Portuguese Communist Party
by Aurelio Santos

1. Some previous issues

I shall approach the theme of this presentation setting
from our specific analysis and experience, based upon the
concrete conditions of Portuguese society.

As is natural, this experience is marked by the social and
political context of Portugal, namely: by the nature of a
long struggle against a fascist dictatorship; with the vast
participation of large strata in unitary actions and
organisations; by a recent democratic revolution with great
popular participation which deeply changed Portuguese
society in its political, economic, social and cultural
aspects; and by a counter offensive of recovery by the
economic and social forces dislodged by the revolutionary
process, an offensive carried out, essentially, by the
political power occupied through the electoral process.

In this context, we characterise the policy carried out by
the present government of the Socialist Party as being a
policy which is voluntarily prisoner of the complicity and
favours of big capital and despising the situation,
interests and aspirations of the workers and vast layers of
population, continuing and deepening, since 1995, the
essential pillars of the policy of the right applied by the
Social Democratic Party.

The PS government, in a first phase, and particularly
during its first mandate (1995/99) benefited from the
electoral support of hundreds of thousands of workers which
conditioned (and still conditions) the participation of
many in the political struggle against government policy.

Meanwhile, the PS government in Portugal, just like other
socialist and social democratic parties in Europe has
applied a neo-liberal policy. The evolution of the social
situation tends to worsen due to this policy of the right,
which places the state apparatus as an instrument of the
forced concentration and centralisation of capital at the
service of great national and foreign capitalist groups.
This policy has led to the dilapidation of the public
enterprising property, the acceleration of privatisations
of strategic companies and areas of Portuguese economy
(electricity, oil, communications, cement, paper pulp), the
destruction of the productive apparatus in agriculture,
fisheries and industry and the handing over of essential
public services to private capital.

Disguising the content and nature of its policy, the PS
government, under the guise of �social dialogue�, is an
accomplice of the anti democratic situation in the majority
of companies, in violation of labour rights and very
serious limitations to the activity of unions and workers'
committees. The efforts to carry out legislative changes in
social and labour areas continue, with an aim of
liquidating the conquests achieved after the revolution of
April 74, and create a relation of forces disfavourable to
the workers. The threats to job security, pay levels,
professional careers, union contracts and reduction of
rights of future generations of workers deepen.

Social inequalities increase. The share of national wealth
continues to evolve negatively to the employees. With the
policy of contention of wages carried out by government the
situation has worsened. There is an increase in the
precariousness of labour relations and work rhythms, the
hiring of underground workers. Tens of thousands of foreign
citizens continue to work in Portugal in a situation yet to
be solved, without rights or any social protection.

The offensive against the rights of the workers also
encompasses the attack on social security, aiming to reduce
the role of the state to a mere welfare function, creating
conditions for the diversion of a substantial part of its
sources of income to financial speculation. It is in this
framework that the Portuguese Communist Party acts so as to
create conditions for a new policy which prevents the
continuation of the destruction of the productive
apparatus, develop the economy, value work, promote jobs
with rights, improve the living conditions and the
stability of the workers and the Portuguese people.

In the political field, we identify the strategy of
struggle against this policy, as being, essentially, a
struggle for the defence and exercise of democratic values
and democracy itself and the deepening and concretisation
of democracy in all its dimensions: political, social,
economic, cultural.

In the last months, the evolution of the national political
situation shows a process of deep government wear and
erosion of its base of support which is determined by the
increasing growth of popular discontent against its policy,
where government guidelines and decisions, as well as the
great, intense and combative movement of workers' struggles
and other social layers weigh decisively.

2. A great movement of struggles

The growth and intensification of the social struggle of
the workers and other social layers represents one of the
main features of the present political situation in
Portugal. The increasing discontent led to the struggle and
its development as an answer to government policy, the
worsening of the country's problems and of the living and
working conditions. By their dimension, diversity of
participation of sectors and strata, by their combativity
and objectives, the mass struggles constituted a decisive
element for a change of the country's political and social
situation, for an understanding of the real government
policy, for its discredit. Through its policy, the PS
government was responsible for this discontent to change
into indignation and struggles of several social layers.

Powerful strikes carried in the transport area and many
companies, the struggle of the textile workers for a 40
hour week and the defence of pauses in their work schedule,
the struggle of the public administration workers, the
dimension and combativity of the huge march of the workers
during the EU Summit on Employment in Lisbon and the
commemorations of May Day carried out by the unitary trade
union (CGTP General Confederation of Portuguese Workers),
protests ranging the country by workers and secondary
school students, in the huge march this week on the
occasion of the EU Summet, with the participation of
workers from several countries, for the social rights and
employment. These huge masses movements having had a great
participation of youth and women, discredited the
government and its social policy, and opened the way for
important results for the workers, and constituted a
qualitative step forward in the dimension and objectives of
their struggle.

Together with these movements, also important were hundreds
of struggles for better wages and more rights carried out
in companies in the industries of transformation, steel and
metal, shipbuilding and cars, chemical and building. In
shoe making and cork, electrical industries and catering
and food, in textiles and wool industries.

During this period, there is a great significance in the
victories in votes and mandates of unitary slates, which
included communists, in elections in unions and workers'
committees in great industrial, transport and service
companies.

The working class component, particularly in local
administration, in communications, energy, transport, have
had a dynamising role in the strikes, marches and different
actions of struggle. This fact does not diminish, but
rather influences, converges and stimulates struggles
carried out in the area of commerce and services,
education, health, justice. Security forces, armed forces,
stressing a new availability and involvement of young
workers of new companies and temporary jobs.

Also the farmers, from the beginning of the year have
confronted government in several struggles for the survival
of small and medium agricultural explorations and the
defence of national agriculture. This whole movement
culminated in the great national concentration of
Portuguese farmers who, together with 5000 Spanish farmers,
protested against the Common Agricultural Policy and the
World Trade Organisation, during the EU meeting in Portugal
on agricultural policy, last May.

The positive results achieved in many areas prove that it
is worth intensifying and following this path, reinforce
the influence of the communists who played a dynamising
role and open the way for a new course and a new policy
which answers the demands and aspirations of the workers
and the classes and layers hit by the policy of the right.

3. The communists and the workers

The Portuguese Communist Party has a class nature, defining
itself as a party of the working class and all workers as a
fundamental line of its political identity and inseparable
from its objectives. This characteristic has consequences
in all aspects of its intervention, activity and
organisation.

It is through practical action that the PCP tries to
confirm that it is a party, which defends the interests of
the workers. This preoccupation is present in all areas of
its activity, in the state institutions in which it
participates, in the action of the communists in the trade
union movement and other workers' organisations, in the
general intervention of the party. Its influence and
organised action in companies and the work place constitute
a fundamental element to face difficulties, promote the
renovation of forces, strengthen its organisation and
intervention. It is mainly on this basis that the party has
its influence on other layers of population and a political
presence which reflects on its intervention in the Assembly
of the Republic, the European Parliament, Local
Administration, in the Legislative Assemblies of the
Autonomous Regions of the Azores and Madeira.

4. The social forces and the social alliances

The framework of the social (and political) alliances must
be concrete, according to the conditions and the historic
situation in every country as well as classes' composition
and the organizing force. There is no universal or definite
way to define these alliances. We consider that it is na
essential task of every party to study its reality and to
define the alliances framework.

The bases and foundations of our strategy of alliances
derive from an appreciation of the arrangement of the
social forces in Portugal. We consider it an essential
issue to perceive the contradictions and real correlation
of force in society, to define social and political
alliances, objectives of struggle, perspectives of the
evolution of the situation and the possibility of an
alternative to the policy of the right.

In Portugal, the first and most important conclusion to be
drawn from the data available, is the continuation of the
development of a deep social stratification, which grows,
diversifies and develops around two poles.

a) the pole of great capital, of a great rebuilt and
renovated bourgeoisie, very small, closely linked to
transnational capital, the sole beneficiary of the
capitalist and latifundia recovery and speculative
activity, and which, in a relatively short time, regained
not only a huge economic, but also political and
ideological power;

b) the pole of the wage earners, a growing mass selling the
force of labour, and which includes the working class
block, numerically stable during the last decade but losing
its relative weight, the growing proletarisation of several
sectors of the active population and a strong increase of
workers in the service area. The rate of employment, during
the last decade increased from 67% to 72.3% and taking into
account the significative increase of false independent
workers this increase was higher.

As to the composition of employment we have to stress,
together with the increase of the employees, the growth of
the participation of women, the decrease of the weight of
the youth, the increase of the volume and forms of
precariousness. 20% of the Portuguese workers have
precarious jobs, increasing the precariousness to 41% among
workers with part time jobs. The youth have a 37% share of
all jobs with non permanent contracts. A new phenomenon is
the fact that the number of unemployed with college
education is growing, having reached 9.2% at the end of
last year. The number of immigration workers increases,
with special incidence of those originating from the former
Portuguese colonies in Africa and from Eastern Europe.

As to the entrepreneurial structure the deepest change is
in the size of the companies. There is a growth in the
number of micro-companies (generally short lived) and the
number of small and medium sized companies, due to the
disaggregation of the big companies into legally
independent units. These changes lead to a greater
fragmentation of the collective of the workers, using
sub-contracts as a weapon in labour disputes, a greater
pressure for a wider deregulation, flexibility and
polyvalence and a greater differentiation of labour,
forming companies with a nucleus of essential workers and a
second group with a precarious link or working for
sub-contracting companies.

The development of the so called underground economy and
the consolidation of a mass of excluded people is also a
visible expression and coherent advance in capitalist
relations: the so called new poor, those who were
prematurely thrown out of the labour force for lack of
qualifications or age, those who survive on miserly
retirement and pensions and others.

The ageing of the population, the increasing participation
of women in economic activity, the growth of urban poles,
concentration of activities along the coast and the
desertification of the hinterland, are other features of
the changes in social texture.

All these strata of population are strongly affected by the
policy of the right applied by government as instrument of
monopolist capital. Precisely, one of the characteristics
of the situation in Portugal is the existence of a vast
front of social struggle, comprising workers, employees,
intellectuals and technical cadres, small and medium sized
farmers, small and medium sized impresarios in commerce,
industry and services, as well as women, youth, retired and
pensioners and other social groups who intervene with
specific aspirations and objectives.

This social front expresses in a permanent, although
irregular, flow of struggles for immediate objectives, of
protest and demands, objectives which are, under present
conditions, a necessary beginning for mobilisation and
development of actions which, later, with their own
dynamics, change into an open opposition to the policy of
the right and to the government. These actions breed the
gradual process of consciencialisation of those who do not
accept the social order they live in, but cannot conceive
any other, those who carry out class struggle, but do not
identify it as such. Through this social front of struggle
the social base of support to the policy of the right
erodes and a social base of support to a democratic
alternative grows. Thus the importance we attribute to this
front.

5. An alternative of the left and political and party
alliances

When approaching the issue of alliances we do not talk only
of social forces, but also of alliances of political and
party forces.

On this issue there is not a method common to all
countries, even capitalist countries with greater
similarities, as is the case of Europe.

Our Party is deeply linked with the interests and
aspirations of the great social front which is vastly
majoritary in the population, is the main political driver
of social protest, but its electoral support, in spite of
mass electoral campaigns carried out by PCP and CDU
(Unitary Democratic Coalition, the electoral coalition
promoted by PCP), has not increased and is far from the
electoral support of PS and PSD, although having increasing
prospects.

The disadjustment between the vast opposition to the policy
of the right in Portugal and the votes obtained by its
promoters, shows that there is no correspondence between
the adjustment of the social forces and the adjustment of
the political forces.

The reasons for this difference are several and, without a
doubt, we try to understand and overcome them. Just note
that the reason lies on the difference between the high
level of social conscience of the voters, obtained through
a direct experience of their role, and the political
conscience, more permeable to the weight of the dominant
ideological pressures, reflecting on their motivations for
voting.

This fact is not enough to characterise the situation and
perceive a perspective. However, we derive two conclusions
from it.

The first: that the huge social movement against government
laws, decisions and measures, comprising sectors which have
constituted important areas of PS and PSD voters is vaster
than the political and voter support they have, and that
their policy will progressively reduce it. The second:
that, at the social level, there is potentially a political
and electoral basis for a democratic alternative of the
left.

On these conclusions lie the basis and foundation of our
policy of convergence to create the conditions for an
alternative to the governments of the right, and a turn to
the left in Portuguese politics.

What is being of the left or right is sometimes a
controversial or polemic question. It is what happens now
when social-democratic parties in general, considering
themselves to the left of the spectrum of political
parties, surrendered to neoliberalism and execute
right-wing policies in favour of big capital. The
distinctive indefinition between left and right can de
characterise the left and disarm it ideologically, while
concealing what is historically and politically the right.

In this prospect, we consider that one of the lines which
distinguishes the left from the right is that the right
leads a policy at the service of the perpetuation of the
dominating sectors of society, while, at the same time,
refusing to admit the existence of opposing social
interests or the role of conflictuality of these interests.
In sum, we consider that the concepts of left and right are
fundamentally integrated in the existence of classes and
class struggle, even if some of its actors are not aware
of it or do not admit it. What distinguishes the left from
right are positions, interventions and distinctive
political, ideological and social projects. Even if, on a
given issue or in a certain state of affairs there may be a
large social consensus.

In this aspect Portugal has curious situations. The
Socialist Party, by its positions and political actions
cannot be presently considered a party of the left,
identifying with the policy and action of the right and
co-operating with it on main issues of national policy. The
party, which has alternated in government with PS, although
openly to the right, calls itself Social Democratic Party,
but this is undoubtedly a borrowed name it took to cover
itself at a time when Portuguese political life was
strongly marked by the left.

The PCP, in its struggle against the policy of the right,
has a diversified unitary policy.

It dynamises unitary social movements, notably in the trade
union movement, where it has a fundamental influence, as
well as movements of farmers, youth, intellectuals, women.

It intervenes in diversified forms of popular organisation
and association: collectivities, co-operatives, cultural
and sporting associations, etc.

At the electoral level, it formed a democratic coalition
with the Ecological Party �Os Verdes� (The Green), which
also includes thousands of independent democrats. This
coalition, CDU, has obtained a dynamic parliamentary
representation and holds a majority and is responsible for
municipal rule in vast and important regions (comprising
almost a � of the national territory and about 20% of the
population).

At the same time, we insist on the need for unity and
convergence among democrats and democratic forces, for an
alternative of government and an alternative policy for the
country and we work to create the forces correlation which
will make it possible, We follow the same guidelines in
relation to local government. One such case is the Lisbon
Municipality, where a coalition of the PCP with PS and
other democratic forces gained a majority, removed the
right which held power for eleven years, and since 1990
ensures a municipal rule with communists and socialists, in
parity, in the country's capital, having obviously a
democratic and progressist contents.

With different characteristics, similar problems take place
in other countries. And hence the legitimate quest for new
forms of co-operation, alliance, convergence and unity of
the communists with other political forces.

We consider, however, that if these conceptions and
initiatives mean a dilution or even dissolution of
communist parties in unitary organisations, the left is not
strengthened, but comes out weakened.

We continue to believe that the communist parties, and not
only in Portugal, are necessary, with their own identity
and its ideological, political and organising independence.

6. A valid project of society

Political forces which propose to carry out an alternative
policy and do not present as mere candidates for the
management of the dominant capitalist society, have to
point out the immediate objectives which inspire and
determine the actions they carry out, and, on the other
hand, the configuration they propose for society.

On our part, we propose a political democracy, guaranteed
and institutionalised in the structures of the state's
power in participative forms, ensuring the freedoms and
rights of the citizens, including the freedom of the press,
the right of the participation of political parties, trade
union freedom, as an integral part of the regime. We
propose diversified and decentralised socio-economic
structures, with social property of the basic sectors, with
management systems wherein the workers are directly
engaged, and taking into account the role of the market. We
propose a social democracy, which assures the improvement
of people's living conditions, which recognizes the working
and social rights as human rights and ensures the criteria
of social justice in income distribution and economic
development. We propose a cultural democracy assuring the
extensive access to free creation and cultural enjoyment.
We defend the guarantee of national sovereignty as
inseparable expression of exercising democracy, and we
propose a policy of peace, friendship and cooperation with
all peoples..

In our project, democracy and socialism are closely linked.

We consider that one of the major ideological ambiguities
for a new adjustment of the political forces and the left
is the counter position so often repeated by our
adversaries between communism and democracy. Our struggle
for socialism is inseparable from our struggle for
democracy. Our project for socialism embodies, develops and
tries to enrich the fundamental features of the advanced
democracy we propose as an alternative of the left and
tries, as a road to socialism, to deepen democracy in all
its dimensions.

Presenting our own objectives and programmes, at the same
time we declare ourselves always ready to discuss, with
those who have proposals, ideas or intervention on the
issues concerning our country, be they around concrete
issues, for actions towards immediate objectives of a
political nature, or in relation to issues concerning the
definition of strategies for common action or political
programmatic projects for a democratic policy. Safeguarding
our specificity and own objectives, but ready to find all
possible common ground.

7. International conditionings and co-operation
among communists and progressive forces

We believe that it is in their own country that each party
has to act to develop its influence, organisation and
capacity for struggle. The intervention at the
international level cannot solve the difficulties of each
party within its country. We also defend that the stronger
and more deeply rooted a party is in its own country, the
greater will be its contribution for the struggle at the
international level.

But this does not mean that international co-operation and
its strengthening are not presently of the utmost
importance. Given a greater internationalisation of
economic and political life and a greater co-ordination of
the big capital at the world level, the solidarity,
co-operation and convergence among communist and the left,
progressive, revolutionary and national liberation forces
are even more necessary.

It is in this sense that the PCP tries to develop its
action at the international level.

During this second half of the 20th, century, capitalism
as a world system (that is, imperialism) underwent new and
great changes and developments, which have, undoubtedly,
important reflection on the conditions and objectives of
the social struggle and policy and demand new answers.

The development of the productive forces gained a new
powerful surge with the modern scientific and technological
revolution, which determined important changes in the
productive apparatus, which gained a more international
character. The development of gigantic multinational
companies, with the creation of a powerful cosmopolitan
financial oligarchy accelerates the increasing
internationalisation of the productive process and the
world integration of the economy. The transnationals exert
pressure on the states, trying to create new instruments to
answer their supranational dimension. The state
intervention on economic life deepens. The wave of
privatisations, the cuts in social public sectors, the
so-called flexibility in labour legislation, the
liberalisation of exchanges, the deregulation of the
financial sphere, are but state interventions chiefly
benefiting groups of financial and speculative capital in
detriment of large masses of peoples, together with other
measures like fiscal and exchange policies, the exemptions,
subsidies, orders and even the acceptance of huge debts of
bankrupt companies.

These changes and their consequences are yet to be,
theoretically, synthesised with rigour.

But, on our part, we believe that two basic characteristics
of capitalism still exist: its exploitative nature and its
aggressive nature.

This question deems reflection, not only concerning theory,
but also concerning political characterisation and concrete
action.

The new processes of development at the national and
international level prove that the accumulation of capital
and the exploitation of workers are two inseparable
processes and realities; that the creation of gigantic
economic groups is based upon increasing exploitation and
new methods to ensure it; that massive unemployment settles
as a permanent fixture.

The formation of great poles of wealth is in itself an
expression of the widening of social inequalities in each
country and at world level, and produces on the other hand
poles of poverty, misery, illness, marginalisation,
widespread corruption, as a mark of great social scourges.
In the context of world inequalities, the problems of
underdevelopment, of hunger, of illness, of depletion of
natural resources, of deforestation, of desertification, of
population, reach in some of the world's regions the
dimension of real catastrophes.

As to the aggressive nature of capitalism a similar
reflection is warranted.

The pressures, impositions and economic blockades imposed
on weaker countries, the foreign policy of the main
capitalist countries, the new international order
understood as the aim of re-establishing world hegemony,
the imposition by force of arms of solutions to issues of
internal policy of other countries by 90o'the United States
and now also by the European Community present clear
examples as was the Gulf War, the aggressions against
Somalia and Libya, the hated financial and military support
to terrorist movements in Third World countries, the
interventions against Yugoslavia.

The international situation created by the disintegration
of the Soviet Union and the defeats suffered in recent
years by the forces that fight for socialism and by the
progressive and national liberation forces, with the
changes and the vertical drop of several communist parties,
imperialism gained a new life. Today, it acts with growing
arrogance and proposes to determine the destiny of the
world. It strengthens its economic and, naturally,
political and military domination. It instrumentalises the
UN and the Security Council, finds among the �Group of
Seven� and their appendixes (IMF, World Bank, GATT), the
elements of a new imperial order of command. The new
strategic concept of NATO aims at transforming this
military organisation into a military arm of imperialism's
global domination and the European Union hastens its own
integrated military system, with the declared intention of
intervention and imposition.

If the forces of capital are united against the workers and
the peoples, co-ordinate their action to plunder natural
resources, to suppress liberation processes, to share areas
of domination and influence, to carry out acts of
aggression and war, this situation makes it more necessary
than ever to strengthen the bonds of friendship,
co-operation and solidarity among the progressive, left,
democratic and anti-imperialist forces.

This is also a demand of the present situation.

And so, on our part, we are sincerely engaged in this
effort of approximation and co-operation, and in the
strenthening of the communist and revolutionary movement,
independently of differences in ideological conceptions,
respecting the increasing diversity of solutions to
concrete problems which in each country are faced by the
forces of social change, and from the common interests and
objectives that the world situation today presents.