Portugal: the last mass Communist Party in Western Europe? For a long time the dominant force on the left, the Portuguese Communist Party (PCP) seemed immune to the crises sweeping the other West European CPs. But over the last few years the Party gas begun to pay a heavy price for its alliance with the Stalinist regimes in the East, and from its own ambiguous relationship to bourgeois democracy and the 'rule of law! But as Francisco Louca explains, the PCP is still the major component of the working class socialist movement. And any new radical left force must be built with elements of the PCP. The author is a member of the Socialist Revolutionary Party (PSR), Portuguese section of the Fourth International.
THE COMMUNIST PARTY had only existed for five years when a fascist regime was installed in Portugal in 1926. During the 48 years of dictatorship, the PCP was the best organised, and in some periods the only force on the left (following the disappearance of the Socialists, and the liquidation of the anarcho-syndicalists). This long winter of repression meant that when the anti-fascist ("Carnation") revolution broke out on 25 April 1974, the PCP had just 3,000 members.
At the same time, its role in the antifascist resistance gave the PCP a great deal of credit. As a result, the Soviet invasions in Hungary (1956) and Czechoslovakia (1968) had very little effect on the Portuguese left: a few important intellectuals left the Party