2. To avoid the isolation of the workers commissions;
3. To combine the struggle for immediate demands with the struggle for transitional slogans (workers control, sliding scale of wages and hours. On this basis, not only can the work in the workers commissions serve as an important point of departure for the struggle for a trade-union organized on a branch basis, but also revolutionary work in the trade uniors can contribute significantly to the development of the workers commissions, especially in factories with combative trade-union commissions, to the centralization of their struggle on a national level, and to the development of the factory structures on which they can base themselves. This requires a determined struggle for trade-union democracy, for decentralization of the discussion of forms of struggle at the factory and branch level. On this basis the trade unions will be able to be in position to convoke congresses of industrial sectors based on elected structures in the factories in order to discuss the concrete problems of each sector, thus playing an important role in the coordination of the workers commissions. It is in this sense that our trade-union work, centered primarily on the sectors of workers in which a more rapid radicalization can be expected because of the economic crisis, is axised around objectives of struggle complementary to those we attribute to the workers commissions. It is also for these reasons that the LCI insists on the absolute necessity of combining both sorts of work, utilizing it overall weight at the level of factory work. Moreover, the close combination of the two sorts of work leads toward placing on the agenda the slogans of the National Congress of Workers Commissions and the Democratic Congress of all the frade unions around the axes mentioned above in relation to the work in the workers commissions. Not only are such slogans sufficiently concrete to be understood by broad sectors of workers, but they also appear as increasingly corresponding to the requirements of a workers response, to the objective needs of the working masses, and to the level of consciousness of the workers, which does not yet permit the immediate formation of a structure of centralization of all the autonomous organs. Finally, given the differences in radicalization of the working class, it is an objective of struggle that takes account of the development of the workers commissions and the trade unions, aiming at the unification of the class. By placing the emphasis on the unions and not on the Intersindical, it permits the mass base of the congress to be broadened by addressing the unions controlled by the CP and permits the unmasking of the divisive policies of the reformist or sectarion leaderships. In sum, it is a question of an intermediary objective that better corresponds to the present degree of extension and centralization of the workers commissions. Ol 18
ViCT SELFa) Since December 1973 the regular intarvention of its revolutionary militants has permitted the construction of the LCI, the deepening of its implantation and ability to take important political initiatives (anticolonia! movement in May-September 1974, antimilitarist actions), and the participation of the LCI in the leadership of some mass struggles. But there was difficulty in freeing this intervention, conducted by a handful of militants that has since expanded to the present nucleus, from some initial errors that marked our history and were a logical consequence of our small implantation af the outset combined with a formal sectarianism and some dogmatic conceptions. The uneven growth and the lack of a clear central political line, which reflected the weakness of our political experience, was nonetheless counterbalanced by the implantation that was developed and by the organization's breaking into new zones in which significant nuclei of workers were rapidly developed. But this development was often carried out at the cost of deepening the empiricism and regionalism of the intervention. It is in this sense that, in spite of the errors committed, in spite of the limits of its education and of the political debates that were conducted within it, the LCI was always integrated into the dynamic of the Portuguese revolution and participated with all its strength in the important confrontations that strengthened the revolution (September 28 and March 11). Although these political errors contributed to weakening us and led us to underutilize important political opportunities, the consolidation and strengthening of the revolutionary Marxist organization and the commitment of its militants and sympathizers to important mass struggles in the factories, enterprises, trade unions, neighborhoods, and barracks constitute a point of departure for a qualitative leap that is now possible, provided we understand and correct our previous errors.
RITICISM b) The fact that the revolutionary Marxists have held two congresses in less than five months is not evidence of any arbitrary subjectivism or a desire to discuss simply for the sake of discussion, but rather corresponds to the objective and subjective requirements of the revolutionary process itself. In this respect, Leninism, the Bolshevik practice to which the LCI adheres, certainly stands in contrast to the Stalinist and bureaucratic pracfice of holding congresses at intervals of years, congresses in which tendency differences and debates are replaced by the principle that unanimity is a virtue and differences a sin. It was exactly five months ago, in August 1975, that the last congress of the LCI was held. But in the five elapsed months, the revolutionary process has developed much faster than had been expected. During this period, revolutionary Marxists found themselves facing tasks whose scope far exceeded their forces. But what made this third (extraordinary) congress necessary was the observation of the fact that the orientation approved at the second congress had not sufficiently armed the militants for carrying out the tasks required by the rapid development of the revolutionary process. c) While the second congress, in August 1975, marked an advance in the discussion of some important questions, it nonetheless maintained and deepened some of the errors mentioned above. The analysis of the MFA, the CP, and the SP that was adopted at the congress facilitated political hesitations and tums that logically led to the signing of the August 25 accords, the acceprance of the September 10 FUR manifesto, and the participation in this front until its effective disappearance. Because of its importance and because of the political and organizational consequences, it is necessary to systematically enumerate the errors of the FUR:
- The unity in action that was possible and necessary was replaced by a "frontist" policy based on an erroneous political platform, which inevitably led objectively to sectarian and divisionist actions relative to the workers movement as a whole and subjectively to confusion about the party, which facilitated the division of the workers vanguard and the development of the "nonpartyist" current within the independent organs (the workers commissions, moradores commissions, soldiers commissions, efc.).
- The lack of any conception of the workers united front at a time when it was particularly important to stimulate united actions that would have permitted the development and presentation of a political outlet for the process of self-organization, uniting the majority of the class in defense of its social and economic conquests and responding immediately to the economic and political crisis of the bourgeoisie.
- An incorrect and extremely dangerous conception of the Social Democracy, which was identified as the twin of fascism;
- The development of putschist and insurrectionist conceptions that facilitated the events of November 25 and made it difficult to put forward an alternative political solution. The political dissolution and organizational consequences of the LCI's participation in the FUR were the product of serious errors that opened the way for a combination of sectarianism and tailendism towards the policies of the centrist organizations and the CP. In reality, a correct comprehension of the dynamic of class struggle that led to the fall of the fifth government, to the mass actions of the soldiers movement, to the new rise of generalized struggles for unifying economic demands (rural wage-earners, metalworkers, civil construction, bakers, etc.), and to the development of partial initiatives of centralization of the organs of direct democracy would have prevented the LC from signing, on August 25, an accord that supported the MFA and the fifth provisional government, giving rise to all the centrist confusion about the character of the CP and developing a sectarian policy toward the SP. This political understanding also would have permitted a different policy, based on a break with the FUR (as soon as the FUR accepted the August 25 accords) and on the recomposition of the unity in action of the revolutionary organizations to attain essential objectives like the creation of a more favorable relationship of forces with the reformists so as to stimulate the centralization of the aufonomous organs, thus addressing ourselves to all the workers and revolutionary organizations. These political errors prevented a battle for the unity in action of the workers movement for its fundamental objectives: the deepening of the conquests and demands of the working masses for the development and centralization of the embryonic organs of dual power in o period in which the initiatives of the workers movement could have rapidly been transformed into new steps forward. D
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