developing in Portugal today. Equally important are the series of nationalisations which have taken returned from Portugal, explains below the significance of these developments in taking the struggle Following the example of the bank and insurance employees, who brought about nationalisation by occupying their offices on the day after the attempted coup on 1l March, mass meetings of workers in transport, have all raised the demand for natio nalisation of their companies. To them must be added several tens or even hundreds of small and medium-sized enterprises where the workers see nationalisation as the natural response to threats of closure or unemployment, whether they result from the economic crisis or from sabotage.
We have always explained that nationalisation isn't in itself a revolutionary measure. What it poses, however, are two key questions concerning how it is carried through: that of compensation, and that of workers' • NO COMPENSATION.• In the context of the workers' mobilisations in Portugal, the question of compensation calls forth a simple answer. Pay with what? The workers know that the country is poor, they are always being told that; and they know, too, that to pay off the capitalists would mean new sacrifices-intolerable sacrifices when the standard of living is already so low.
Why pay? The compensated capitalists will waste no time in transferring their pital abroad-notably to Brazil, where Spinola and the Champalimaud family are already sounding out prospects. That is, of course, if they don't decide to use this windfall to finance new attempts at a coup!
Already on 12 April, 20,000 agricultural workers attending a meeting at Beja called by the Union of Agricultural Workers voted by acclamation for a resolution demanding the expropriation without any compensation of the big estates', and 'State support, both technical and financial, to the workers management com missions • PROPERTY OF WORKERS• Before the nationalisation of their firms, decided on 15 April, meetings of the workers at SONAP (oil company) and SOPONATA (petrol transporters) passed several resolutions. means a victory for the working class. But they represent only one factor in the political situation place, often forced through-as in the case of the banks and insurance companies-by workers' action from below, and frequently accompanied also by measures of workers' control. DANIEL BENSAID, a correspondent of the French Trotskyist paper Bouge who has recently forwards towards the revolutionary overthrow of capitalism and the establishment of a workers' from any return on their capital, which must be the exclusive property of the workers.
Those at SOPONATA considered that nationalisation is a process with its own dynamic, requiring both the postal service and the oil companies administrators who are efficient and politically committed to the working class and to the revolutionary process underway, and also a vigilance and permanent role by the workers... The workers at SOPONATA consider that the present holders of capital should benefit from no return on their capital, which belongs to the workers. These are just a couple of examples at random.
On the question of workers' control, it is also the bank employees who have shown the way. After the nationalisation, the unions made a thoroughgoing enquiry into the role of big banking capital in preparing the coup attempts on 28 September and 11 March. They gave details of the results of their enquiry at a press conference on 1 April.
•WORKERS' CONTROL• The checking through of credit transfers, of cheque counter-foils, and of assignments of funds produced some dramatic results. it was revealed for instance, that the Espirito Santo bank financed the fascist Progress Party in preparation for the silent majority demonstration on 28 September; 750,000 escudos (about £13,000) were transferred to the account of Carlos Bettencourt, the leader of this party in Porto. Furthermore, an account was opened and rapidly credited with 5 million escudos in the name of two leaders of the right-wing CDS party At the Pinto and Sotto Mayer bank, the employees found a list of 20 fake companies which had been used solely as a means of channelling money abroad-a substantial amount of it designed to lubricate the alarmist campaign of the foreign press. The employees of the Burgos bank found nearly 30 such phantom' enterprises. And that's not to mention the way in which credit has been Manipulaled in order to worsen the economic situation.
In firms which haven't yet been nationalised the clenicione remova have in many cases stimulated the pickets and to institute a preventive control on the stocks, the accounts and other documents. This has been the case in the electricity, papermaking and printing industries.
• ECONOMIC SABOTAGE• ary committee has been set up to the workers on 11 March and to make broadcasting time available to the workers organisations. Most frequently, experiences of workers control have proceeded from the expulsion of right wingers or the threat of sackings.
instructive. The workers at the be approved first by the workers' commission, and all movements in and out of the factory are similarly controlled by pickets.
going to move out the machines and zerland. So they set up pickets on and to deny access to a Canadian manager who had arrived to sort out the accounts.
¡ lic enterprise for the urbanisation of " Lisbon) occupied their offices in protest against their role, demanding a of the shanty-towns. The employees of the Sugarloaf chain of supermarshoppers to read.
workers to organise round-the-clock At the Clube Radio a revolutionweed out those who refused to alert Certain examples are particularly tion".
Cardoso & Costa factory managed to get their control officially recognised: every cheque issued by the boss must At the Firestone tyre factory the workers were up against the manoeuvres of a multi-national company. They discovered that the management was the Government. transfer them to its factories in Switguard duty to prevent the removal of either tyres or machinery, to prevent the unloading of any imported tyres, The 160 employees of EPUL (pubbudget and a plan for the urbanisation which would deal with the problems *: 3 'People's Bank' at Leiria-nationalised after workers' occupation kets expeneu our directors linked to the previous regime, and then published a summary of the accounts, the real profit margins, etc. for the •RESPONSIBLE TO WORKERS• Still more forthright was the communique given to the press on 19 March by the workers' commission of the Ourique insurance companies, explaining why they refused to elect delegates to a provisional administrative commission, and how they were not thereby sabotaging nationalisaOn the evening of 15 March the workers on the picket were asked to contact the union leadership in order to send two delegates as quickly as possible to the aforesaid commission. But at the first meeting these delegates discovered that a third worker had been appointed, not elected; that the administrators nominated did not merit the confidence of the workers: and that the provisional commission would be dependent exclusively on So, challenging the way in which their election had been rushed through under the pretext of urgency, they refused once elected to be completely independent of the workers and res ponsible only to the directives of the Finance Minister'. To the predictable slanders accusing them of being saboteurs they replied 'that on the contrary, the saboteurs are those who would prevent the development of the nationalisations to their ultimate revolutionary conclusion.
The workers' commission finally refused to elect delegates to a provi I sional administrative commission I because that would help 'to concea the real location of economic and political power and create illusions that the socialist revolution can be brought about by nibbling away at the capitalist State apparatus and infiltrating the centres of decision-making, when it needs in fact to be - destroyed and replaced by a Socialist Another example of what can come out of such a situation was the eXposure by the brewery workers of Dr. Alves Conde, currently Secretary of State for Tourism and also a member of the two previous Provisional Governments. In going through the files at their factory, they found a letter from Alves Conde to their boss, the reactionary Manuel Vinhas (involved in the 28 September rightwing mobilisation) advising him in 1972 to invest in Brazil because of the lack of political risks there. Simi larly, they found a telegram from Manual Vinhas to Alves Conde congratulating him on his appointment to the Government.
As one can see from these examples, one of the most worrying aspects for the capitalists about the situation in Portugal today is the continuing role of the mass meetings of workers and of the workers com missions. These latter are often recog nised by the Government as de facto representatives in spite of the June 1974 anti-strike laws and the trade union unity law of January 1975, which was intended to 'normalise' working class representation and crush in the egg the embryos of workers' self-organisation.
Daniel Bensaid
red weekly 15 may 1975 The contradictions of the Portuguese Armed Forces Movement as it seeks to manoeuvre between the capitalists and the working class have recently
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IN The Portuguese election results, while clearly a defeat for the open right wing parties, were by no