Fernando Rosas changed his position: on November 25, 1975, he became leader of the MRPP and was involved in the counter-coup that was victorious that day. Today I would be on the other side of the barricade. However, he thinks that November 25 was a kind of suspension of the agreed revolution; the hypothesis of a socialist revolution effectively ended with the elections.
Where were you on November 25, 1975?
I was a member of the MRPP and we were semi-clandestinely printing Luta Popular, because of martial law, and despite that the magazine went away. Especially since the MRPP had a position of support for the counter-coup of November 25.
The MRPP was one of two organizations from the Maoist camp that supported the November 25 winners, the other being the AOC (Workers’ and Peasants’ Alliance) front organization of the Communist Party of Portugal (Marxist Leninist) (PC de P(ML)) [partido em que o principal dirigente, Eduíno Vilar, foi responsável ideológico do PSD de Carlos Mota Pinto]. The MRPP was in the field in November against, to put it simply, the Gonçalvism camp, which is claimed to be planning a coup. The MRPP supported the Novembrist counter-coup, which had been prepared for a long time. I don’t have the same view on the events today.
But at the time it was.
Strange as it may seem to you, I think Álvaro Cunhal analyzes the situation well when he writes Truth and lies in the April Revolution. It is true that at some point there is a rush forward in the field of socialist revolution. A forward flight that increases as it loses ground. This begins with the Constituent Assembly elections, which begin to impose voting legitimacy over revolutionary legitimacy; continues in the Tancos Assembly, with major changes in the balance of forces within the Armed Forces Movement (MFA). The communist party interpreted this situation correctly and called the Central Committee (CC) to Alhandra. The famous meeting, secret at the time. In the sense that the policy resulting from that CC, as stated in the available documents, is what had to be tolerated, try to win back the dialogue points with the MFA and even with the PSbut the logic unleashed on the ground is the opposite and is a logic of forward flight, which ultimately turns into a frustrated test of military movement, starting with the SDCI [Serviço de Deteção e Controlo de Informação], which constitutes a kind of command, because Othello, although pressured to take command of operations, does not want to and leaves. What emerges from this is a kind of frustrated military movement: the television, Emissora Nacional and some parts of the city of Lisbon are occupied. The others are waiting for this misstep and there is the counter-coup in November.
Can we say, as many are saying today, that this is a scam linked to the PCP? There are many military units with people close to the communists who never leave, as is the case with the Marines.
Yes, a characteristic of this movement is that there is no consensus within the political field that I call in general: the field of socialist revolution. The PCP is clearly not in favor of it. Cunhal is not a man who takes power from below and takes over the Winter Palace. Boris Ponomarev’s strategy [destacado dirigente soviético] It’s not, it’s more from top to bottom. I believe that the PCP leadership is assessing the situation and realizing that it is heading towards a catastrophic civil war. And so he retreats, demobilizes the militants he summoned to headquarters. Even the naval officers close to the PCP are not leaving. The Marines were the only force that could face the commandos that did not advance. In the historiographical debate that exists, I don’t think November 25 is a counter-revolution. Counter-revolution is a bloody thing. Historically, these have included banned parties, disbanded unions, prisons and mass executions. This is not what happens on November 25. It is not a counter-revolution. What is happening is that, the suggestion is from Álvaro Cunhal himself and I agree, that there is an agreed and agreed control of the revolutionary process. Cunhal calls it an objective restriction, because he wants to imply that the PCP did not negotiate the process. But today it is known that Álvaro Cunhal himself met Melo Antunes. There is disagreement between the PCP, as the main force in socialist revolution, and a sector of the Document of the Nine, the left wing of the forces on the other side. This translates into the famous statements that communists are very important to the revolution. The PCP continues in the VI Provisional Government and the Constitution that is the result of this balance is a document that still enshrines all the major achievements of the revolution: agrarian reforms, nationalizations, workers’ committees, workers’ control, all of this is enshrined in the Constitution. It is the result of a political and ideological equilibrium, in which the revolution had the power to resist democracy and even some of the most advanced achievements of the revolutionary process. Where does the counter-revolution come from? If we consider that the counter-revolution is the return of the old dominant classes and the new ones that are now emerging, imposing the destruction of agrarian reforms, mass privatizations and the change of labor legislation, all that led to the decade of thunderous cavaquismo. Where is it from? The counter-revolution emerges from the ballot boxes and they give a majority to the PS, which allies itself with the PSD on fundamental issues.
Although there was significant growth in the PCP until 1980.
There is the growth of the Communist Party, but above all there is intense social resistance to attempts to undo the achievements of the revolutionary process; a resistance that was very strong until the beginning of the cavaquismo. If you privatize everything, you will eliminate agricultural reforms completely. This liquidation was not an overnight process: it took several years, as occupations were still taking place in 1976. It is a process of violent strangulation, in which at a certain point the GNR makes its appearance. The counter-revolution will not come from November 25, but from the ballot box. In my opinion, November 25 brings two very important things in changing the balance of forces: first, it establishes the consensus that the legitimacy of the ballot boxes takes precedence over revolutionary legitimacy; second, it puts an end to the MFA. It disbands the part of the armed forces that functioned as armed protection of the revolutionary process, returning the armed forces to their essential function as the backbone of state violence, which had disappeared on April 25. This is because since the revolution was carried out by captains and intermediate officers, it ultimately decapitated the hierarchy of command.
So can it be said that November 25 guaranteed pluralistic democracy over other dynamics that would not have the vote as a basis?
No, because no one in the field of socialist revolution admitted that a one-party dictatorship had been established without voting rights, this program did not exist anywhere except in the opponent’s propaganda. The problem is that the revolutionary process created momentum that was stopped by a military coup. The revolutionary process itself degenerated into a military adventure from which some forces tried to escape, probably avoiding civil war. An agreed and negotiated restriction emerges that saves democracy, and that initially also saves an important part of the achievements of the revolution, but by introducing the logic of electoral legitimacy over revolutionary legitimacy; and ending the MFA changes the balance of power. It changes the balance of forces in relation to what the dynamics of the revolutionary process were. Yet there is a very strong social resistance, defending the achievements that constitutional governments have begun to attack, with general strikes and gigantic demonstrations. This resistance is only broken with cavaquism. This is a profound change, it is neoliberalism imposed by force: total end to agricultural reforms, first measures to revise labor laws. From the perspective of the revolutionary process, November 25 includes the revolution, but this revolution still has enough strength to guarantee democracy.
What is the reason for the urgency of some sectors demanding a celebration of November 25? If he were this unbreakable guarantee of freedom, as these people say, wouldn’t he be celebrated from the next day?
This urgency to celebrate November 25 is not exactly about the celebration. Fascists also celebrate May 28 and no one worries about that. If the right wants to celebrate November 25, celebrate it. The much more important problem is to know what is the matrix of democracy? Does democracy emerge from the revolution or from the military counter-coup of November? That is the question. Does democracy have a counter-revolutionary essence or is it a fruit of the revolution? Is there democracy despite the revolution or is there democracy because of the revolution? That is the question that arises. At a time when the far right is rising across Europe and in many parts of the world to establish a new discourse of historical legitimacy, it will naturally find that democracy emerges from the November 25 counter-coup. From my point of view, it is important to make it clear that democracy in Portugal was achieved on the streets, and during the revolution, and not on November 25.
Source: DN
