WRONG TO CALL FOR CP - SP | IMGpapers 1976

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Communist Party candidate Pato PRP was correct Otleo is not a 1970s version of V.I.

Lenin or even Louis Blanqui. Trutsky would no doubt have referred to him as a centrist, vacillating between reformism and revolutionary class struggle. However, *Otelo was the only candidate prepared to Had and help extend the gains won by Portuguese workers since 1974, namely the powers of factory and neighbourhood committees, the land occupations in the south and the nationalisations of industry.

The Communist Party has no such perspective, and most workers - either because of its opportunism, or Tor Its lavish approval or cast Europear dictatorships (or both).

Secondly, I would like to comment on the Trotskyists' call for a CP-SP government. Both the 'Socialists' and une Tascists supported General canes, who has been elected as President because or tnis alliance. canes is the man responsible for the provoking and crushing of the 25 November rebellion by revolutionary soldiers.

The SP is not a workers party in any real sense at all. Formed in West Germany inse itnes no nistory oT involvement in Portuguese workers' struggles. In recent union elections in the Setenave shipyards, SP candidates couldn t even obtain the bu signatures needed to get their names onto the ballot papers. There are 4.000 workers at serenave.

To call for a CP-SP government is there fore quite wrong. As far as the majority of politically advanced workers are concerned, these counter-revolutionary parties do not need 'exposing".

Just because workers vote for a party e.g. the SP, it does not mean that it is their party. In Argentina, millions voted for the Peronists. In the USA they tend to vote Democrat, partly because the union bosses regard the Democrats a best representing workers interests. But are these workers organisations?

At one time the bourgeoisie used republicanism to achieve supremacy over the working classes; in today's republics they advocate 'socialism'. The sooner we recognise this fact the better.

Increasingly in today's world the new forces of revolt - women, vouth blacks, rank-and-file workers, etc. -are learning to rent and speak Inrouan self-organisation (although this is not to deny ine importance ot interventior by Marxist revolutionaries). When the workers destroy capitalism they will do so by destroying the bankrupt organisations of Stalinism and social democracy in the process - DAVE BLACK (Tottennams.

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10 Olympics Red Weekly 15 July 1976