Article by Albano Nunes, Member of the Secretariat of the Central Committee
The PCP's Seminar 2000/2010, ten years of a right-wing policy – a demand for rupture”, proved, once again, the imperious emergency of breaking loose the ties which attach Portugal to imperialism and hinders its development.
Portugal’s external dependency problem, which holds the submission mark towards the dominant classes, is an historical problem, that has been dragging on, without solution, for centuries. A well known problem, on the dependency relations with Great Britain, and with which, in an untimely occasion, an “alliance” was sealed, from which we never got liberated entirely, and to which we owe the “Ultimatum” humiliation ( together with the 31st January rebellion, which accelerated the fall of the Monarchy) or Portugal’s participation in the imperialist World War I, a national misfortune, during the Republic.
With fascism, the situation worsened. Without breaking off with the “old ally”, Salazar, did his best for Hitler and Mussolini, but the Nazi – Fascism defeat, reverted the situation. Then, he turned to the North-American imperialism, handing in the strategic Lages’, in the Azores, “ aircraft-carrier”, becoming a NATO founder member, in 1949, when, in order to fight the progress of the socialist field and the communist parties ( and within Portugal, the PCP had become the great national party), the “ democratic West” broke out the “cold war” counter-offensive and launched the dark clouds of another world war, over the world. A war, which was only avoided by the consequent USSR and the Socialist field ‘s peace policy, together with the powerful movement against war, which mobilized millions all over the world, during those years, including Portugal, through great actions round the “Stockholm Appeal” and others, which imprisoned many democrats, namely the Juvenile MUD young members. In exchange of both its survival and the colonial empire, in which imperialism was equally interested, Fascism handed over the country to the great capitalism powers hands. Portugal’s liberation from imperialism, being a secular goal of the Portuguese people, became one of the “eight items” of the PCP’s Programme for the Democratic and National Revolution.
The April Revolution was in itself a powerful liberating act . Portugal’s prestige and authority within the international level became huge. The external dependency ties were strongly shaken. But were not cut off. The imperialist conspiracy against the Portuguese revolution – with Spinola, Mário Soares, Carlucci, “together with Europe” and tutti quanti – not only did not find the necessary required resistance, as was actively endeavoured by the reaction forces and Social-Democracy, leading to the revolution’s imperialist recovery.
Thirty years after national submission policies and one has, in force, the European Union, IMF, World Bank, EODC, “rating agencies”, suddenly thrown unto politics footlights, all demanding the discharge, with no mercy, of the crisis costs, in which the right-wing policy drove the country into, over the workers, together with the international capitalist crisis endless costs. And there one has the PS and the PSD, the “central block” parties, the Government, the President of the Republic, and with them, a whole court of parasite bankers and capitalists, proclaiming amen to the anti-social and anti national measures, demanded by the imperialist globalization.
It’s all this one must restlessly struggle against. It’s with this dominant national and foreign dominant class perverse secular alliance, one must find an ending, so that the patriotic and left-wing alternative, which the PCP points out, the Country will, finally achieve life.
And therefore, one must believe, and make the masses believe, Portugal’s backwardness and dependence situation is not fatal nor a “destiny”, but a problem which , in alliance with the struggle with other freedom loving peoples, is entirely at the Portuguese people’s reach.
