Messages, appeals and statements of Comintern (SH)

Message on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the Carnation Revolution

Message from the Comintern (SH)

on the occasion of the 50th anniversary

of the Carnation Revolution in Portugal

We send militant greetings to the Portuguese Section on occasion of the Carnation Revolution in Portugal.

Today we're celebrating 50 years of the Portuguese carnation revolution of 25th of April 1974, that liberated Portugal from fascism.

This design features the Palestinian flag with a carnation on top.

25th of April stands for victory over fascism and the Palestinian cause is interconnected with our worldwide fight for the world socialist revolution.

Fifty years ago today, the fascist form of bourgeois dictatorship was replaced by the "democratic" form of bourgeois dictatorship in Portugal. As we had already explained and stated in our article on the 90th anniversary of the P"C"P, it was very far from being any kind of "socialist revolution", but was merely a coup d'état organised by one section of the bourgeoisie against another that remained linked to fascism. In fact, since the end of World War II, when the Portuguese fascist-colonialist regime lost its main ideological partners (Nazi-fascist Germany and fascist Italy), certain parts of the bourgeoisie in Portugal realised the dangers of maintaining an openly fascist form of their class dictatorship, as it promoted the acquisition of a communist consciousness by the workers in the face of the explicitly bourgeois and repressive class nature of the fascist state. However, for many decades, the aspirations of this so-called "liberal" bourgeoisie had to stand still, because Anglo-American imperialism emerged as the new major supporter of Portuguese fascism as a bulwark in the struggle against comrade Stalin's socialist camp and later against its social-imperialist rivals for world domination. This is how Portuguese fascism lasted for 48 years (!), the longest period of a fascist form of bourgeois dictatorship that has ever existed. Portugal had more years of fascism than Albania had of socialism. After the defeat of the Axis forces and the surrender of Nazi Germany, very few believed that Portuguese fascism could last. But thanks to the interests and needs of the Western capitalist-imperialists in their fight to prevent the world socialist revolution, the Portuguese working classes had to endure fascist repression until 1974. In this year, the supposedly "liberal" sections of the bourgeoisie finally managed to convince the army (previously one of the main pillars of fascism, but which was becoming dissatisfied with the unsuccessful colonial war being fought in African colonies) to side with them and overthrow the regime, on 25 April 1974, when it was called "the Carnation Revolution", due to the fact that on that day, to celebrate the end of the fascist period, some women in Lisbon put red carnations on the rifles of the soldiers who were taking part in the operations to put an end to the old regime. Even today, revisionists and neo-revisionists repeatedly declare that this episode is proof of the alleged "peaceful and poetic character of the Portuguese revolution". The social-fascists of the P"C"P claim that:

"(...) the military movement was transformed into a peaceful revolution." (http://www.pcp.pt/avante/1378/7803m4.html, 25 April Always, Portuguese edition)

In fact, if it turns out to be anything at all, it's that the "Portuguese revolution" could never be anything other than a "bourgeois-democratic" revolution, which aims to replace one branch of the bourgeoisie with another and which aims to perpetuate profit-maximising capitalism by hiding the inevitably and inherently oppressive and exploitative class nature of its state behind "democratic" and even "popular and socialist" masks, preventing the exploited and oppressed masses in general and the workers in particular from acquiring real revolutionary consciousness and keeping them away from Marxism-Leninism-Stalinism-Hoxhaism. And this is because all genuinely socialist and proletarian revolutions must necessarily involve class violence and bloodshed, as the exploiting and oppressing classes must be ferociously crushed by the exploited and oppressed classes under the leadership of a Bolshevik-type communist party. Soon, they must always include the dictatorship of the proletariat. This may not sound as "poetic" and "romantic" as women giving flowers to soldiers, but it has already been proven by the teachings of the Classics and confirmed by history. As comrade Lenin once said: