policy made it easier for the Socialist Party leadership to retain its political hold over its supporters, and to mislead them into the present anti-communist campaign.
It is not likely that even a victory of the right wing of the Armed Forces would lead to Chile-style repression in Portugal. The main sections of the working class are too class conscious and too highly organised, and have too much support within the left-wing of the army for this to be done without launching a full-scale civil war. At the moment both imperialism and the Portuguese capitalists hope to restore their power without such a drastic course. What they are seeking is a conservative Government that would act to prevent any further steps forward in the Portuguese revolution (such as the spread of the organs of popular power' agreed to by the Armed Forces Movement assembly) and begin a campaign of selective repression designed to pave the way for a future rolling-back of the gains of the working class.
Whatever developments take place within the next few weeks there is only one way forward for the Portuguese revolution: to overcome the split in the mass movement and isolate the reactionaries and social democratic traitors by building and generalising the existing organs of working class power (workers, soldiers and tenants committees, popular assemblies, etc) on a truly democratic basis, open to all sections of the masses, irrespective of their party affiliations. A key task must be to work for the unification of these organs on a national level, as the Portuguese Trotskyists of the International Communist League are in their call for a National Popular Assembly, and to fight for the creation of a Workers' Government based on these bodies and the unity of the entire working class.
In this struggle-whatever turn it may take-the Portu guese working class needs the broadest possible international solidarity.
red weekly 14 august 1975