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forces have obliged the faltering Movement of the Armed Forces to take
public opinion more seriously.
(I
am reminded of the headline
inJornal Nove
when I was there: "Please! The Movement of the Armed Forces Asks the
People to be Good Enough
to
Make the Revolution .' ') But that opinion is
deeply divided, and authority-even revolutionary authority-seems
nowhere to be found. Soares and the Socialists have reaffirmed their commit–
ment
to
the socialization of large-scale property, but this has not satisfied the
left . The real difference between them is the Socialists' insistence on parlia–
mentary socialism; the left is Leninist. The stabilization of the revolution, the
consolidation of its political and economic gains, seems remote. There is an
advantage
to
the confusion, oscillation and division : if no one force can
emerge triumphant, a revolutionary pluralism of a de facto kind, an uneasy
coexistence of tendencies, may consolidate itself. That, in turn, presupposes a
relatively benign international setting-by no means assured . Soares would
do well to ask his friends in Western Europe to give economic aid to Portugal .
The rest of us would do well to cease regarding him as a Pericles reborn. His
struggle for democratic freedoms is admirable, but it would be more effective
had he not accepted indirect subventions from the CIA and were his party less
rhetorical and more political. Instead of complaining that it is not being lis–
tened
to,
it might do more work at the base in the unions and the armed
forces. Does anyone really care for Portugal, or must it function as a political
puppet theater? My most poignant memory of Portugal was of a ragtag dem–
onstration of leftists in Lisbon's streets: workers, some relatively threadbare
office workers, soldiers, students. Their placards declared that the great
powers were conspiring
to
turn Portugal into the theater of an international
civil war.
Nem Praha Nem Chtle.
("Neither Prague Nor Chile. ")
The words speak for half a continent. Northern European Social Democ–
racy and Latin socialism, revisionist Communism and new forms of leftism,
are agreed on this. The old continent's new ideas may never come to fruition.
They require a protected geopolitical space in which to grow. Circumstances,
above all the economic crisis, may preclude much social experimentation in
Europe . If, however, Western Europe cannot devise new social forms-it is
difficult to see who else will .
