PORTUGAL'S DANGLING REVOLUTION
Plastrik, Stanley
For a brief, involuntary moment, while traveling to Portugal's Estoril beach, we joined the revolution—or was it the "counterrevolution"? It wasn't easy to tell. Rates on the suburban railroads...
...CDs: Center Democratic Socialist Party — the most conservative party to participate in the April 1975 elections — without serious influence...
...There were promises of a free election within a year, though it was unclear whether power would be turned over to a constitutional civilian government...
...he smiled, shrugged his shoulders, and turned away...
...there is much confusion and helter-skelter turmoil...
...Angola was the center, and there alone 50,000 Portuguese troops fought the revolutionaries...
...In a statement made at the Lisbon airport on May 10, Socialist leader Mario Soares said to a representative of Le Monde: My party is democratic...
...they hold prisoners in COPCON's name in the notorious Caxias jail outside Lisbon...
...Not one of the experienced political leaders or sophisticated intellectuals to whom we spoke dared venture a prediction...
...Not to have spoken out more forcefully at that moment may have been a serious tactical error on the part of the Socialists, since this enabled the military to describe the elections as a "pedagogic exercise" and, after the elections, to downgrade and even bypass the Constituent Assembly...
...For example, the president would be elected by a Legislative Assembly of about 250 members as proposed in the Constitution, plus the Assembly of the Armed Forces of 240 officers and enlisted men, the two together forming an electoral college...
...the Communists have 30...
...It approves the creation of a Popular National Assembly, product of the alliance "MFA-People...
...This was the MFA's first open attack on the power of the seven major financial 338 STANLEY PLASTRIK groups that dominate the banking system of the country (86 percent of total deposits, 83 percent of the portfolios of commercial enterprises...
...COPCON squads raid homes, offices, hotels...
...The Socialists accuse the MFA of seeking to "militarize political life" and of desiring to erect "a typical police state," while they in turn are charged with being a disruptive political party that "ought to show evidence of more patriotism...
...A pyramidal structure will lead upward to the Popular National Assembly, and all voting will take place openly, by raised hand...
...It was Salazar's strongest weapon...
...We observed that the majority of daily papers (morning and evening) support the government and the Communists (although such critical papers as the weekly Espresso have the freedom to publish whatever they wish), and that the radio and television pro340 STANLEY PLASTRIK grams are Communist-slanted...
...and, to show some signs of life, they have taken refuge in the cult of the "three F's": Fatima, Football, and Fado...
...It is a significant reawakening of international solidarity on the part of a movement that appeared to have long since forgotten such concepts...
...this was followed in May by measures that will lead to the nationalization of the drug and pharmaceutical business...
...A Lisbon historian The MFA (Military Armed Forces) is the unique feature of the Portuguese revolution...
...MFA's body of a few hundred men—in command of some tens of thousands of armed forces, subject to no higher surveillance and a power unto itself—seems to have lost its moral authority in the country...
...A point of no return has been reached...
...and political pluralism...
...Portugal is not on the eve of an open Communist seizure of power, with a pro-Soviet, Cunhal regime...
...The nationalized banks, run by a Communistdominated bank employees' union and Communistinspired officials, operate with exhausted treasuries and day-to-day improvisation...
...The first paragraph of the MFA's program condemns the old regime precisely on this point...
...An officer or a soldier representing the MFA will sit on each body...
...During the two weeks of our visit we observed freedom of movement, of speech, including sharp criticism of the government, and—except for the seizure of the pro-Socialist newspaper Republica —freedom of the press...
...The radio and television people we met were obviously Communists or sympathizers, and their domination of the media was privately acknowledged to us by informed persons...
...No doubt, reactionary elements are fishing in these troubled waters...
...But Fallaci, in turn, has sent a letter to l' Unitd, organ of the Italian CP, claiming to have a tape of the interview she is prepared to submit as evidence—a challenge Cunhal has not accepted...
...To the section of the military that admires Cunhal, he seems a model of boldness, discipline, and ideological firmness, and insofar as their aim is to modernize the country through draconian measures, these military men find themselves instinctively close to a Stalinist type like Cunhal...
...Involved in these actions have been scores of thousands of small, property-owning peasants who fear—and why should they not?—that a CP-dominated government would endanger their small land-holdings...
...Perhaps suspecting that the civilian population would reject its advice to boycott the elections and thus show its scorn for the warring political parties, the MFA virtually imposed a prefabricated Constitution upon the country weeks before the elections, with all essential power reserved for the High Council of the Revolution, a military body consisting of 28 officers...
...Pcp: Partido Communista Portugues — Portuguese Communist party — headed by the notorious Stalinist Alvaro Cunhal...
...The northern region is characterized by small, rural farms and homesteads, high population density, and high rates of illiteracy...
...In any case, Cunhal's CP is not a mere puppet of the Soviets...
...While the stores in Lisbon are still filled with (high-priced) goods, and the food shops abound with fairly cheap summer fruits and vegetables, plus a healthy supply of fish, the approaching winter months will tell a different story...
...Neither the Arab nor the Soviet bloc have offered to help, and a meeting of the ministerial council of the Common Market, strongly influenced by the Social Democratic representatives present, turned down Portugal's request for aid on the ground that the Republica and RadioRenescenca incidents showed failure to pursue the promised goal of a pluralist democracy...
...The MFA has always charged that the political parties, with the exception of the Communist party, act within a "reformist perspective...
...The Constituent Assembly has been meeting fitfully for some weeks now...
...As this moral authority has dissolved, MFA's dependence on the Communist party has increased, with the Communists in turn concentrating their major efforts on the MFA...
...Though morally and politically the most authentic expression of the will of the people, it may sink into oblivion even before its work is completed...
...Whatever may have been the relation between the military and the Socialists, the divorce is now consummated...
...The document of this proposed Constitution guaranteed the military's right to run Portugal for a period of three to five years, putting the country "irreversibly on the road that will lead it to Portuguese socialism...
...In Mario Soares they have a leader of experience, popularity and integrity...
...they conduct illegal hunts of ` `counterrevolutionaries" and "economic saboteurs...
...The cry of the Socialists is "Socialism, yes...
...Founded in exile several years ago, the party has mushroomed rapidly in membership, attracting to its ranks youth, intellectuals, workers, some peasants, and educated middleclass people...
...In the words of Socialist leader Mario Snares, his party is...
...Frelimo's strategy includes the elimination of all other bases of political power in Mozambique, and in this at least it has been successful...
...The Socialist party is now on the point of issuing a detailed economic recovery program for the country...
...Forty-eight years of clerico-fascism made for an absence of political initiative and democratic traditions...
...What will be Portugal's role in Western Europe, and what its relations to the European Common Market...
...The issue of democratic rights has suddenly become vital to the European Left...
...No matter how informally elections were carried out—through open voting by show of hands at general meetings—and no matter how fortuitous the outcome might have seemed at times, the councils' power and authority rested primarily on the free election of deputies...
...Since the council is a military body, the president would be a military man...
...Meanwhile, thousands of returning Portuguese are now living in camps around Lisbon...
...The MFA also told the Constituent Assembly it would have to provide for the Constitution's guarantee that the military set the country's basic policy over the next four years in order "to start the economic and social transformation of the country into a socialist state...
...rumor has it that the Russians provide millions each month to produce this effect of a smoothly operating machine with an aura of inevitability about it...
...Kenneth Maxwell has observed that the colonial war in Mozambique was a major factor in the political education of yesterday's middleranking captains and majors in Portugal— who now are the generals of the MFA...
...From the cowed, gray, melancholy people who walked with cast-down eyes— so I remember them from a visit five years ago—they have changed into a lively, alert, and vivacious people who love to talk and argue in the Rossio square of Lisbon...
...Given half a chance to assert themselves, the Portuguese will not return to any form of totalitarianism, Left or Right...
...The Social Democratic parties of Western Europe have given material help and moral support to the cause of their embattled comrades in Portugal...
...The "dynamization groups" sent into the Portuguese countryside by the MFA have not had much success (for one thing, the young soldiers and officers rarely speak the regional Portuguese dialect of the peasants whom they call together...
...The war in Africa led directly to the revolution in Portugal...
...The MFA's growing hostility toward the Socialist party follows from the Socialists' stress on rule by the citizenry— free and untrammeled...
...When we say that there will be no bourgeois democracy, Western style, in our country, we don't mean that there will be no freedoms...
...At some point he has said that if the Socialists proved to be intractable, a purely military government would be acceptable to him...
...In the north, the peasant landowners fiercely guard their small holdings, ready to battle unto death...
...extremely preoccupied by the fact that the newspapers, radio and television engage in brainwashing and completely deform news and information...
...Yet things are not that simple...
...The Portuguese Socialists have not hesitated to meet challenges head-on when necessary, as the Republica struggle has shown, and their leaders now show that they are prepared to pursue their fight clandestinely, if the present phase of active resistance should fail...
...The Popular National Assembly is to redivide the country into seven regions or, in the pretentious language of the military, seven "poles of socioeconomic and cultural development...
...The Portuguese CP issued a statement denying that Cunhal had said what Fallaci quotes...
...The Portuguese revolution now is a mere 15 months old...
...The MFA's theoretical guidelines, to be sure, point in another direction—that of "popular power," a long-term alliance between the army and the people, under the army's guidance...
...And at the moment, it is at a low point...
...the latest and most dubious is the creation of the generals' triumvirate whose legitimacy at this writing (who chose them...
...They have lived for a bit more than a year in freedom...
...It's as if Kornilov has shouted, `All Power to the Soviets...
...True, the Portuguese have little experience with the instruments of democracy...
...In the past, Africans faced with job competition from poor whites coming from Portugal in search of economic opportunity were forced to leave the shantytowns outside Luanda and Lorenzo Marques and to emigrate...
...President Ford recently expressed his regret that the investigations of CIA activities have made it impossible for that organization to pursue an active role in Portugal...
...But there is also an exhilaration and devotion founded upon conviction rather than fanaticism...
...In a number of documents, the latest dated early July and precipitating the immediate crisis between MFA and the Socialist party, the military theoreticians have attempted to spell out their vision of the future Portugal...
...It is a shameful story and led the Socialists to quit the government...
...Its many meetings are held in secret...
...The artillery regiment called upon refused to take action against workers with whom it sympathized...
...MDP/CDE: Movimento Democratico Portugues — Portuguese Democratic Movement — front for the Communist party...
...Under his leadership, it has been the CP's strategy to make itself indispensable as an ideological ally of the MFA...
...The Catholic radio station had been seized by a group of its ultra-leftist employees known as the Popular Democratic Union...
...As the conductor approached us, the passengers began to shout at him...
...The role of the MFA in this affair, before turning over the newspaper to those who had seized it, consisted of hypocritical nonintervention, symbolic gestures and phrase-mongering, without any serious guarantee of freedom of the press...
...In this pastiche everyone could find consoling words...
...Oskar Anweiler, The Soviets: The Russian Workers, Peasants, and Soldiers Councils, 1905-1921, p. 52...
...Such activities hinder the construction of any kind of stable regime...
...This document, annulled in effect by the new government crisis, was a compromise among warring ideological groups within the MFA, with each tendency corresponding more or less to one of the civilian groups or parties...
...But Soares now is a powerful spokesman for the growing opposition to MFA-Communist rule...
...the country is experiencing a temporary euphoria, much like *"The St...
...Who holds power...
...We enjoyed a round trip to Estoril without paying the fare...
...This has been the MFA's major problem...
...A program of economic reform and austerity, together with major help from the Western powers, would then have to be instituted—a program that would gradually build up a modern society, enable the workers to gain material benefits and develop free institutions, and reassure the small peasants they will not be regimented...
...coPCON: The MFA's internal security force, under the command of General Otelo de Carvalho, commander of the Lisbon military garrison...
...The one way to prevent that, in the opinion of our Portuguese friends, is to establish a stable, democratic regime that will represent the majority of the people...
...Like so much else in the Portuguese revolution, this is a pastiche...
...Now, neither is thriving...
...Portugal's dangling revolution might then achieve the stability of democratic progress...
...But one man's "pluralism" is another man's "authoritarianism...
...The MFA is at the heart of the revolution...
...they must constantly use the formula of criticism and self-criticism...
...A few weeks earlier, on a visit to New York, while addressing an audience of professors and intellectuals, Minister of Communications Jesuino had defined "pluralism" as one's right to hold one's opinion...
...The Socialist party urges a strengthening of Portugal's European ties through the European Economic Community, from which urgent economic help was sought this past summer...
...its minutes are unpublished...
...only its operational resolutions are available to the public...
...Now Mozambique is not Portugal and Portugal not Mozambique...
...The MFA must first assure its power, then construct a state in its own image and find an economic base...
...During the final months of the Caetano dic331 Glossary of Portuguese Politics MFA: Movimento das Forcas Armadas — Armed Forces Movement — organization of the military, divided into levels of political and governmental power, such as the Council of the Revolution (CR, Conselho da Revolucao), the supreme command of the MFA...
...In 1961, the year of the great divide for these movements, the Portuguese regime in Africa was challenged by armed insurrection and given notice to quit the continent...
...No aspiring group in Portugal can fail to have an economic program of some sort...
...Whatever Cunhal said in his interview with Fallaci—he has made other statements also...
...The activities of Brigadier General Otelo de Carvalho, head of the MFA's 4,500-men Praetorian guard (COPCON), directly threaten democrats and democratic institutions...
...If Soares is a popular and personable figure, Cunhal is a charismatic, intimidating, and cynical one...
...So far, fortunately all forces have drawn back from the brink, still finding some basis for compromise...
...This Assembly, representing the grass-roots opinions of officers and men, has been more moderate than the "leftist" Supreme Revolutionary Council, at one time the MFA's top policy unit but now reduced to the status of an advisory body...
...The number of CP functionaries in Portugal runs into thousands...
...Edgar Morin in this Dissent...
...It is especially aware of the need not to antagonize the experts and specialists, and the small businessmen...
...a new socialist society that will end the rule of the 200 families who have controlled 75 percent of the nation's wealth, a society that will improve conditions for the working and poor peasant classes...
...in other words, begin to act like a parliamentary body—was rejected by MFA and Communists alike...
...Nevertheless, Portugal's MFA cadres are inspired by this approach, openly admiring the "MarxismLeninism" of the Frelimo movement, its discipline, its dedication, its hierarchical centralization of power and authority...
...490 as compared with $830 for Spain...
...Consider the problems: a 30-percent rate of inflation, a foreign currency reserve that is about to vanish (a standing joke is that the Portuguese owe a debt of gratitude to Salazar for having built up a substantial gold reserve), 300,000 unemployed (close to 10 percent of the working population), and the prospect of hundreds of thousands of refugees from Angola, etc., who must be absorbed...
...With a large body of politically trained cadres, "Bourgeois Individualism" will be eliminated and the party line fixed in the consciousness of the people...
...A Lisbon witticism and play on letters has COPCON meaning "how to organize the PIDE (Salazar-Caetano secret police) under another name...
...There is the familiar cry of "labor discipline" and the "battle of production," but spontaneous strikes (opposed by the MFACommunist bloc in the unions) and workers' seizures of plants have an equally familiar, paralyzing effect on productivity...
...Dictatorship, no...
...Apparently, his notion of supporting the cause of democracy in Portugal is limited to what the CIA can, or cannot, do...
...A beginning has been made in erecting this system of bureaucratic state capitalism or "socialism...
...Whoever heard of a group of young officers who hold classes and discussions among themselves relating to theory and ideology (Marxism, dialectics, 332 STANLEY PLASTRIK etc...
...As for Republica, brutally stolen from its Socialist-oriented editors, it now is edited by an officer of the Portuguese army and controlled by a coordinating committee of printers...
...and in the demand for free elections in the unions, municipal bodies, etc...
...While the Stalinist leadership of the CP again showed its concern for the young officers of the MFA whom it hopes both to serve and to use, the other parties yielded, in effect, to intimidation and blackmail...
...This indoctrination process has priority over the usual economic program of nationalization, control over small trade, and the beginnings of collectivist agriculture...
...A party 334 STANLEY PLASTRIK plenary meeting in February 1975 issued a series of resolutions that stated: It is necessary to pursue a purge campaign within the ranks of the dynamic groups to detect, denounce, and expel infiltrated elements...
...for if Portugal was a part of Europe geographically it was separated from it politically and by a deep failure to create modern social and economic institutions...
...A government, including Socialists, Communists, and other parties, was formed with the blessing of the MFA...
...To this day this issue has not been resolved, although numerous efThis map shows Portugal's 18 electoral districts and the country's three geographic regions...
...When Mario Soares took his fellow Socialists out of the Lisbon government, precipitating the drawn-out crisis of July and August, his European comrades without exception gave him their support...
...The colonial wars continued up to the April 1974 revolution...
...When we arrived in Portugal, the MFA, after passing through weeks of crisis that had ruined the summer tourist trade, had managed to lessen the tension by issuing a lengthy statement known as the "Political Action Resolution...
...The size and resources of the Portuguese Communist apparatus are wonders to behold...
...it has a life of its own— even a small group of young oppositionists who are opposed to Cunhal 's "tough" policy and closer to the moderation of the Spanish and Italian Communists...
...Samora Machel, the 41-year-old president of Mozambique, has proclaimed his determination to create the first "authentic Communist state" in Africa...
...INTER-SYNDICAL: Trade union federation, dominated by the Communist party...
...In striking contrast is the rigid disciplined cadre party of the Communists, numbering between 75,000 and perhaps 100,000, but reported to be losing membership...
...Let me stress that this is not a conventional social democratic party...
...Two episodes involving Radio Renascenca, the Lisbon radio station belonging to the Catholic Church, and the Socialist-oriented newspaper Republica indicate the growing authoritarian drift...
...Pluralism is obviously the key...
...We also must understand that, as was explained to us by Minister of Social Communication Jesuino, comandante of the MFA, that the MFA has undergone its own internal evolution since the days of April 25—that, for example, the conservative Spinolista influence has been cast off, and each officer has gone through his own individual experience...
...With an average monthly loss in foreign reserves of over $100 million, with the political impasse preventing any drastic measures to reduce imports, the economic situation demands integration with Western Europe...
...The south is the region of the Algarve tourist area, and the Alentejo with its huge estates where absentee landownership and large numbers of landless laborers encouraged the predominance of the Communist party in the villages...
...Let us carry this point one step further and examine the Frelimo movement (the Mozambique Liberation Front) as it now exercises power in its own country...
...Yet Angola, potentially the richest of the former colonies, now is torn apart by the power and tribal struggle among three rival groups...
...it has understood the need for austerity, for ending indiscriminate and hasty nationalizations, and for discipline and productivity in the country's economic life...
...They neither held tickets nor were they prepared to pay...
...It has increased the minimal wage to 4,000 escudos per month—a substantial raise—and granted 20 and 30 percent hikes to industrial workers and white-collar employees...
...E.g., during the peak of the repression in India, Television Portugal showed a lengthy program praising the "human side" of Mrs...
...Portuguese peasants are not tribal members of an African society (in many parts of the country, long since emancipated from semifeudal bondage, they have a strong sense of landownership, and associate "Communism" with confiscation...
...In April of this year, the state took control of 14 industrial enterprises: steel, petrochemicals (Petrosul, Sonape, Sacor, Cidla, and 75 percent of the Portuguese capital invested in Soconap, transporter of crude oil), as well as of four transport enterprises, including the National Navigation Company (merchant marine), TAP (Portuguese national airways...
...Can these seemingly contradictory statements be explained...
...the Communist party denounces it on every occasion, calling for its dissolution...
...Indigenas (natives), mestizos (mixed), and assimilados (assimilated) alike joined together to form liberation fronts...
...As the first European nation to establish overseas colonies and the last to give them up, what are the country's relations likely to be with its ex-African empire (Guinea-Bissau, Angola, Mozambique) and with Africa and the Third World in general...
...The "flower" revolution was welcomed by the people with great enthusiasm...
...Seeking to maintain its power, which rests mainly on top-level deals with portions of the military, the CP has begun casting about for new allies...
...In the end, the fate of the revolution will be determined by the fate of the economy...
...It has been inculcated by every possible method...
...Again the Communists disclaimed responsibility, pointing out that a majority of the workers involved were "leftists" who do not belong to the Communist party...
...The Socialist party of Mario Soares is the main obstacle to the growing militarization of Portugal...
...who was right...
...A major instrument has been the formation of so-called dynamic groups, or party bodies, in every Mozambique institution: in the factories, shops, slums, schools, and rural areas...
...To stop this war, the regime at home had to be overthrown...
...Chile under the Allende regime in its first year and a half...
...q tatorship a folksong, "Grandola," haunting yet militant, had become the people's song, expressing the hope for personal and political freedom...
...The party headquarters, which we visited, is a model of efficiency—receptionist, referral to an organized committee or the proper functionary, an elevator that works, bookstores and propaganda pamphlets, the inevitable visit of the Soviet Union's lady astronaut and the Bolshoi Ballet, etc...
...Although economics is scarcely its strong point, the MFA, again with strong Communist backing, has carried out what passes for economic policies...
...Now the first is exhausted and the second is being discretely negotiated in the world gold market...
...For 15 months Portugal has lived off reserves accumulated by previous regimes—foreign paper and a large gold reserve...
...Whether or not Fallaci quotes Cunhal accurately, there is no doubt that what she has him saying is what he really believes...
...But his varying poses, from blunt intimidation to silky reassurance, are to be seen less as reflections of political opinion than as complex elements in the overall strategy of the CP—namely, toward a drive for power, shared at first with the military and then, if circumstances allow, closer and closer to the East European model of party hegemony...
...Western Europe's most underdeveloped nation, Portugal still is lagging far behind Spain...
...Portugal's relations with the more advanced West European countries have long been unsatisfactory and degrading...
...Psp: Partido Socialista Portugues — Portuguese Socialist party, organized abroad in 1973 — led by Mario Soares...
...the resemblance to the famous soviets of the Russian Revolution—before they were transformed into mere decorative bodies—is of course nil.* Profoundly antidemocratic in implication (political parties would have no place in this structure except, of course, for the Communists who would easily infiltrate), this MFA model of society is rejected out of hand by the Socialists as a form of left-authoritarianism violating the spirit of the Portuguese revolution...
...The per capita annual income was the lowest in Europe...
...The document was elaborated by a working group representing the three branches of the armed forces, plus COPCON...
...It is the largest party in Portugal...
...A vivid sense of his deeply totalitarian outlook, his utter contempt for freedom, and his disdain even for those European Communists, like the Italians and Spaniards, who propose a Popular Front course, can be had from his now famous interview with the Italian journalist Oriana Fallaci (part of which appeared in the New York Times, July 13, PORTUGAL'S DANGLING REVOLUTION 341 1975...
...The MFA's July document, presented to the public as a "guide"—a guide the moderates in the MFA claim is not intended to go into effect for another 10 or 20 years—has been rejected out of hand by the Socialists and their supporters in the PPD...
...This is the heart of the struggle...
...The Socialists, for example, were encouraged by the promise to build a "pluralist society...
...Henrique Galvao, hero of the dramatic seizure of the passenger liner Santa Maria, describes Salazar's Portugal...
...The struggle over Republica turned out to be a major defeat for freedom of the press...
...PPD: Partido Portugues Democratica — Portuguese Democratic party — an ally of the Socialist party with whom it shares control over the Constituent Assembly — publishes Espresso, probably the best weekly in Portugal...
...The Socialists remain the key to the political impasse, the only hope of continuing the revolution along peaceful lines and for significant changes that would benefit workers, peasants, and the middle class...
...The attitude of the people has now undergone a fundamental change...
...in part upon genuine feelings of solidarity...
...After Spinola's thwarted rightwing coup of March 11, 1975, the left wing of the MFA (COPCON and the officers of certain elite regiments), plus those officers active in the "cultural dynamization" movement, obtained the immediate nationalization of private Portuguese banking and insurance companies...
...In fact, he added, "We are struggling in Portugal for a regime with two fundamental characteristics: the widest freedoms, among them fredom of expression and the right of political parties to be formed and to be active...
...Workers' and Peoples' Power" -endorsed this latest expression of MFA pseudo-Marxism and military Maoism...
...the MFA ignores it...
...The European democratic socialist and intelPORTUGAL'S DANGLING REVOLUTION 343 lectual Left is watching events in Portugal with nervous intensity...
...Maxwell explains the social background of the hundreds of young majors and captains who were radicalized during the colonialist wars in Africa and describes both their program for Portugal and their hostility to the business and industrial communities...
...They moved on to the former Belgian Congo, Rhodesia, and South Africa, and there they came in contact with nationalist movements and new ideas...
...How do they envisage it...
...A major source of income has been tourism—always a sign of outrageous exploitation of a servant class...
...This challenge has been expressed in the elections of April 25, 1975, the formation and semifunctioning of the Constituent Assembly, the struggle to achieve a free press and free sources of information (radio, television, etc...
...Parallel to the military regime, there is a democratic, reforming civilian regime trying to be born...
...MES: Movement of the Socialist Left...
...In this region, the Socialist party did best in the recent election, especially in the towns and cities...
...Putting a decisive end to Communist efforts to inch toward a monopoly of power is a necessary condition for progress in Portugal—but not a sufficient condition...
...Kenneth Maxwell gives the best account of the formation of the MFA (New York Review of Books, April 17, 1975...
...Comparisons with the military clique of Peru or with the Boumedienne-led military regime of Algeria may help us understand the Portuguese MFA, but only in part...
...Rates on the suburban railroads had been raised by 30 percent to meet the railway workers' wage increase of over 20 percent, and the passengers—mostly suburban housewives, returning from a day's shopping in Lisbon, and commuting workers—were protesting...
...This statement came after Soares's removal from his post as Foreign Minister and his temporary acceptance of the post of Minister without Portfolio...
...The Communists have neither the strength and support nor the means for direct rule...
...Postscript September 1 THE WAVE of intensive anti-Communist sentiment that has been expressed in numerous actions bordering on and sometimes spilling over into violence, which developed during the summer in northern Portugal, has placed the CP on the defensive...
...In any case, the draft Constitution gave the armed forces veto power over the civilian government it projected...
...I do not deny that I had a plan for parliamentary and reformist democracy that would have made it possible to avoid major shocks in rallying Portugal to the Europe of the Common Market...
...Three decades of PIDE (secret police), concentration camps, hellish dungeons, censorship, violation of homes and of correspondence, tapping of telephone conversations, fiscal extortion, and political sham have reduced a simple, gentle, courageous people to the moral misery of the pariah peoples of the totalitarian countries...
...is so shaky as to cast doubt on its survival...
...But a powerful minority within the ranks of the MFA is stimulated by its experience with Frelimo in Mozambique, and with the strategy of successful guerrilla movements...
...Petersburg workers'council and the provincial soviets were the first freely elected proletarian mass organizations...
...Wearing the stars of admirals and generals, living in the villas of Portugal's former rulers, and driving around in Mercedes-Benzes are only the superficial trappings of a ruling class...
...The wealthy coastal industrial belt runs from Porto in the north to Sebutal, south of Lisbon, and includes Portugal's largest cities...
...These were the euphoric days of "MFA-Povo"—the MFA and the people...
...Yet it had to be signaled by the army—and only then did the people come, dancing, into the streets...
...While the euphoria of the early weeks of the revolution has worn off, the momentum of the rediscovery of political freedom is still present...
...It is a new version of a left-authoritarian regime, borrowing from Frelimo's Mozambique, the Peruvian military, the Algerian experience, and from Eastern Europe's "people's democracies...
...Gandhi, no doubt made available by the Indian Embassy in Lisbon...
...Fear was the foundation of his stability...
...Reminding one of Allende's policies in Chile, the consequence has been a savage inflation estimated at 8.7 percent per month (Figaro, July 14, 1975...
...PORTUGAL'S DANGLING REVOLUTION 339 The Socialists and their allies hoped that a large vote in the April elections and a correspondingly large number of seats in the Constituent Assembly would enable them to stand up to military pressure, perhaps even annul the draft document for the proposed Constitution that they had signed...
...In the words of England's foreign secretary, "Why should we aid another dictatorship...
...Premier Gonsalves, who represents the Communist view in the government, announced that the Constitution would have to be ratified by the High Council of the revolution, thus assuring its conformity to MFA wishes...
...PORTUGAL'S DANGLING REVOLUTION 333 forts have been made to do so...
...At least in Portugal, the "Leninist road to power" now leads not through the proletariat but through generals and colonels...
...to infiltrate other organizations, gain control and, ultimately, to rule...
...AN: National Assembly of the armed forces — 240 members representing the three branches of the armed forces, plus regional commands in the country...
...for most of its history it was itself little more than a dependency of others...
...Whatever the dreams of the MFA may have been in terms of their relations with the former African colonies, it seems that at most, vague cultural and modest trade relations can be expected...
...In Portugal today, it seems, there exist elements of dual power—but in a sense that reverses the usual historic experience of the old regime finding itself confronted by a parallel, revolutionary body that challenges its authority...
...all this under the pretext of "the will of the workers...
...How to resolve the antagonism between military and civilian power...
...The party can plaster Lisbon overnight with any number of excellently produced posters and leaflets...
...Forty-four percent of the annual budget was poured down this drain, and the average length of overseas service was four years...
...The population of about 9 million was largely poor, backward (semifeudal conditions prevailed in the countryside), with a 38 percent illiteracy rate...
...Its course has been feverish, with the country approaching civil strife, military coups d'etat, even civil war...
...The Communistdominated railway workers' union denounced the action as "counterrevolutionary...
...The economic base upon which this politicaladministrative superstructure would rest would consist of nationalized property in industry, finance and banking, and agriculture...
...so long as one obeyed the military...
...And in an interview published in l'Humanite (July 17, 1975), shortly after the Fallaci interview, Cunhal preferred to stress his party's moderation...
...Portugal remains fundamentally a West European nation...
...The general populace ignores the work of the Constituent Assembly, largely out of a growing indifference...
...But, despite their decisive victory in the elections, their hopes were quickly shattered...
...From the beginning, the Communists made it clear that this was not their perspective...
...One of the crucial tasks of the Portuguese Socialists is to persuade such peasants that democratic socialism (as distinct from authoritarian Communism) poses no threat to them whatever...
...No doubt, they would like to take advantage of the turmoil in the country...
...By contrast, the Socialist apparatus appears technically ineffectual...
...And again the Communists supported the military...
...As to the military's abandoning power after a term of four or five years—who can take that seriously...
...This is the country's most conservative area, and here the CDS and PPD gained a majority...
...The High Council of the Military—formed after the Spinolista uprising of March 11, 1975, and the army purge that followed—was at that moment the most radical wing of the MFA, but certainly not its majority...
...the people have been unable to speak freely since Salazar more than 30 years ago stopped listening to them...
...The Communists piously denied any involvement...
...When Premier Gonsalves reluctantly decided that the station must be returned to the Church, he was overruled by the Supreme Revolutionary Council of the MFA, which proceeded to "nationalize" all privately owned stations, including Radio Renascenca...
...Those in dynamic groups must know profoundly the party line...
...For one thing, the MFA's hold on power still seems tenuous, and all sides acknowledge that the Communist party has been in decline (both in membership and influence) since the April elections for the Constituent Assembly...
...The president would head the High Council of the Revolution as well as the armed forces...
...What is needed is a stable government, basically civilian in character, with the Socialists and Popular Democrats playing a major role, and with the overly politicized military (each general at the head of a faction, backed by his own battalions) returned to a subordinate role...
...They called for a "deepening" of the relationship between "the people" and MFA, through nonparliamentary, nondemocratic means...
...342 STANLEY PLASTRIK While these issues cannot be decided until the political complexion of the country becomes clear, most of them are strongly affected by the present internal struggle...
...At all crucial points in the past 15 months, the MFA-CP alliance has emerged at the center of decision-making...
...The revolution came after 48 years of harsh, clerico-corporative, semifascist dictatorship under Salazar and his pathetic successor Lisbon, August 1 Caetano...
...In Portugal, by contrast, a regime that claims to be "revolutionary" (the MFA-CP alliance) has been challenged, tentatively and hesitatingly, by what may • be called dual power in civilian form...
...The initial proposal of the Socialists that the Constituent Assembly, in addition to working on a draft Constitution, should spend part of its time discussing current affairs, the economic situation, etc...
...In part it is based on self-interest...
...The MFA stood for three things: nationalism...
...In Portugal, the simple answer is to point to the MFA—there is the power...
...The weekly Espresso, popular among the educated middle class and the best paper produced in the country, features a running critique of the MFA (Military Armed Forces) and the government...
...Some 150,000 Portuguese were drafted or recruited to go overseas to save the Empire for Salazar and Caetano—all in vain...
...But the government could not get COPCON security forces to clear the station of those who had seized it...
...The rise or fall of this Assembly is as good a sign of Portugal's political development as any...
...MFA-Povo" has become "MFA versus Povo...
...Portugal's very poverty was implicityly a weapon and a threat to the Europe it had first led into imperial adventures...
...MRPP: Movement to Reorganize the Proletarian party — both these are Maoist sects, usually described in the press as "leftists...
...Even with the aid of the Communists, this is not easy...
...The cadre-party of the Communists is incompatible with the voluntary party of the Socialists...
...Most Portuguese would agree that the United States has conducted a cautious, hands-off policy in Portugal, largely confined to watching the Russian intervention that, in turn, is felt to be strictly limited by the strategy of detente...
...Partly a throwback to the fanatical Stalinists of the 1930s, Cunhal can more fittingly be described as a Communist geared to the tactical needs of the 70s...
...Apart from proposals that nationalization be extended to all areas of the economy, and a proposal for further extension of the agrarian reform program, the novelty of the document lies in its proposals for organization of power: district (continued on page 338) PORTUGAL'S DANGLING REVOLUTION 335 councils, workers' committees, village councils, councils of cooperatives, associations of small and medium agriculturalists...
...Citing the fact that many Portuguese are now listening to foreign radio stations, "as in fascist times," in order to learn what is happening in their country, Soares accused the CP of exercising a monopoly of control over the news media...
...It keeps pointing to the possibility of a right-wing uprising, first as a way of muting its democratic opponents and second in the hope, perhaps, that a threat from the Right might reunify the "revolutionary elements...
...Ac: The 247-member, elected Constituent Assembly whose purpose is to draft a constitution — the Socialists and their allies (PPD) hold 195 seats in this body...
...one's papers and introductions wind up in wrong and unexpected places...
...They have held one authentic, successful election, and have set free the last of the colonial empires...
...It is a mass party but, except for Porto and the surrounding area, it is not yet deeply rooted in the countryside—although it won considerable support among peasant landowners in the elections...
...With such a project I respected the heterogeneity of an antifascist, antiCommunist electorate, eager for reforms, and a working class that, in its majority, seemed to reject any kind of authoritarianism or attack upon our freedoms...
...this alone justifies the revolution...
...Are these not real accomplishments...
...It is more aggressive and militant, with an effective leadership that is slowly developing its own program...
...In the south, the latifundia are in the hands of agricultural laborers awaiting the details of agrarian reform programs...
...Soares, while Minister of Foreign Affairs, had successfully arranged the liberation terms with Guinea-Bissau, Mozambique, etc...
...Perhaps more important is the debate in European intellectual circles over the meaning of such basic notions as freedom of the press, the relationship between liberty and material progress, etc...
...Or, if power is floating in space, so to say, in which direction is it floating...
...Fear is the general sickness of the population...
...Machel is essentially a Maoist ideologue and insists upon keeping the country in a state of political and psychological turmoil to avoid "backsliding...
...in addition, basic economic and social transformations that will lead us to socialism...
...By contrast, it says, rank-andfile committees of workers, peasants, soldiers, etc.—some in existence since the revolution began, and others to be formed over the years—have a "revolutionary perspective...
...Whether or not the MFA conceives this prefabricated structure as a Portuguese version of "soviet power" is hard to say...
...The Communists, on the other hand—mobilizing their forces under such slogans as "Dissolution of the Constituent Assembly...
...It was the sole formula adopted for the winning over of an electorate fearful of totalitarian Communism and which is afraid of the unknown and of adventurism...
...The MFA's original coordinating committee (set up to organize the overthrow of Caetano) then gave way to the considerably larger body, the Assembly of the Armed Forces Movement...
...344 STANLEY PLASTRIK...
...This support was endorsed by the Communists of Italy and Spain, but not by the French CP, which has sharpened its confrontation with the Socialists, reflecting the intensity of the debate over press and other freedoms in French Left circles, a debate that is closely tied to the events in Portugal...
...The Communists' total attachment to the MFA seems to give strength to this view...
...With the rising level of violence, with clashes between Communists and peasants in the countryside and between rival party demonstrators in the cities, it has become clear that only if power is turned over to a civilian government— headed by the Socialists but including all political parties and military representation— can the situation be saved from further deterioration and the danger of civil war...
...But contrary to Cunhal's claim that "fascist reaction" is responsible for the anti-Communist agitation, it must be emphasized that the actions of peasants and townsmen, especially in the north, are mainly a spontaneous revulsion against the threat of a "People's Democracy," East European style...
...This is clear enough, but the future of Portugal's relations with the excolonies is not...
...But the MFA is highly vulnerable—it needs the support of the democratic civilian parties (PSP and PPD), which in turn enjoy the support of the middle-class functionaries and professionals, the senior public functionaries, and the industrial managers and technocrats...
...Everyone in Portugal acknowledges that an old Stalinist like Cunhal has no interest in or feeling for political freedom...
...This song, played on the Portuguese radio the night of April 24, 1974, had been the armed forces' signal for launching the uprising...
...C. L. Sulzberger suggests in the New York Times that the MFA wishes to constitute itself as "a new class...
...We only know vaguely, from endless gossip, about the true -relationship of power and opinion within the MFA and its subordinate bodies...
...Its ability to mobilize large numbers of followers in Lisbon has been proved over and over again, but it has not had time to develop corresponding strength in the rural areas...
...As Kenneth Maxwell remarks...
...in other words, symbolic representation...
...And so, very early, an ideological tussle developed between the democratically oriented civilian population and the military (which was ardently supported by the Communists), over the nature of political power in Portugal...
...A 14-page document outlining the new Constitution that the Constituent Assembly was to adopt was accepted—enthusiastically by the Communists, with reservations by the other major parties...
...This is the present dynamic of the Portuguese revolution...
...The elevator at headquarters is broken...
...Fifteen months ago the MFA, through its component bodies, could legitimately claim political and organizational leadership in the revolution...
...So goes Portugal's confused, dangling, often chaotic "revolution," and so goes Portugal's sinking economy as expenditures outstrip income...
...It is the difference between authoritarianism and democracy...
...the ultra-leftist sects search for a Lenin to send the Assembly packing...
Vol. 22 • September 1975 • No. 4
