Click here for our website in english and here for photos and videos of our activities
The Revolution is Possible!
Humanity is being pushed into a dead end. Imperialist wars, militaristic rearmament plans, the Zionist genocide against the Palestinian people that has taken the lives of hundreds of thousands of men, women, and children, and environmental devastation confirm that nothing stops the capitalists in their eagerness to acquire wealth and power.
Our rights and living conditions are under attack. Each day increases the precariousness of our works, the brutal cuts in health or education, the real estate speculation with which banks and real estate funds fill their pockets, denying us the right to decent housing, the systemic sexist and queerphobic violence, the racist legislation against immigrants and the police repression and brutality against those who fight,
The decomposition of capitalism is causing phenomena that were experienced in the 1930s. The rise of the racist, sexist, Zionist, and chauvinist far-right represented by Trump, Bolsonaro, Netanyahu, Milei, Ventura and also Montenegro, should not be underestimated. It is a very real threat to democratic rights and to the oppressed.
But you cannot fight the reaction by defending the capitalist policies that brought us to this situation, or by appealing to parliamentary cordons that do not work in any country. The demagoguery of the far-right can only be defeated with the most combative and massive mobilization of workers.
This unsustainable situation for the majority of workers is fueled by governments that, whether openly right-wing or calling themselves 'socialists,' accept the logic of the system. They all talk to us about 'democracy,' but the truth is that a minority of privileged people, who live in the most obscene luxury and absolute impunity, are the ones who decide about our lives. Capitalism is not reformable; it is a completely reactionary system that has already surpassed its historical time.
1 in every 5 people in Portugal lives below the poverty threshold and the majority does not bring home more than 1000€/month, completely insufficient when the salary needed to have a decent life in Portugal is €1,600. This is the result of low wages, speculation with housing, the cartelization of banks, supermarkets, telecommunications, fuels... It is these bourgeois of GALP, Jerónimo Martins, MEO, MILLENNIUM BCP, Sonae, Solverde, etc., who while setting inflated prices among themselves – increasing inflation – pay us miserable wages, thus achieving record profits every year while condemning us to misery. The same ones who turn our workplace into a dictatorship and dictate the government policies.
Without breaking with this privileged elite, in whom no one voted but who govern society with an iron hand, 'progressive' speeches inevitably become a farce. The bourgeoisie in Portugal has declared war on the working class and the oppressed. The authoritarian measures – which had been in place for some time, for example the use of civil requisitions by the PS government – are now being used by the PSD/CDS government supported by Chega to take away our labor and democratic rights and to privatize the profitable public companies that remain.
Organize with Revolutionary Left
Capitalists rely on powerful organizations, on the State institutions they control, on media to hammer into us what they want us to think day and night, on the inertia and habit of living under an oppressive system, and on the inability of the parliamentary left to overcome its fetishism for bourgeois institutions and lack of trust in the working class.
Therefore, those of us who aspire to break with capitalism need to build a revolutionary mass organization with a class, communist, and internationalist program. This is what we do in Revolutionary Left, and this is why we actively intervene in the workers' and youth movement, for public and dignified housing, NHS, and schools, against sexist, queerphobic, transphobic, and racist violence, and the rise of the far-right.
We have a simple operational structure, based on democracy and the participation of our members. Our members meet weekly or biweekly for assemblies where we discuss the events of the international and Portuguese class struggle and address the history of the revolutionary movement and Marxist theory. We also plan our collective intervention in strikes, demonstrations, and in all actions that we consider of interest for building our organization. The assemblies of members democratically elect a committee that is responsible for coordinating and driving the activity.
Every two years we hold a Congress of the Revolutionary Left. It is the most important meeting of our organization, as it ensures the participation of all comrades in the development of the policy we advocate. The Congress elects a Central Committee through an open-list system, which constitutes the permanent governing body. All comrades elected to any responsibility can be revoked at any time by a majority of the members of the body.
Internal democracy is a fundamental principle of our organization to ensure that all members freely express what they think. Revolutionary Marxism has nothing to do with social-democratic organizations, nor with Stalinism, nor with sects with personality cults. If we fight to develop the conscious and creative thought and activity of our class, we need a critical and politically educated membership. This is the best antidote against bureaucratization and degeneration that dominate institutional parties and unions.
Our activity is based on the voluntary contribution of our militants, which is why we have basic commitments so as not to depend on anything other than our own strength:
1. We pay a monthly fee to fund ourselves, as we are well aware that only financial independence ensures political independence.
2. We sell our newspaper A Centelha at street actions in which we participate in order to spread our program and to be able to have a self-sufficient revolutionary press.
3. We promote revolutionary theory and historical memory by publishing, selling, and discussing fundamental works of scientific socialism, such as The Communist Manifesto or Reform or Revolution; writings by Marxists little known in Portugal, such as Alexandra Kollontai; and books on the history of the class struggle like The Portuguese Revolution.
Being a communist today
In The State and Revolution Lenin wrote: "To decide once every certain number of years that members of the ruling class must oppress and crush the people in Parliament: that is the true essence of bourgeois parliamentarism (...)." This remains true today. It is not the function of communists to be part of governments that manage capitalism, as some try to justify in a lamentable way. We exist to organize the forces of the working class and the oppressed. Being a communist, being a Marxist, being a Leninist, being a revolutionary is not a label, it is not an aesthetic, it is being aware that we are living through a barbarism that will grow ever more while we do not seize power from the bourgeoisie.
Being a communist means vigorously intervening in every strike of the working class, in the movement of working women defending class-based and anti-capitalist feminism, in the LGBTI+ movement for the defense of full rights for queer people, against the police and judicial repression of immigrants, and in every mobilization against fascist violence. This is what we do understanding that an attack on one part of the working class is an attack on all of our class, and that therefore it is essential to combat any form of oppression within the movements and organizations of our class, from chauvinism and racism to sexism and transphobia.
Take the step to get organized
The working class is stronger today than at any other point in history. And this has been widely demonstrated in recent years, in revolutionary uprisings around the world, in the large mobilizations that shook France and the United Kingdom, on March 8 and Pride Marches that fill the streets, in the enormous internationalist solidarity with the Palestinian people and against Zionist genocide, in the general strikes against Milei and of course agains Montenegro’s Labour Package… But this immense strength needs to be organized, it needs to gain consciousness, it needs to be endowed with a communist program.
All those who believed they could achieve significant improvements through the bourgeois parliament, by supporting a social-democratic government to manage crumbs, obtained a regrettable result. No. What can change things and alter the balance of power are not speeches in parliament, but rather the class struggle, the mobilizations, the general strikes, the factory occupations, the uprisings.
We revolutionary communists defend socialism. And what does that mean? Putting the immense wealth that already exists in society at the disposal of the majority of the working and oppressed population in the only possible way: through the expropriation of large companies, banks, lands, and houses from the bourgeoisie – which does not represent even 0.1% of the population – and managing them democratically. Only in this way will we have a socialist economy and be able to solve the urgent crises caused by the parasitism of millionaires. We know very well that for the working class, freedom with a capital 'F' is nothing other than the absence of necessity.
In a society where needs are met, without exploitation, without repression, it will be possible to establish another type of human relations in which each person, regardless of their nationality, skin color, gender, or sexual orientation, enjoys a full life, in which the talent and free expression of each of us flourish.
Now is the time! Join our revolutionary organization to challenge and defeat those who want us crushed and voiceless!
Organize yourself in the Revolutionary Left!
Build the forces of revolutionary communism!
Our program:
• Solve the housing crisis: expropriation without compensation of real estate funds, large property owners for rental, and banks. Creation of a national public housing system with affordable social rents. Stop all demolitions and evictions.
• Increase the minimum wage and the unemployment benefit to an amount where we can live with dignity, not less than 1600€/month. Enough of living in misery so that big companies can have record profits at the expense of robbing and exploiting us! End precarious contracts; re-establish collective labor bargaining; reduction of working hours to 30 hours per week; retirement at 60 years old.
• To ensure a dignified life and full employment: nationalization of banks and large monopolies under democratic control of the workers. Full repeal of labor and pension counter-reforms.
• Stop the privatization of healthcare: in defense of a public, free, and quality NHS for everyone; more funding; immediate hiring of thousands of healthcare workers and nationalization of private healthcare; unconditional affirmative healthcare for trans people.
• Avoid the degradation of education: completely free education from daycare to university and vocational training. End precariousness in education: entry into the staff positions for all professionals. Create a national plan to train thousands of teachers in the coming years, with salaries paid to students while they train. Not a euro of the public budget for private education.
• Immediate end to all ongoing and planned privatizations (TAP, RTP, etc.). Renationalization of privatized public services, hiring more workers and respecting labor rights.
• Against fascism and racism, mobilization and organization. the racist laws on Foreigners, Nationality, and Return (Leis dos Estrangeiros, da Nacionalidade e do Retorno); fight racism by granting all rights to immigrants and their families, and nationality if they so wish. Elimination of AIMA and the police; establish working-class militias to defend us from State and fascist violence.
• Against sexist violence, patriarchal justice, and queerphobic and transphobic discrimination. Equal work, equal pay. Right to free and accessible abortion in the NHS. Sex education in schools. Full rights for the trans community.
• Stop the environmental catastrophe: for a socialist, ecological, and sustainable planning of the economy.
• For proletarian internationalism. Down with imperialist wars and militarism! End NATO and the European Union's rearmament plan! End the genocide of the Palestinian people. For a free Palestine from the river to the sea.
Send us a message via Instagram or Este endereço de email está protegido contra piratas. Necessita ativar o JavaScript para o visualizar. and we will answer you back very shortly.
Support us: By buying our newspaper, our books, or even by making a donation to the IBAN PT50003500410000817933096.
