The almost spectacular indifference with which most workers reacted to the events of November 25 is not difficult to understand, Neither the Nine/FMU nor the PCP/FUR had anything relevant to offer in relation to their fundamental needs, to their real life. To choose the one rather than the other was to choose one boss in preference to another. In many ways the forces which came out on top on November 25 were the ones which appeared to offer the easiest way out, for to carry through the projects of FUR or COPCON would have brought the wrath of Europe and America down on the workers' heads.
Sometime during the afternoon of the 25th the Central Committee of the PCP had drawn certain conclusions. They had two choices: a) to support the paras and call for street mobilisation. This, most probably, would have led to a 'Lisbon and Alentejo Commune', rejected by the rest of the country but which might have survived a few weeks. Such an 'adventure', they must have calculated, would have lost them the entire leadership of the crisis. Power would be lying in the streets and on the barricades, and there they would be outflanked. b) to hold back, to compromise with 'the Nine' (through Costa Gomes) and to seek to reap what benefits they could from this. Given the state capitalist nature of the Party, the second strategy was the less dangerous. Although they would lose their power in the ministries, they would retain considerable control over the state infrastructures, i.e. in the unions, the CMs, the CTs, the co-operatives and the media.
In any event the turn~ut on November 25 had been poor. The PCP was faced with the prospect of losing everything. It decided to throw to the wolves the officers it had used in the weeks prior to November 25. In return it would keep its place in the government. 'The Nine' knew they couldn't control the workers on their own. They needed the PCP. Brigadier Charais said as much in a radio interview on November 29.
As in all Portuguese crises to date the outcome was an extension of state control: the remaining capital of 8 newspapers and of all radio stations was nationalised. But it wasn't so much nationalisation that was on the mind of 'the Nine': it was control of that vast section of the economy already in the hands of the state (65% according to official statistics, though other reports -that of the Banco Pinto Magalhies for instance - put the figure as high as 74%). Five morning and three evening papers were given new managements. Information became a major state prerogative. 0 Seculo, Diario de Noticias, A Capital, Jornal de Noticias, Diaro de Lisboa, Diario Popular, Jornal do Comercio and Comercio do Porto as well as a variety of state owned magazines and radio stations received major 'overhauls'. The PCP, despite its machinations, lost many of its positions in the media. The political parties, perhaps to their own surprise, survived November 25. Those inheriting the newly strengthened state apparatus realised that political parties (left or right) were a necessary ingredient of the democratic camouflage. All the parties (PPD, PS, PCP, CDS FUR, UDP, PCP-ml and MRPP) were invited 'for talks' at Belem on Sunday, November 30. On learning he was only to be received by a presidential aide, Arnaldo Matos, leader of the MRPP, took his usual 'bourgeois enfant terrible' stance - and left his own aide to do the talking. It was typical of the personality of the leninist leaders.
The autonomous workers' groups (i.e. those outside party, or 'non-party' party fronts) received most of the stick. A search for weapons was started. The GNR (now rearmed) 'investigate if over 40 cooperatives and autonomous proletarian organisations. The local Infantry School and GNR threw a cordon around the cooperative at Aveiras de Cima, in Ribatejo. The workers were herded out into the cold night, in their bed~lothes. 'Where are the guns? ' No one answered. The GNR began to search, finding one G3. No one owned up. There were threats of arrests. A worker owned up for the rest; two men were arrested all the same. 'All living together, eh? Sleeping together, too? 'a GNR officer smirked. No one answered. Some factories were likewise searched as were the Popular Clinics of Santa Cruz and Cova de Piedade.
The PRP headquarters were raided, but then a raid there was almost 'de rigueur' in view of their boasts about weapons. None were found. Had they been distributed? Were they hidden elsewhere (for an even bigger 'emergency')? Had they ever existed? Captain Fernandes (who had certainly distributed 1500 G3 automatic rifles and had then sensibly disappeared) was declared a deserter and an order for his arrest sent out. These searches, aimed at bringing the organisations into line, were to continue right up to March 1976.
The main repercussion of November 25 was a strengthening of the state apparatus, allowing it a more coherent and united approach to control and 'planning'. This required the modification of other projects of state control. This was achieved rather drastically, through a series of purges in various ministries - in particular the Ministries of the Economy, of Internal Affairs and of Agriculture and Fisheries. More specifically it required firmer control over the workers' organisations and over the Army. The differences between the two technocratic projects ('Nine'-PS and PCP-FUR) can be looked at from an economic point of view, though obviously there were wider ramifications. The proposed 'solutions' differed in the pace of the nationalisations envisaged and in the sectors to be nationalised. What constituted the 'commanding heights' of the economy depended on the general direction chosen for the 'development of the productive forces' and this in turn was related to international agreement between various states. The Nine never questioned the principle of nationalisation: the argument was about the areas or sectors considered most in need of development.
What people thought was the collapse of capitalism was in act a crisis which allowed this mode of production to advance. The private monopolies had been neutralised and the various technocratic groups struggled as to what would come next. Each had its own vision of distribution and envisaged production accordingly. For the PS and PPD the future was Europe. For others (Melo Antunes, for instance) it was the Third World. A few doubtless dreamed of endless trade with Albania and China. No one was asking at what cost - or at whose cost - the new production would be established. There was no basic awareness of the law of value - hence an ambiguity about the whole question of production and about the proletariat itself.
These technocrats (from the PS, through the military 'left', to the so-called extreme left groups) shared the same general historical perspectives: to subordinate the economic to the political, and the sweat of production (done by the workers) to calculations about distribution (done by the technocrats). The proletariat, as Marx had said, had no ideals to defend. It was a body on which ideals would have to be fitted. Capitalists and state-capitalists alike were in business for just that. For the mass of maimed individuals salvation was a choice between one vanguard and another (each pretending it wasn't a vanguard). The super-revolutionary vanguards are never like ordinary people. That's why we're supposed to look up to them, and never voice what our alienation demands. For the revolutionary misfits, i.e. the proletariat, decisions about life were being taken by others. Tomorrow the International 'would be the human race'. Today, sadly, demands and perspectives centred on 'national independence.
* * * The "coup' of November 25 wasn't 'A la Pinochet' as PRP (and others) had guessed. It wasn't even 'A Ia Noske'. And it didn't herald a return of capital into private hands as all the foreign press (including the Financial Times and Le Monde) said it would.
It represented a step, a pause, an attempt by the state to catch up with itself, to draw its breath and to generate policies from above to put its house in order. As a first step all military communiqu~s other than those emanating from the Military Chief of Staff and the 'Revolutionary Council' were forbidden. A decision was taken to reduce the armed forces to 12,000 men by 1978. Many conscripts, due to be called were excused But the army provided employment for thousands of young then and there would be difficulties. in the meantime the ADUs in the barracks were abolished. Traditional discipline was restored.
Plans for the 'censorship of pornography' were worked out (the military always have an obsession about this matter). All further occupations of land were prohibited by the Minister of Agriculture. Only 4 occupations took place between November 1975 and February 1976, compared to 400 between September and November 1975. Some 700,000 hectares had still to be reallocated if the 'law on Agrarian Reform' was to be implemented, but the state clearly wanted to assimilate what had already been taken over before any new occupations were made.
All this, of course, didn't satisfy the extreme right, who saw Melo Antunes as a 'dyed in-the-wool' communist. The forces of ELP and MDLP continued to organise and to dream of a return to the 'good old days'. Bombings continued in the North, in Braga, in P6voa de Varzim, etc. In Braga alone no fewer than 7 bombs exploded during the weekend of January 28-29. The UDP and the unions were the chief targets. The forces which had been active on September 28 and March 11 were again on the offensive There was a lot of talk (mainly by the left-wing groups) of a 'return of the bosses' from Brazil and the US. But the new state was not prepared to give them back what it had gained. In certain instances, certain bosses were allowed back . .. as managers. By mid-January 1976 some 128 'requests' by ex-bosses had been received. Tellingly, it was the Ministry of Labour whose task it was to unravel all this. The Ministry of Agriculture issued instructions giving March 1, 1976 as the closing date for compensation claims by ex-landowners. By March only 19 cases of 're-occupation' had been registered and some 10 cases of 'reprivatisation' (i.e. return to private ownership). The latter cases (all in the northern textile industry) had been called for by the workers themselves. In many cases where workers called for support for the old boss this was refused by the state authorities.
What had happened on November 25 was that one of the bureaucratic-military groups (actually an alliance of groups) -had managed to impose its will on the others. But there were enormous differences between the old PIDE and the new police: the new regime regarded the opposition' parties as essential and concentrated its attacks on the base groups. During the first waves of reprisals, the parties moved to defend themselves first and foremost. They 'forgot' all their fine phrases about 'the defence of the workers'. Their first reflex was to tighten up their own apparatus. But really they had little to fear: were essential to the new schema.
The government move more cautiously in relation to the working class in general. They were confronted with some 800 industrial cooperatives and with some 200 enterprises under workers' control, not to mention the thousands of cases of 'workers' vigilance' (a term coined by a Lisnave worker to describe the situation in that firm). In addition there were over 600 agricultural cooperatives (most of them legalised by May 1976). This meant that over one-fifth of all agricultural land in Portugal (one million hectares out of 4,974,158) was under some form of collective control. House occupations, which had reached 35,000 before November 25, were maintained. Squatters were not prepared to give up their rights just because the PCP and left parties had lost a few ministries.
November 25 was, however, to affect the workers in a very direct way. Prices had been frozen after March 11 'for the remainder of the year'. They were now 're-fixed' and this meant they now incorporated all the hidden, state-supported inflation that had occurred in the intervening nine months. In January 1976 there was an I all-round 40% increase in food prices. People complained and there were cases of refusal to pay. But no organised opposition developed, despite attempts by UDP and PRP. The workers tried to increase their pay packets, to get the extra month's wage which most had ‘won' over the previous year, but which many private and state enterprises were refusing to pay. During February and March 1976 some 380 factories went on strike and thousands passed protest motions against the new policies. The bosses had found a new confidence and the state was gradually taking things under its wing .
Lavandaria Portugalia is a dry cleaning concern. It has branches all around Portugal and a central plant in Ajuda (Lisbon) employing 198 workers, mainly women. In November 1974, after a lock-out and a day's strike it 'fired" the boss and went into self-management. The enthusiasm was overwhelming: everyone was to be paid the same wage (4500 escudos a month). Some 30 women in the worst jobs (the 'pressing' section, working in a temperature of 400C) called for better pay. A general assembly rejected this, the majority viewpoint being that socialism had to begin with equal wages for all. In September 1975 the pressers had organised a Committee of Struggle to put their demands to the Workers' Committee, but were denounced by the rest of the workers.
November 25 came and went and the old bosses started hanging around the central offices (as many other bosses began to do). A part of the Committee of Struggle (some 90 workers altogether) supported the boss. 'He, at least, understood the peed for differentials'. The CT condemned this Committee as 'an attempt to create an intolerable situation for the finances of the enterprise, with the aim of bringing back the boss'. The Committee said 'the boss must return. He is the guarantor of our bread. And, anyway, he is the owner of all this'. The boss said he would only pay wages if half the staff were dismissed. The CT decided to call in the PS-oriented Ministry of Labour, who recommended that the boss be taken back ... as a manager.
At Manuel Goncalves' textile factory at Famalicao (see p.270) things developed rather differently. The PCP had totally disgraced itself. Gonqalves could count on man workers voting in his favour. He outlined his own conditions for returning: a) full democracy for the CT within the factory(!); b) state help; c) freedom to determine his own market. The government accepted the first two conditions, but not the last (they had a general policy for the textile industry). But the fact that Goncalves, an ANP supporter before April 25th, could stipulate 'workers' democracy' as a condition for his return only illustrates the absence of such democracy when the or was under PCP control. Seventeen PCP workers were fired by the CT and refused entry to the factory. The government opposed this decision saying that Gon calves could Only return if the 17 workers stayed on. The case of Sanimar, a Lisbon factory making sinks and lavatory bowls and employing some 350 workers, is even more informative. In October 1975 a plenano had fired the boss and elected a CT of 5 workers to manage the company. Some workers in the sales department and offices sided with the boss and boycotted the plenario. The CT then discovered that the boss' friends in these departments were helping him remove goods to the value of some 6 million escudos. These were being stored in a warehouse in Setubal, where the sales department workers had actually opened a shop to sell them.
The 'Secretary of State for Public Investments' at first recognised the representativity of the CT elected by the plenario. But after talks between the boss, the (PS) Minister of Labour and the Ministry of Finance it was decided to nationalise the company and to appoint a state functionary as manager. This, it was argued, was the only way to assure the 'unity of the workers. The CT refused to accept this decision, calling it 'anti-worker and anti-democratic' and decided to throw the 'three well-spoken gentlemen' (from the ministries) off the premises. The Ministry of Labour called in the GNR to back up their plans for nationalisation. They closed down the factory, locking out the workers for three weeks. The workers were eventually forced to accept nationalisation and returned to work.
There were hundreds of cases in January and February 1976 where workers took more radical stances and actions than they had in the months before November 1975. Only now, it was no longer spectacular. Termo-Electrica Genia, an electrical parts firm in Lisbon with a hundred workers, took over their factory. The police had to rescue the boss from the hands of the workers. At Conlus (ladies' underwear) the workers went on strike for back wages. The government paid up. Busmen's strikes in Coimbra, Porto and Barreiro took the form of not collecting fares. At Firestone, the workers kidnapped the American bosses and demanded a ransom from the parent company, to pay back wages. These struggles continue.
With a million hectares under occupation the workers prepared for their first 'collective harvest. What the government planned was to 'commercialise' these cooperatives, forcing them to sell their olive oil, wine and cereals to state controlled institutions (the Wine-producers Association, the Institute of Cereals, etc.) who would arrange for their further distribution. Failing this, credits would not be allocated.
By prohibiting all further occupations the state was creating a certain division among the agricultural workers, hoping thereby to control them better Many further occupations were attempted (like at Vale de Sobrados near Evora) but the local GNR were immediately called and the workers evicted.
The problems of small tenant farmers were becoming acute Many who had rented land for a season, for a particular crop (wheat or tomatoes, for example) began to ask the state for land on which they could continue to do this. The state was slow in replying. In many cases it just refused, despite the fact that 700,000 hectares of latifundios still existed. CAP (ex-ALA) began to use these tenant farmers in their campaign against the land occupations, suggesting that the cooperatives provide land for them and falsely claiming that the workers on the cooperatives were making fantastic profits and living the good life. A group of small tenant farmers who occupied a farm near Santarem were evicted by the GNR and then proceeded to occupy part of a cooperative. The workers in the cooperative needed this land for a crop they were planning. They criticised the PS Minister of Agriculture (Lopes Cardoso) and asked that other land be given to the tenant farmers. The Minister refused. The workers finally 'gave' land from their cooperative, but in a different part of the estate. Several similar cases followed. In 1975 2.5 thousand million escudos had been paid out, as emergency credits, to workers who had occupied farms (i.e. to pay wages and to buy fertiliser and seeds). It was clear that the new administration had no intention of returning to the previous system. It was intent on using the 'cooperatives' to modernise the economy.
In places workers attempted to set up parallel economic structures. Direct selling from cooperatives to Neighbourhood Committees was organised on a wide scale in the Centre and South and proved very popular, given the increase in the cost of living. Cabbages costing 15 escudos in the supermarket were sold for 4 escudos. Wine and olive oil were also sold at much lower prices.
Party manipulations continued, however. It was now a question of who 'supported' which occupation. Money was raised for tractors and buildings but these campaigns were, in part at least, vote-catching gimmicks. It was not just the PCP and PS who indulged in all this. The fragments of FUR, scattered to the winds after November 25, began to regroup. PRP, UDP and MES (and the more reformist maoist groups) were now acting in closer unison. Their support for the cooperatives was organised through the Neighbourhood Committees which they still controlled.
Support, at times, came from other strange sources. The Hissapa Cooperative (in Bulgaria) had made a gift of 8 tractors to the Cooperative at Casebres. They had also given 4 wheat sowers and other machinery, all rather ancient-looking. The Bulgarian delegation were extremely embarrassed when the tractors couldn't be got going. Finally, by using petrol to start with, the workers managed to get the diesel motors going.
Unions of Cooperatives were formed. Here again the PCP began to intervene, demanding that the 'progressive' technicians from the IRA Centers who had been purged) be readmitted. One such Union (embracing cooperatives named New Hope, Good Hope, Alentejo Flower, Red Rose, Future, Liberty, Popular Power, Bento Goncalves, etc.) was, as might be guessed, completely PCP-dominated. It concentrated on making demands on the PS-controlled state machinery. Another was 'the Union of Vimeiro' which attempted to federate certain cooperatives with a view to mutual aid and defence against the state.
In Barcouco, near Coimbra, a group of 46 small farmers decided to join parts of their lands together to create a cooperative. 'The more advanced no longer say "hey, let's go to my land". They say "let's go to the cooperative" Clearly there are still people (and there will be for years to come) who think: "that is my land" ... The idea (of the cooperative) emerged during a plenario to resolve the problem of collecting resin from the trees ... We decided to form a cooperative, joining up our small plots. We would increase production and rent a tractor '.
The tractor was in fact given to these tenant farmers by PS militants who organised a concert for the purpose. Barcouco was an exception, however, and in the north the situation of the small tenant farmers continued as it had always been. They were poor and getting poorer.
In the North a law relating to the 'baldios' (common grounds) had been prepared by the Fourth Government. It was designed to give these grounds over to the poorer tenant farmers to graze their cattle on. When the law was finally promulgated in January 1976 it had been changed so that any farmer could use the 'baldios'. The larger farmers would obviously benefit most. This caused the tenant farmers to attack the PS (whom they now identified as the detainers of state power and the initiators of decisions). So much for their 'constitutional anti-communism.
The now fully nationalised radio and TV were amalgamated. The new company would avoid the confrontation of political views heard before November 25. The nationalised papers were given a new set of editors, mainly PS-oriented though including some 'independents' close to the PPD. It was horrible. 'The radio spoke for the people', the people were told, 'for the real people of Portugal who were tired of songs of revolt'. The authorities seemed to think the people would prefer the soft-cushioned, social-democratic music of American ice-cream parlours. Self-discipline (in their mouths a euphemism for self-repression) was urged on everyone, daily.
Poets, novelists and professional lawyers rook over editorial desks in magazine and newspaper offices. The weekly Vida Mundial and A Capital, which had been reasonably objective, were entrusted to the timid imagination of small minds. News consisted of information about what technocrats were thinking, or doing, or thinking of doing. Whereas before November 25 all news had been related to Portugal, it was now the opposite. Earthquakes, official visits, the Lebanese war all received major coverage. Comments about local affairs consisted of tirades against anarcho-populism, 'Copconism', and the burning down of the Spanish Embassy. Those who contested - and even those who questioned were denounced to a chorus of cries of 'discipline', 'discipline'. Economic collapse was predicted a hundred times a day and the workers held up as scapegoats. The workers, it appeared, were all being manipulated. Except those, of course, who had followed the parties 'victorious' on November 25. Everyday life was trodden to death with half-truths culled from the masochist repertoire of petty officials. One wanted to scream at them, at their 'freedom' - to hurl at them Mallarmo's quietly desperate 'the flesh is sad, alas, and I've read all the books Had they an inkling of the torment they were causing, of the pit into which they were pushing their listeners? What did they know of the yearnings which, in the hectic pre-November days, had provided such a strange peace of mind? Did anyone tell them that pills and alcohol were repressed forms of class struggle? Could they feel the real immiseration of the proletariat which in their mouths (and in those of their left fractions) immediately became empty rhetoric?
These new rulers, great anti-fascists all, were out to destroy both imagination and any semblance of life. These morons, with their ideas of 'pluralism' had a vision of socialism so lifeless that, as Lukacs put it, it 'crippled to the point of abnormality'. Moralism and mediocrity buttressed one another. All this pettiness in the name of order, 'sanity' ... productivity. But if all this didn't satisfy the workers, it didn't satisfy the extreme right either. With international help they launched a series of new papers attacking the left: 0 Pais, Rua, Rossio, Retornado, 0 Dia. The PCP, having lost its dominant influence in Diario de Noticias (now the propaganda organ of an aggressively insipid PS) set up its own insipid daily: 0 Diario. The left, having lost Republica because of financial difficulties, set up weeklies such as Gazeta da Semana and Pagina Um. The former was edited by an ex-MES militant who had resigned from the Fifth Government, calling it state-capitalist. The latter was in the hands of the PRP.
Radio Renascenca was handed back to the Church. Even Otelo began to wonder if his decision to back the workers had been the right one, strategically. The Church had proved so strong. Masses were heard again on Sundays, after six months of sublime silence. Mysticism was peddled everywhere.
On March 8 Diario Popular reported that 1040 PIDEs had been freed since November 25, leaving only 300 in prison. The latter were to be released later. Of those freed, 600 were under semi-house arrest. This didn't stop them from moving freely around the country, attending meetings and conducting political propaganda. Until April 1976, not a single case had been brought against the PIDEs. Up to May 1976, two years after the coup, only 108 cases were being 'processed.
The cooperative movement was not born as a revolutionary challenge to capitalism but as a state capitalist attempt to control the crisis and to guide it into channels which the established institutions could dominate. The workers occupied land, houses, factories. The state then came along with promises to 'legalise' some of their achievements. The workers, in order to survive, were forced to accept these recuperated results of their own self-activity.
Why was the government interested in industrial or agricultural cooperatives? The answer is simple. Believing that the land or factories were their own the workers would work twice as hard as they ever did for private bosses. The government lacked hard cash to invest in the restructuring of capitalism. They found something else to invest: labour power. Through this means the government secured its objective of increased production. While the workers worked towards their own integration, the technocrats congratulated themselves at having avoided a complete breakdown of the system. Many agricultural workers toiled 10 to 12 hours a a o reorganise the farms. In industrial enterprises they produced more surplus value than any private employer could ever have extracted from them. They self-managed their own exploitation.
It is obvious that nationalisation (or statification, as it should preferably be called) has nothing to do with socialism: it is merely a means of ensuring the smooth functioning of vital sectors of the economy such as transtort.power, the distribution of raw materials, there y making possible both state planning and an overall development of the productive forces. But whether these benefit the workers or not depends on how the fundamental decisions have been taken - and by whom - in the last resort on who holds power. The same ruling classes who were horrified nearly 60 years ago when Lenin and the Bolsheviks showed them how to bring about a fundamental restructuring and development of capitalism are today horrified when the state is threatened by workers who want to run things for themselves, by themselves. Nationalisation is the way out of the classical type of capitalist crisis and this previous 'heresy' is slowly (and sometimes less slowly) becoming the dominant trend of ruling class thought.
The Portuguese experience is modern in every sense. So is the Portuguese revolutionary movement. Modern not just in the attitudes of the workers and in the nature of their demands but also in the pattern of state-capitalist counter-attack which the working class practices unleashed. It is a movement which has transcended the sterile arguments between leninists and left communists that have raged for over 50 years. The advocates of the Vanguard Party are forced to disclaim the very core of their beliefs and to say that they are not parties. Council forms are fetishised and put on show, even if they have no socialist content. And people who call themselves materialists (even historical or dialectical materialists) refuse to see the material reality that stares them in the face.
The Portuguese experience between 1974 and 1976 shows that revolutionary activity does not develop as the result of strategies devised by system analysts or bourgeois planners, masquerading as revolutionary generals like Otelo or Costa Gomes. It emerges in the, the struggle itself and its in most advanced forms are expressed.by those for whom it is a necessity to struggle. Hundreds of thousands of workers entered the struggle. But the enemy constantly appeared before them in unexpected garb: that of their own organisations. Every time they set up an organisation they found it manipulated by so-called vanguards or leaders who were not of their class and who understood little of why they were struggling. Even the groups who paid lip-service to a critique of state capitalism did so because of their weakness. They were forced to support the base organisations for the time being. They were no less leninist for having a critique of state capitalism for their denunciations proved to be denunciations of particular sets of bureaucrats, not critiques of the system per se.
The revolutionaries - on a massive scale were found to be part of the problem, not part of the solution. In this the Portuguese experience may prove to be a pre-figuration of revolutions to come. The lessons should be pondered while there is yet time. The alternative is clear. It was put concisely many years ago: 'the liberation of the workers is the task of the workers themselves'.
First published by Solidarity(London)1977
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