Portugal—Between Hammer and Anvil?

Perhaps the saddest aspect of socialist history has been the frequent evocation of a right-wing reaction through extremism on the left. No fiercer battles were fought in pre-Hitler Germany than those between Communist Red Front fighters and brownshirted Nazis. But an unholy “dialectic” found Red Front feeding brown shirts. In the Prussian plebiscite, Communists and fascists voted together. Communist theories of “social fascism,” which designated social democracy as the greatest menace, facilitated Hitler’s rise to power.

Will the same sorry symbiosis of left-wing and right-wing extremism shatter the hope of a democratic socialist evolution in Portugal? There are good grounds for optimism and hope. Both those on the far right and far left view parliamentary democracy as a form of “cretinism.” Thus, an American Communist party leader (in a party distinguished by its subservience to the Soviets) headed one of many “tourist” delegations who had been swarming over Portugal to see a real revolution in action. A fellow-traveling tourist asked, timidly of course, why the Communists had received only 12.5 percent of the vote in the April 25 elections in 1975, held on the first anniversary of the revolution that overthrew the half-century-old dictatorship. “Because the workers were not ready for elections,” the Communist leader explained.

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