Contribution of the PCP by Aurélio Santos - 23-25 06 2000 Athens

1. Some previous issues

I shall approach the theme of this presentation setting from our specific analysis and experience, based upon the concrete conditions of Portuguese society.

As is natural, this experience is marked by the social and political context of Portugal, namely: by the nature of a long struggle against a fascist dictatorship; with the vast participation of large strata in unitary actions and organisations; by a recent democratic revolution with great popular participation which deeply changed Portuguese society in its political, economic, social and cultural aspects; and by a counter offensive of recovery by the economic and social forces dislodged by the revolutionary process, an offensive carried out, essentially, by the political power occupied through the electoral process.

In this context, we characterise the policy carried out by the present government of the Socialist Party as being a policy which is voluntarily prisoner of the complicity and favours of big capital and despising the situation, interests and aspirations of the workers and vast layers of population, continuing and deepening, since 1995, the essential pillars of the policy of the right applied by the Social Democratic Party.

The PS government, in a first phase, and particularly during its first mandate (1995/99) benefited from the electoral support of hundreds of thousands of workers which conditioned (and still conditions) the participation of many in the political struggle against government policy.

Meanwhile, the PS government in Portugal, just like other socialist and social democratic parties in Europe has applied a neo-liberal policy. The evolution of the social situation tends to worsen due to this policy of the right, which places the state apparatus as an instrument of the forced concentration and centralisation of capital at the service of great national and foreign capitalist groups.
This policy has led to the dilapidation of the public enterprising property, the acceleration of privatisations of strategic companies and areas of Portuguese economy (electricity, oil, communications, cement, paper pulp), the destruction of the productive apparatus in agriculture, fisheries and industry and the handing over of essential public services to private capital.

Disguising the content and nature of its policy, the PS government, under the guise of “social dialogue”, is an accomplice of the anti democratic situation in the majority of companies, in violation of labour rights and very serious limitations to the activity of unions and workers' committees. The efforts to carry out legislative changes in social and labour areas continue, with an aim of liquidating the conquests achieved after the revolution of April 74, and create a relation of forces disfavourable to the workers. The threats to job security, pay levels, professional careers, union contracts and reduction of rights of future generations of workers deepen.

Social inequalities increase. The share of national wealth continues to evolve negatively to the employees. With the policy of contention of wages carried out by government the situation has worsened. There is an increase in the precariousness of labour relations and work rhythms, the hiring of underground workers. Tens of thousands of foreign citizens continue to work in Portugal in a situation yet to be solved, without rights or any social protection.

The offensive against the rights of the workers also encompasses the attack on social security, aiming to reduce the role of the state to a mere welfare function, creating conditions for the diversion of a substantial part of its sources of income to financial speculation. It is in this framework that the Portuguese Communist Party acts so as to
create conditions for a new policy which prevents the continuation of the destruction of the productive apparatus, develop the economy, value work, promote jobs with rights, improve the living conditions and the stability of the workers and the Portuguese people.

In the political field, we identify the strategy of struggle against this policy, as being, essentially, a struggle for the defence and exercise of democratic values and democracy itself and the deepening and concretisation of democracy in all its dimensions: political, social, economic, cultural.

In the last months, the evolution of the national political situation shows a process of deep government wear and erosion of its base of support which is determined by the increasing growth of popular discontent against its policy, where government guidelines and decisions, as well as the great, intense and combative movement of workers' struggles and other social layers weigh decisively.

2. A great movement of struggles

The growth and intensification of the social struggle of the workers and other social layers represents one of the main features of the present political situation in Portugal. The increasing discontent led to the struggle and its development as an answer to government policy, the worsening of the country's problems and of the living and working conditions. By their dimension, diversity of participation of sectors and strata, by their combativity and objectives, the mass struggles constituted a decisive element for a change of the country's political and social situation, for an understanding of the real government policy, for its discredit. Through its policy, the PS government was responsible for this discontent to change into indignation and struggles of several social layers.

Powerful strikes carried in the transport area and many companies, the struggle of the textile workers for a 40 hour week and the defence of pauses in their work schedule, the struggle of the public administration workers, the dimension and combativity of the huge march of the workers during the EU Summit on Employment in Lisbon and the commemorations of May Day carried out by the unitary trade union (CGTP General Confederation of Portuguese Workers), protests ranging the country by workers and secondary school students, in the huge march this week on the occasion of the EU Summet, with the participation of workers from several countries, for the social rights and employment. These huge masses movements having had a great participation of youth and women, discredited the government and its social policy, and opened the way for important results for the workers, and constituted a qualitative step forward in the dimension and objectives of their struggle.

Together with these movements, also important were hundreds of struggles for better wages and more rights carried out in companies in the industries of transformation, steel and metal, shipbuilding and cars, chemical and building. In shoe making and cork, electrical industries and catering and food, in textiles and wool industries.

During this period, there is a great significance in the victories in votes and mandates of unitary slates, which included communists, in elections in unions and workers' committees in great industrial, transport and service companies.

The working class component, particularly in local administration, in communications, energy, transport, have had a dynamising role in the strikes, marches and different actions of struggle. This fact does not diminish, but rather influences, converges and stimulates struggles
carried out in the area of commerce and services, education, health, justice. Security forces, armed forces, stressing a new availability and involvement of young workers of new companies and temporary jobs.

Also the farmers, from the beginning of the year have confronted government in several struggles for the survival of small and medium agricultural explorations and the defence of national agriculture. This whole movement culminated in the great national concentration of
Portuguese farmers who, together with 5000 Spanish farmers, protested against the Common Agricultural Policy and the World Trade rganisation, during the EU meeting in Portugal on agricultural policy, last May.

The positive results achieved in many areas prove that it is worth intensifying and following this path, reinforce the influence of the communists who played a dynamising role and open the way for a new course and a new policy which answers the demands and aspirations of the workers and the classes and layers hit by the policy of the right.

3. The communists and the workers

The Portuguese Communist Party has a class nature, defining itself as a party of the working class and all workers as a fundamental line of its political identity and inseparable from its objectives. This characteristic has consequences in all aspects of its intervention, activity and organisation.

It is through practical action that the PCP tries to confirm that it is a party, which defends the interests of the workers. This preoccupation is present in all areas of its activity, in the state institutions in which it participates, in the action of the communists in the trade union movement and other workers' organisations, in the general intervention of the party. Its influence and organised action in companies and the work place constitute a fundamental element to face difficulties, promote the renovation of forces, strengthen its organisation and intervention. It is mainly on this basis that the party has its influence on other layers of population and a political presence which reflects on its intervention in the Assembly of the Republic, the European Parliament, Local Administration, in the Legislative Assemblies of the Autonomous Regions of the Azores and Madeira.

4. The social forces and the social alliances

The framework of the social (and political) alliances must be concrete, according to the conditions and the historic situation in every country as well as classes' composition and the organizing force. There is no universal or definite way to define these alliances. We consider that it is an essential task of every party to study its reality and to define the alliances framework.

The bases and foundations of our strategy of alliances derive from an appreciation of the arrangement of the social forces in Portugal. We consider it an essential issue to perceive the contradictions and real correlation of force in society, to define social and political alliances, objectives of struggle, perspectives of the evolution of the situation and the possibility of an alternative to the policy of the right.

In Portugal, the first and most important conclusion to be drawn from the data available, is the continuation of the development of a deep social stratification, which grows, diversifies and develops around two poles.
a) the pole of great capital, of a great rebuilt and renovated bourgeoisie, very small, closely linked to transnational capital, the sole beneficiary of the capitalist and latifundia recovery and speculative activity, and which, in a relatively short time, regained not only a huge economic, but also political and ideological power;

b) the pole of the wage earners, a growing mass selling the force of labour, and which includes the working class block, numerically stable during the last decade but losing its relative weight, the growing proletarisation of several sectors of the active population and a strong increase of workers in the service area. The rate of employment, during the last decade increased from 67% to 72.3% and taking into account the significative increase of false independent workers this increase was higher.

As to the composition of employment we have to stress, together with the increase of the employees, the growth of the participation of women, the decrease of the weight of the youth, the increase of the volume and forms of precariousness. 20% of the Portuguese workers have
precarious jobs, increasing the precariousness to 41% among workers with part time jobs. The youth have a 37% share of all jobs with non permanent contracts. A new phenomenon is the fact that the number of unemployed with college education is growing, having reached 9.2% at the end of last year. The number of immigration workers increases,
with special incidence of those originating from the former Portuguese colonies in Africa and from Eastern Europe.
As to the entrepreneurial structure the deepest change is in the size of the companies. There is a growth in the number of micro-companies (generally short lived) and the number of small and medium sized companies, due to the disaggregation of the big companies into legally independent units. These changes lead to a greater fragmentation of the collective of the workers, using sub-contracts as a weapon in labour disputes, a greater pressure for a wider deregulation, flexibility and polyvalence and a greater differentiation of labour, forming companies with a nucleus of essential workers and a second group with a precarious link or working for sub-contracting companies.

The development of the so called underground economy and the consolidation of a mass of excluded people is also a visible expression and coherent advance in capitalist relations: the so called new poor, those who were prematurely thrown out of the labour force for lack of qualifications or age, those who survive on miserly retirement and pensions and others.

The ageing of the population, the increasing participation of women in economic activity, the growth of urban poles, concentration of activities along the coast and the desertification of the hinterland, are other features of the changes in social texture.

All these strata of population are strongly affected by the policy of the right applied by government as instrument of monopolist capital. Precisely, one of the characteristics of the situation in Portugal is the existence of a vast front of social struggle, comprising workers, employees, intellectuals and technical cadres, small and medium sized
farmers, small and medium sized impresarios in commerce, industry and services, as well as women, youth, retired and pensioners and other social groups who intervene with specific aspirations and objectives.

This social front expresses in a permanent, although irregular, flow of struggles for immediate objectives, of protest and demands, objectives which are, under present conditions, a necessary beginning for mobilisation and development of actions which, later, with their own dynamics, change into an open opposition to the policy of the right and to the government. These actions breed the gradual process of consciencialisation of those who do not accept the social order they live in, but cannot conceive any other, those who carry out class struggle, but do not identify it as such. Through this social front of struggle the social base of support to the policy of the right erodes and a social base of support to a democratic alternative grows. Thus the importance we attribute to this front.

5. An alternative of the left and political and party
alliances

When approaching the issue of alliances we do not talk only of social forces, but also of alliances of political and party forces.

On this issue there is not a method common to all countries, even capitalist countries with greater similarities, as is the case of Europe.

Our Party is deeply linked with the interests and aspirations of the great social front which is vastly majoritary in the population, is the main political driver of social protest, but its electoral support, in spite of mass electoral campaigns carried out by PCP and CDU (Unitary Democratic Coalition, the electoral coalition promoted by PCP), has not increased and is far from the electoral support of PS and PSD, although having increasing prospects.

The disadjustment between the vast opposition to the policy of the right in Portugal and the votes obtained by its promoters, shows that there is no correspondence between the adjustment of the social forces and the adjustment of the political forces.

The reasons for this difference are several and, without a doubt, we try to understand and overcome them. Just note that the reason lies on the difference between the high level of social conscience of the voters, obtained through a direct experience of their role, and the political conscience, more permeable to the weight of the dominant ideological pressures, reflecting on their motivations for voting.

This fact is not enough to characterise the situation and perceive a perspective. However, we derive two conclusions from it.

The first: that the huge social movement against government laws, decisions and measures, comprising sectors which have constituted important areas of PS and PSD voters is vaster than the political and voter support they have, and that their policy will progressively reduce it.
The second: that, at the social level, there is potentially a political and electoral basis for a democratic alternative of the left. On these conclusions lie the basis and foundation of our
policy of convergence to create the conditions for an alternative to the governments of the right, and a turn to the left in Portuguese politics.

What is being of the left or right is sometimes a controversial or polemic question. It is what happens now when social-democratic parties in general, considering themselves to the left of the spectrum of political parties, surrendered to neoliberalism and execute right-wing policies in favour of big capital. The distinctive indefinition between left and right can de characterise the left and disarm it ideologically, while concealing what is historically and politically the right.

In this prospect, we consider that one of the lines which distinguishes the left from the right is that the right leads a policy at the service of the perpetuation of the dominating sectors of society, while, at the same time, refusing to admit the existence of opposing social interests or the role of conflictuality of these interests. In sum, we consider that the concepts of left and right are fundamentally integrated in the existence of classes and class struggle, even if some of its actors are not aware of it or do not admit it. What distinguishes the left from right are positions, interventions and distinctive political, ideological and social projects. Even if, on a given issue or in a certain state of affairs there may be a large social consensus.

In this aspect Portugal has curious situations. The Socialist Party, by its positions and political actions cannot be presently considered a party of the left, identifying with the policy and action of the right and co-operating with it on main issues of national policy. The
party, which has alternated in government with PS, although openly to the right, calls itself Social Democratic Party, but this is undoubtedly a borrowed name it took to cover itself at a time when Portuguese political life was strongly marked by the left.

The PCP, in its struggle against the policy of the right, has a diversified unitary policy.

It dynamises unitary social movements, notably in the trade union movement, where it has a fundamental influence, as well as movements of farmers, youth, intellectuals, women.

It intervenes in diversified forms of popular organisation and association: collectivities, co-operatives, cultural and sporting associations, etc.

At the electoral level, it formed a democratic coalition with the Ecological Party “Os Verdes” (The Green), which also includes thousands of independent democrats. This coalition, CDU, has obtained a dynamic parliamentary representation and holds a majority and is responsible for municipal rule in vast and important regions.

At the same time, we insist on the need for unity and convergence among democrats and democratic forces, for an alternative of government and an alternative policy for the country and we work to create the forces correlation which will make it possible, We follow the same guidelines in relation to local government. One such case is the Lisbon Municipality, where a coalition of the PCP with PS and other democratic forces gained a majority, removed the right which held power for eleven years, and since 1990 ensures a municipal rule with communists and socialists, in parity, in the country's capital, having obviously a democratic and progressist contents.

With different characteristics, similar problems take place in other countries. And hence the legitimate quest for new forms of co-operation, alliance, convergence and unity of the communists with other political forces.
We consider, however, that if these conceptions and initiatives mean a dilution or even dissolution of communist parties in unitary organisations, the left is not strengthened, but comes out weakened.

We continue to believe that the communist parties, and not only in Portugal, are necessary, with their own identity and its ideological, political and organising independence.

6. A valid project of society

Political forces which propose to carry out an alternative policy and do not present as mere candidates for the management of the dominant capitalist society, have to point out the immediate objectives which inspire and determine the actions they carry out, and, on the other
hand, the configuration they propose for society.

On our part, we propose a political democracy, guaranteed and institutionalised in the structures of the state's power in participative forms, ensuring the freedoms and rights of the citizens, including the freedom of the press, the right of the participation of political parties, trade union freedom, as an integral part of the regime.
We propose diversified and decentralised socio-economic structures, with social property of the basic sectors, with management systems wherein the workers are directly engaged, and taking into account the role of the market.
We propose a social democracy, which assures the improvement of people's living conditions, which recognizes the working and social rights as human rights and ensures the criteria of social justice in income distribution and economic development.
We propose a cultural democracy assuring the extensive access to free creation and cultural enjoyment.
We defend the guarantee of national sovereignty as inseparable expression of exercising democracy, and we propose a policy of peace, friendship and cooperation with all peoples.

In our project, democracy and socialism are closely linked.

We consider that one of the major ideological ambiguities for a new adjustment of the political forces and the left is the counter position so often repeated by our adversaries between communism and democracy. Our struggle for socialism is inseparable from our struggle for democracy. Our project for socialism embodies, develops and tries to enrich the fundamental features of the advanced democracy we propose as an alternative of the left and tries, as a road to socialism, to deepen democracy in all its dimensions.

Presenting our own objectives and programmes, at the same time we declare ourselves always ready to discuss, with those who have proposals, ideas or intervention on the issues concerning our country, be they around concrete issues, for actions towards immediate objectives of a political nature, or in relation to issues concerning the definition of strategies for common action or political programmatic projects for a democratic policy. Safeguarding our specificity and own objectives, but ready to find all possible common ground.

7. International conditionings and co-operation among communists and progressive forces

We believe that it is in their own country that each party has to act to develop its influence, organisation and capacity for struggle. The intervention at the international level cannot solve the difficulties of each party within its country. We also defend that the stronger
and more deeply rooted a party is in its own country, the greater will be its contribution for the struggle at the international level.

But this does not mean that international co-operation and its strengthening are not presently of the utmost importance. Given a greater internationalisation of economic and political life and a greater co-ordination of the big capital at the world level, the solidarity, co-operation and convergence among communist and the left, progressive, revolutionary and national liberation forces are even more necessary.

It is in this sense that the PCP tries to develop its action at the international level.

During this second half of the 20th, century, capitalism as a world system (that is, imperialism) underwent new and great changes and developments, which have, undoubtedly, important reflection on the conditions and objectives of the social struggle and policy and demand new answers.

The development of the productive forces gained a new powerful surge with the modern scientific and technological revolution, which determined important changes in the productive apparatus, which gained a more international character. The development of gigantic multinational companies, with the creation of a powerful cosmopolitan financial oligarchy accelerates the increasing internationalisation of the productive process and the world integration of the economy. The transnationals exert pressure on the states, trying to create new instruments to answer their supranational dimension. The state intervention on economic life deepens. The wave of privatisations, the cuts in social public sectors, the so-called flexibility in labour legislation, the liberalisation of exchanges, the deregulation of the financial sphere, are but state interventions chiefly benefiting groups of financial and speculative capital in detriment of large masses of peoples, together with other measures like fiscal and exchange policies, the exemptions, subsidies, orders and even the acceptance of huge debts of bankrupt companies.

These changes and their consequences are yet to be, theoretically, synthesised with rigour.

But, on our part, we believe that two basic characteristics of capitalism still exist: its exploitative nature and its aggressive nature.

This question deems reflection, not only concerning theory, but also concerning political characterisation and concrete action.

The new processes of development at the national and international level prove that the accumulation of capital and the exploitation of workers are two inseparable processes and realities; that the creation of gigantic economic groups is based upon increasing exploitation and
new methods to ensure it; that massive unemployment settles as a permanent fixture.

The formation of great poles of wealth is in itself an expression of the widening of social inequalities in each country and at world level, and produces on the other hand poles of poverty, misery, illness, marginalisation, widespread corruption, as a mark of great social scourges.

In the context of world inequalities, the problems of underdevelopment, of hunger, of illness, of depletion of natural resources, of deforestation, of desertification,of population, reach in some of the world's regions the dimension of real catastrophes.

As to the aggressive nature of capitalism a similar reflection is warranted.

The pressures, impositions and economic blockades imposed on weaker countries, the foreign policy of the main capitalist countries, the new international order understood as the aim of re-establishing world hegemony, the imposition by force of arms of solutions to issues of
internal policy of other countries by 90o'the United States and now also by the European Community present clear examples as was the Gulf War, the aggressions against Somalia and Libya, the hated financial and military support to terrorist movements in Third World countries, the interventions against Yugoslavia.

The international situation created by the disintegration of the Soviet Union and the defeats suffered in recent years by the forces that fight for socialism and by the progressive and national liberation forces, with the changes and the vertical drop of several communist parties, imperialism gained a new life. Today, it acts with growing arrogance and proposes to determine the destiny of the world. It strengthens its economic and, naturally, political and military domination. It instrumentalises the UN and the Security Council, finds among the “Group of Seven” and their appendixes (IMF, World Bank, GATT), the elements of a new imperial order of command. The new strategic concept of NATO aims at transforming this military organisation into a military arm of imperialism's global domination and the European Union hastens its own integrated military system, with the declared intention of intervention and imposition.

If the forces of capital are united against the workers and the peoples, co-ordinate their action to plunder natural resources, to suppress liberation processes, to share areas of domination and influence, to carry out acts of aggression and war, this situation makes it more necessary than ever to strengthen the bonds of friendship, co-operation and solidarity among the progressive, left,
democratic and anti-imperialist forces.

This is also a demand of the present situation.

And so, on our part, we are sincerely engaged in this effort of approximation and co-operation, and in the strenthening of the communist and revolutionary movement, independently of differences in ideological conceptions, respecting the increasing diversity of solutions to concrete problems which in each country are faced by the forces of social change, and from the common interests and objectives that the world situation today presents.