Translated "Avante!" article by Albano Nunes, Member of the Secretariat of the CC
Long live November 7th ,1917,a date which marks an irreversible in the History of Humanity! Long live the October revolution, the first victorious socialist revolution, inaugurating a new era, an era of the passing of capitalism towards socialism! Long live Lenine, the founder and guide of the first new type proletarian party, the Bolshevik Party, having conducted peoples of the Czarism empire unto victory, opening up the unprecedented paths of a new society, free from exploitation of man by man! Long live the first State of workers and peasants that, defeating the home counter-revolution and the imperialist aggression under colossus sacrifices, changed a semi-feudal backward country into a world powerful power, a bastion of the workers’ and international communist movement which, by its achievements and peace policy, influenced decisively the great liberating achievements of the XXI century!
At a time, when in Portugal, Portuguese workers and people, are confronted with the most violent offensive ever since Fascism, against their rights and when, at the international level, the great capital, in its attempt of throwing over workers the capitalist crisis consequences, is concerned in a social regression of a civilizational dimension, and the dark clouds of fascism and war condense, it is particularly important to remember the October Revolution and its universal historical nature and reflect on the great convulsions and changes ever since, throughout a path, paved by gigantic class battles, without which, the achievement of a new world ought not to be possible. A path with plenty of victories and defeats, achievements and drawbacks, of exalting moments of a liberating influx and counter-revolutionary re-flux, but, as the historical process has demonstrated, drives towards freedom , social progress, socialism. A path which has revealed to be more complex and time consuming than the USSR and other socialist countries great victories and achievements, ever previewed, but socialism tragic defeats do not refute, as the PCP stated from the first moment, during its XIII Congress, confronting that time huge campaign, on the PCP’s “irreversible decline”, and in the affirmation of its communist identity with deep conviction.
Twenty five years upon the so-called “ fall of the Berlin wall”, an event that reaction and social-democracy have been celebrating, as a symbol of the definite defeat of the communist project and ideal, one has before, not the “ communism death” but the evidence that the capitalist system, incapable of overcoming its hallucinations and contradictions, is concerned with its structural crisis deepening and over-production and capital over-accumulation crisis, which has been lasting for more than six years, with no ending in view, calling upon the need of its revolutionary overcoming. The USSR, an October Revolution creation, represented a powerful peace factor and social progress for the whole world and its disappearance a dramatic drawback. Imperialism begun its counter-offensive. But as Lenine stated, “ all nations will achieve socialism, its inevitable, but not all by the same means…”. This is also the PCP’s deep conviction, that along its daily struggle, in the defence of the workers’ interests and a patriotic and left-wing alternative , has always in mind its Programme of “ an advanced democracy, April values, in Portugal’s future”, as an integrating and indissoluble part of its struggle, towards socialism and communism.