CDU’s victory in the local government elections, on 9th October in Portugal, has an international dimension that deserves to be stressed. Firstly, because it has to do with the advance of a progressive force in a highly unfavourable international context. In electoral terms limited but politically highly significant. Paraphrasing Lenin, each concrete step in the right direction is worth more than a thousand speeches. The possibility of containing and defeating the violent global offensive of imperialism goes through big and small struggles and partial victories at the level of each country, not through speculative “global alternatives”, generally born out of verbalism and impotence. It is our duty to valorise them.
Secondly, by what such a victory represents in the context of an acute ideological struggle where classic anti-communism converges with the theses on a “re-foundation of the left”, which considers outdated Leninist type parties and the national dimension of the struggle. In truth, it is another nail in the coffin of the “irreversible decline” of the communist parties, confirming the possibility to resist and grow with the unequivocal affirmation of the communist project. Because this is what has characterised the action of the PCP, both in its own intervention and that which it carries out in the framework of its alliance with the Green Ecological Party and many thousands of independent people without any party, in CDU. Contrary to other situations, the electoral progresses achieved by the Portuguese communists were not at the cost of electioneering, disguising or abdicating its own programme, yielding to immediacy and sweet songs of the conjuncture. In view of the sophisticated campaign on the “death of communism” it is important to stress what all this means, not to place ourselves above our height or teach lessons to anyone, but to give more strength and more confidence to the revolutionary communist current in the field of the left-wing forces.
History shows that anti-Marxist opportunism has objective roots within capitalism’s own development, is always ready to spring again under new forms, always manifests as an international trend that is necessary to combat with persistence. This is particularly decisive at the present moment when socialism’s defeats continue to be exploited to delay the creation of the necessary subjective conditions for the revolutionary overthrow of capitalism. Without this combat it will not
be possible to find a progressive outcome to the crisis of capitalism and a solution for the dramatic problems of Humanity.
Social-democracy, particularly rooted in Europe, has been a serious hurdle to the development of the revolutionary conscience of the working masses but its discredit grows visibly. Its scandalous surrender to neo-liberal policies threatens to exhaust its ability to deceive the workers and execute, like Schröder in Germany or Socrates in Portugal, right-wing policies that even the right-wing could not execute for lack of social and political support. Divergences, differentiations and divisions in the social-democratic area (and in the collaborationist trade unionism associated with it) are inevitable and they tend to expand the anti neo-liberal and anti capitalist camp. This, however, demands, not a dilution of the communists in the name of reheated scenarios of the “left” and an appendicular “participation in the power”, but a persistent policy of convergence and unity in action, turned to the masses, against the exploitative and aggressive policy of big capital, involving the independent affirmation of the communist project. Also on this matter the local government elections in Portugal hold lessons that should be retained.
When in its 15.10.05 edition Expresso [a Portuguese weekly newspaper] was forced to acknowledge that the “PCP gained an important victory” and added that this was achieved in a “mere logic of resistance to the times”, it takes its wishes for reality. The PCP is there to fight, resist, grow and win. Just like the international communist movement. Whether the enemies and adversaries want it or not.
