Critique Journal of Socialist Theory

ISSN: 0301-7605 (Print) 1748-8605 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rcso20

From Anti-Colonial Revolutions to Revolution in the Metropolis

Raquel Varela

To cite this article: Raquel Varela (2015) From Anti-Colonial Revolutions to Revolution in the Metropolis, Critique, 43:2, 145-171, DOI: 10.1080/03017605.2015.1051791 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/03017605.2015.1051791

Published online: 07 Aug 2015.

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Download by: [the Bodleian Libraries of the University of Oxford] Date: 24 April 2017, At: 04:57 Critique, 2015 Vol. 43, No. 2, 145–171, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/03017605.2015.1051791

From Anti-Colonial Revolutions to Revolution in the Metropolis Raquel Varela

This article both describes and theorises the origins and course of the Portuguese revolution of 1974. It argues that it was intimately related to the anti-colonial revolution in the Portuguese African colonies of Guinea–Bissau, Angola and Mozambique both because the Portuguese Imperial structure that constituted a unity that once undermined in the colonies was rocked in the metropolis, and because of the military experience of a 13 year war. The primitive accumulation in the colonies required a dictatorial regime in the heartlands of the empire. The super-exploitation of the colonies needed the Salazar regime in Portugal itself. The latter slowly provided access to the basic elements of a contemporary existence but saw to it that working class and opposition organisations like unions were avoided or incorporated. When the revolution broke out on 25 April 1974, the moderating role of the unions was correspondingly absent. The article describes the unfolding of the revolution itself and shows the importance of control from below with workers’ commissions, and other forms of workers control, as well as the conjuncture of the global capitalist turning point with the defeat of the regular army in the colonies. It describes the course of the revolutionary years to the point of counter-revolution, bringing in the radical reforms in agriculture and industry.

Keywords: Dual Power; Social Revolution; Workers’ Commissions; Forced Labour; Stalinism; Counter-revolution

‘This is the people, this is the people, this is the people!’ Saint Benedict Square, 13 November 1975. It was here that the Constituent Assembly and the government were held hostage, surrounded by a mass of almost 100,000 people, the majority construction workers. The scenario is almost unreal: it was Europe, in sunny , the disproportionately large capital of Portugal, the last colonial empire in history. If it were not for the helicopters, the hostages in the Saint Benedict palace, including the Prime Minister, would not even have received food or blankets. Outside there was a

© 2015 Critique 146 R. Varela gigantic demonstration of workers who elbowed each other and literally stood on top of each other on the palace steps with red flags and banners, yelling slogans. Suddenly, a cement truck entered the square and crossed the mass of demonstra- tors who surrounded the Assembly and, with smiles and raised fists, they moved aside to let it pass. On top, there were two men. One of them wore jeans and an open shirt, had a cigarette in his mouth and smiled triumphantly for the crowd. With one hand on the cement mixer and the other raised, he yelled along with the other demonstrators: ‘This is the people! This is the people! This is the people!’1 When he decided to suspend government functions on 20 November 1975 one week after the siege of the Constituent Assembly, Admiral Pinheiro de Azevedo, the Prime Minister of the VI Provisional Government—a government