A worker who struggles every day to make ends meet, not to be evicted from his home, to receive dignified care in the SNS or to ensure that his children have a teacher, cannot fail to be outraged by the atrocities committed by the Costa government, namely, the collusion with millionaire managers, whether they are those paid with taxes from all of us, or those who also steal workers from the private sector.
Editorial of In Struggle, Portugal
However, we do not forget, as the right-wing parties want to do so much, that this use of the state apparatus to protect the rich and their administrators is not only a characteristic of the PS, but also of the PSD/CDS governments.
Faced with the crisis of the Government of Costa and the use that the right wing intends to make of it, some voices seek to excuse the Government given the danger of the return of a right-wing or extreme-right government. But it was exactly this argument that gave the PS an absolute majority to unload the costs of inflation on the workers, while EDP and Galp, Continente and Pingo Doce, or the big banks, make millions. Or, more recently, he wants to threaten to end the teachers’ strike, seeking to claim its illegality, just for its impact. It is the protection of the PS that fuels the growth of the right, not the opposite.
For his part, Paulo Raimundo, the new general secretary of the PCP, in a recent interview points to the return of the Geringonça model, opening the doors to alliances between the parliamentary left and the PS. Here, too, we have already seen that the road is not serving us: it drowned the confidence and spirit of struggle of the working class and youth in the illusions of conciliation with the bosses and the government, and it did not reverse the decline in living conditions nor the project of submission of the country. The extreme right also grew there.
Contrary to what Costa said: we are not going to get used to it. Neither the two pesos and the two measures of the government, with a strong hand for the workers and protection for the administrators, nor the false dichotomy that either it is the PS (with or without tied left) or it is the return of the right. The year-end struggles in Autoeuropa, and now the struggle of teachers defending the dignity of their profession, but also of the public school itself, show that there are other paths. Enough of accepting the lesser evil and constant blackmail. Enough of bowing your head or waiting for the usual solutions. It is necessary to recover confidence in our forces and unify the struggles, to build a true alternative to capitalism and its dirty businesses.
Article published in https://emluta.net, 1/13/2023.-
Translation: Natalia Estrada.