A-Infos (en) Czech, Ostrava, OAFed: Fifty years since the revolution they didn't teach you about in school (ca, de, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

In the history section, we recall the anarchist background of the 
so-called Carnation Revolution, which swept away the fascist regime in 
Portugal in 1974. It will be fifty years since this event at the end of 
April. The article was published in the magazine Solidarita, then edited 
on the AF website. ---- In Portugal in 1974, workers used a military 
revolt against the dictatorship to spontaneously establish 
self-governing bodies. Who stifled this initiative? ---- On April 25, 
1974, a radical faction of the Portuguese Armed Forces, the MFA, 
rebelled against the government. Until then, Portugal had been under a 
fascist dictatorship for more than half a century. Whether the MFA leans 
to the left or to the right was unclear at the time. But the military 
mutiny created a space in which people could change their lives, and 
they seized the opportunity.

Left-wing activists were returning from exile, new political parties 
were being formed. These parties used the situation to gain political 
power in government - but ordinary people were interested in how to 
improve social conditions in their municipalities and businesses through 
new autonomous organizations. And it was at this level that the changes 
that most interest anarchists took place.

Portugal was the least developed country in Europe during the fascist 
dictatorship. It had 400,000 people out of work, 150,000 people lived in 
slums, one million had emigrated, and the infant mortality rate was 
almost 8.5%. Strikes and other expressions of resistance by workers 
against cruel conditions were met with the brutal force of fascist 
repressive forces.

Workers' struggle

The workers' struggle continued even after the revolution: one of the 
most significant strikes took place at TAP, a semi-state airline whose 
employees had already experienced a number of social struggles (during a 
strike in 1973, three TAP workers were murdered by a paramilitary police 
unit). And it was the strike struggle at TAP in the summer of 1974 that 
showed whose side the supposedly radical revolutionary government was on.

The strike broke out in the airlines after the government refused to 
meet the workers' demands of May 1974. These included, in particular, 
the dismissal of all fascists from the company, an increase in wages, 
the right of workers to renegotiate collective agreements whenever they 
deemed it necessary, and also the firing of those executives, who 
displayed "anti-labor attitudes". The strike, which halted all 
international flights, was supported by all employees - except members 
of the Communist Party, whose member, the Labor Minister, appealed to 
the strikers to return to work.

And what was the response of the coalition government (including the 
Socialist Party and the Communists)? She sent the army to occupy the 
airport and arrest the strike committee. Two hundred workers were 
dismissed from their jobs. When these measures did not break the 
resistance of the workers, mass demonstrations took place and further 
strikes were threatened, the dismissed employees were taken back. A 
40-hour work week was gradually introduced.

Around this time, however, the first Provisional Government also 
introduced anti-strike laws. The government's reaction thus indicated 
how all post-fascist governments would react to workers' struggles. 
However, the working class was not worried about this: during the summer 
of 1974, around 400 enterprises experienced social conflicts.

Enterprises: workers' committees and self-governing cooperatives

As a relic of the fascist era, unions were considered by many to be 
reactionary, and workers needed to organize themselves more 
democratically and independently. Thus, workers' committees were 
created: delegates to them were elected by workers' assemblies once a 
year, and if they were not satisfied with the activities of their 
delegate, they could dismiss him. Most of them were not revolutionary, 
but the committees were a manifestation of people's distrust of the 
"left parties", the government and the army. By the end of October 1974, 
about 2,000 were in operation.

In the summer of 1975, this movement began to develop further. When 
management ignored their demands, workers occupied the plant and in many 
cases set up self-governing systems. In Unhais de Serra, 1,100 textile 
workers got rid of management and elected a workers' committee to run 
the factory. According to estimates, in the summer of 1975 there were 
380 factories under self-government and 500 cooperatives operating.

Self-government in municipalities

Of course, social struggles were not limited to the factory level: 
people were unwilling to rely on and beg the government to do something, 
and decided to solve their problems themselves. Thus, after April 25, 
1975, a movement of the poor grew up, who, as a response to the housing 
crisis, began to occupy empty properties in an organized manner.

In working-class neighborhoods and in neighborhoods where the lower 
middle class lived, residents elected Autonomous Revolutionary 
Committees of Estates. These committees organized the occupation and use 
of houses and ensured the operation of free crèches, workers' centers 
and other municipal services. One local housing committee in Lisbon 
organized the occupation of about 400 empty houses. A "social rent" was 
paid, which paid for house repairs. 260 families from the slum moved 
into apartments near the center of Lisbon.

About 150,000 slum dwellers were members of the Federation of Slum 
Committees. It was independent of political parties and fought for the 
construction of new housing estates instead of slums, land expropriation 
and rent regulation.

Collectives in the countryside

Agricultural workers made up a third of Portugal's population. Seeing an 
opportunity for change, rural workers began occupying estates, cattle 
farms, and unused land. In addition, they cooperated with industrial 
workers and various labor organizations: in Cabanas, with the help of 
the local housing committee, an abandoned farm was occupied, and a 
nearby factory provided equipment. When 354 workers from the estate in 
Santarem decided to occupy the land, dozens of workers from the city 
came to help them - eventually ten large estates were collectivized.

Socialism was apparently a natural thing for the workers: the land was 
not divided among the individual inhabitants, but was cultivated 
collectively and owned by the village as a whole. In August 1975, 
official statistics reported that there were over 330 agricultural 
collectives operating here.

What about the political parties?

And how did the political parties react to the workers' spontaneous 
initiative? Amid a growing culture of self-government, the Proletarian 
Political Party (PRP) launched its campaign to create councils based at 
workplace, neighborhood and barracks levels. It sounded nice, but the 
PRP was more interested in creating bodies to dominate than councils 
through which the working class could decide public affairs. Delegates 
from companies and soldiers' committees thus met a large block of 
"workers' party" members in the councils: in addition to delegates who 
were elected directly by the workers, there were also activists who were 
not elected by the workers and who got into the councils automatically 
as party members. In short: if the self-styled "revolutionary parties" 
were unable to gain enough support to have their members elected as 
delegates by their collaborators, they were to be given seats by the 
simple title of calling themselves "workers' parties."

Housing organizations also faced the same difficulties. Left-wing 
parties tried to control the committees of housing estates and slums. 
Partisans, often well-practiced orators, allowed themselves to be 
elected to key committee positions to use to build their parties. Many 
ordinary people stopped going to meetings when they got the impression 
that they were being dominated by a certain group.

On the whole, it seems that the "workers' parties" did not so much help 
the committees as hinder them.

The changes did not go deep

However, the capitalist system itself was not fundamentally affected 
during the Portuguese revolution. Cooperatives and collectives had to 
negotiate the price of their labor under the conditions set by the 
capitalists. Even the workers' committees were almost nothing more than 
the workers' self-government of their own exploitation. The cooperatives 
were not revolutionary either. It still had to cope with the limited 
possibilities of capitalism. It had to make a profit and their members 
received wages (of varying amounts). Even though many cooperatives were 
able to reduce the prices of goods and services, this situation 
inevitably led to competition between them.

All this fighting took place against the backdrop of six interim 
governments, several coup attempts and rumors of right-wing plots and a 
NATO invasion. The space for radical worker-led social development that 
the armed forces had created was quickly reoccupied by politicians, 
pushing programs that had nothing to do with the revolution. The fault 
cannot lie in the absence of a "workers' party," as some Trotskyists 
claim: in fact, there were at least fifteen "workers' parties" in 
Portugal. And in fact, it was precisely the center and left-wing 
"workers' parties" who participated in stifling the workers' independent 
initiative. Not only have they diluted democracy, they have also given 
rise to the idea that the "incompetent masses" need some sort of elite 
to guide them.

https://oafed.noblogs.org/post/2024/04/23/padesat-let-od-revoluce-o-ktere-vas-ve-skole-neucili/
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