be submitted for consideration by the National Organizing Commission, which is the body that has sole responsibility for planning and carrying out the unity congress of all the unions. In any event, some basic points will remain under debate. These all flow from the central question-that is, whether the Secretariat is interested only in holding a "second congress of the Intersindical," which would perpetuate the current divisions, or whether, in fact, it recognizes the need for a genuine democratic congress of all unions for unity. For the Intersindical, this would mean accepting all the consequences of thus putting an end to the dominance of one tendency over the Portuguese workers movement.
The same communiqué went on record in favor of "the establishment of a single, democratic, and independent trade-union federation, where tendency rights would be guaranteed."
The Secretariat-that is, the central leadership of the CP's trade-union fraction-reacted to the "open letter" with delaying tactics. The fight for democracy launched by the "open letter" group found a wide hearing. It soon united sixty-nine trade-union leaderships around its two central goals: "the convening of an allunion congress" and "the constitution of a national organization commission representing all existing currents of opinion within the trade-union movement."
But the "open letter" group soon lost momentum, falling prey to its own limitations and weaknesses.
The SP trade-union leaderships did not, in fact, lead a real fight in the workers movement to achieve the two goals outlined in their "open letter." On the contrary, they confined themselves to endless negotiations inside the apparatus, with representatives of the "Inter" Secretariat. The Intersindical leadership could not have asked for anything better, since this allowed them to stall for time.
While the objectives outlined in their declaration undeniably corresponded to the well-justified feelings of many workers about the behavior of the "Inter" bureaucrats throughout the whole previous period, the SP trade-union leaders declined to organize a real tendency, especially in those unions controlled by the CP. Such a tendency could have built a potentially very powerful current, capable of forcing the Intersindical to yield on some basic points.
From one meeting to the next, their approach seemed to consist of counterposing the demands of the SP to those of the CP, rather than trying to put democratic norms of functioning-in line with the wishes of most if not all of the workers, regardless of which party they looked to at the time-into practice in the trade-union movement.
The Stalinist leadership of the "Inter" seized this opportunity to set its steamroller in motion against the right to form tendencies, claiming that the "open letter"
group's behavior was typical: "An introduction of the norms of parliamentarism, with its endless palavers, which the workers do not understand and which bog them down...
Most of the far-left groups (MES [Movimento de Esquerda Socialista-Movement of the Socialist Left], PRP [Partido Revolucionário do Proletariado-Revolutionary party of the Proletariat], and UDP [União Democrática do Povo-People's Democratic Union] shamefully followed in the CP's footsteps, in order to carve out a niche in the Intersindical apparatus.
Only the Trotskyists of the LCI [Liga Comunista Internacionalista—Internationalist Communist League] defended the right to form tendencies, and took a clear position, both publicly and inside the unions, in favor of supporting the democratic objectives of the "open letter" group.
These weaknesses on the part of the "open letter" group in fact stemmed from much more fundamental political deficiencies. As soon as Mário Soares, the SP general secretary who had been named premier by Eanes, announced his austerity program in September, the central focus of the concerns of the workers movement shifted to organizing a response to the government's anti-working-class policies.
By not putting forward any proposals to meet the workers' expectations, the SP trade unionists in the "open letter" group left themselves open to the demagogy of the "Inter" Secretariat, which portrayed them as quibbling about democracy at a time when the workers were under attack. "The 'open letter' group can neither take positions nor present them publicly, because it has not been elected by the workers. This can only be done separately by each union participating in the movement, in accordance with the wishes of its members," the Secretariat wrote in November 1976.
The SP activists in the "open letter" group were caught in their own contradictions. On the one hand, they were subjected to harsh disciplinary measures inside the SP at the hands of the party's Social Democratic leadership, which was seeking to push obstacles to its bourgeois orientation out of the way (more than a thousand members were suspended after the December SP congress). On the other hand, they wanted to avoid an open confrontation with Soares, for fear of wrecking the SP's outward appearance of unity.
The "open letter" group itself was a reflection of this contradictory situation. It was not a grouping of trade-union activists around a platform of clear political and economic demands; rather it originated as an extension of the SP. Several currents coexisted inside it, extending from the SP's radical working-class wing to supporters of the Soares line.
As a result, the compromises necessary to its survival required failing to take a position on the government's policy-i.e., on the orientation of the SP leadershipeven if the majority of open letter" activists were hostile to this policy, as indicated by their campaign during the struggles against the government decrees.
This political confusion proved costly to the "open letter" group. The last meeting, held January 5 and 6, 1977, on the eve of the trade-union congress, managed to bring together only twenty-five tradeunion leaderships. The scaffolding was reduced to the leaderships of the bank and office workers unions in Lisbon and Oporto, and the leadership of the highschool teachers union in the capital. Not a single significant blue collar union was included. Since the formation of the SP government, not a single union had elected an SP leadership.
For example, the Lisbon public employees union, traditionally composed of elements sympathetic to the SP, elected a leadership controlled by the CP. The referendums organized by the leaders of the "open letter" group in their unions to win approval for their refusal to participate in the January congress resulted in setbacks. Some 12,500 members voted in the referendum in the Lisbon office workers union, while 30,000 workers had voted in the elections for the leadership of the union.
On the eve of the trade-union congress, then, the "open letter" group found itself at an impasse. Under these conditions, the right wing of the SP was in a good position to carry out its plan of building a rival trade-union federation, in league with PPD [Partido Popular Democrático—Democratic People's Party] agents in some unions. The worker militants in the SP's left wing, for their part, were trapped by their irresolution, both in dealing with the leadership of their party and with that of the CP.
The CGTP-IN
Commenting on the defeat suffered by the CP candidate, Octavio Pato, in the presidential elections of June 1976, in which half of the CP's electoral following threw their votes to Otelo Saraiva de Carvalho, Alvaro Cunhal declared tersely: "We will get it all back, with interest."
The January trade-union congress represented the most important step in this process of recovery by the section of the workers movement adhering to the CP. At the "all-union congress," 265 unions were represented, amounting to about 1.8 million workers, or 85 percent of all organized workers. According to the CGTP leadership, eighty unions that were not previously members of the Intersindical, and which represent 300,000 wage workers, were included. The overall meaning of this is clear. The CGTP-IN represents the overwhelming maiority of Portuguese workers, and probably a near totality of the industrial proletariat.
Using its 2,500 cells in the factories, the CP combined harsh criticism of the Soares government with a tight rein on all attempts to broaden struggles around specific demands. This enabled it to maneuver its way back up to the dominant position from which it had fallen because of its policy in the first phase of the revolution. The crisis of the far left, coming after the collapse of the illusions inspired by the success of Otelo's presidential campaign, as well as its opportunistic adaptation to the CP's line on the question of trade-union democracy, left the Stalinists plenty of elbow room.
However, the bureaucratic way the was organized-with mainly congress leadership delegations attending-could not keep the radicalization of the working class and the high level of combativity maintained by the workers from finding expression there. For example, the National Organizing Commission for the Congress (CNOC) was forced at the last minute to put discussion of an immediate action campaign on the agenda. Even its last-minute draft was substantially amended to allow for the preparation of a "list of immediate demands" with a much more radical coloration.
The Stalinist faction managed, nevertheless, to eliminate an important part of the bargaining platform-the proposal for a twenty-four-hour general strike against the austerity program. The entire far left blocked together around this proposal, and it gained support from nearly a third of those attending the congress.
On the other hand, the CNOC had to yield to the intense desire for unity and the demand for democracy on the part of broad layers, by accepting the principle of participation by different working-class currents in the national leadership of the CGTP-IN-without recognition of tendency rights being included in the statutes.
The national leadership of the CGTP-IN thus includes several members of the MES and of the SP. Kalidas Barreto, a wellknown SP worker militant and former SP deputy to the Constituent Assembly, is a member of the National Secretariat and a public spokesman for the federation. This concession, which the CGTP-IN leaders used to carry out a publicity operation, proved fruitful, because several members of the "open letter" group announced their union's intention to affiliate to the new federation, whose authority could hardly be questioned.
Negotiate or Fight?
The CP's line of action has not radically changed. While it obviously has trouble trying to win favor with a fragmented MFA, its orientation remains that of using working-class and popular struggles as a tool for getting pro-CP elements into key positions in the state apparatus.
The CP has been giving more and more guarantees not to disrupt the established order, but only to improve on it. This can be seen in its numerous pronouncements in favor of a "genuine austerity program"- the Soares policy supposedly being "inadequate"!
In the trade unions, the CGTP-IN leadership has so far been able to prevent any possibility of an extension of the struggles that have begun to develop, particularly since the 15 percent devaluation of the escudo. The leadership in fact displays unusual cynicism in the arguments it uses:
The satisfaction of certain demands-such as wage increases, improvements in social services, and so on-may very well represent a temporary expedient that the bosses will use to regain control of state-run enterprises, those under worker management, and even nationalized enterprises. Having overcome the workers' resistance in this fashion, and having reestablished capitalist control over the enterprises, the real face of exploitation and oppression will soon be revealed. [O Militante, January 1977.]
These Jesuitical arguments seem unlikely to win much support from the workers, and perhaps not even from the CP's own membership. National strikes are being discussed in nearly all the key sectors of the economy. In the first two weeks of March alone, two national strikes of several hours were conducted to demand the signing of new contracts in the metal and textile industries.
The bureaucratic apparatuses have not managed to establish air-tight control over the working class. The deepgoing nature of the political, social, and economic crisis, and the workers' readiness to struggle are such that without a decisive defeat of the proletariat it is impossible to qualitatively alter the existing relationship of class forces, which is the result of three years of revolutionary mobilizations. In this situation, the recent trade-union congress represents an impetus to struggle, not an excuse for demobilization.
For the first time in its history, the Portuguese working class has a mass national organization of its own. This organization is still too young for the bureaucratic methods of the reformists to succeed in transforming it into a malleable tool for their policy of class collaboration. The future battles that are shaping up in Portugal, in which the unions will play a primary role, will soon give a concrete content to the fight being waged by revolutionists to assure that the CGTP-IN lives up to the hopes that thousands of workers have invested in it.