Class Struggles in Portugal, Part II

Abstract

In last month's Review of the Month I tried to provide background information necessary to an understanding of what is going on in Portugal approximately seventeen months after the armed forces coup which overthrew the fascist regime installed by Salazar in 1926. The socio-economic and class structure of the country, the character of the Armed Forces Movement (MFA) which carried out the coup, the development of a full-fledged revolutionary process involving all classes of society, the form this process took in the period between April 1974 and the summer of 1975, and the beginnings of democratization of the armed forces as a whole—these were the main themes touched upon. In this second and final installment, I shall comment briefly on the political parties which, along with the MFA, are the main actors on the Portuguese political stage, going on to draw a few very tentative conclusions about what is obviously, even for those directly involved, a highly confused situation.This article can also be found at the Monthly Review website, where most recent articles are published in full.Click here to purchase a PDF version of this article at the Monthly Review website.