Portugal’s Carnation Revolution marks an important milestone in Portuguese political history and world history, as it not only brought down the authoritarian regime in Portugal but occurred in tandem and in response to the national liberation struggles in Portugal’s former African colonies.
The revolution began as a coup organized by a section of army officers, the Armed Forces Movement (MFA), in Lisbon, but swiftly received mass support and was supported by popular participation on the streets. It unfolded as a nonviolent revolution that ultimately deposed the regime on April 25, 1974. That day, civilians greeted the revolutionary ‘rebel’ soldiers in the peaceful resistance with carnations. The revolution was thus memorialized as the Carnation Revolution and is celebrated every year on April 25 as Freedom Day in Portugal and is a national holiday.
Peoples Dispatch spoke to Professor Raquel Varela, a renowned scholar in labor history and author of ‘A People’s History of the Portuguese Revolution’ on the impact of the Carnation Revolution in Portugal’s society and politics. Earlier, on April 25, 2023, the people of Portugal celebrated the 49th anniversary of the Carnation Revolution that ended the 48-year-long dictatorship of the Estado Novo (New State) in the country on April 25, 1974. She also talks about the ongoing political crisis in Portugal marked by the fall of the center-left Socialist Party (PS) government, its EU-driven policies, and its implications for the working class.
Peoples Dispatch: How is the April Revolution viewed today in Portuguese society?
Raquel Varela: The Carnation Revolution which happened in Portugal between 1974 to 1975 is one of the most important revolutions in the 20th century and in the history of mankind.
Almost one third of the people of Portugal were directly or indirectly involved in it. Some kind of dual power existed in the revolutionary period in the form of a revolutionary government constituted by political parties and revolutionary military officers and the Workers’ Commission that exerted workers’ democracy in their workplaces and neighborhoods. Over 600 companies were occupied and self-managed by the Workers’ Commissions during that period. The big capitalist companies were put under workers’ control in several places and the National Health Service was constructed through democratic management of the healthcare sector, mainly the doctors, but also nurses and many others, and the schools were put under workers’ control as well. Everyone got free access to schools, universities, etc. Social rights including universal suffrage, also women’s rights were extended. Attempts for land reforms were initiated in the rural parts of Portugal.
The revolution assured the end of the Colonial wars and led to the independence of Portugal’s colonies in Africa including Angola, Guinea [Bissau], and Mozambique. I would say that the first impact, and the most important one is that it opened the floor to the social revolution in Lisbon, which also had a huge impact on the mobilizations against Francoism in Spain and the military junta in Greece.
During that revolutionary period, what people have shown was an incredible moment of democracy from the bottom to the top. It’s really a people’s history. So the country was transferred, in fact, from middle age to the most advanced social welfare, with the most advanced ideas of cultural integrity and emancipation. These values are highly celebrated today. The popular fest of the 25th of April is a national fest and It’s extremely popular. Working class sections across the country used to organize popular demonstrations on April 25. The values of April are first of all of course connected to a memory of the generations.
PD: In your opinion, how disastrous was the tyranny of the 48-year-long Estado Novo regime for the Portuguese working class and civil society?
RV: The dictatorship lasted for 48 years from 1926 to 1974. The regime’s censure of unions and political parties was used as a way to regulate the labor force for 48 years in the metropolis. Such a long period of tyranny meant that many people were born and died without knowing what is freedom. During the 1960s, mass migration from Portugal to other parts of Europe occurred because people could not afford to live. Over such a period, the highest mortality rates of children and women were also marked in Portugal making it one of the most backward countries in Europe, as per some parameters, worse than countries in the periphery of the imperial system.
Read more: Portugal heads for fresh elections after PM António Costa resigns
PD: What’s your response towards the resignation of the long-time Portuguese Prime Minister Antonio Costa and the downfall of the center-left Socialist Party (PS) government? What’s your take on the policies of the government in general? What has been the government’s approach especially worker’s rights, minimum wage, and pensions?
RV: These days, the majority of the social rights earned by the revolution have disappeared. Since 1976, the Socialist Party (the incumbent social democratic party in the county) and the Social Democratic Party (the center-right party in the opposition), have been governing the country in alternative terms in a neoliberal way.
The Portuguese bourgeoisie has become totally dependent bourgeoisie on German, France, British, also Chinese companies. But after the pandemic, they have accelerated the path that was already going before the pandemic in order to convert the country into a place for real estate speculation; over the so-called green transition and the digital transition. All of this scheming has taken place in the name of the European Union (EU)-backed Recovery and Resilience Plan in the garb of fostering a strong recovery from the crisis inflicted by the pandemic, which was later deepened by an energy crisis exacerbated by the war in Ukraine.
What really happened with this plan is that they are using public funds which are essential to education, health, etc to subsidize the big companies to make their restructuring in order to avoid, losses. So, they are buying the machines and computers and other technologies that will operate the productive restructuring from core countries, especially Germany. This whole scheming through the Recovery and Resilience plan implies huge amounts of loans that pay interest to Banks of the central countries of the European Union, and there is a fight over the bourgeoisie over this money. Such scramble for that big financial money in return for compromising the country’s natural resources has led to the fall of the Socialist Party (PS) government over the charges of corruption.
But these big restructuring programs cannot go further. Because there are sectors of the labor force, which are exhausted and the productivity is therefore very low. There has been a constant cut in the real wages, which was done by the inflation and succumbing to workers’ protests token increases in wages are made which is much lower than inflation. What we are seeing is the destruction of the welfare state to subsidize the so-called green transition. A restructuring of the constant capital of the big companies, mainly the automobile and industry sectors using subsidies from the state. In 2023, the minimum wage in the country is 760 euros, but the required minimum to live with minimum standards should be 1500 euros. The majority of the workers, over half of the workers, in the country are working between 50 to 70 hours a month because the only way they can achieve a wage to survive is to work extra time. This of course leads to so-called low productivity and bad quality and workers are also too prone to accidents and fatigue. So people are getting affected mentally and physically because of extra working time hours.
The successful execution of the Recovery and Resilience Plan may not happen in the near future not only because the labor force has been totally exhausted, but also because there is a spike in worker strikes and protests which have made for the bourgeoisie more difficult to govern. In my opinion, following the upcoming snap elections, the EU-driven bourgeois class tries to form a majority government at any cost through a collaboration with either center-left and center-right parties or the center-right and far-right parties to facilitate the Recovery and Resilience Plan.
PD: How does a far-right party like Chega emerge into the mainstream in Portugal these days?
RV: The far-right party Chega is mainly a party that has its origins in the Social Democratic Party, a major Conservative Party in Portugal and the Christian Democratic Party. Nowadays, the Christian Democratic Party has disappeared from the parliament as they don’t have one single deputy elected and the extreme right now has 12. The official reports of counterterrorism show that the extreme right is engaged in a militia, especially the private security system, the National Guard, and the national police. They are trying to influence professions that have access to arms. Fan groups of important football teams are found cooperating with the far-right. Chega is an extremely nationalist and conservative group that calls for total deregulation of labor rights, and defends the traditional conservative ideals like ‘family’ instead of society and collectivity.
PD: In the novel ‘Stone Raft’ written by popular Portuguese novelist, José Saramago, the Iberian peninsula which consists of Spain and Portugal gets split away from the European mainland and drifts to the Atlantic. In your opinion what has been the public perception of Portugal’s membership in EU and NATO?
RV: José Saramago is one of the most incredible writers in the world and the stone raft is an incredible metaphor for utopia, Iberian utopia, the idea of the first socialists in Portugal after the Paris Commune. It was that there could be a socialist Iberian federation that was just possible to think of a development of culture or an economy and politics if we look in an Iberian way, and this was destroyed by nationalist approaches. In the novel, the Iberian peninsula splits away from Europe and moves to the Atlantic. Here, characters walk around the peninsula while the peninsula moves. So the idea of moving recalls Rosa Luxemburg’s statement “Those who do not move, do not notice their chains”, and so the idea that socialism is action in moving towards transformation. Of course, this is a deep criticism of the European Union (EU) as José Saramago always had the courage to say that the European Union is a project of barbarism, of competition because it is based on market competition and this ultimately would lead to war as we are seeing in the world like the one in Ukraine. I’m against the invasion of Ukraine by Russia and the NATO/European Union. EU is not Europe. EU is the opposite of Europe, the opposite of solidarity. Portugal has been destroyed by the business of the European Union, which is based on low-wage, real estate speculation as workers cannot afford a home even outside Lisbon and the public services are totally in degradation.
PD: What accounts for the perception of Portugal as a poor nation in Europe? How do you evaluate the ‘development’ of Portugal using the mainstream parameters and the parameters of the Human Development Index?
RV: Using mainstream parameters is always very risky because GDP doesn’t show how many rich people [there are], how many poor people [there are]? How alienated are the workers? if workers are happy or not, if they have access to basic needs.
You can have an increase in GDP and at the same time no labor rights, no political rights as we have in so many countries. So if you compare, of course, the Portuguese situation with the majority of the countries in Africa, Asia, and Latin America, it’s better if it’s a semi-peripheral country. But what we are seeing is a continued degradation. Portugal is one of the countries that continues to send abroad 50,000 to 100,000 workers a year. So I wouldn’t use GDP as a measure of happiness.
