The issues at stake in tnis discussion ivolve a basic question or class principie and are not differences over tactics. Whether you vote for Pato or Carvalho indicates nothing less than what you consider the strategic line of march should be for the Portuguese working class. In short, it is a choice betweer the political independence of the working class or its collaboration with a 'progressive section of the bourgeoisie represented by a section of the Armed Forces Movement (MFA).
Viewed in this light the lack of a Trotskyist candidate was not a 'problem at all for socialists in portugal. The LCI was faced with a clear cut choice of voting for a workers candidate or a bourgeois candidate. Where the problem arose was that d section of the working class (the 'vanguard) has illusions in a representative of the bourgeoisie. Unfortunately, it seems that some contributors to tnis discussion notably comrades Sissons and Grogan -have similar illusions.
In their attempt to get round the fact that Carvalho is a bourgeois candidate, they say tnat tne decisive criterion for voting was the programme of the candidates. But if this was the case it would not have been possible to vote for either Pato or Carvalho since both have bourgeois reactionary programmes. Moreover, if we adopted this criterion then revolutionaries throughout the world te.g. In Argentina and the USA) would be indifferent to workers' invólvement in bourgeois parties - we would then change the orthodox Trotskyist position and simply call on the unions to fight for a socialist programme within these bourgeois parties.
Both comrades necessarily com pound their error by fostering illusions in Carvalho's programme. Hence, a bourgeois military general who has a record of strike-breaking as part of his function in upholding the capitalist state is suddenly transformed into a 'confused part of the workers movement' This, it seems, is made possible by Carvalho's defence of the existing national. isations and perhaps a promise or more to come. But this is notning new for a demagogue of Carvalho's stature - and moreover, as the LCI have pointed out, does not differ from the programme of the Communist Party.
The Fourth international never na and never will place contidence in tne programmes of either bourgeois or Stalinist outfits, and the same applies to the Portuguese elections. So why was it correct, as the Lordia, to davocate a vote for Pato?
The answer is relatively simple. We draw a distinction not between their programmes but in the tact tna one is a workers candidate and the other a bourgeois candidate. ne fact that Carvalho was supported by the ultra-left and centrist groups does not make him a workers candidate any more than the SP leadership's support for Eanes made him a workers candidate While the CP has a class collaborationist programme, which in other circumstances would permit it to sponsor a bourgeois candidate, it has presently been forced into a semioppositionist stance in order to improve its future prospects of currying favour with the bourgeoisie. Fielding its own candidate could have temporarily connicted with its class tionist goal. Socialists had the opportunity to deepen and exploit that contradiction in oreer to eaucate ne working class as a whole in a perspective of independent working class political action in its own class interests.
Key to this, as in the last two years, side of Goncalves, Carvalho has been the personification of the CP's class the "MFA-people alliance'.
Carvalho's candidacy showed that the bourgeoisie is still keeping is options open in anticipation of a renewed upsurge of the Portuguese masses. The the initial reconstruction of a new popular front bloc which could once collabora Ist oooressors.
elections is only an extension of and opportunity to continue to place a this when he states that our starting For did it strengthen bourgeoisie against workers candidate Pato (above)? is the need to break with the bourgeois MFA and the illusion that a section of it will liberate the working class. Alongcollaborationist programme, embodied in While presently out of favour with the dominant policy of the ruling class, bourgeoisie.
elections provided the opportunity for again bind the workers to their capitalSocialist participation in bourgeois class struggle policy before the oppressed. Comrade Sissons partly recognises
10 Entebbe/Americas Red Weekly 22 July 1976 There will be more terrorist actions