In the presence of representatives of the Armed Forces Movement, who simply convened the meeting, representatives of the following parties and organisations met togue for Unity and Revolutionary Action (LUAR), Movement of the Socialist Left (MES), Popular Democratic Movement (MDP), Portuguese Conmunist Party, Revoled the following points:
action and tasks of the transition' constitute a valid basis of work for the elaboration of a revolutionary political programme.
2. Such a programme represents the indispensable instrument for uniting and elaborating the actions of the political forces engaged in the revolutionary process, and or me popular masses.
sary conditions for the formation of a government of revolutionary unity are met. ary political organisations, revolutionary militants, the MFA and the autonomous organs of popular power referred to in the guiding document of the People-MFA alliance constitutes a way forward for the revolutionary process. with elaborating actions which allowa joint offensive against reaction and which take forward the revolutionary process. is open to all organisations and all revolutionary militants and organs of popular DUCTWO WS LOOTER At the beginning of last week the Portuguese Communist Party and its petty-bourgeois ally, the MDP, established a 'Revolutionary United Front' with various organisations of the revolutionary left, including the Internationalist Communist League (LCI - Portuguese sympathising section of the Fourth International).
While revolutionaries should be the most active in promoting united workers' action against the reactionary offensive, it is clear that the project of the 'Front' was a sectarian manoeuvre by the Communist Party, and that a serious tactical error was made by those revolutionary groups which signed its common platform, TEXT OF THE 'UNITARY AGREEMENT gether: Popular Socialist Front (FSP), Internationalist Conmunist League (LCI), Leautionary Party of the Proletariat (PRP-BR), Group of Ist May. This meeting approv1. The Copcon document and the document entitled 'The line of programmatic 3. The document Line of programmatic action and tasks of the transition' constitutes the basic guiding document for the activity of the Government until the neces 4. The creation of a front which groups together the parties and other revolution5. The undersigned hereby decide to establish a provisional secretariat charged Ine undersigned declare that this platorm the 'unitary agreement'. This very rapidly became clear when the CP turned a demonstration in Lisbon called by the 'Front' on 27 August into a rally whose sole theme was the defence of the Goncalves Government - resulting in a decision by the LCI and other groups to withdraw their contingents from the march before it reached the presidential palace.
Below we print the text of the 'unitary agreement' together with comments by Ernest Mandel, one of the leaders of the Fourth International. The MFA assembly and Prime Minister Goncalves - both wish to subordinate workers' organisations to the institutions of the state.
is being torn apart by the effects of the class polarisation, the 'unitary agreement' appeals to the MFA under the same heading as it does to To be sure, the agreement reveals the change in the relation of forces which makes the CP seek the support of the revolutionary left. In such a context, it is both possible and necessary to force the CP to take a position on the central objectives mentioned above. But the 'unitary agreement' on the contrary allows the CP to use this force to negotiate a compromise on the governmental level within the bourgeois state apparatus and within the MFA. In this sense, the lack of concrete objectives along with all references made to the document of the Fifth Provisional Government represent concessions to the orientation of the O the revolgiary left and thee workers vanguard must firmly base themselves on the dynamic of the mass response to the reactionary offensive, as shown by the demonstration of 20 August, in order to inpose the objectives cited in point 1