prestige which Repubinto a major political football.
compatible with the principles of workers' democracy.
pendence - in any sphere - can True, that the Republica workers were quite their own democratic organisation ers democracy. the Republica affair.
Soares - turned the Republica affair aims and methods were completely Of course this unity and indeultimately only be won and defended by independent bodies of working class democracy: by soviets. Bat correct to start the struggle by using to speak out on behalf of the whole working class and to create a paper establishing this sort of mass workThe most that could be said against the Republica workers is that they may have made a tactical mistake in under-estimating the political capital the SP leaders would make out of this. But we should recall that the SP leadership's reac tionary offensive did not begin with What is more, Republica today, far from being part of any 'chorus of uncritical support' for the AFM, is a far more independent spokesperson of the working class than it ever was under SP influence. It is, for example, currently spearheading the opposition among newspaper workers to the plan of the AFM Minister of Communications to reintroduce censorship (which the CP has been prepared to accept in its essentials). GRIEVANCES We must recognise the fine line between the need to avoid fuelling the the legitimate grievances exploited by the SP leaders to rally their base, and the equally important need to avoid capitulating before their reactionary offensive. In our view the Republica struggle was entirely on the correct side of this foreign investors!
To resolve the crisis in the inter ests of Portuguese working people would mean the institution of a planned economy, requiring such measures as the wholesale expropriation of industry without compensation and under full workers control (not through the medium of AFM-appointed overseers), the complete protection of wages and benefits against inflation through the establishment of a sliding scale; generous provision of credits.to small-scale enterprises; a monopoly of foreign trade; and a thoroughgoing programme of agrarian reform. TREACHEROUS It is only by counterposing such a programme of socialist economic measures to the bankrupt policies of closer links with the EEC etc. put forward by Soares & Co. that the ranks of the SP can be won away from their treacherous leaders. And it is only within the context of such a workers solution to the crisis that the popular assemblies can be seen to have a universal relevance. For who is to implement such a program me? The SP leaders won't, and nor will the AFM Such a programme can only be carried through by the workers themselves, organised in their own bodies of working class power coordinated at the highest level in a National Popular Assembly the embryo of a new state power of the workers. All attempts to exclude members of certain workers parties - notably the SP - from the right to represent bona fide workers organisations in such bodies must be strenuously resisted. 'Left' talk of such bodies as being 'above parties' is dangerous nonsense; informed decisions can only be made on the basis of an organised discussion in which the parties have a vital role to play in presenting thought-out alternatives