because of the depth of the economic crisis, have operated at a level at which the problem of power has been clearly posed The struggles against economic sabotage, against the refusal to pay wages, for the purging of fascists from the administration, have all reacnea une proporuons, and taken on une forms (such as factory occupations), in which the power of the capitalists has been effectively fought.
From the north to the south of Portugal, the struggle of textile workers has decisively contributed to this. For example, when the French bosses of SOGANTAL tred to get into the factory and remove the machinery and finished goods, the workers reacted by locking them inside.
Bounced cheques
Likewise in the CHARMINA factory where the Austrian boss tried to pay the wages with cheques that bounced and then fled the country - workers occupied the factory immed lately and began to sell the products in order to guarantee their wages.
This was also the case when the textile workers came out onto the streets in a huge demonstration demanding revolutionary measures which would deal with the sabotage by reactionary bosses, who were doing all they could to close their factories, run away with the machinery and sabotage the economy.
Workers' Committees, with their real experience of struggle, democratically elected, and working in cooperation with the trade union committees are the ground on which workers control must be based.
National level
It is not enough to ensure working class dominance through the workers organisations at factory level in order to guarantee control over production in the nationalised industries. What is at stake is the whole economy and this requires the creation of organs of control at sectional, regional and national levels As workers' control over production is a step towards people's power, workers control has to be based on workers democracy - that is, on elections of all representatives, on direct democracy, and on the mass meetings. The narrow anti-monopolism which considers nationalisations as an end in themselves will be superseded by the principled anti-capitalism which knows that to nationalise the key sectors of the economy is not enough; above all it is necessary to introduce qualitative changes in the relations of work and of production in the nationalised industries.
Shortcomings
Workers' control over production must be seen as a basis for overcoming the present short comings of the workers organisations. It will also point towards the formation of workers' councils which will be organs of popular power, which will unite, within a given region, the struggles of the industrial working class and its allies, namely other workers, soldiers and sailOIS So, comrades, the struggle must move onto the offensive. It must be an anti-capitalist and not merely an anti-monopolist struggle, In this struggle the solidarity of the British and EuroSENECEI MASTE NIE On 10 July the Lisbon newspaper Republica appeared on the streets of Lisbon once again - but this time under workers' control.
Shut down since 19 May because of a bitter row between the newspapers' workers and its editors — the latter being backed by the journalistic staff, a majority of whom were members of the Socialist Party - Republica became the first rallying point for the reactionary campaign launched by Socialist Party general secre tary Mario Soares But the workers were determined to make Republica into a truly independent paper in the service of the working class, rather than the undercover organ of the Socialist Party that it had become. Despite the capitulation of the military Supreme Council of the Revolution to the Socialist Party's demands, the workers stood firm. On 9 July they announced that they were 'not prepared to wait indefinitely for the Government to work out a solution, and were going to publish the paper 'under the responsibility of the workers' Faced with this decisive action, the Government reversed its position and named•a military officer as director of the paper, thus allowing it to be published legally. But the paper's production remained under the control of its workforce Eagerly received Since 10 July Republica has appeared regularly, and has been eagerly received by the militant workers of Lisbon, who understand that it is their own. The new Republica is a model of working class journalism, featuring prominent and regular coverage of the major workers struggles, and open to different shades of opinion inside the workers movement The absurdity of the slander that the workers struggle was an attempted 'Communist Party take-over' is shown by the fact that Republica runs a prominent column called "workers in struggle' (at least a full page, and often two, in every issue) at a time when the Communist Party leadership has been opposing strikes as 'inopportune' and placing all its emphasis on che battle for production While Republica is a politically committed paper, it has not tried to hide uncomfortable facts. In its issue of 16 July it carried a full report of the Socialist Party demonstration of the preceding day (at which a big section of the crowd had tried to march on the Republica building) under the headline Ranks of the SP say Yes to the Leadership' The publication of the workers' Republica
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