country in Europe, since the aftermath of World War II, in which the elements of a truly pre-revolutionary crisis and direct struggle for socialism existed. In Lenin's famous words not merely were the working class and op pressed unwilling to go on in the old way but the ruling class was unable to go on in the old way.
The Portugese army had been defeated in the wars in Africa. The economy was drained by the effort of the war. The ruling discredited. By the summer of 1975 huge splits had developed in the armwith rising self-organisation of the working class and soldiers. In short the material conditions to overthrow capitalism in Poralthough the development of revoluclasses' repressive useless in the situation I mallaining capitalist tuie.
ter on the other.
was ed one Soviet, style socialism. proclaimed that the sole parliamentary democracy. rule, was clear. The Portuguese ruling apparatus was • no coercion by the state played a fundamental role The ruling class intervened politically to shatof the working class along the line of divide introduced by the Socialist Party bureaucracy on the one side, and the Communist Party The Communist Party - and in Portugal it was a particularly Stalinis- proclaimed the virtues of East European, Bulgarian The Socialist Party possible model of democracy was capitalist Of course in countries other than Portugal the split would not even naive reached point of summer 1975. Portugal was the weakest link in the West European imperialist chain. It had the oldest dictatorship, bably the weakest ruling class. class credibility had been smashed by colonial wars fought in defence of an empire which Portugal had clung to long precisely because it weak.
Under these circumstances Stalinist Communist Party had greater support than in any other West European country. Portugal is, together with Greece, the one country in Western Europe where an old-style be pulled behind a Moscow-style road to socialism. In most West European countries the division of the working class would be in a far less favourable relation of forces against capitalism than in Portugal.
The Stalinism, of the bureaucratic system Ruling in Eastern Europe, has been to give an extra, and totally undeserved. for cracies was From Portugal however can be seen with absolute clarity the strategic problem OT far Western Europe. This is to build a left which is simultaneous democratic and socialist — or rather to fuse the two in the higher form democracy. That is the only way to prolelallal capitalist impact of point boost the social democratic bureauEurope For socialism of socialist left.
liberties, democracy in local government and a whole series of other issues. In short it roots itself objectively in a defence of what Trotsky called "the nuclei of within society' Both of view of its. . internationa orientation and its domestic policies the Benn-Scargill-Livingstone left of the Labour Party is the most advanced mass working class current in Western of Sinn Fein that curient to be influenced by, or deflected by, Stalinism would be an historical catastrophe for the British working class movement. That is the stakes of what is developing in the fight over the future of the Labour
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