generalization of workers councils
The economic situation is getting worse all the time. Last January, official statistics claimed that more than 200,000 were unemployed. Today the figure 300,000 is accepted in government circles. Portuguese industry, based around exports, has been hit full force by the international recession. The major industries, textiles and clothing, which employ about 200,000 workers and export 90 percent of their production, have been hard hit by a drastic reduction in orders. Both the structural weoknesses of Portuguese industry and bourgeois economic sabotage compound the effects of the international recession. The deficit in the trade balance is growing; because of the agricultural crisis, food products are high on the list of imports. The repercussions of this trade deficit on the balance of payments are especially great because the fraditional compensating factors are no longer operative: the income provided by money sent back by immigrant workers and by tourism. In face of the aggravation of this crisis and of the political maturation of the working class, the tensions within the MFA (Armed Forces Movement) reflect in a deformed way the growing polarization between the two fundamental classes of Portuguese society. The resolution of June 21 published by the Council of the Revolution itself expresses the deep crisis of leadership racking the
PORTUGAL MFA. The basic project seems to go in the direction of centralizing power even further and of consolidating the state apparatus, which implies more assertive control over the organs of self-organization of workers and soldiers (the reaction against the soldiers committees is indicative of this). Nevertheless, the formulations of the text leave the door open for initiatives that, under the cover of control over the instruments of self-organization, nonetheless move in the direction of links between soldiers and workers. All the ambiguity of the present situation is reflected in this phenomenon. Any new step forward in the revolutionary upsurge would put severe strains on the increasingly fragile unity of the MFA. Workers struggles are continuing, although there has been some slowdown in their pace. Essentially, they are developing around demands related to employment guarantees and responses to layoffs, , factory closings, and lockouts. Nevertheless, sentiment about the insufficiency of occupations, workers' restarting of production, and the demand for nationalizations is on the rise among the workers. More and more, these initiatives and demands appear as insufficient in themselves to deal with the economic crisis. And the "battle for production," placed in the center of the propaganda of the Communist party, the
Intersindical (the trade-union federation), and the MFA since May 1, has only a limited grip on the working class, which is increasingly asking itself such questions as: Production for whom? Production of what and how? How are the nationalized companies (60 percent of all companies) to be managed ? Who will decide on a central economic plan and how will the workers be able to define the objectives of the plan and control it application? While the working class is exhibiting some hesitation in moving to a higher stage of struggle, of the same time these questions are being discussed among rank-and-file workers. They can be summed up in the formula: "battle for production" or "battle for power"? Even more significant are the instances of initiatives of self-defense that have occurred during the past two weeks. First, many workers commissions are insisting on the necessity of dealing with fascist sabotage. In many communiqués the workers are putting the emphasis on the urgency of making military instruction available to all worker militants. Second, an effective linkup between the soldiers and the workers commissions and neighborhood committees is developing. Some workers commissions are receiving military instruction in some barracks. Some soldiers are training militants of the tenant commissions and workers commissions. These initiatives are not yet very extensive, but they nonetheless mark a change in the relations between the soldiers and the instruments of self-organization of the toiling masses. This is porticularly important in that reaction is now trying to take advantage of the crisis situation to launch harassment operations against the headquarters of workers organizations and against the militants of these organizations. In the North, for example, Communist party militants in Viseu were attacked by reactionary gangs. In Sao Joco de Madeira (near Porto) a demonstration of about 1,000 people was organized to demand the release of a fascist employer, a member of the far-right ELP (Portuguese Liberation Army). The church is trying to gather together a part of the forces of reaction and is organizing a big assembly in Lisbon for June 29. Reaction is increasingly preparing for a confrontation with the regime, The leadership of the Socialist party, under the cover of a campaign for "socialism with freedom, " is taking many initiatives to defend bourgeois parliamentary democracy (against workers democracy based on workers 28 and soldiers councils), to maintain private property and combat "anarchy" in the factories, and to support "order in the army". (against self-organization of the soldiers). During the June 23 demonstration, which was presented as a demonstration in support of the Council of the Revolution, a reactionary tone was dominant, especially in that the demonstration wos joined by the PPM (the monarchist party), the PPD (Posular Democratic party), the CDS (Social Democratic Center), and the Maoists of the Portuguese Communist party (Marxist-Leninist). In face of these Social Democratic maneuvers, the Communist party, while proclaiming the necessity of unity, is setting the "battle for production" as the objective for which the workers should fight in order to attain this unity. A "battle" that involves challenging the mobilizations and demands of the workers! There is a deep sentiment for unity within the working class, a result of the victory of March 11, This sentiment is expressed both in the emergence and strengthening of organs of workers self-organization (neighborhood commissions, tenants commissions, workers commissions, efc.) and in the trade uniors, where the workers are monifesting their will to reach real agreement, after discussion, on the various problems that confront them. In face of the division that the bureaucratic apparatuses can stimulate within the working class, in face of the necessity for taking a step forward to respond to the fundamental economic and social problems that are posed for the Portuguese toiling masses today, and in face of the reactionary conspiracy, our comrades of the Liga Comunista Internaciona lista (Internationalist Communist League, sympathizing organization of the Fourth International) are waging a systematic campaign for the unity in action of all the organizations and representative orgons of the workers and for the generalization and centra lization of organs of democratic and proletarian power. The LCI is waging this campaign in a united front with other organizations, such as the Movimento Esquerda Socialista (Left Socialist Movement), LUAR, etc. We are publishing below a call for the "building and generalization of workers councils" issued by the LCI on June 17. A coming issue of INPRECOR will publish large excerpts from an LCI manifesto presenting the essential positions of revolutionaries on the way to combar the crisis and struggle for socialism.
STATEMENT OF THE LCI
Forward to the building and generalization of workers councils! Create and unify armed self-defense pickets in the unions, neighborhoods, and factories!
1975 1. The political situation is rapidly increasing in tension. Along with an offensive by the reactionary forces of the FLNA and UNITA, capitalist reaction is once again launching its attacks: bombs, explosives, attacks on the headquarters of workers organizations, especially in the interior of the country, reactionary demonstrafions in the Azores and the Madeira Islands, The methods of reaction are provocation, terror, economic sabotage, massive layoffs, and systematic attacks on the buying power of the workers. The theft of arms from the Santa Margarida barracks is
RUSSIA 1917 PORTUGAL an important step in the offensive of reaction. Nevertheless, the workers are organizing their response with a determination even more assertive than that which permitted the crushing of the attempted coups of September 28, 1974, and March 11, 1975: armed self-defense detachments and antifascist vigilance committees in contact with the workers and tenants commissions are springing up and becoming generalized. But at the same time, the government and the MFA are not putting forward the Fundamental means that would
PORTUGAL enable reaction to be swept away: dissolution and disarming of the fascist gangs, arrest and public trial of counterrevolutionaries, arming of the unions and the Intersindical (the trade-union federation) and workers and tenants commissions. 2. The present impasse cannot go on for long. The workers, basing themselves on their mass organizations, con take their destiny into their own hands! The revolution will advance toward the power of the workers and their representafive organs - councils of elected delegates in the factories, neighborhoods, and villages - only if the basic steps to beat reactionary resistance, put an end to unemployment and poverty, and crush reaction and its parties are taken right now. We will advance down this road by struggling for: *the generalization and unification of all the popular vigilance committees linked to armed self-defense pickets in the unions and factories and directed by local coordinating bodies of the workers and tenants commissions. * the immediate convocation of zonal assemblies centralizing and pressing forward the creation of delegates councils in all factories, impelling forward the strengthening of workers commissions charged with exerting workers confrol over the work pace, orders, and stocks, with holding general assemblies for controlling all administrative activities (as at CUF, where the workers have demanded nationalization), and, finally, with proposing to the tenants commissions the setting of prices and controlling of prices of food, transport, and rent. *the application of a radical agrarian reform giving the produce of the land to those who till it, unifying the common struggle of the workers of the countryside and the cities against capitalist exploitation, for the socialist revolution. 3. Those are the measures that must be applied immediately. In many factories the workers have already taken initiatives in this direction. That is the rood of struggle against capitalist reaction and for socialism. In order to go forward, today more than ever it is necessary to form a solid united front of all the workers organizations. All workers, all revolutionaries, all militants struggling for socialism, those of the Communist party, the Socialist party, and all the revolutionary organizations, must unite in representative bodies of workers against capital and reaction. To crush the gangs of the PPD and the CDS, to prevent new reactionary provocations, to defend the workers and their struggles, to defeat economic sabotage and imperialist pressure, it is not enough simply to assert the will for unity. We must participate massively in the workers and tenants commissions, in the zonal assemblies, in the village councils, in the popular vigilance committees. 4. But in order for these measures to be extended throughout the country and be really applied, if is necessary to go beyond the hesitations of this fourth provisional 30 government. Stumbling from crisis to crisis, it is ever more incapable of dealing with the unemployment (which now affects more than 200,000 workers), the reactionary offensive, or the imperialist pressure. It is necessary to impose a government that breaks with the policy of class collaboration, nationalizes without compensation and under workers control the big commercial, industrial, and agricultural companies, establishes a monopoly of foreign trade and creates a single state bank, disarms the reactionaries, dissolves their organizations, and bans their activities, generalizes workers control throughout the system of production and exchange and throughout the whole economy on the basis of a central plan, and definitively guarantees the democrafic rights of the workers and soldiers. This government of workers organizations must be conFrolled by the workers and by trade-union, neighborhood, and factory assemblies and must be responsible to the workers councils elected in the work places and neighborhoods. This government will have to be based on the workers, on their demands, decisions, and permanent mobilizotion. It will have to be bosed on representative committees of soldiers, sailors, ond airmen that press the purge of fascists to its conclusion, organize general assemblies within which all officers are elected, and guarantee the right of propaganda and assembly to all political and trade-union currents. 5. From this point on, for the workers and popular movement the present crisis represents much more than a government crisis, If is thus urgent to elect workers commissions or delegates councils that can structure the workers offensive, prepare the zonal assemblies, organize self-defense, and coordinate the tenants commissions with the assemblies and elected committees of soldiers and sailors. It will be around these bodies that the workers will have to gather in determined fashion in order to: *apply workers democracy, decide the future, and choose representatives; *prepare a real national workers assembly uniting all the organizations of workers and peasants, whether in or out of uniform, and struggling for socialism. It is necessary to prepare for decisive struggles!
For the socialist revolution, for socialism based on workers and soldiers councils, on international solidarity with the struggle of the Spanish workers and revolutionaries and of the former Portuguese colonies. For the building of a revolutionary workers party, proletarian leadership of the anticapitalist mass movement! FORWARD TO THE SOCIALIST REVOLUTION! FOR THE SOCIALIST UNITED STATES OF EUROPE!
The June 11 General Strike in the Basque Country
In the last issue of INPRECOR (No.29, June 19, 1975) an ambiguous formulation that could create confusion slipped into the editorial on the June 11