Portugal | 48 years since April 25: Capitalism is no solution, we need a new revolution!

On March 24, several news reports stated that we have now experienced more days in a democracy than in a dictatorship. As the 50th anniversary of April 25, 1974, approaches, more and more people are thinking of this date as a “celebration” of democracy. For our part, we believe it is necessary to learn from the revolution of 1974/75 to meet the challenges of the present.
By Maria Silva
Anyone who reads the newspapers without knowing the reality of the situation in Portugal would say that our democracy has solved the problems of our country and the world, and that capitalist democracy is the end of history. However, the reality is more complex.
From coup d’état to revolution
On April 25, 1974, a coup d’état, organized by the Armed Forces Movement, headed by the captains who refused to continue to bear the burden of the colonial war, put an end to the fascist Estado Novo regime. The deep contradictions that gave rise to this process within the army are closely linked to the national liberation struggles of the African peoples. So one can say that April 25 began in Africa and encountered the immense contradictions that also existed in Portugal during the Salazar period.
But April 25 is much more than a day. The military coup opened the doors to a revolution in which thousands of workers and young people, oppressed and repressed by the dictatorship, came on the scene. It was this popular workers’ movement that brought down the main institutions of the fascist regime, starting with the PIDE on the 25th, and that, in the following months, put thousands of demands to change the country on the agenda.
Self-organization and socialism on the agenda
During this period, Workers Committees were organized to self-organize the companies and take the necessary actions to carry out the workers’ demands. Neighborhood and Residents’ Committees were formed, which built houses, streets, day-care centers, etc… Movements were organized to give the land to those who worked on it, to teach literacy to people who could not read, to bring health care to those who had no access to health care. The soldiers also created their own committees, calling into question the strict hierarchy within the barracks. They did not wait for their leaders, nor for the new constitution. They took change into their own hands.
In this process, it was in dispute how to change and where to take the country. The establishment of a capitalist democracy was one among many options. On the agenda was the construction of a new society from the bottom up, including the possibility of moving towards a socialist society without oppression or exploitation, that would definitively break with the foundations of the capitalist economy, from a proposal for alternative power, based on the centralization of workers’ committees, soldiers, etc..
However, this proposal was very much in the minority. The right wanted to maintain the essentials of Salazarism, with some democratic openness and greater economic liberalization. The Socialist Party defended a capitalist democracy, under the “false” slogan of “socialism with democracy”. The Communist Party of Portugal, subservient to the division of the world between the US and the USSR, was not willing to break with capitalism in Portugal, but wanted a regime more equidistant from the two blocs, with strong, repressive safeguards against democratic freedoms, in order to be able to control the labor movement.
The democracy of the rich was the winner
The Socialist Party’s project of a capitalist democracy triumphed. The Constitution of 1976 enshrined in law several rights that had been demanded by the mobilizations in the streets and that would hardly have been enshrined had it not been for the revolutionary struggle of thousands in the streets.
But the Constitution was above all the institution of the power of the bourgeoisie, with the concretization of the powers and bodies typical of a capitalist democracy (of the rich), as opposed to the parallel power that emanated from the bodies of the workers (workers’ democracy), but which was not able to organize itself as a political alternative.
In this sense, the Constitution is the ultimate expression of the defeat represented by November 25, 1975, as a decisive moment in the fight for leadership of the revolutionary process.
The youth that today take to the streets against war, climate change, machismo, homophobia, or racism, have the task of completing what the 25th of April did not finish: breaking with the chains of capitalism, which cannot solve its own problems, and tread the paths to a new revolution.
After the pandemic and the crisis, the war
The pandemic and the economic and social crisis that it unleashed have showed, once again, on a large scale, the destructive face of capitalism.
The Russian invasion of Ukraine has caused more destruction, but it also opens hope inspired by the strength and courage of the Ukrainian resistance. As the Portuguese revolution of 1974/75 teaches us, in the hands of a leader serving the big interests of capital like Zelensky, the sovereignty and independence of Ukraine has no guarantees. Entry into the EU or NATO will bring no end to the conflict, but rather subordination and greater exploitation of Ukraine’s resources and workers. The supposed neutrality of the Communist Party of Portugal only serves the Russian invasion, and the pacifism of the Left Bloc prevents support for the resistance, which is the only way to fight the invasion without allowing NATO to advance in the region. Only international solidarity among peoples and the strengthening of the resistance can bring victories to workers and youth.
The growth of the extreme right and the failure of Geringonça
Still under the effect of the Troika crisis and the recent pandemic, in the January 2022 elections, the far-right party Chega, which claims to be the heir to Salazarism, was the third most popular political force. In France, in the first round of the presidential election, Marine Le Pen, far-right candidate for the National Front, came in second place. In Portugal as in France, the answer to the extreme right is not left unity to save the bosses, but above all it is to refuse the class conciliation that brought us here.
Geringonça has shown well the impossibility of change the living conditions of the youth and of those who work without changing the system.
Green capitalism does not serve us, nor the radicalization of democracy.
Capitalism uses environmental concerns to create new market niches. The exploitation model of capitalism causes (false) environmental measures to be taken at the expense of workers and populations (with layoffs for example) and opening up new ecological and social problems. “Clean energies” are created in imperialist countries on the basis of intensive and destructive exploitation of resources in semi-colonial countries, as is happening today with lithium and the electric car in Portugal. Fighting climate change implies changing the logic of the system, which forces constant consumption to feed capitalist profits and which puts the individual rather than the collective and human and environmental sustainability at the center of the solution. The reforms for a green capitalism proposed by Communist Party and Left Bloc are more of the same.
Faced with the machismo that kills and oppresses, faced with the racism that runs through the various institutions of Portuguese society, the homophobia that continues, there is no way out within capitalism. The Communist Party and the Left Bloc propose measures to make the democracy of the rich more “radical” and “inclusive”, but without ending exploitation there is no way out, because capitalism uses all these oppressions to exploit us even more.
We need a new revolution
On the 48th anniversary of 25 April, we recall that the capitalist democracy that the Constitution consecrated does not solve the main problems facing youth and workers, in a country submissive to the dictates of the EU and the interests of the big capitalist groups.
In times of war and economic and social crisis, class conciliation shows its rottenness and opens the gaps for the return of far-right solutions. As the resistance in Ukraine shows, only the revolutionary struggle of workers and youth can bring about change. An April 25 of accommodation to the democracy of the rich is not enough, we need a new revolution that brings back what was at stake in 1974/75: a society without exploitation and oppression, a socially and ecologically sustainable society, built by workers and the youth.