2023-11-28 14:49:04
By: Maria Silva
Carlos Moedas, president of the Lisbon Chamber, announced that the autarky would celebrate November 25, 1975 in the name of the defense of democracy. But what does this date mean?
April 25, 1974: a democracy conquered
The anti-colonial revolution and the impasse of the war in Africa led a sector of the army to depose the Estado Novo. The military coup opened the doors to the revolution, in which workers and youth took control of their destiny. They were the ones who defeated the counterrevolutionary attempts, which wanted to condition and control the new regime that was going to emerge (as happened in Spain, for example), as demonstrated by the coup attempts of General Spínola on September 28, 1974 and on September 11. March 1975. Portuguese democracy was not offered but conquered by the force of the struggle of the masses in the streets and in the workplace, imposing the Constituent Assembly, the dismantling of the PIDE, the sanitation of companies, etc. . It was not the result of an agreed transition between the dictatorship and the new regime, but of a revolution.
The revolution put socialism on the order of the day
But the fight for the most basic needs of the population (Peace, Bread, Housing, Health, Education) required going beyond democracy and fighting against capitalism. In the front line were the workers, agricultural workers and youth, who formed their own organizations: committees of workers, neighbors and soldiers who voted and decided the course to follow. There was, thus, a double power in the country: the power of the Provisional Governments, led by the bourgeoisie (which made up the PS, PSD and PCP), and the power of the Commissions of Workers, Soldiers and Residents, which represented an embryo of a workers’ state. The revolution had as its horizon socialism and a society without exploitation or oppression, and it gave rise to the organizations that could serve as a basis for that new power.
A first defeat of the revolution
Both the PS and the PCP were against this power that was born in the streets. The PS defended a bourgeois democracy, similar to that of Western Europe. The PCP was conditioned by the USSR policy of accepting the division of the world in two and Portugal was in the Western Bloc; For this reason, he did not intend to establish socialism in Portugal, but rather to dispute a space in the State apparatus that would allow him to control the labor movement and ensure that the country was not directly aligned with the capitalist bloc of the United States and Europe. With different projects, PS, PCP and MFA had a great agreement: accept the maintenance of capitalism in Portugal and defeat the self-organization of the workers that questioned their power.
Therefore, the objective of the coup of November 25 was to defeat the revolution and its own organizations. The bourgeoisie took advantage of a provocation from the “leftist” military sector to put an end to double power within the Armed Forces, which was one of the most radical elements of the Portuguese revolution, since it took away from the bourgeoisie the control of force to impose its social and political order. The PCP called on its militants not to resist the coup (unlike what happened on March 11). Behind this there was a great pact between the PS and the PCP: the acceptance of the project of bourgeois democracy in Portugal, in which the PCP would have the determining role of controlling the labor movement, until today so visible in the characteristics of the Portuguese union movement. .
Commemorating November 25, 1975 is denying the revolution
November 25 did not put an end to the revolution, but it was its first major defeat, opening space for a new relationship of forces.
In the name of “democratic socialism” (as the PS called it), the 1976 Constitution established, in effect, a bourgeois democracy. There was a lack of a revolutionary leadership that defended the centralization of the commissions of workers, neighbors and soldiers, to take power and build a workers’ State.
Fifty years later, it is clear the dead end to which the power of the bourgeoisie has led us and from which we can only get out again through the revolutionary struggles of workers and youth. Therefore, there is nothing to celebrate on November 25 and only the fight for a new revolution can give meaning to the celebrations of April 25!
Text originally published in the newspaper In Fight, nº 13 – November 2023
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