Esteemed guests and dear friends

Comrades,

I would like to begin by greeting you and at the same time stress the importance of your intervention in the strengthening of our Party and the construction of an alternative.

Important contributions

The political balance of your work, the debate over the great strategic guidelines are important contributions to the initiative and reflection of the entire party collective.

I also believe that the guidelines which you set for a greater participation in the political struggle of ideas; for the development of social struggle and the dynamization of the movements and organisations of intellectuals; for a decisive intervention in the Universities and the strengthening of the organisation and PCP’s influence among intellectuals; are very important to materialise the “New Impulse” in the organisation, intervention and political affirmation of our Party.

But, for this strengthening to take place and as stated in the “Declaration” of this Assembly, “the PCP, whose historical, socio-political and cultural identity justly encompasses also the integration of the intellectuals, needs the elevation of the contribution of its intellectuals, while intellectuals, for the collective construction of its answers to the problems of the country, for the shaping of its project of the left and the democratic and revolutionary alternative. The Party, all of us, have to raise and lighten the way we work with the communist intellectuals and all those who are or could come to us, or converge with us”.

In fact, as you state, we “ are not a party of propagandists or preachers, we are a Party that organises and helps to organise, a Party that toils, that struggles and projects a freer, fairer and more brotherly society, socialism. A Party that carries with it an unbending and renewed commitment of struggle for the great causes, from way back into history, which reconfigure and converge with new aspirations.”

And this struggle today faces a great ideological offensive and a great offensive against the wages and the rights of the workers.

As stated in the draft of the Political Resolution of this Sector “ the capitalist market, and more generically and effectively the capitalist system, are shown as a natural fatality, as the final stage of social evolution, or as the most rational of human life’s social organisation. There is, thus, a renewed pressure to modernise Marx’s critique of the effects of naturalisation (and political, ideological and theoretical legitimisation) of capitalism by bourgeois political economy. The totalitarian legitimisation of capitalism by neo-liberalism represents, in fact, a reduction of human reason and social rationality; tries to prevent the questionability of the primacy of the maximisation of profit; conceals the structural character of the polarisation of wealth and poverty; blocks the formulation of questions and elaboration of answers on the projected values and ends of human action; tries to limit, in an intolerable way, the capacity of the human agents, acting under certain historical conditions, to change these very conditions and their social forms of life.”

Nothing but the market

In truth, the results of the blind and uncontrollable market laws and globalization are at sight. And, meanwhile, we know, for example, that the monetary amounts resulting from the application of the well known Tobin tax to the transactions of capital could solve the main basic needs of the Third World peoples, and that, only 3% of the 800 billion dollars presently wasted on military expenses, could solve general access to essential health services, which, according to United Nations estimates, comes to 25 billion dollars per year.

We live in an age of great scientific and technical progress, which is not accompanied by the social progress of millions and millions of human beings. On the contrary, we witness social regressions and an attack on the conquests and rights which many thought irreversible.

Thus, looking at the world’s evolution, at these realities and the hypocrisy of those who criticise these situations, but omit or connive with the motives, it is easy to understand the reason to be a communist in present times. The reason of the actuality and validity of the project of building a new society and the need, more than ever, of the existence of Communist Parties who, with this or any other name, struggle for the liberation of the human being from exploitation, oppression and alienation. And all this taking into account, on one side, the serious historical responsibilities of social democracy, its failures and present policy, which has essentially adopted neo-liberal measures and guidelines, albeit in a different rhetoric. And, on the other side, the mistakes, tragedies and defeats in the building of a socialist society, which discredited it (even on the environmental issue as referred here by Carlos Moura) and withdrew the power of attraction of the communist ideal.

But to better understand the present situation, I believe we should pay greater attention to the course of the ideological offensive and its consequences.

“Two great traps”

In the last 25 years, two great traps, although of a different nature, were set at the ideological level: “the trap of the foreign debt” already well addressed and which was even the title of an interesting book and the trap of “internationalisation” or globalization, according to the anglo-saxonic culture.

The trap of the foreign debt worked through the attraction exercised by the availability of money at low interest and favourable exchange rates, leading many countries to assume huge debts. But, because the creditor countries determine and can change the conditions and their monetary and exchange policy, they moved to high interest rates and unfavourable exchange rates, which together with an unequal trade, monstrously inflated the debt, putting an iron collar on many countries and placing them under the permanent ward of the IMF, in a dead-lock and which still today constitutes a heavy burden on any attempt on development. In such a way, that the payments on the debt service are vastly superior to international aid and new loans.

As someone said, it is a world turned upside down. The least provided nations “aid” the richest through “the net transfer of resources”, financing investment and growth in the “North” with damage to the “South”.

As to the “globalization”, based on real facts, on the development of information technologies and that, in the most different areas of the world we find the same advertisements, the same fashion, the same products, the same TV series, the same cars, as well as mastodonic multinationals, with an economic and financial power well above that of many countries, the idea is spread that the role of the States and countries in the defence of the peoples is practically none. It is then argued that it is necessary to create supranational institutions of a political nature to regulate aspects of global economy. Without taking into account the limitations imposed upon States and disregarding the importance that these institutions could and can have, the fact is, that under the present correlation of forces and their practice, they are usually dominated by the great international capital, the great powers, as is the case of the European Union. Separated from the people, without effective democratic control, these institutions, as is the case of the Commission and the Council of the European Union, they act and pressure, not in the direction of co-operation and economic and social cohesion, but in that of deregulation and liberalisation.

The great powers and the great international capital exerted great pressure for the free circulation of money, freedom of trade, all in the name of development and the creation of jobs, and later on pointed that the role of the states in a global economy is lesser and lesser because they do not control the flow of money, information and goods. And based on this, often maintain, with crafty arguments, in practice, more deregulation and lesser power to the states, as is the case of the famous Multilateral Investment Agreement (MIA), and, later on, through supranational institutions impose upon the workers and the peoples, more submission and exploitation. It is the cycle of domination.

A growing pressure for freedom of world trade goes along the same course. The countries are not on an equal footing. The United States, in theory champions of free trade, are, in practice, one of the world’s most protectionist countries. They open their doors to products produced by their companies (usually consumer goods and light industry, which need a lot of labour)in peripheral countries with cheap labour and close them to competitors in high technology products, directly competing with those produced in their country. It is a free trade of the type of “a funnel law”. The same goes, although on a lesser degree, with the European Union, which is very liberal with textiles, shoes, tropical agricultural products, turning into a fort when at stake are productive activities which interest the great economic groups commanding integration.

Behind “all for liberalisation” and the market lies the goal of hegemony, the rule of the strong, the submission and annihilation of the weak. The output, of companies under American influence, produced outside the US territory represents more than 25% of its gross domestic product(GDP). This percentage is between 10 to 15% for Europe and 6% for Japan. The USA controls the world’s oil market, has a strong influence on that of food production and dominate the so called “21st. Century industries”: multimedia, cultural industries, the activities linked to the “society of information and communications”.

The concentration of wealth has grown steeply. Deregulation on a large scale allows free flow of capital to travel at the speed of light enabling fantastic speculative gains, at the cost of the peoples. It is the acceleration of the so called casino economy. After the neo-liberal offensive of the past eighteen years, it is clearer today to many who benefited and benefits from neo-liberalism.

Confronted with the crises and the stock exchange collapses many wonder over the promised positive effects of this policy of adaptation to the “global economy”, both in the more economically fragile countries and the more developed ones.

It is in this framework of growing inequalities that increases the brew of integralisms, fundamentalisms and nationalisms. The degradation of political democracy and the growth of inequality and social injustice and the anguish of a precarious living feeds all irrational deviations, adding, in great cities, a grey and isolationist urban development, creating real ghettos, mainly among immigrants. The explosions of violence and insecurity linked to these questions later feed racist and xenophobic responses.

IMF - instrument of imperialism

The IMF, guardian of the interest of the creditors, continues to wield “the truncheon and the carrot” and to lecture on the excellence of the measures it proclaims.

But there is not a single case where the so called “structural adjustment” of the IMF has had any brilliant success. However, these programmes bashfully known as “adjustments” continue to be shown as the best way to improve the standard of life of the people. The monetarist dogmas, neo-liberal orthodoxy and propaganda continue to hide the mechanisms that gear poverty and misery. At the service of the great interests, the high clergy of neo-liberal religion, solidly anchored to its dogmas, although contradicted by the hard reality, continues to proclaim that there is no choice, that there is no other policy. But there is. The prevailing thought is that of the prevailing classes, that which is called “single thought”. The “Bibles” and neo-iberal formulas are retrieved by the various penmen, universities and large press, as if we were faced by a clear and undeniable truth, while accumulation continues and the peoples sink into misery.

And although this neo-liberal “model” is discredited, the ideological offensive has not diminished nor the great money lords given up their lust for ”more profit and more power”.

But also the resistance and the struggle of the peoples appears everywhere! From Chiapas to Timor, the peoples and the workers get organised and fight and have retreats as well as victories. Strikes, general strikes, uprisings in arms, demonstrations, protests and world-wide protests, as shown by the world march against child labour.

That is why, even the offensive against public services has had retreats and defeats, namely after the protests and following the disastrous results as is the case of the Anglo-Saxon “model”, called “waste”, “fraud” and “corruption” by a House of Commons Public Accounts Committee report. The privatisation was carried out, as always, in the name of the consumers and with “specifications”! The truth is that the problem does not lie in competition, because the private owners, soon after taking charge, immediately try to curtail it, raise prices and make profit.The problem lies in the criteria of public services management, in its control and the demand for efficiency by penalising their boards of administration.

Everywhere, the aim of “liberalism” is the achievement, with different disguises, of profit and accumulation for the great national and international capital.

All over the globe liberalisation is accompanied by a fantastic concentration and centralisation of capital, with multiple restructures and multiple scandals and the corruption from the state apparatus is no longer a phenomenon which was displeasingly applied to the Third World.

Using objective facts, we are made to believe that the only course is in deregulation and the worship of competition.

To lower “labour costs”, “deregulate”, “flexibilize” and improve the “excellence of products” and “competition” are the key phrases for success and modernism.

How to compete in global economy? This is a central issue which faces governments, businessmen, unions, workers. And once this problem is presented, in a schematic way, the answer comes: it is necessary to deregulate, flexibilize, lower wages, in a world which is more and more open and competitive. If this is not done, they say, we shall have companies shut down and with it unemployment, so the choice is: employees, you either accept to work more and earn less with less rights or we have more unemployment. Deregulation, flexibilization and a loss in real wages continue. But instead of jobs we have a rise in unemployment and insecure jobs and without rights, as was also stated here, among others, by Agostinho Santos Silva, Rui Pereira, Marta de Sousa.

Competitiveness is thus spread as the law of the jungle, as military strategy, as war ideology, as a need to annihilate the other, before he annihilates us and without any regard for the environment.

But all this which is planned in boardrooms, by technocrats and well paid bureaucrats, has been faced by, and we are convinced will so continue, the resistance of the workers and the peoples and shows the failure of the solutions and whom they serve. It is a globalization against human development, against the human being, against human rights, against democracy, as stressed here, among others, by Francisco Silva and André Barata. The new technologies which could benefit human development serve as an instrument for speculation, arms race, and serve as vectors of financial war among the multinationals of the three world poles.

The crises

It is in this framework that the crises and the financial crises are produced, with repercussion in the productive apparatus, more separated in time than in the past, due to the huge amounts linked solely to speculative activities.

Now that we are going through the “ Asian crisis”, let us remember the case of Mexico, which is paradigmatic, and also for the events in Chiapas and their evolution. In 1982, Ronald Regan cut short his vacations because Mexico had ceased payments and, as Continental Bank of Illinois, was threatened with bankruptcy, the President of USA, a champion of liberalism, nationalised the country’s 7th. bank...

This was yet another proof of the lies of the so called “ minimum State”, when involving profitable areas to business ( as referred here in relation to education by Rui Namorado Rosa and Paulo Sucena) or the great money lords crushing the weak and the maximum and interventionist State, if need be, “ rushes to help” in all areas, even in the cultural one. As explained to us in relation to heritage, among others, by Vitor Serrão, Pessoa and Mário Moreira and by António Abreu and Modesto Navarro in relation to Expo 98, Helena Serodio on theatre and others.

With great pomp and circumstance, IMF’s General Assembly met years after in Madrid in September 1994 and portrayed Mexico as a “model” for the Third World, thanks to the application of liberal prescriptions: privatisations, dismissal of government employees, opening of its internal market, payment of a part of its debts with the mineral heritage of the country. Only Pinochet’s Chile had gone so far, applying the programme of Milton Friedman’s “Chicago boys”.

But a few weeks later, the example presented at Madrid was faced with ridicule. Mexico again declared that it could not pay its debt commitments, the peso was devalued 60%, US banks panicked and the debtor country was submitted to economic surveillance and strict and humiliating conditions in order to obtain new “help”, a new intervention with its oil revenues as counterpart.

The system, with all its weaknesses and the weakness of the international financial system, as witnessed now in the Asian crisis, continues with its contradictions to produce its results -polarisation of wealth and poverty - in spite of pious words here and there, in this or that institution, or world summit, feeding hopes quickly wiped by facts. In March 1995, 184 countries meeting in Copenhagen under UN patronage, in the World Summit for social development, took the “solemn oath” of striving for “ social development around the world”. The results are here to see.

The Asian crisis is another clear example of economic growth with feet of clay. The Asian tigers portrayed as models, are after all pet kittens of the transnationals. And the prescription for the crisis? Financial services were liberalised in 70 countries beginning in 1999, by virtue of an agreement, called historic, within the WTO. The Asian countries which refused to completely open their internal markets, ended by yielding to American pressures.

Paradoxically, the financial crisis, mostly linked to a very quick financial liberalisation, compelled them to accept even greater opening ... And this, in spite of World Bank’s chief economist, Joseph Stiglitz, recently declaring in Manila that “the crisis would not have taken place if there had not been a liberalisation of capital operations in their economies”.

But it is clear that the crisis will leave important and profitable companies from this area of the globe at the mercy of the appetite of the great capital, namely American and German.

The “trap” of globalization based on objective facts aims at suggesting to the people two great ideas: the first is that the States can only resist transnational capital and globalization by submitting to international institutions, which, as we know, under the present correlation of forces, are themselves dominated by the great capital and by the great powers, thus accelerating global domination.

The second is that in a global world, in world competition the winners are those who dismantle, flexibilize, deregulate more, that is, those who lower the costs of labour, rights, those who reduce and continue to reduce relative wages, those who introduce more the “law of the jungle”, a new labour slavery, so that the planet is ruled by the kingdom of capital ... As stressed, among others, by Eduardo Chitas in his analysis of the Manifest of the Communist Party and Sergio Ribeiro on freedom as meant by the prevailing classes.

But, comrades, is man condemned to this regression on the road to the 21st. Century? Is this road a fatality? Is this modernism? Is mankind progressing, when entering 21st. Century, with unparalleled inequalities in income, with utter misery side by side with the most splendid luxury? Is mankind progressing when entering 21st. Century with new technical and scientific marvels and at the same time carrying social scourges of the beginning of the century?

Also in our country we are made to believe that there are no other options, that only a neo-liberal policy achieves efficiency in economy, that only private economic groups can produce wealth and create jobs, that there is no other way to the so called European construction, which, according to the 3rd. Report by the Commission on Social Security now published has 57 million Europeans living below the poverty line!

A shame. But also in the European Union there is a growing struggle for better living conditions, a reduction in working time, a 35 hour week, more democracy and participation and a growing co-operation and joined efforts of progressive forces, both at institutional and non-institutional levels.

Our Party is proud to be at the forefront of this co-operation and, following the great initiatives in Paris, Lisbon and Madrid, will be in Berlin, in June, together with other communist, environmentalist, left and progressive forces.

In fact, the European Union, the leading world power, with its 18 million unemployed and 57 million poor and half a dozen monopolies, is a magnificent example of a solidary, brotherly, fair, human rights abiding society!

The sanctification of markets

The right to work and workers’ rights as acknowledged in many countries’ Constitutions have become an inaccessible privilege to many youngsters and workers. And this is the society they want to dish out to us, on the threshold of the 21st Century, always in the name of markets, that so-called abstract entity, above human beings, without poll card but to whom in today’s societies, we are supposed to yield our options and decisions. Markets answered favourably. Markets answered negatively... Markets! Will say the yuppies or kin when speaking about the economy or about any election result or collective lay-off. All is owed and has to be submitted to the markets. But markets are no abstract entities, they have names, faces and owners - they are financial capital, banks, financial and speculation activities - financial capital which has power, which rules over or participates and therefore has influence over the great mass media.

As somebody already asked and answered are we manipulated, conditioned, watched in a State of law and in a society so-called fully democratic?

Citizens may think they always choose with their own heads. A pure illusion! Other “discreet and subtle machines... condition the minds: the media, publicity, opinion polls” things that are said in the name of the market... as was here underlined by Urbano and Fernando Correia, among others.

Therefore, when we see the government arm in arm with big capital’s “cream of the cream” and when we see some former ministers going back and forth between the State apparatus and the management of big private and public companies, we have to admit our right was that commentator who only a few days ago wrote that some of the political parties’ leaderships could well have their meetings in the boardrooms of some economic groups. It is shameful! It is shameful for the Socialist Party [PS]. We are witnessing the re-constitution of a new State monopoly capital, which is now more transnational and with the new features which result from Europe integration and from economy’s globalization. The yielding of political power to the power of big economic groups, each of them with its own bank, its own insurance company, its chain of supermarkets, its influence in the media, is growing.

Reason why it is quite interesting that the PSD [right-wing party]now raise the issue of the State’s favours granted to certain economic groups as well as the promiscuity of some former ministers with the big lords of capital. The fact is the PSD did exactly the same. And the fact that the PSD did it, does not acquit the PS. But I believe it is equally useful to remind and reveal the posts that the present PSD leaders and their former-ministers hold in several public and private companies. I will not tire you but I will give the Media some examples which may freshen up the memory of Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa.

It is as stated by one journalist (Eduardo Dâmaso) in “Público” of 2/5/98: “more than a favoured “right wing of interests”, what mostly exists is an “interests central block”, which since the 80’s, has self-perpetuated in power, both under the protecting shadow of the PS and the PSD”. And it is against this block of interests that the railway workers, the [Lisbon Transport Co.]Carris’ workers, the public administration workers, textile workers, students and teachers, farmers and so many workers from other sectors, with their trade unions and with the effective support of our Party, carry on the struggle with intervention and confidence.

A demanding and committed intervention

In the times to come, we need an even more demanding and committed intervention, as was actually underlined by several comrades: Filipe Diniz, Ana Pessoa, António Filipe, Rego Antunes, Bernardino Aranda.

On the one hand, we are in terms of organisation, deploying great efforts to implement the 14th and 15th February Central Committee resolutions; we are going forward with the campaign for the improvement and strengthening of Social Security; with the campaign on the workers’ rights; with the debates on “Portugal - 2000” and at the same time with a very intense intervention in Parliament, in the mass movement and also in the campaign for a “yes” in the referendum to acquit those women who voluntarily stop their pregnancy [abortion]... It is an enormous effort which is only possible through the generosity, the abnegation and the dedication of the communist militants!

But please allow me, comrades, that I here launch an appeal for an engaged mobilisation in the referendum on the abortion law (IVG) which is still not won!

The PS, with its ashamed position of neither yes, nor no [a sort of “nes”] after the sudden turn in Parliament, as was here mentioned by João Valentim and André Barata, disguised and hiding behind Citizens’ Movements, is doing all in its power to avoid a real campaign. But on the other hand we also see those in favour of a “No” intensely intervening and using the most fallacious arguments, often in the most cudgelling and retrograde fashion so that clandestine abortions continue to exist.

You will certainly agree that our Party carries out a serene, dignified, enlightening, convincing and committed campaign and that we do not shamefully hide our faces behind a “Nes” when what is at stake is either continuing to allow clandestine abortions which are the second cause of maternal death and the first cause of the adolescents’ maternal death, or as an alternative to promote the necessary health care and psychological backing. What is there for discussion is whether we want or not to put an end to the present up to 3-years jail sentences for women who make abortions and that it may become legal as a result of women’s responsible decision and done in a legally authorised health institution.

Comrades,
Today’s debate, the stimulating written reflections, the main assessments and draft orientations included in the draft Resolution testify, altogether, the existence of a valuable asset of reflection for the Party’s action and organisation among the intellectuals which is also a valuable contribution to the new impetus we want to give to our Party.

In this new impetus it is relevant to reaffirm that we are profoundly bound to our identity and to our political and ideological patrimony, but exactly due to that we want to be growingly awake and attentive to the new phenomena and to rejuvenation and renewal which the course of life and reality constantly demand.

We stand firm in our convictions and ideals, but exactly because of that, we are open to critical reflection and to the stimulus brought about by dialogue and debate with differing conceptions or viewpoints.

And as comrade Gusmão and several other comrades here underlined: ”in the very moment in which we are trying to promote the debate and convergence on the left, the acknowledgement of the left’s present but also historical plurality, means also the acknowledgement of our own identity, always under construction”.

We are certain of the role we play in the Portuguese society, but because of that we are always engaged in joining efforts, binding wills and yearnings, in order to mobilise energies, capacities as well as democratic and left-wing values which are essential to build an alternative which meets the challenges that Portugal and the Portuguese people are facing on the brink of the 21st Century.

We are firmly determined to preserve and strengthen the unity, the fraternity and the solidarity ties which unite our Party collective and its common engagement in the definition, materialisation of guidelines and tasks of the Party, reason why we want more and more to give worth to each militant’s contribution, we want more and more to strengthen internal democracy, we want more and more to defend, as an irreplaceable richness, the diversity of paths, of social origin, of experiences and opinions and always considering it as an indispensable sap to our collective action.

We are proud of what we are, of what we do, of what we are worth, but exactly because of that, we are very far from having any boasting or arrogant attitudes, but rather be the carriers of the legitimate ambition of doing better and serving better. So that in our Party thoughts and action may reflect more strongly, with more irradiation and projection the humanist and revolutionary dimension of communist ideals, the actuality, modernity and future’s prospect of our project and of our cause, the great cause of freedom, democracy and socialism.

Long live the 3rd Assembly of the Lisbon Intellectual Sector!

Long live the PCP!