trom peo The Portuguese bank workers have shown that they understand this fact when they insist that the nationalsation of the banks must be based po watken control -on systematic supersion of the banks' affairs by democratic workers' committees. Such a set-up would give the working das the essential information and authority that could be used to work out its own plans for the economy. However the coordination and implementation of such a plan could only be carried out if the working class was united and organised on all levels from the workplace and neighbourbood through to the national levelwith democratic workers committees running attairs at all these levels. In other words it requires the creation of a system of soviets.
In order to defend the workers" organisations against all reactionary attacks it is necessary that the hierarchical structure of the capitalist army be destroyed and that the masses in the army —the vast majority of whom are rank-and-file soldiersare organised through their own domocratic bodies and integrated along with workers" soviets into the soviet system.
At the same time the workers must have their own armed militias under the control of the soviets, whose responsibility it must be to preserve order" -working class order -rather than the specialised police force of the capitalist state. ELEMENTS Many of the clements for such dewith any sort of cconomic sabolage. In many factories the workers have already locked out the bosses because of their malpractices, and in some the workers have even started up production themscives to provide the material means to continue the struggle.
SELF-DEFENCE The mass mobilisations against the reactionary threat have given thousands of workers practical experience of organising their own sell-defence. In the recent upsurge many workers obtained arms from the military (although they were taken back after the danger was past). At the same time the various police forces (one of which was centrally implicated in the attempted coup) are thoroughly discredited with the mass of the popWlation. The demand for an armed workers' militia would have tremendous popular appeal. After all, what better way to guarantee the defeat of reaction than an armed people?
Inside the army the upheaval has brought rank-and-file soldiers closer than ever belore to the vanguard of the workers" movement. In some of the most politically anvolved units the militaty hierarchy (which the Armed Forces Movement steadfastly upholds) has started to break down, with mass meetings of all ranks being held to issue statements and appeals about the current situation. The attempted coup shows the senious dangers in the lack of organisation of the ranks: reuctionaries continue to hold important positions among the officers, and the military hierarchy allows them to manipulate ordinaty soldiers for their own political airs. Once more, what better way to seal the road to reaction than by replacing control by military hierarchy with control by workers democracy?
In the coming months Porlugal will face many probleins: the shock waves of the world capitalist crisis. and the reactionary conspiracies of international capitalism and homegrown reactionaties alike. But the situstion will not stand still: it must either go forward to the creation of a genuine workers' power as the basis for a socialist revolution, or it will slide backwards into moribund cap Italism and the resurgence of reaction. That is the choice facing the Portug use working class. It is up to the fonces of the revolutionary left in Portugal to build the sort of orginsation -a party such as that which led the Russian working class forward to victory in [917 -that can make Portugal the harbinger of a Red Europe.
All over Portugal workers are setting up check-points like this to make sure no reactionaries pass through without their knowledge Paratroopers leave the scene of their attempted attack on a barracks, demoralised by the mass popular resistance they met