But if the SP today provides the main political cover for the moves of the extreme right in Portugal, it would be quite wrong to see the Socialist Party as itself the physical instrument of counter-revolution. Soares is someone whose job is to disorient and crush the vanguard of the working class - not a Pinochet whose task is to drown the entire workers' movement in blood. We can be sure that the real Portuguese Pinochets will crush Soares and the Socialist Party almost as severely as they will destroy the rest of the Portuguese workers - just as in 1933, in Germany, Hitler ruthlessly crushed the German Social Democrats who a mere 14 years earlier had murdered Rosa Luxemburg and thousands of workers to save the life of German capitalism.
The real Hitlers and Pinochets in Portugal lie not in the Socialist Party but inside the army and the Armed Forces Movement. One of the best bets for this role is the ex-Chief of Staff in Caetano's army, President Costa Gomes, who made his views very well known last week. Returning from a visit to Eastern Europe he was full of praise for the authority, order and discipline' in Poland and Russia Attacking soldiers who sided with the work ers and not with the capitalist class, he announ ced: "If a soldier doesn't place his weapons at the service of the people, but at that of his own individual political opinions, he is betraying his uniform.
Closely associated with Costa Gomes and the Melo Antunes group of officers are the ultra-right commander of the Northern military region, Brigadier Veloso - who last week
treatened to bomb out left-wing soldiers coupying the Oporto artillery barracks; and bable candidate for next Chief of Staff i the army, General Charais — who in mid-August threatened to march on Lisbon with right-wing forces.
As for Prime Minister Azevedo - whose programme was referred to by the CP as recenlly as 9 October as confirming the 'fundamental option of the revolutionary perspective helped the Government to gain those weeks.
It is true that in Portugal certain individual officers have shown by their actions that in the struggle between the workers and the bourgeoisie they will, for whatever confused reasons, stand with the workers. Captain Henrique Fernandes, who diverted 1,000 automatic rifles to the workers, and Major Almeida of the Light red weekly 2 Artillery regiment, who undertakes the military training of workers' militias, must obviously be included in any military bloc against the reaction. But they will do it not through transforming the MFA but through breaking with it. It is the SUV and the soldiers committees, not any section of the MFA, which shows the way forward.