Robin Blackburn
The Test in Portugal
The Military revolt which seized Lisbon and overthrew the Caetano government on 25 April 1974 toppled in a morning the most long lived fascist State in history and one of the most stable capitalist regimes anywhere this century. By the same stroke it set the stage for the end of the oldest colonial empire in the world. Thirteen years of guerrilla war in Africa had sapped the whole economy and society of metropolitan Portugal, and destroyed the allegiance of most of the younger officers in the Army and Navy to its political system. The coup itself encountered minimal resistance: yet for the same reason it initially left intact an important part of the State apparatus of Salazarism. But the tutelage exercised by the corporate State over the whole of civil society was immediately suspended, and the fascist secret police rounded up. For the first time in three decades a Communist Party entered the government of a West European country. Immediate and massive popular acclaim met the take-over from above of 25 April. A generalized social assault from below was unleashed upon the structures of the old order. A wave of workers’ struggles challenged the economic pattern of Portuguese capitalism while, under pressure from the African liberation movements, decisive steps have been taken towards independence for the colonies.
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