The Portuguese Communist Party (, , PCP) is a communist and Marxist–Leninist political party in Portugal. It is one of the strongest communist parties in Western Europe and the oldest Portuguese political party with uninterrupted existence. It is characterized as a far-left party on the political spectrum. Since 1987, it runs to any national, local and European elections in coalition with the Ecologist Party "The Greens" (PEV), assembled in the Unitary Democratic Coalition (CDU).
After the death of its secretary-general, Bento Gonçalves, in the Tarrafal concentration camp, the Party went through a period, from 1942 to 1961, without a secretary-general. In 1961, the historic leader Álvaro Cunhal was elected. In 1992, he was succeeded by Carlos Carvalhas, and in 2004 Jerónimo de Sousa was chosen by the Central Committee to be PCP's Secretary General; Paulo Raimundo was elected in 2022, and currently acts as the party leader.
The PCP was founded in 1921, establishing contacts with the Comintern in 1922 and becoming its Portuguese section in 1923. The PCP was banned after the 1926 military coup and subsequently played a major role in the opposition against the dictatorial regime of António de Oliveira Salazar and Marcelo Caetano. During the nearly five-decade-long dictatorship, the PCP was constantly suppressed by the secret police, which forced the party's members to live in clandestine status under the threat of arrest, torture, and murder. After the Carnation Revolution in 1974, which overthrew the regime, the 36 members of party's Central Committee had, in the aggregate, experienced more than 300 years in jail.Cunhal, Álvaro (1997). O caminho para o derrubamento do fascismo. Edições Avante!.
After the end of the dictatorship, the party became a major political force in the new democratic government. One of its goals, according to the party is to maintain its "vanguard role in the service of the class interests of the workers".Working-class party and all workers: the role of the PCP in strengthening the organization, unity and struggle of the workers at pcp.pt. Filed in Wayback Machine"Ficará para história a reposição de direitos que se julgavam perdidos" in Notícias ao Minuto. Archived in Wayback Machine Currently, the PCP is the joint sixth largest in the Portuguese Assembly of the Republic, where it holds 3 of the 230 assembly seats. It is also represented in the European Parliament, where it is part of the European United Left/Nordic Green Left group.
The party publishes the weekly Avante!, founded in 1931. Its youth organization is the Portuguese Communist Youth, a member of the World Federation of Democratic Youth.
History
Party's origins and formation (1919–1926)
Portuguese Maximalist Federation At the end of World War I, in 1918, Portugal fell into a serious economic crisis, in part due to the Portuguese military intervention in the war. The Portuguese working classes responded to the deterioration in their living standards with a wave of strikes. Supported by an emerging labour movement, the workers achieved some of their objectives, such as an eight-hour working day.Como nasceu o Partido Comunista Português, Portuguese Communist Party, URL accessed 20 June 2006
In September 1919, the revolutionary syndicalists of the more radical sectors of the labour movement founded the Portuguese Maximalist Federation. Two years before, the October revolution had occurred, which led to the creation of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic. The worsening of the living conditions potentiated the amplification and radicalization of the social movement, and in the same year, the General Confederation of Labour was constituted. In this Federation, inspired by the Bolshevik revolution, there were those who did not conform to the impasses and limitations of the traditional trade union action. They sought to follow the example of the Bolshevik revolution, proclaiming through the insurrectional path and working towards its repetition. The designation "maximalist" was chosen because: "After a broad debate the conclusion that Bolshevism meant 'revolution taken to the max' was reached".
The ideological consistent of its leaders was low, inheriting what they had from their syndicalist origins, still far from freeing it to embrace the doctrine and dominating conceptions of Lenin's Party. Despite this, another centre opened in the Portuguese workers' movement, claiming that the syndicalist organization, in itself, was insufficient in a new social order. However, the organization wasn't able to survive the impact of the arrest of their main entertainer, Manuel Ribeiro, at the end of 1920. The articles that he published in the maximalist newspaper "Red Flag" (Bandeira Vermelha), about the governmental behavior in the strike of the railway workers where he ended up arrested, or the "cold dread that the government felt because of the propaganda of the triumphant revolution in Russia", lead to the ban of the Maximalist Federation.
Foundation of the Portuguese Communist Party However, after three months the Portuguese Communist Party would be founded, continuing with the group of people that in the disarticulation of the Maximalist Federation demeaned the need of a communist congress. The PCP was founded on the 6 of March 1921. Shortly after the Party's foundation, the Communist Youth was created, that immediately established contact with the Young Communist International.
The third of the provisional organic Basis states that:The supreme goal that the Portuguese Communist Party will seek to make in a revolutionary action, that the circumstances of the European and national means make timely, is the full socialization of the means of production, circulation and consumption, this means, the radical transformation of capital society into a communist society.The historian João Madeira considers that in the document remained "a set of confusing and not very clear references, or that collided with the doctrine in which the Soviet experience anchored itself, that had been working since the maximalist experience".
Connection to the Communist International and I Congress In 1922, PCP's connection to the Communist International (Comintern) is established, the PCP's Secretary of the National Board, Henrique Caetano de Sousa, was designated by the Party as its delegate for the IV Congress of the Communist International in Moscow, where he would become the only leader in PCP's history to be in the presence of Vladimir Lenin. The militant José Pires Barreira is nominated as PCP's delegate for the III Congress of the Communist Youth International. However, the political divergences and personal rivalries within the Party generated a profound crisis, that lead to the arrival of a Comintern delegate, the Swiss Jules Humbert-Droz, in mid August, 1923. He knew the condition of the Party's creation — outside of any direct influence from the Comintern, and that the Party's model had nothing to do with the Leninist model of democratic centralism.
According to Droz's evaluation, "[the] Party hadn't yet had its constituent congress and didn't have an organic status nor a theoretical and tactical program".
Besides this, what also concerned the "international" was the organic desegregation state found in the Party, polarized in two groups, on one side Henrique Caetano de Sousa and José Pires Barreira, and on the other, José Carlos Rates, that mutually fought. The Congress, meanwhile postponed to November, 1923, had Droz's participation, armed with a Comintern mandate that gave him full powers. Having constituted the Portuguese Section of the Communist International. The Congress elected a new Central Committee (CC), through secret and nominal voting. Out of 71 lists, Carlos Rates was, with 70 votes, the leader more voted in a CC of nine members, becoming the 1st Secretary General of PCP. In these circumstances, it would have to be established if it was possible to not only clarify the Party's political line but also pass to the social and political intervention, unifying a Party with feeble origins and diffuse thoughts, making way for its bolshevization, like the Communist International demanded. The Communist Youth is, in fact, dissolved.
Right after the Congress, PCP became very active. In the beginning of the following year, Carlos Rates went to Moscow to participate in the V Congress of the Communist International. Because of his absence, or not, there's an attempt of change of direction in the Party's orientation, starting to focus its propaganda on the danger of a right-wing coup and defending a left front that included the General Confederation of Labour (CGT) and the Democratic Leftwing Republican Party (ED).
1924 manifestation The danger of the right and the coverage of the left front made it that in a big manifestation, in February 1924, they screamed "Down with the reaction!" and "Out with the predominance of living forces!". The communists militants, while telling the press they were standing before the beginning of a proletarian revolution, also stated that it was through their initiative and effort that the protesters that wanted to overtake the parliament were diverted to the headquarters of the newspaper "A Batalha". At the same time that the PCP maintained the version of the imminent revolution, it was also going through many political weaknesses, tactical uncertainties, and profound contradictions, that would end up internally dividing the Party. It was particularly significant that the PCP's representation in the V Congress in the International was ensured by Jules Humbert-Droz, and not by the main leader of the Party, Carlos Rates. The "international" didn't fail to recognize that: "It didn't have illusions about the communist maturity of the Party's direction".
Unlike virtually all other European communist parties, the PCP was not formed after a split of a social democratic or socialist party, but from the ranks of anarcho-syndicalist and revolutionary syndicalist groups, the most active factions in the Portuguese labor movement. The party opened its first headquarters in the Arco do Marquês do Alegrete Street in Lisbon. Seven months after its creation, the first issue of O Comunista (The Communist), the first newspaper of the party, was published.
The congress was attended by about a hundred members of the party and asserted its solidarity with socialism in the Soviet Union and the need for a strong struggle for similar policies in Portugal; it also stated that a fascist coup in Portugal was a serious threat to the party and to the country.Vasconcelos, José Carlos de (dir.). (1982) Revista História (History Magazine) - Number 47
1925 legislative elections For the 1925 legislative elections, PCP proposed an alliance, but it was rejected by the Portuguese Socialist Party, only forming the ED/PCP bloc, where none of the eight PCP candidates, that participated in the respective lists, were elected. In "O Trabalhador Rural", for example, considered that the Party was hidden by its allied, and that the tactic ended up manifesting negatively. It was about the failure of Carlos Rates' direction.
Related or not with this failure and the resulting disappointments, Rates accepts a beneficial proposal by the Union of Economic Interests, a powerful employer central, to be a writer for the newspaper, "O Século". The Party and Comintern found this an unacceptable action with the role he had, and his resignation was demanded. However, he rejected that, being kicked out the Party on the II Congress, in a framework of demoralization and weakening.
Establishment of the military dictatorship