By Y.KHARLANOV~.

In a recent article on the situation in
Portugal, Lionel Bloch, an observer of
the conservative British paper Daily Tel-
egraph, complains that while democracy
is being destroyed there, NATO has
failed to send naval units in case the Por-

~ tuguese should appeal for help.

The destruction of democracy to
which the British journalist refers does
not mean the frequent sallies by reaction-
ary elements or raiding of Communist
Party and other democratic organization
premises. Actually, he welcomes these
outrages. The gunboats he demands from
NATO are to prevent the government of

Gunboat diplomacy raising its head against Portugal

the country from stopping this reaction-

ary tide of terror.

Calls coming from the Daily Tele-
graph for outright intervention are not
the only such calls in the West. They are
being echoed by Springer’s papers in the
Federal Republic of Germany (FRG),
l’Aurore Type in France, and La Derniere
Heure in Belgium.

Some people in the U.S., moreover, do
not conceal their anxiety over the fact
that the recent exposures of the CIA’s ac-
tivities in Chile prevent a repeat in Por-
tugal.

These calls for gunboat diplomacy and
interference of foreign intelligence serv-
ices in Portuguese affairs are being made
because the democratic forces of Portu-
gal are courageously repelling the at-
tempts of both home and foreign reaction
to force the Portuguese people to abandon
the path they have chosen.

The interference campaign in Portu-
gal’s internal affairs by the reactionary
circles of the capitalist world began in the
first months following the overthrow of
the fascist regime in the country, when it
became clear that the new government
had taken action towards serious demo-
cratic and social reforms.

The campaign was begun by interna-
tional monopolies for which Portugal was
a privileged recipient of capital invest-
ments in the years of fascist rule. Such
whales of world capitalism as ITT-Bell,
British Leyland, and FRG Electro-Engi-
neering Companies, which readily built
their offices in the country, are now con-
sidering a complete pull-out.

According to the Financial Times, for-

eign capital investments in Portugal grewb

by 37.6 percent annually during the last
four years of the Salazar regime, whereas
their influx had been sharply reduced or
—" altogether by the summer of
1974.

A particularly spectacular perform-
ance, in this respect, was given by the
U.S. monopoly ITT-Bell, in planning to
transfer its Portuguese enterprises to

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Portuguese fishermen.

other countries. ITT-Bell is notorious for
its role in Chile.

According to the American magazine
Business Week, Dow Chemical, a U.S.
chemical monopoly, acted in the same
manner when it broke off negotiations on
the construction of a large plant in Portu-

_ gal.

The oil trusts, Exxon and Mobil, have
given up plans to build refineries there.
The motives behind such decisions were
protests, according to Britain’s Lloyds
Bank Bulletin, against the leftward pol-

icy pursued by the government and the -

Armed Forces Movement in Portugal.
Meanwhile, the aggravation of the
economic crisis in the West and the meas-
ures undertaken by a number of West Eu-
ropean countries to restrict imports from
Portugal have considerably damaged that
country’s foreign trade balance. Foreign

trade plays a great role in Portugal’s econ-
omy, because the lopsided development
of agriculture under the fascist regime
forced Portugal to buy a substantial por-
tion of its foodstuffs abroad while farm
lands lie idle. :

Systernatic Western propaganda ur-
ges people not to keep money in the na-
tional banks of Portugal. The BBC and
Deutsche Welle Radio Stations, which
broadcast to Portugal, are trying to scare
the population with the specter of eco-
nomic crisis. The developing situation,
which can be described as an economic
boycott, has failed, however, to produce
the expected results. Unlike Chile, Por-
tugal is not dependent on the manufac-
ture of only one export product and has
sufficient resources at home to supply
much of its demand.

The stand taken by the Common Mar-

_ Sure on Portugal. In mid-July, the E

ket leadership on economic aid'to Porll
gal, which was to be given during
early months of the revolution of Apri
confirms the West’s intent to put pre

pean Economic Community (EEC)
cil of Ministers — the ‘Common Markel
— suddenly decided to make the aid col)
ditional upon Portugal’s compliance will}
an internal policy suitable to the capita
istic West. : a

The ‘world press directly connect
this EEC turnabout with the withdraw?
of the leaders of the Socialist Party from)
the government. UPI reported from Brus)
sels on July 17 that officials at the EBC
meeting asserted that Mario Soares, gel”
eral secretary of the Portuguese Social:
ist Party, impelled them to exert maxi |
mum pressure on the Portuguese militat) |
leaders. Bs

The Council of Europe, with its hea‘
quarters in Strasbourg, joined the pI
sure campaign. After A. Baseler, one
the leaders of the Portuguese Socia
Party, spent three days in Strasbouré:
the council postponed implementation of
the program of consultations and &
change with Portugal in education a!
law which it had agreed to finance.

The West German Society for Eco
omic Cooperation excluded Portugal
from the program for expanding capil#
investments of the FRG firms abroad
and warned banks and other firms —-
cooperation with the Portuguese. ee

Thus, following the example of the)
NATO military-political machine, whic!
has maintained an interventionist policy
in Portugal’s internal affairs since th® |
first days of the democratic regime: |
many other Western organizations an¢
political leaders joined the campaign

interference. The Portuguese press points |
out with surprise that the terminology |

which several weeks ago was used only by |

such anti-detente NATO leaders as NA1Y |

Secretary General Luns has been added to
the arsenal of many Western leaders.

Peking is also trying to exert pressure |
on Portugal by attacking Communists and |
other democrats. :

The capitalist circles in Europe and |

the U.S., says the Lisbon newspapely
Diario de Noticias, “threaten our cou |
try with an economic boycott and inspifé |
Social-Democratic parties to exert pre> |
sure on the Portuguese organs of power. |

Firmly convinced that the Portugues’

themselves should handle their own 1 |

ternal affairs, the Soviet people follow |

with alarm the attempts of capitalist cil”. :

cles in the West to impose on the Portv:

guese people a political choice that suit j

only those who oppose the revolutionaty |
process in that country.

| Benefits of cooperative system

By A. KRCHMAREK

_ The world crisis of capitalism has a
special dimension in its relationship to
the so-called “Third World.’’ These are
the countries whose riches have been
mercilessly exploited by the monopolies
of the imperialist countries, which over
the past centuries amassed enormous
profits while their victims remain im-
poverished

The condition of these countries is
_ recognized even by Robert S. McNa-
mara, president of the World Bank in
Washington and former Secretary of
Defense, who has noted that the per
capita income in the poorest nations is
less than $200 a year.

“Some 900 million of these indivi-
duals subsist on incomes of less than
$75 a year in an environment of squalor,
hunger and hopelessness,’’ he adds.
_ “They are the absolute poor, living in

situations so deprived as to be below —

any rational definition of human de-
However, now there is a world-wide up-
_ surge and revolt of these millions of

PACIFIC TRIBUNE—SEPTEMBER 19, 1975—Page 4

the world’s poorest. They demand of
their exploiters action in helping to
build up their economies.
But the international
monopolies and states have no such

plans. Their only concern is to gain °

ever greater profits from exploitation
at home and in the world’s poor nations.
This results in further deepening the
world-wide crisis of capitalism.

In striking contrast is the relation-
ship among the countries building So-
cialism. Here we have a planned, sys-
temmatic leveling upward of their eco-
nomic development.

In these countries of the CMEA
there is a process of a planned, gradual
unification and leveling up of their eco-
nomic advance. This is a completely
new feature in world economy, never
before experienced anywhere in the
world.

At the end of World War II, having
embarked on a socialist gourse, they
deliberately embarked on a path to
change the mainly agrarian nature of
their economies and to transform them

imperialist .

of production and exchange

into modern, industrial lands. To a
large degree this planned - rational
course is almost completed.

The sharp differences between the
highest and the lowest levels of indus-
trialization and agriculture are being
rapidly overcome. The industrial pro-
duction’s share of the national income
totals as follows:

62.1 percent in Czechoslovakia.

61.6 percent in the German Demo-
' cratic Republic.

57.6 percent in Romania.

52.0 percent in Bulgaria.

51.9 percent in the USSR.

50.2 percent in Poland.

43.7 percent in Hungary.

Within this system of planned indus-
trial cooperation, each of the partici-
pating countries is able to concentrate

on producing those items for which it —

has special resources available, mate-
rial and scientific. This results in gene-
rating trade between them to supple-
ment on both sides their own needs in
all areas of human activity.

Within this arrangement the Soviet

Union plays a special role as a SUP |
plier of basic raw materials large! 3

lacking in the East European countfi@ |
—coal, iron ore, many metals and esP® |
cially gas and oil. Thousands of pee

of pipelines provide such supplies

ficiently. They extend even into Austria |
Italy, West Germany, etc., besides th? 7

socialist countries. 4
This new, cooperative system of i*
dustrial production and exchange Pt

' vides a living example for all mankind: |

It is most certainly not lost upon
poor countries of the world. It als?
creates new difficulties for their ©
ploitation by imperialist profit-motivat
ed monopolies. _

. These problems were sharply '
flected in the recent Conference of

127 members of the International Mon
tary Fund held in Washington, D.C. NO
solutions were projected except a d&

mand that U.S., Japan and Germany: |
the main countries of imperialis™ |

quickly overcome their economic
cline and thus help the rest of thé
world. : :

oso ¢

“ier

DAILY WORLD