First Published: The Call, Vol. 3, No. 12, September 1975.
Transcription, Editing and Markup: Paul Saba
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The political crisis within Portugal is sharpening daily as the two imperialist superpowers, the U.S. and the Soviet Union increase their interference and subversion of the Portuguese democratic revolution.
Using their agents within the country, the revisionist Portuguese Communist Party and the pro-imperialist “Socialists”, the big powers have escalated their contention in this strategically key area of western Europe at the expense of the Portuguese working class and people. In doing so they have also enlisted aid from their followers internationally. The Soviet Union especially has used their “left” cover to push the revolutionary forces of the world into line behind them.
Neither the revisionists nor the “socialists” have the backing and support of the masses whom they both claim to speak for. Using their influence within the Armed Forces Movement, the revisionist CP has turned their backs on the election results after swearing upon the electoral system for years as though it were the holy scriptures. They have preceded to unleash wave after wave of social-fascist repression against all other working class parties and progressive organizations, outlawing strikes and jailing genuine Marxist-Leninists and banning all communist literature on the grounds that it is “ultra-leftist.” The failure of their Aug. 20 general strike attests to their lack of support among the masses of Portuguese workers and anti-fascists.
The Socialist Party, also using the words of Marx to bring fascism back upon the shoulders of the people, has formed a reactionary, anti-communist alliance with backing from the U.S. and other western powers.
Both forces are preparing for civil war which could well bring on a new imperialist war in Europe. But the real democratic forces, led by the young Marxist-Leninist movement, oppose supporting either set of imperialists and their Portuguese flunkies, and have instead, under the most difficult conditions, begun to mobilize for the carrying through of the national democratic revolution to the end.
Under these conditions, the revisionist CPUSA has tried unsuccessfully to mobilize a campaign of support for their Soviet and Portuguese fellow traitors. Just as they had a hand in the bloody defeat for the Chilean working class two years ago this month, the U.S. revisionists are now trying to cover up the betrayal of the people by the Portuguese revisionists who are selling their country lock, stock and barrel to the Soviet Union.
Alongside the CPUSA increasingly stands the Guardian newspaper, which has turned itself into an apologist for the Soviet Union and the revisionist parties throughout the world.
Claiming that the Portuguese CP is actually the “leader” of Portuguese democracy instead of the social-fascists that they have been shown to be in practice, the Guardian in their Aug. 20 issue calls for all-out support for the revisionists. Like the revisionists in Chile, the Guardian points only to the CIA as the cause of Portugal’s crisis. Meanwhile the heavy hand of Brezhnev and Co. is no secret to anyone. Even the social-imperialists admitted their “great interest in Portugal” following the Helsinki Conference on “European security.”
But the Guardian pooh-poohs the danger of Soviet interference in Europe as they do elsewhere in the world, claiming that the Soviet Union is still “socialist.” The Guardian apologists write “While we of course agree, for different reasons, that the revisionism implied in rumors about ’Eastern European’ socialism is not a good thing for Portugal, we view the charges as a pretext even if the CP’s ideological loyalty to the USSR gives the pretext of superficial credence.”
What Irwin Silber and his fellow Guardian editors are saying in this editorial is that Soviet domination (i.e., Eastern European socialism) is better than U.S, domination and therefore it is perfectly okay for us to line up behind the Soviet reactionaries in “united action” against the people of Portugal. This call for “united action” behind the Soviet Union and the revisionist parties has become quite fashionable these days among certain groups calling themselves Marxist-Leninists. On every front these groups like the Guardian and Workers Viewpoint have attempted to lead our movement into an alliance with the revisionists and have spread dangerous propaganda aimed at all those forces in the world (such as the genuine Marxist-Leninists and Third World liberation organizations and governments) that dare to resist both superpowers. They are daily spreading the very propaganda needed by the Soviet Union to prepare for its taking to the warpath.
Say the Guardian editors: “Unfortunately some forces to the left of the CP apparently view the struggle against revisionism at this stage as more important than a united struggle against the right and appear to believe that the isolation and removal of the CP from government is the principal task, even if this means joining with the Socialist Party and others in the current reactionary offensive.”
Here we have, word-for-word, the now familiar revisionist lies and slanders which are generally aimed at China and the Marxist-Leninists of the world. Under the banner of “fighting the right” the revisionists ask us to “unite” with them in their efforts to destroy the working class movement and set the stage for fascism, Chilean-style. They further slander the left by claiming that it “supports the Socialist Party,” which they know is an out-and-out lie, but repeat anyway, just as they repeated the claims of the revisionists that Portuguese Marxist-Leninists were “CIA agents.”
The Guardian shows us once again that their rhetoric about opposing revisionism is just that. They view the struggle against revisionism, not in the life-or-death way as Lenin did, but simply as an ideological exercise to be carried out apart from the struggle against fascism. “It is to the CP’s credit,” claims the Guardian, “that it is fighting back ... a reflection of the party’s long history of struggle, hardship and clandestine organization.” Yes, the revisionists will fight back either against the working class or the other sections of the bourgeoisie to save their own skin. This is not attributable to the “history of struggle” but to their aspiration of becoming the ruling clique in Portugal as they have become in the Soviet Union.
The Guardian goes so far as to claim that while super-power rivalry “is a factor in virtually every struggle in the world today, and this may become the major question in Portugal’s future, it is not so today.” According to the Guardian, the Soviet Union is not even interested in bringing Portugal into their sphere of influence and instead prefers a “non-aligned Portugal.” They say this even while Brezhnev is making statements in Moscow threatening “massive solidarity” and “international support” for the Portuguese revisionists.
The Guardian is carrying out their role as centrists between the proletarian forces and the revisionist party. They defend the revisionists in a more open fashion than the revisionists would dare to themselves.
To really render aid to the people of Portugal in their moment of crisis, our movement must attack both super-powers who are the cause of Portugal’s problems and at the same time expose those who cover up the role of the revisionists and social-imperialists as the Guardian is now doing.