A-Infos (en) Portugal, Caderno "Luta Social"*, No.3 - November 2008 - Editorial

In the midst of a serious situation, with great instability on economic, 
political and social levels due to another crisis in the world financial system, 
which has already spread to the "real economy" and with no end in sight, our 
country is immersed in an "endogenous crisis". ---- This "endogenous crisis" has 
still to be duly analysed at theoretical and practical levels (mainly for 
guiding action) by the non-authoritarian left, the left not compromised with 
neo-liberalism. ---- As a matter of fact, our country is historically a country 
with the past of a colonial empire, but it was soon neo-colonized by various 
powers. ---- In the post-25 April 1974 epoch, the shift towards the EEC meant 
its anchoring to formal democracy. But also to capitalism (in contradiction with 
the people's feelings, at least in this time, in the mid-eighties).

The expression of this was a political and economical subordination - to an 
extent never seen before - to the dominant powers, without a clear conscience of 
what was really at stake. Certainly, this was contributed to by the fact we were 
at the end of the "cold war" period, with a series of tensions between the 
dominant superpower (as the USA already were) and the super-power that would 
soon lose its status, with the fall of the Berlin Wall, the USSR's dissolution, 
the quick conversion of the "people's democracies" in Eastern Europe to a savage 
version of capitalism after the forced experience of state capitalism.

In the turmoil of this new power and political rearrangements, the workers' 
class in every European country had always shown its rejection of imposed 
solutions, the reduction of their rights, against the strengthening of 
capitalism, against unemployment and the increasing casualisation of work, used 
as a terrorist weapon by the bosses and State officials from Europe, including 
the so-called "liberal democracies".

But, due to decades of subordination of their class instruments - the unions - 
to interests that were external to its own reality, identity and nature, the 
worker class was badly armed for the battle. In fact, union leaders, chosen and 
maintained because they are party members or sympathisers, were "controlling" 
the mass movement, as orderlies of the bosses, useful to the dominant caste.

The leaders' treason can be understood as corollary of having transformed 
themselves progressively into a caste or "coordinator class", with certain 
privileges, with a seemingly unchallenged status as "social partners", essential 
to the big circus called "social dialogue", in fact, the search for a (false) 
consensus between the exploited and the exploiters, in short.

Nevertheless, in Brazil (see Alexander Samis' article on Syndicalism and the 
Social Movements), in in France (see the CSR militant interview) and even in our 
own country, the unions are subject to change, sometimes to splits, sometimes 
reunifications, but always subject to a grassroots dynamic.

Under our eyes (see also in this issue the "Open Letter to Education Workers"), 
the teachers are fighting for the state school system, for their dignity, to 
maintain their autonomy and the quality of the educational act in itself, 
showing how people can organise themselves in a spontaneous way, in autonomy, 
forcing the heavy machines such as the unions to move forward and take steps 
which were previously rejected as being "too radical".

Whatever the outcome of the struggles, one thing is sure: the worker class and 
the people in general are learning - through the practice of social struggle - 
to determine for themselves their will, imposing respect from leaders of the 
mandate that was given to them. Although these have a permanent tendency to take 
decisions in place of those that elected them, they have no longer the hegemony 
over the social movement.

Today in Portugal, people are understanding better and better that their 
self-organisation, horizontal, democratic, with active solidarity, crossing the 
frontiers of professional groups, uniting everyone in the action, independent 
from their partisan or ideological preferences. This is the key to being able to 
impose their will, at any level, and to defend their dignity, their livelihoods 
and their future.

This movement should put down roots and spread even more, because the long-term 
goal is the elimination of capitalism, the construction of socialism from below, 
the deep change we call "social revolution".

"Luta Social" Collective

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* Caderno "Luta Social" is published by the "Luta Social" Collective, an 
anti-authoritarian, anti-capitalist group based in Portugal.
http://www.luta-social.org
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