Letters to Joseph Hansen on the Key Issues of the Portuguese Revolution
On 25 April 1974, the “Carnation Revolution” triumphed in Portugal, led by the Armed Forces Movement (MFA), which succeeded in overthrowing the long-standing fascist dictatorship of the Estado Novo headed by Marcelo Caetano. Various sections of the Fourth International (United Secretariat) were involved in the revolutionary process of those years, and there were significant theoretical developments and debates. In August 1973, the Morenoist current had formed, together with the SWP of the United States, the Leninist-Trotskyist Faction in opposition to the Mandelist majority (which had grouped itself within the International Majority Tendency in March of that year).
From 1974/75 onwards, the Morenoist current sent several leaders to Portugal (Antenor from Brazil, Pedro Fuentes and Aldo Casas from Argentina), and Moreno himself made several trips there. Various theoretical and political orientation papers were produced, characterising the situation in Portugal as the high point of the European revolution. In this regard, we may mention the two issues of Cuadernos de Revista de América (published in August 1975 and February 1976) and Moreno’s important text, reproduced in Cuaderno No. 1, Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Portugal (available at nahuelmoreno.org).
We present here three letters from Nahuel Moreno addressed to Joseph Hansen, a leader of the SWP in the United States, in which points of agreement are highlighted, and certain issues are raised with a view to drafting a document for the Leninist-Trotskyist Faction. The differences with the SWP’s positions on the development of the revolutionary process in Portugal became increasingly acute, and new points of contention emerged (among others, regarding the Angolan revolution), leading Moreno and his current to break definitively with the SWP and to found the Bolshevik Tendency in Bogotá in February 1976 — which remained part of the Fourth International (Unified Secretariat) until 1979.