Portuguese Communist Party Research Articles

Pluralism, Unity or Uniqueness in Labour Unions? A Historical Digression through the Political Discourses Around the Single Union Law

The current study follows a historical perspective to analyse the partisan positions and contents of the political discourses around the Single Union Law in Portugal, which was put forward in the revolutionary context that followed the 25th April 1974 revolution. It was enacted in 1975 and led to the first major dissent among the left-wing parties, namely the PS (Socialist Party), the PCP (Portuguese Communist Party) and their respective allies. The identification of the most controversial discourses was done using publications on the history of labour unionism under the perspective of the CGTP – General Confederation of Portuguese Workers (report entitled “Contributions towards the history of labour and trade union movement. From its roots to 1977” – Silva et al., 2011) and the UGT – General Workers Union (Brito & Rodrigues, 2013), the two labour union federations in Portugal. The results are discussed in the conclusion, as well as the influence of labour unionism in the current times of crisis. DOI: 10.5901/ajis.2015.v4n3s1p242

Societal Responses to the Post-2008 Economic Crisis among South European and Irish Radical Left Parties: Continuity or Change and Why?

The economic crisis has meant that radical left parties in Europe have been faced with changing socioeconomic environments. In this study we examine how European radical left parties have responded to the crisis in terms of their societal mobilization strategies and seek to explain their responses. Discussions in the relevant literature advocate that party-specific characteristics matter greatly in how parties mobilize in society and establish relations with social groups in times of stability. But do they continue to be as important at times of dramatic change, when new realities emerge in society? We look at the cases of the Greek (Greek Communist Party and Coalition of the Radical Left), Irish (Sinn Féin), Portuguese (Portuguese Communist Party and Bloco) and Spanish (Spanish Communist Party/United Left) radical left parties, which are alike at the country level but exhibit differences at the party level. Utilizing data from an original expert survey, we show that both ideology and organizational legacy throw considerable light on the observed variation among the six radical left parties’ societal responses to the crisis. In this way, they ensure continuity rather than change.

Etica, volontà e politica. Gli anni di apprendistato di Álvaro Cunhal

Alvaro Cunhal (1913-2005), the leader of the Portuguese Communist Party for about half a century, was renowned for his ethical profile, and ethical concerns are constantly present in his political writings, as well as in his artistic and literary works. This article tries to assess his youth writings, written during the 1930s, in the perspective of the connection between philosophical principles and his development as a communist politician. A parallel is established with Gramsci’s thought, for whom the ethics of historical materialism entails the relationship between human and objective conditions. Starting from the negative will of the opposition to Salazar’s dictatorship, Cunhal sketches the project of an antifascist revolution that can be understood as the constrution of a new collective national - popular will.

Cunhal não foi Carrilo? Estratégia e Táctica do Partido Comunista Português durante a Crise Revolucionária de 1975

Several authors have highlighted the divergence between the political strategy of the Portuguese Communist Party in the Carnation Revolution in Portugal (1974-75) and the ‘Eurocommunist’ politics carried out by the Communist Party of Spain (PCE). This article, based on national and international primary sources, traces the history of PCP politics during the «Hot Summer» of 1975. We focus on the party’s historic relationship with social movements, on the one hand, and secondly on its relationship with the Government. Finally, we compare the politics of the PCP, led by Alvaro Cunhal, with the politics of the PCE, led by Santiago Carrillo, highlighting the similarities – the defence of peaceful coexistence, the agreements with the Iberian socialist parties, their influence on major trade unions – and the differences, which, in our opinion, are mainly centered around the PCP’s defense of a strongly regulated capitalist order, including the completion of land reforms and the nationalization process of an important sector of the economy, as opposed to the acceptance of the Moncloa Pacts by the PCE, which assume a much more liberal market economy. Finally, the issue of the regime (republican or monarchical) also distinguishes the politics of both parties.

The Portuguese Communist Party and the Portuguese military left. Contributions to the study of the political-military crisis in the Carnation Revolution

Au cours de la Revolution des Œillets, Portugal a vecu une crise politico-militaire dont l’epicentre etait le prolongement de la dualite de pouvoirs au sein des casernes, apres que le Mouvement des Forces Armees est entre en crise face a la radicalisation de la situation sociale et politique (rupture du VIe gouvernement provisoire). Cet article analyse la relation entre les militaires, le gouvernement, l’Etat et les mouvements sociaux, entre la fin d’Aout 1975 et le 25 Novembre 1975, la date du coup d’Etat qui initie la stabilisation du regime de democratie representative au Portugal. On examine la facon dont cette duplicite se developpe et sera percue par le VIe gouvernement provisoire, d’une part, et le Parti communiste, de l’autre.

O Partido Comunista Portugues, as nacionalizações, o controlo operário e a "batalha da producao". Estudo de caso na Revolucao Portuguesa (1974-1975) <br>DOI:10.5007/1980-3532.2011n6p38

The Portuguese revolution began on April 25, 1974 following a military coup directed against the Salazar-Caetano regime and its colonial war and was defeated only 19 months later, again by a military coup on 25 November 1975. It was during the Portuguese revolution that the main sectors of the economy – banks, insurance and energy – were nationalized. In this article we‟ll study the history of these nationalizations, the relation the Portuguese Communist Party had with them and above all whether they meant workers control over production and economic activity or, on the contrary, they were a means for the Portuguese bourgeoisie to subtract companies and factories to workers control and rescue them from financial collapse after the economic crisis‟s impact.

Rethinking the role of the Portuguese Communist Party in the transition to democracy

Lying within the ambit of the theory on transition studies and party development, this article focuses on the political mobilisation and organisational development of the Portuguese Communist Party between 1974 and 1976. Using in-depth interviews and quantitative data, this paper demonstrates that the constraints and the opportunities at the institutional level particularly with respect to the role of the Armed Forces Movement (MFA Movimento das Foras Armadas) are a key element towards achieving an understanding of the party's strategy during the different phases of democratisation. The main conclusions underline two points: the first is the importance of the distribution of power within the MFA in influencing the role played by the PCP in the transition, while the second is the subordination of the social power to the institutional integration.

José Manuel Durão Barroso

FROM REVOLUTIONARY ACTIVISM TO ACADEMIC EXCELLENCEThe nomination of Jose Manuel Durao Barroso to the presidency of the European Commission was regarded as a major surprise by many commentators. unexpected nomination by the council of the European Union emerged out of the need to agree on a candidate who would be accepted by all member-states.This young politician was born on 23 March 1956 in Lisbon. He is married to Margarida Sousa Uva and is the father of three children: Luis, Guilherme, and Francisco, who are 21, 18 and 16 years old respectively. He spent his childhood and school years under one of the last authoritarian regimes of western Europe. regime of Antonio Salazar and, later on, of Marcelo Caetano shaped the commitment of Barroso to democratic values and freedom. Indeed, as a reaction to the maltreatment of one of his teachers by the regime in his last years of high school, he joined the illegal antifascist Revolutionary Movement of the Party of the Proletariate (Movimento Revolucionario do Partido do Proletariado, MRPP), which was founded in 1970 as a Maoist-Leninist splinter group of the Portuguese Communist Party (Partido Comunista Portugues, PCP]. MRPP was inspired by the Chinese cultural revolution.The coup d'etat of the Movement of Armed Forces (Movimento das Forcas Armadas, MFA) on 25 April 1974 against the authoritarian regime led to the spontaneous bloodless support of the population, a movement that became known as the of the carnations. When the revolution broke out, Barroso was merely 18 years of age. He, like many other young Portuguese of this generation, such as Fernando Rosas and Jose Pacheco Pereira, joined the wave of revolutionary spirit that found its expression in spontaneous action by the population with the support of a multiplicity of extreme leftwing parties. At that time, he was reading for a licenciatura in law (a five-year first degree) at the prestigious faculty of law of the University of Lisbon, where the MRPP had one of its strongholds through its Marxist-Leninist Student Federation (Federacao Estudantil Marxista Leninista, FEML). He soon became one of the leaders of the FEML and was elected to the presidency of the student union during 197576. In 1977, after the return of normalcy to Portuguese universities, Barroso concentrated his energies in completing his law degree, which he achieved with honours in 1978.After a public competition, he became an assistant professor in the department of legal-political sciences in the law faculty. Between 1978 and 1985 he pursued a distinguished academic career in Portugal. In 1981, he completed his master's degree with honours at the prestigious department of political science of the University of Geneva. His dissertation was on The impact of the European Community on the Portuguese political One year later, he also completed a certificate in European studies at the University of Geneva. Afterwards he embarked on a doctorate leading to short research visits and postgraduate courses in several prestigious institutions such as Columbia University in New York, the University of Amsterdam, the European University Institute, and the University Institute of Luxembourg.Barroso can be regarded as one of the founders of modern Portuguese political science. Indeed, his first book published with his long-time friend Pedro Santana Lopes was called Government and Party System, a collection of studies and newspaper articles on the possibilities of improving the young Portuguese democracy, which was quite unstable until 1985. Indeed, their book included excellent scientific essays on the problems of the Portuguese political system. They regarded the book as a contribution to a revision of the constitution, which at that time carried many features influenced by the revolutionary process such as Marxist-Leninist language, the monitoring of democracy by the military through the Council of the Revolution, and the strong position of the president in the political system. …

Jose Saramago "Revises," Or Out of Africa and Into Cyber-History

José Saramago "Revises," Or Out of Africa and Into Cyber-History Ronald W. Sousa (bio) Nobel Prize winner José Saramago's most cited novels are complexly allusive to Portuguese culture. Everything from official history and canonized literature to historical documentation, local histories, urban planning, and many strands of contemporary popular culture, both national and international are invoked, in jumbled and a-chronistic fashion, in such titles as Memorial do Convento (1982) (English trans.: Baltasar and Blimunda). It is probably because of that mode of presentation—and the irreverent tone that accompanies it—that while Saramago sells extremely well in Portugal and the rest of the Portuguese-speaking world and has become so well-known internationally that the Nobel Prize for literature has followed, he is not held in high regard by a significant portion of the Portuguese literary and intellectual establishment. His long-standing public adherence to the Portuguese Communist Party doubtlessly adds to that low regard which perhaps in turn underpins his preference to make his home in neighboring, and rival, Spain. Another way of characterizing Saramago's practice is to observe that rather than focus on a discrete set of issues, as conventional novelistics dictates, his novels regularly mix discourses, cutting across a broad swath within the Portuguese symbolic, explicating, critiquing, interrelating, and intervening, apparently at whim, as they go—and clearly, in the process, claiming a considerable operativity for themselves within that symbolic realm. This practice is most in evidence [End Page 73] in his "historical" novels, the aforementioned Memorial do Convento and both O Ano da Morte de Ricardo Reis (1984) (The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis) and A História do Cerco de Lisboa (1989) (History of the Siege of Lisbon), which take on a labyrinthine character as a result. Indeed, in O Ano da Morte de Ricardo Reis, the image of the labyrinth is thematized and played upon. This essay intends to explore such aspects of that diffuse but simultaneously blatant operativity as touch on the Portuguese colonialist imaginary. It is a truism in Portuguese cultural criticism to observe that over the past two decades the nation has been, and continues to be, interrogated and symbolically reconstructed through reference to the twin poles of national history and colonialism—because those were key areas within which the inherited concept of the nation was principally constructed. Less regularly mentioned is the fact that (as the ensuing pages will evidence) national history and colonialism come so interwoven that reconstruction often has to be directed to both at once. It will not, therefore, surprise that, in order to explore issues having to do with the colonialist imaginary, these pages will focus on a "historical" novel—at first glance, an unlikely one for the purpose—História do Cerco de Lisboa, which deals not with a colonial subject matter but instead with the Christian taking of Lisbon from the Arabs in 1147. Or, rather, it deals with the complex interaction between that past event and an obscure present-day Lisbon copyeditor named Raimundo Silva. Early on, História takes on a form that the Portuguese reading public would find quite recognizable: it involves a central character who is also an author writing an historical text by drawing on a prior historical text for his material. Alluded to—in effect an intertext to História—is the novel A Ilustre Casa de Ramires (The Illustrious House of Ramires) (1900) by the classic realist novelist Eça de Queirós (1845–1900). A standard of Portuguese literature, Ilustre Casa gives us one of its most fascinating and problematic figures: the hereditary nobleman Gonçalo Mendes Ramires. In Saramago's História, Gonçalo is clearly enough alluded to that not far into the book he becomes an ongoing "pair" of Raimundo Silva. Their life situations are similar, their plot location in many ways identical, and História continues to produce textual echoes, when not what are essentially parallel passages (cf., e.g., História, 318 [285] and Ilustre Casa, 59 [51]), all of which keep that doubling before the reader. The result is a specific configuration of the textual labyrinth, namely the palimpsest. It is as though História...

International Communism and the Communist International 1919-1943

Part I The view from the centre: Zimmerwald and the origins of the Third International, David Kirby the history of the Comintern in the light of new documents, Kevin McDermott the structure of the Moscow apparatus of the Comintern and decision-making. Part II The parties and the Comintern - Europe: the Comintern International and the British Communist Party, Andrew Thorpe the Comintern and a trotskyist menace to British communism on the eve of World War II, Yevgeny Sergeev about a few things we know better concerning French communism and the Communist International, Guillaume Bourgeois the Comintern and the Italian Commuist Party in the light of some new documents, Aldo Agosti the testing-ground of world revolution - Germany in the 1920s, Aleksandr Vatlin from Lenin's comrades in arms to Dutch donkeys - the Communist party in the Netherlands and the Comintern of the 1920s, Gerrit Voerman the highpoint of Comintern influence? - the Comintern and the Civil War in Spain, Tim Rees nationalist or internationalist? The Portuguese Communist Party's autonomy and the Communist international, Carlos Cuhna the Communist Party of Greece of the Comintern - evaluations, instructions and subordination, Artiem Ulunian Tito and the twighlight of Comintern, Geoff Swain. The parties of Comintern - the Americas and Asia: the Communist International and the American Communist Party, Hugh Wilford from Caribbean backwater to revolutionary opportunity - Cuba's evolving relationship with Comintern, 1925-1934, Barry Carr the COmintern, the Chinese Communist Party and the three armed uprisings in Shanghai, 1926-1927, Steve Smith peasants and the peoples of the east - Indians and the rhetoric of Comintern, Wendy Singer the Comintern and Japanese Communist Party, Sandra Wilson.

Orthodoxy and dissent in the Portuguese Communist Party

Orthodoxy and dissent in the Portuguese Communist Party

Industrialization and communism: The Portuguese communist party confronts the Sines Growth Pole

Sines, a small fishing town on the southern coast of Portugal, was chosen in the early 1970s as the site of a large state‐led industrial growth pole project. By focusing on the role of the local Portuguese Communist Party organization in the confrontation of this traditional community with large‐scale rapid industrialization, the process whereby community interests become linked to communist representation can be studied. Changing forms of the state and community exclusion from the industrial project help explain this relationship.

The twelfth congress of the Portuguese communist party

The twelfth congress of the Portuguese communist party

Cracks in the Monolith? The Portuguese Communist Party and the Portuguese Elections of 1985–86

(1986). Cracks in the Monolith? The Portuguese Communist Party and the Portuguese Elections of 1985–86. Journal of Communist Studies: Vol. 2, No. 3, pp. 292-295.

Portrait of a model ally: The Portuguese Communist Party and the International Communist Movement, 1968–1983

Throughout much of its history the Portuguese Communist Party (PCP) has shared the peripheral situation that most observers have assigned to Portugal itself. Before the military coup of 25 April 1974 little was ever written about this small party, acting within an almost forgotten dictatorship that only interested a few specialists. In the 18 months that followed the overthrow of the Caetano government, the period of the Portuguese revolution, it suddenly came to the fore. Until then most Western European communist parties had paid it little attention, and had restricted themselves to ritual references to the PCP’s ‘heroic struggle against fascism’. It had gained a reputation as a hard-line, ultra-orthodox spokesman for the Soviet view of proletarian internationalism and as such, carried negligible weight with the three most important communist parties of Southern Europe, which were beginning to seriously question their relationship with the party of the Soviet Union after the crushing of the ‘Prague spring’ in 1968. Nobody can question the accuracy of an image of which the PCP itself so proudly boasts. This image has not changed, but since 1974 the PCP has gained the status within the international communist movement that had eluded it previously. With a claimed membership of over 200 000’ in a country of some 10 million inhabitants, a share of the vote that fluctuates between 16 and 20 percent and the effective control of Portugal’s largest labor federation, the PCP has become Western Europe’s second largest communist party in terms of its relative size. Unlike the French, Finnish or Spanish parties it has not yet suffered any serious erosion of its electoral support. This situation alone would enhance this party’s position in a movement which sets great store by numerical success, but the international role of the PCP owes much of its increased importance to changes which have occurred in the international communist movement in recent years, and to the Portuguese revolution.

The Dilemma of Credibility: The Spanish Communist Party, the Franco Regime and After

IT IS REPORTED THAT WHEN ALVARO CUNHAL CAME OUT OF PRISON IN the late 1950s, he initiated a purge of the leadership of the Portuguese Communist Party (PCP). Their crime was apparently españolismo – or a sympathy with the broad reformist policy of ‘national reconciliation’ adopted by the Spanish Communists in 1956. The Spanish leaders were aware of this implied slur on their revolutionary seriousness, but as both parties battled for survival against repressive dictatorships, it was not an issue over which to break openly the fundamental solidarity between them. Yet a decade and a half later, with Cunhal seemingly leading his Party down the highroad to socialism and his Spanish comrades probably within sight of their immediate goal of the collapse of Francoism, the theoretical discrepancies have re-emerged. Santiago Carrillo, Secretary-General of the PCE, has been sufficiently critical of Cunhal's attempt to create an Eastern European-style socialism in Portugal to earn Soviet accusations of lack of solidarity. Carrillo has described Cunhal's policy during the last year as ‘a good example of how not to make a revolution’. In doing so, the Spanish leader has not only incurred the displeasure of Moscow, something which he has learned to live with since his stand against the 1968 invasion of Czechoslovakia, but also risked serious internal division inside his own party.