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Italy 's struggles to extricate itself from the consequences of breakneck
capitalistic expansion and authoritarian political tutelage seemed simple–
when viewed from Lisbon . I arrived in Portugal (for the ftrst time) with
Western Europe 's debates about the Portuguese revolution resounding in my
head. The French Communists had denounced Soares and the Portuguese
socialists . Berlinguer had received Soares with cordiality, and the Italian
Communists had declared that the Socialists' electoral victory ought to be
respected. Portugal itself presented a much more disordered reality-and
continues to do so . The country is poor and backward , and forty percent of the
population is illiterate . Political expression had been blocked for generations :
there were neither institutions nor traditions to call upon . What is remarkable
is not the confusion , even anarchy of the situation, but its relative peaceful–
ness . A clerical north of petty landed proprietors and local patrons opposed a
more industrial south , which also had a radicalized landless proletariat . A
professional and mercantile bourgeoisie long since emancipated culturally,
anxious to introduce liberal democracy, confronted an energized working
class which wished to proceed directly to socialism. A rigid and dogmatic
Communist Party, Stalinist in its leadership, sttuggled with Socialists who
looked to Western Europe . (I spoke with a member of the Communist Party's
Central Committee, who took most of the time to denounce the Italian
party .) To the left of the Communists and Socialists, anarcho-syndicalist
groups , several Maoist sects, and unrepressed proletarian energy threatened to
outflank the Stalinists and Socialists alike . Meanwhile, revolutionary officers
who had spent years in Africa acted as if their country were in the Third
World-and justifted themselves by a national liberation ideology they had
learned from their erstwhile African opponents.
Lisbon 's streets were full of slogans, vendors of newspapers and pamph–
lets, and of arguing clusters of militants, mostly young. In July, the demon–
strations were peaceful. The banned Maoist group MRPP put thousands into
the streets, followed discreetly by two military police jeeps. The period of ugly
rioting in the north, of the burning of Communist headquarters and the
attempted lynching ofCommunists, was still ahead. In earlyJuly, however, it
was possible to see the tensions that were to explode in the summer and the
fall-and which may still wreck the promise of the revolution .
There was a book fair on in the center of the city, and the proliferation of
titles was striking . I found endless translations from contemporary literature,
the whole Marxist literature (including a good many anti-Stalinist and anti–
Soviet books). The best seller of the fair, however, was clearly Reich's
Function
of the Orgasm.
After decades of clerical puritanism, the demands of instinct
were being heard . But instinctual liberation coincided with a precipitous
decline in production: the economy was in wretched shape. The European
