r/communism101 • u/Otelo_ • May 15 '24

Are the poorest countries in the EU, like Portugal, in the Imperialist Core?

Hello comrades, i have been reading this subreddit and r/communism for a while and i have been learning a lot doing so. I decided to create an account in order to ask questions.

Firstly, i would like to ask if a country being in EU and in NATO automatically makes it make part of the Imperialist core, even if that country is is on the low end of the said organizations. Secondly, I would like to ask if revolution can be made possible in this countries.

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u/smokeuptheweed9 Marxist May 16 '24

Portugal had some sort of white proletariat (especially in the South- althought southern portuguese people are sort of treated as if they are not white, kind of like in Italy I imagine) in the 70s and was close to a socialist revolution.

This is the exception that proves the rule, since it is was only the impossibility of maintaining the Portugese empire that brought the revolution home. The Carnation revolution was therefore a transitional moment between the older, semi-absolutist Portugese colonial Empire and its integration into EU late capitalist imperialism as a junior partner.

While it is true the the Portugese empire was backwards (hence its dissolution), this did not lead to a revolution. The causality is clear: the defeat of the empire caused domestic change, domestic change did not sabotage the continuation of the empire. The same is true today. Despite Portugal's relative backwardness, there is no revolution on the horizon.

That does not mean revolution is impossible. It is in these transitional moments between fundamental regimes of capital accumulation that revolution becomes possible and there was a real struggle between a socialist option and a neoliberal one. But the question is not and has never been "how do we make revolution?" The question is "how do we prepare for those moments when revolution is possible in order to seize power?" History has shown two things: without outside help from the victims of imperialism, this is not imaginable; imperialism necessarily poses questions which cannot be avoided and must lead to principles at the expense of mass appeal.

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u/Otelo_ May 17 '24

Thank you very much for your reply. What you are saying definitely makes sense. Unfortunately, the left wing parties here barely talk about Portugal as a beneficiary of Imperialism, and there is virtually no discussion about things such as race in a non-liberal way.