Abstract
The April 25, 1974 military coup in Portugal required workers and intermediate sectors of society to come into the scene. There is a historical connection between the attaining of social rights and the development of the workers’ control in the revolutionary process from February 1975. The Government then implemented a series of social measures intended to prevent the uprising and that, broadly speaking, would build what has been called the social State, i.e., the allocation of resources for work through the social functions of the State (education, health, social security, leisure, sports, subsidized public transport, subsidized income, etc.), against, in fact, the orders of the military leadership itself, which had put an end to the dictatorship, the Armed Forces Movement. From March 1975, with the widespread establishment of worker and resident councils, the beginning of the agrarian reform, and the questioning of private property (a process taking place through the action of workers, often fighting against dismissals or disinvestments and the abandonment of companies, and not as a strategy of its main policy guidelines, the Portuguese Communist Party), the Portuguese revolution took a qualitative leap, becoming a ‘Soviet’-type revolutionary situation.
Keywords
Revolution; social status; Portugal
Fonte: Pordata, 2010.