I

The PCP assumes its objectives and project with confidence in its forces, in the working class, in workers and people, in a context in which the future presents itself with dangers and potentialities. Whereas PCP is the target of systematic attack, slander, discrimination, silencing, it assumes its communist identity, its project of transforming society. The Party counts on its strength and ability to intervene, it resists attacks, it fulfills its role but, faced with its shortcomings, it needs to be stronger and more influential in current and future political battles. Working for a stronger and more influential Portuguese Communist Party is a demand to all Communists, and it is also a necessity for Portuguese workers and the people, to affirm patriotic and left-wing alternative policies, an advanced democracy, the values ​​of the April 1974 Revolution in the future of Portugal, socialism and communism and the internationalist struggle for the emancipation of workers and peoples.

II

The XX Congress defined guidelines and priorities for the strengthening of the Party namely "as regards the leadership’s work, strengthening means and capacities and improving their utilization; affirming and reinforcing collective work, individual responsibilities, initiative, coordination and discipline; at the level of the party cadres, allocating permanent responsibilities to more comrades; at the organization level, promoting a great action of recruiting and integrating the new militants, mainly from their workplaces; creating and boosting Party cells in companies and workplaces; structuring local organizations taking into account the reality of the Party members on the ground; taking the political initiative and working with the new generations and pensioners; in the field of propaganda and press, organizing the propaganda work, systematizing and extending the use of electronic media, increasing the dissemination and readership of Avante!; on funding, ensuring the Party’s financial independence, the increase in contributions ibeing a key element.

The priorities of the reinforcement of the Party were defined do address the present time and its immediate challenges, always combining intervention with the reinforcement of the organization. At the same time, the reinforcement of the Party must take into account any future demands.

In this context, the Central Committee of the PCP has outlined guidelines, priorities and measures that must be implemented in a global and integrated way taking into account the reality of the organization, the demands of the situation and its developments:

1. Leadership work, assigning responsibilities to Party cadres and political and ideological training

Strengthening the work of the Party’s leadership, means and capacities, enhancing their use, affirming and reinforcing collective work, individual responsibilities, spirit of initiative, coordination and discipline, and accountability of cadres are decisive elements for strengthening the Party. The aim is to ensure the smooth and efficient functioning of the Party’s governing bodies, their strengthening, renewal and rejuvenation; to ensure that more comrades are available to take on regular tasks according to their availability; to identify Party members who have distinguished themselves in various tasks and to work towards assigning them further responsibilities; to contribute so that thousands of people who are not or are not yet Party members but who stood out in the mass struggles, social and political intervention and also in the municipal elections, are integrated with an active participation in structures and unitary actions.

In terms of political and ideological training, it is proposed: timely programming and dissemination of the annual training plan of the Party’s School and Regional Organizations; to stimulate the reading and study of the Party’s publications - Avante! and O Militante - in meetings and in regular work; to base training initiatives mainly on the Party’s fundamental texts - Program, Statutes, Resolutions of the Congresses, in the classical works of Marxism-Leninism, in Alvaro Cunhal’s works, in the History of the Party and the Portuguese Revolution; to highlight in 2018 the training actions undertaken in the context of the Second Centenary of Karl Marx’s; to consider as a priority the training of the cadres in charge of organizations and those integrated in mass movements.

2. Militancy and the new member card of the Party

One of the noteworthy initiatives in 2018 will the issuing of the new Party member card. It is noteworthy for it is a means of identifying each member of the Portuguese Communist Party, the great collective that carries with it a heritage of actions and struggles that is honored again and again in the conduct and action of its members. It is noteworthy because it renews the members’ commitment to the Party on which rests its ability to intervene. It is noteworthy because the delivery of the cards will involve a vast effort to contact all Party members and thus will further and strengthen their connection and integration and will raise the level of their militancy. Hence, preparations by the Party organizations are of great importance.

3. The recruitment and integration of new militants

A strong effort at recruiting new members is particularly important, with the call to join the Party and contact work among the many thousands who are in a position to be Party members. Their membership is essential and it is important that they are integrated and assigned responsibilities. Their membership and integration are necessary to strengthen, renew and rejuvenate organizations, but also to create Party organizations where they do not exist, namely new cells in companies and workplaces.

4. The organization and intervention in companies and workplaces

All Party organizations should give priority to interventions in enterprises and workplaces, which are central to the Party’s class nature, to reinforce it, to intensify and broaden the mass struggle, and to achieve its objectives and project.

Bearing in mind the conclusions of the XXth Congress, which pointed out that "a great national action must be carried out to this end, ensuring discussion and decision-making in all Party organs and organizations", the following priority orientations are highlighted:

- to undertake in each organization, by the end of March 2018, a reflection on the priority and means assigned to this task, to draw conclusions and to adopt the corresponding measures, ensuring an integrated view of the challenges facing the Party, in accordance with the decisions of the Congress and the successive resolutions of the Central Committee;

- to extend and strengthen the leadership capacity in the Party’s organizations by highlighting and assigning responsibilities to more cadres, namely Party officials, whose main task is to monitor or establish company cells and organs for the intervention among workers in particular sectors or groups of undertakings and to ensure effective enforcement; to evaluate priority companies, in particular those with more than 1,000 employees and / or of strategic importance, their priority status being accompanied by measures involving the leadership and cadres to ensure, in each and every one of them, continuous and consistent work;

- to define recruitment objectives, with the identification by name of workers to be contacted, establishing an objective of 5,000 contacts with workers by the end of 2018, explaining to them why they should join and strengthen PCP, with a particular focus on members of the workers’ representative structures who have stood out in their companies in defending workers, deciding who makes those contacts and regularly monitoring execution;

- to continue the transfer of Party members under 55 from local organizations to enterprises and workplaces;

- to define work plans by company, combining political, institutional and propaganda action and diffusion of the Party press, at the gates or within the companies, with the establishment, reinforcement and operation of cells, ensuring in particular: that each organization does at least once a year, a collective assessment of the implementation of the decisions taken and their results; organising, at least twice a year, agitation and propaganda actions aimed specifically at workers; increasing significantly the number of companies and workplaces where specific Party information is published, addressing the concrete problems of workers and stimulating the struggle for their resolution;

- to ensure the integration of all militants organized in companies and workplaces in the Party’s life, bearing in mind their individual availability;

- to reinforce the coordination and leadership structures essential to the development of this work in each organization, ensuring the necessary coordination with the multiple situations of enterprises in which the intervention of the Party takes place only by one-off contacts;

- to contribute in each workplace to the strengthening of the unitary trade union movement, in particular by encouraging unionization and the election of trade union delegates;

- to strengthen, to create and regularize the functioning of Party organs whose members have tasks within the unitary trade union movement and other workers' unitary organizations, where, collectively and within the context of the functioning and general orientation of the Party, guidance for communists’ intervention is defined.

5. Local organizations

Local-based organizations play a decisive role in connecting the Party to the population, contributing to the raising of social and political awareness. The following are priority tasks for all local organizations:

- to identify the problems and aspirations of communities, to translate them into demands and protests, to energize local struggles, especially around the defense and improvement of public services, paying particular attention to the needs and demands of the new generations and the retired;

- to survey existing cadres and to make use of their skills and availability for the renewal and rejuvenation of the governing bodies of local organizations, ensuring their regular operation, strengthening their structures, creating new leadership bodies;

- to ensure that all militants who are part of local-level leadership bodies are assigned regular tasks (until May 2018);

- to identify Party members in the Popular Associative Movement and in the various popular structures (until the end of the first half of 2018) and organize their intervention;

- to establish and to regularly operate bodies of those elected for local authorities and its work.

6. Working with specific social groups and sectors

The existence of specific work programmes directed towards specific sectors has proven to be correct and must be strengthened. The following are worth mentioning:

- to strengthen JCP and its work with youth, reinforcing the knowledge about actions and about JCP members in each organization, supporting them in their work, in particular among the largest concentrations of youth and youth associations;

- to intervene in the area of culture, with intellectuals and technical staff, promoting their organization and intervention and of their unitary structures;

- to set up cells of pensioners and bodies with comrades with unitary tasks on this front by the end of 2018, with the aim of increasing the involvement among this social group and strengthening its unitary organizations;

- to develop actions among farmers and fishermen; to work with micro, small and medium entrepreneurs; to work with women; to engage with people with disabilities; to work with immigrants; to work with the unemployed;

- to strengthen the organized work of the Party with the emigrants.

7. The propaganda and diffusion of the Party press

Against the backdrop of a great ideological offensive and propaganda by big business, with the powerful means at their disposal, the Party's propaganda and press are even more important.

Propaganda and agitation are tasks for the entire Party, which must continuously be improved in terms of content, form and its multiple expressions - fixed, written, audiovisual and electronic - in articulation with the strengthening of the Party’s organization.

Among the several lines of work the following stand out:

- to strengthen the structures for this task, ensuring planning and implementation, accountability and the training of cadres and the allocation of the necessary means for their implementation at all levels;

- to ensure and to carry out the planning of national information and propaganda campaigns, which should be perceived as a unifying element of the action and general orientation of the Party at national level;

- to address the issues affecting workers and populations at the level of intervention of each organization, to publish leaflets, to use other information and propaganda instruments, to give more prominence to the work of agitation while adapting the message and means to each specific reality;

- to improve, at various levels, the Party's work with the media in a thoughtful, directed and persistent way, promoting our positions and initiatives, addressing the difficulties and without neglecting the denunciation of the class content of the dominant media;

- to give greater attention to electronic communications; it is necessary to organize, reinforce structures, train Party members, improve the dissemination strategy and coordination at central, regional and local level, with the intervention of communists in social networks, to improve the coherence of contents while disseminating information on the actions and orientation of the Party;

- to assume as a priority in each Party organization the promotion, dissemination and widening of the diffusion of the Party’s press, in particular Avante!. This requires: increasing the number of its regular purchasers; surveying and contacting Party members and supporters who do not yet acquire the Party press; extending and rejuvenating the number of comrades who take on the task of distributing Avante!, stressing the worth of such a task in the context of taking on permanent responsibilities; continuing to create new ADEs, promoting special editions of Avante! and carrying out special sales; organizing regular public sales, particularly in companies and workplaces; promoting its role as a tool for propaganda and electronic communications and its Internet site;

- to value editorial activities and the sale of the editions by Party members;

- to promote and publicize the Avante! Festival, associating it to the sale of EPs and thus guaranteeing the mobilization and participation in the Festival as a condition for its political success.

8. The Party’s own resources and financial independence

Ensuring the Party's financial independence is indispensable to ensure its political, organic and ideological independence. It is therefore a task for the whole Party, for all organizations and members.

It is on the basis of the Party's functioning, its strengths and means, its militancy, its own initiatives, the contribution of its militants, sympathizers and friends that it is important to ensure the financial means to support its action and intervention.

The ability of PCP to ensure the essential financial means for its activity, by refusing to become a department of the State or a political appendix of economic and financial groups, has great political and ethical value that makes PCP a distinctive political party in the pursuit of its objectives and in its intervention among the Portuguese workers and people.

The Party's assets, its various technical means, means of transportation, facilities and Work Centers, the grounds of the Avante! Festival, endow the Party with important own resources that do not depend from third parties and are indispensable instruments for the Party's intervention in the service of workers, the people and the country and an important component of its political and ideological independence. This state of affairs has been secured over decades, using fund-raising campaigns with the participation of militants and friends, relying on the efforts of a vast number of militant for the construction and conservation of facilities, as well as on donations, and is in itself a distinctive feature of PCP in Portuguese society.

Along with the revitalisation of the life of the Work Centers, it is important to take care of their maintenance, conservation and, taking into account the real needs and the possibilities, the existing Work Centers should be evaluated.

Increasing the Party's financial capacity is indispensable to support and grow its ability to intervene. The proper management of the available means , a careful assessment of expenses, with its possible reduction in areas that do not call into question the presence and political intervention of the Party and especially an increase in revenues, are objectives to be pursued in the Party's financial policy.

In order to ensure the financial equilibrium of the Party and its organizations, it is necessary to aim at reducing the organizations’ dependence from the central cashier as well as the relative weight of revenues from institutional and other sources of a more circumstantial nature.

At the present time the following measures stand out:

- to increase the value of membership fees and the number of comrades who are up to date with their membership dues, taking particular advantage of the moment of delivering the new card to achieve these objectives and inform how and to whom they can pay their dues; to expand the structure of comrades with the responsibility of collecting membership fees on the basis of one comrade for every twenty Party members; to extend the possibility of payment by direct debit or via ATMs; to ensure a broader base of members who make regular payments, including monthly payments; to continue the discussion on increasing the value of the fee, with 1% of one’s salary or monthly income as a reference;

- to ensure that the contributions of elected and other representatives of the Party in public office are paid in, while respecting the principle that no one should be benefited or prejudiced by his or her status; calculating the respective amounts; defining how best to implement the principle, giving priority to direct bank transfers; regularly discussing and following-up this matter;

- to promote the collection of contributions from members, sympathizers and other friends of the Party, who must have a regular nature and be based on specific objectives or general needs. It is important to define comprehensive lists of contacts to be made and to evaluate who is better suited to carry them out. Fund-raising campaigns can be important mass initiatives and fund-raising initiatives such as 'A day of salary for the Party' should be pursued, ensuring that they are monitored by central and regional leadership bodies, overcoming practices that have become routine, broadening the involvement of the Party's organization and enhancing the growth of these revenues;

- to keep in mind the importance of other revenues that, beyond their political significance, can also represent important financial amounts, namely the fees paid for the participation in polling stations, the sale of Avante!, O Militante and other Party publications, political initiatives, get-togethers, parties and, more generally, events aimed at revitalising the Work Centers, as well as the Avante! Festival;

- to expand, create where they do not exist and streamline the functioning of structures to monitor financial issues and to extend the number of cadres who are assigned responsibilities for various funds-related tasks, ensuring that they are properly valued;

- to prepare budgets in each organization with an estimate of expenses and revenue objectives, ensuring the sustainability of commitments undertaken without undermining the Party's future intervention, ensuring budgetary control and monitoring of the financial situation.

9. Assemblies of party organizations

It is of particular importance that a large number of assemblies of party organizations be held in 2018. Holding assemblies of organizations is one component of the Party’s internal democracy and an integral part of the Party’s functioning principles, with the election of its leadership bodies; the assessment and evaluation of the work carried out, the situation in the areas under their responsibility, and the definition of guidelines for intervention, within the framework of the Party's general orientation. Particular attention should be given to holding the largest possible number of assemblies of grassroots organizations, starting with those that have not met for more than three years. While respecting the scope and specific preparation of the assembly of each organization, the combination of assemblies of grassroots organizations with ongoing preparatory processes for assemblies of regional, county-level or equivalent organizations, may assist in the achievement of the former.

10. The organization and working principles of the Party are the basis of its strength

The realization of the objectives and the role of PCP, which by its identity and intervention is targeted by capital, raises the need for a proper organization and operating principles stemming from the creative development of democratic centralism which, based on a deeply ingrained internal democracy, a single central direction and a single overall orientation, guarantee the Party’s participation, unity and capacity to intervene. The working principles of the Party are a component of its communist identity and an essential basis of its strength which is indispensable to reaffirm, value and ensure in practial terms a stronger and more influential PCP.

III

The work of reinforcing the Party, with the tasks and measures indispensable for the strengthening and building of Party organizations, must be conceived in conjunction with a strong connection to the masses and an intense political activity. A work of strengthening the organization, intensifying and broadening the mass struggle, which combines the immediate objectives, the insistence on taking as far as possible the defense, reinstatement and attainment of new rights, the struggle for patriotic and left policies, the affirmation of the Party's project, the implementation of its Programme of an advanced democracy with the values of April Revolution in the future of Portugal, for socialism and communism.