Portugal: Belated fruits of the November 1975 coup 

November 24, 2024

The analysis that Raposo, editor of jornalmudardevida.net, wrote about the Nov. 25, 1975, coup by the anti-communist wing of the Armed Forces Movement in Portugal contains important lessons for working-class revolutionaries worldwide. 

The most important lesson is that the essential step of the political class struggle is for the exploited classes to take state power. Without that step, all other victories for the exploited and oppressed sectors of society can be reversed, and the ruling class will attempt to rewrite history to deceive those who are ruled. 

As Raposo wrote, “The coup’s primary objective: to deprive the working classes of their ability to intervene politically to dispute the authority of the state and its rulers.” Translation: John Catalinotto

For a short introduction to the Portuguese revolution of 1974-75, the role of the Armed Forces Movement and its relationship to the anti-colonial struggles in Africa, see workers.org/2016/06/25639/.

Forty-nine years later, regarding historical facts, everything has been said about November 25 and verified. What remains to be discussed, and this is why we return to the subject every year, is the political question, that is, what the impact of the coup was on the life of the country. That’s because by defeating the popular movement of 1974-75, the coup paved the way, not only for dismantling the main achievements of the revolutionary period, but also, for this very reason, for the reestablishment of the most reactionary social and partisan forces in Portuguese society.

The political anatomy of the coup must therefore be seen in the light of the moment we are in today; from the point where the country has arrived today rather than from the point of departure of 49 years ago. The relevance of Nov. 25, 1975, to today’s events can be seen through this perspective.

The point of departure is well known. It was a military coup long prepared and executed by the right wing of the officers, supported by the European and U.S. intelligence services and governments. Its political spearhead was the Group of Nine [anti-communist members of the Armed Forces Movement], the Socialist Party and Mário Soares.

The coup aimed to put an end to the most radical popular movement in Portugal’s recent history, triggered by the fall of the [fascist] dictatorship. It created the conditions for the reconstitution of Portuguese big business, which had been dismantled by the loss of the colonies and by the action of the popular uprising led by the workers. It destroyed the popular and workers’ organizations that had given substance to the revolutionary movement. On this wreckage, it has established a parliamentary democracy from which the working classes are completely excluded when it comes to the essential issue: power. In this respect, it has fulfilled what French novelist Gustave Flaubert, faced with the Paris Commune, advocated for the people: give them freedom, but not power.

Having said that, it’s the point of arrival — that is, the current situation — that raises the most interesting questions and the most useful answers.

What does the Portuguese right-wing want by making the commemoration of November 25 official? It wants to take another step in the long process of counter-revolution that began in 1975. While swearing oaths of respect for democracy, it is carrying out a campaign to discredit everything that still carries a trace of collective rights and benefits, with the practical result of privatizing everything that can produce a profit, from health care to schools and housing.

Almost 50 years later, capitalism, now with broad representation from the reformist center parties to the fascist far right, is continuing the battle of ideas to impose itself as the only and irredeemable way of life for Portuguese of all classes.

Why target the Socialist Party?

Why has the right wing targeted the Socialist Party (PS)? The recovery of Portuguese capitalism’s power after the upheaval of 1974-75 was the political work of the PS, at the time the only bourgeois party in a position to carry out this task.

Only the PS was closely linked to big business and, at the same time, close enough to the petty bourgeoisie and the less radicalized popular strata to be able to play a role that would allow it to isolate and dismantle the most radical and grassroots sectors of the workers’ movement.

The consolidation of capital’s power since then has shown the Portuguese bourgeoisie, now well supported by European capital, that it no longer has to walk in the shadow of the PS’s reformism. The novelty of the PS and its supposed socialism being the visible target of the rest of the right wing does not deceive anyone about the real target: the working classes and the few social rights they still enjoy.

Did November 25, 1975, “restore” the “democratic spirit” of the April 25, 1974, revolution? The military coup that brought down the dictatorship [in 1974] gave rise to two opposing movements.

One was that of the liberal bourgeoisie, which, in order to rid itself of the fetters of an outdated fascism, which was defeated in Africa and abhorred at home, could only modernize its power in the form of a parliamentary democracy legitimized by popular vote — of course, within the bounds set by Flaubert’s advice.

Another was that of the working class and the poorest toilers who had the audacity to take freedom and democracy literally and decided to impose their will in practical terms — by organizing, deciding and acting. It was a blueprint for popular democracy that challenged the plans of the liberal bourgeoisie, shook the power of the state, brought in six provisional governments for a year and a half and threatened to turn the country upside down.

The contradiction between these two April 25s is blatant, and that’s why the bourgeoisie dedicated and still dedicates its hatred to the workers’ April. To claim that April and November “complement” each other is pure hypocrisy, still dictated by the living memory that the workers have of the events, despite everything.

Did the November coup establish a democracy “for all?” The Novembrists sell the idea that the revolutionary months amounted to a dictatorship imposed by a minority of extremists and that the November coup brought democracy without discrimination, for the good of all.

The truth is that never in any period of history as much as in those nineteen months did the working classes [in Portugal] enjoy so much freedom and ability to assert their material and political demands in such a determined way. The minority who felt cowed were the bosses, the bankers and monopolists who fled to Brazil [then ruled by a military dictatorship], the nostalgic fascists and colonialists, the landowners expropriated by those “risen from the mud,” the real estate speculators, plus the entourage of servants who lived in their shadow.

The first objective of the November coup was to strip the working classes — their grassroots democratic organizations — of the capacity for political intervention that had allowed them, in the months of the revolutionary process, to contest the authority of the state and of the rulers.

Popular masses excluded

The proof is in the regime we have today: a monopoly of the bourgeoisie, a “democracy” of and for this minority. The “democratic normalization” of 1975 excluded the popular masses from any role in defining the political regime.

There is no way that the interests of the working population can be met through elections or parliament. The majority of citizens have become so accustomed to identifying democracy with the mere regular exercise of the vote that they fail to see that the nature of a political regime is determined by the power to decide and act. And that power is today completely in the hands of the capitalist elite.

Was November 25 a “peaceful” act? Not at all. The military coup was the culmination of a conspiracy that had been prepared since the summer of 1975. Alongside the social and political intervention of the Socialist Party and Mário Soares, the right wing, associated with various fascist groups, carried out concerted terrorist actions, bombings, assassinations and assaults on the headquarters of left wing parties throughout the summer and fall of that year. A foreshadowing of what we see happening today at party and parliamentary level, now carried out under the guise of institutional decency.

Several of the protagonists of this vast maneuver had been the perpetrators of the coups [under the leadership of General António de Spínola] — then defeated by popular mass resistance — of September 28, 1974, and March 11, 1975. The latter battle claimed just as many lives as the one in November 1975.

Speaking to Agência Brasil (April 25, 2013) and other media outlets, Mário Soares, recalling the 1975 coup, said frankly: “If the communists had taken over the Lisbon Commune [local city government], we would have bombed Lisbon.” And he described the support (including military and logistical) given to the coup by the U.S., Britain and Germany as a highlight of his contribution.

As is easy to see, the “communists” and the “Lisbon Commune” were the most active popular and working-class sectors, the ones that wanted to take the country’s transformation further. This belies any peaceful purpose and reveals the extreme that the “democratic” right was prepared to go to in order to crush (by bombs, if necessary) the aspirations of the most farsighted and radical sections of the population.

Working classes brought democracy

Who won and who lost with the November coup? The working classes had shown, even if only for a short time, that they were the only actors capable of giving the country a true state of freedom and democracy, as a result of their own activities in defense of their own rights.

The country transformed and progressed; political freedoms became a reality. The daily lives of the people improved as long as the political initiative belonged to the masses, as long as collective action confronted the bosses and the political regime, as long as the movement’s autonomy from the installed power progressed. There can be no change in the country’s course without the proletariat assuming its role as an independent and active political force.

“Democratic normalization” (at public expense) has helped the big economic groups recover from the shock they suffered. Another so-called representative regime (representative of whom, if not the ruling classes?) took the place of what had been a tentative beginning of popular power.

We didn’t have to wait many years to see the fruits of the change: absolute primacy for business and private property, corruption and skyrocketing fortunes, ever-growing colossal differences between wealth and poverty, degradation of social services and working conditions, the poor once again pushed down, immigrants vilified as well as exploited.

Now far-right parties hail the coup

It’s a neo-Novemberism in the form of a farce. These days, it’s the right wing of the right (Chega, Liberals, CDS) that is taking on the role of spearhead of Novembreism, taking the flag away from the historical [PS] agents of the coup. It wants to push the regime further to the right, calling those who led the counterrevolution in 1975 soft. It wants to recover — not so much in exact form, but in practical advantages — the freedom that capital and the bourgeois elites enjoyed before the dictatorship collapsed.

But all this garbage with extremist goals, in claiming to be the most consistent heir to Novemberism — making the coup the founding act par excellence of the current regime (and rightly so!) — will have to bear the brunt of the miseries that the regime itself has dished out. For the simple reason that these miseries, 50 years on, cannot be blamed on the tentative beginnings of popular democracy in 1974-75 — but rather on bourgeois “normalization,” the recovery of capital’s economic power, the free rein given to the ruling classes to exploit, enrich and corrupt. This is the origin of the class divide and the social and political rot that we are witnessing.