centralization
FiM AO CAPITALISMI by A. UDRY *The Sovier Union and Poland assure us that if we do not succeed in reestablishing authority and discipline, the revolution will be in danger, * declared Vasco Lourenço and Costa Neves, members of the Council of the Revolution, upon their return from the USSR. (Jornal Novo, October 7) After the failure of the occupation of the radio stations, after the response of the CICAP soldiers to the dissolution of their unit, the insistence on discipline in the army now coming from all goverriment spokesmen is not surprising. One of the characteristic features of the course of events in Portugal comes through in these many statements: the advanced crisis of the state apparatus. Nevertheless, there is a danger in seeing only this aspect of reality. In reality, the characteristic feature of the political situation taken as a whole lies precisely in the lack of correspondence between the advanced process of crisis of the bourgeois state apparatus and the level of development and centralization of the "organs of popular power." The outbreak of the struggle of the soldiers since the beginning of September and the emergence of a tendency toward self-organization in the army (about a dozen barracks now have elected soldiers commissions) have rapidly accelerated the disintegration of what constituted the keystone of the project of the sixth goverment, the government of "order" of Prime Minister Pinheiro Azevedo, But concurrently, the workers commissiors, tenant commissions, and popular assemblies have not experienced an analogous qualitative growth, neither in terms of their expansion and the integration of broad sectors of the toiling masses within them nor in terms of their level of centralization. By definition, such a lack of synchronization can only be temporary. Either a decisive step forward will be taken in the direction of the centralization of these bodies and the transition from a prerevolutionary situation to a revolutionary situation will take place, or the bourgeoisie will reconstitute more or less effective instruments for imposing its own order and discipline.
PORTUGAL toward The totality of the initiatives being taken today in both opposed camps must be seen in this context. After suffering stinging failures in the first tests of strength, the government has changed its tactics in an attempt to achieve the same objectives: The regime is now avoiding frontal attacks and is seeking to gain time to carry out its military and police projects. Very concrete measures are now being added to the appeals for discipline. In the air force, the sergeants are organizing. After a five-day meeting, a plenary assembly of air force sergeants - convoked under the impetus of General Morais e Silva - voted a motion insisting on the necessity for "an intransigent defense of the spirit of the MFA program. * The meeting also adopted a proposal to create "disciplinary councils" composed of sergeants and members of the commands of various military units in order to "examine disciplinary violations." At the same fime, the sergeants launched a public attack against the command of the RPM (Lisbon Military Police Regiment), which is known for having parficipated in workers and soldiers demonstrations on many occasions. The hierarchy is trying to reorganize and consolidate its own networks in the army. Concurrently, g real army of civil war is in process of being created: the AMI, Military Intervention Group. The various regiments that were initially supposed to compose this striking force refused to take part, so the general staff opted for recruiting volunteers. Very well paid volunteers, for a rank-and-file AMI soldier will get nearly 5,500 escudos a month, while a normal rank-and-file soldier gets only 250 escudes a month! About 3,000 volunteers, most of them ex-commandos, have already been recruited. Army Chief of Staff Fabião had the audacity to explain that this corps of genuine professional gunmen was constituted "because of the need to send commando troops to Angola in order to establish a sort of bridge to the date of independence." (A Capital, October 23.) The construction of this professional army has been combined with a reorganization of the police forces (the
PORTUGAL PSP and the GNR) and a strengthening of their operational potential. The setting in motion of this project goes hand in hand with the de facto dissolution of a large part of the units of the land army: about a third of all soldiers are going to be demobilized. In oddition, many militia officers known for their militant activity have been placed on unlimited leave. While the crisis in the army is extremely deep and while the progress of self-organization among the soldiers is important, in the present situation it would be erroneous and dangerous to believe that the disintegration of the army has gone so far that the hierarchy is incapable of taking any initiative. To be sure, the hierarchy needs time to reconstitute militarily solid elements that are worthy of confidence, but its project can fail only as a result of the capacity of the soldiers and workers to take decisive new steps in the organization of self-defense, within the framework of the extension of the "organs of popular power." For example, the surveillance of arms stocks has become an important point in the battle for the restoration of "capitalist order and discipline" in Portugal. In face of the maneuvers of reaction, which at the moment that it is arming the soldiers of the counterrevolution is trying to prevent at all costs a possible arming of the "organs of popular power" for their own self-defense, the control of arms stocks becomes a task that can be jointly planned by the soldiers and workers. That has been stated clearly by several hundred soldiers in Lisbon in a public declaration. In face of the creation of the AMI and the repressive measures that may come down on the most militant soldiers, the coordination and centralization of the soldiers commissions, once their development has attained a certain level, can permit an effective response. That is one of the lessons drawn by those who led the struggle of the RASP and the CICAP (Artillery Regiment of Serro de Pilar and Instruction Center for Military Vehicle Drivers of Porto). Finally, the mobilization of the workers of the estabelecimentos fabris, a group that includes all the arms factories, can also be part of the development of self-defense. On October 6 several thousand workers of these various factories organized a demonstration in Lisbon. They demanded: "The reconversion and restructuring of the factories, the abolition of the Rules of Military Discipline, workers control, wage increases, improved social conditions." The mere control of deliveries of military matériel, like the publication of the list of some of the AMI volunteers, could throw some light on the government's projects and give the lie to Fabião's asserfions about the function of these shock troops. The deepening of the economic recession and the structural crisis striking many industrial branches (textiles, clothing, shoes, shipbuilding, etc.) are stimulating a new rise of movements for workers demands. These move4 ments are taking on two new characteristics: First, they are confronting a government that is not prepared to make many concessions. Thus, for the first time, broad sectors of the working class are developing an attitude of distrust and opposition to the government. Their politicization is accelerating. Second, the depth of the structural crisis is such that the limitation of demands for wage increases, shorter hours, or simple demands against layoffs are rapidly becoming clearer. Hence, there are more and more lists of demands that more or less clearly call for the nationalization of the entire sector, branch-wide planning, and even socialist planning of the whole economy "in order that the reconversion of one sector does not enter into contradiction with the reconversion of another, " as was affirmed in a joint declaration of the workers of Lisnave and Setnave (shipyards). During a general assembly of the workers commissions of the CUF company held October 4 the following motion was passed: "If, within one week, the governmental bodies do not take concrete measures for the solution of the grave problem of fertilizer with which the agricultural workers are confronted, the Unity Commission of the CUF will convoke a general assembly of workers to decide to immediately and directly grant the organizations of agricultural workers the fertilizer needed to advance the agrarian reform. The bills, with a discount of 30 percent, will be sent to the nationalized bank." (República, October 7.) The junction between the agricultural and industrial workers is being established on a level never attained before. Moreover, on October 12 a meeting was held near Evora of 800 delegates of agricultural workers and metalworkers of the South to discuss their respective problems. While the influence of the Communist party has been felt in all these mations, which talk about the benefits of the agrarian reform not only for the workers but also for the "small and medium-sized agricultural-material enterprises, "there is no doubt that the quality of the demands indicates that the problems of socialist planning are posed on the agenda. Hence, the objective of the development and the centralization of the "organs of popular power" is becoming concretized. In fact, this is increasingly tied to the effective needs of brood layers of workers, needs that are expressed in the demands for planning, generalized workers control, and so on. Further, on the basis of such demands, the objective possibility of unifying the various components of the working class is much greater. To take advantage of this opportunity to resolve the above-mentioned lack of synchronization in a positive direction — that is, to stimulate a centralization of the workers commissions, tenant commissions, popular assemblies, and soldiers commissions into a National Popular Assembly - remains the priority task of revolutionaries. That requires an initiative capacity linked to a correct policy of the broadest unity in action in order to avoid the traps of "partisan" pseudocentralization, which facilitate reformist maneuvers.
SUL SEMPRE AO LADO DO POVO SOLDADOS, SEMPRE, AVEN In the last issue of INPRECOR (No. 36, October 23) we published an interview with a member of one of the commissions set up during the occupation of the barracks of the RASP (Artillery Regiment of Serro do Pilar), an occupation that constituted the first response to the government's dissolution of the CICAP (Instruction Center for Military Vehicle Drivers of Porto). The struggle of the RASP and the CICAP is of extreme importance at a time when the general staff is creating a professional army (as is shown by the new Military Intervention Group, AMl) made up of volunteers, ex-commandos, ex-legionnaires, dismissing thousands of recruits, and placing militia officers on indefinite leave and when the officers of the general staff who claim to be "progressive" are trying to control the movement of soldiers by all available means. We are publishing below an interview with a member of the northern region of the SUV (Soldados Unidos Vencero-Soldiers United Will Win) who was elected to the RASP-CICAP "struggle commission, " the commission that was charged with directing this struggle. A plenary session of the RASP-CICAP was scheduled to beheld on October 24 to axamine the situation and draw up a balance-sheet in the wake of the promises made by Army Chief of Staff Fabião on October 14. (See INPRECOR, No. 36, October 23.) But the general staff of the northern region, utilizing the pretext that there was danger of a coup, consigned the soldiers to barracks. Thus, the plenary assembly was able to draw only a minority of soldiers, about 300 of them. On October 29 a demonstration was organized in Porto. Its relative success - 500 soldiers and several thousand damonstrators - illustrated both the problems posed by such a protracted mobilization and the maneuvering abilities of the general staff, which ordered nighttime maneuvers for October 29 in an effort to prevent the soldiers from leaving the barracks. We have deliberately limited the interview to the questions of most general interest. It was taken in Porto on October 24.