We look to the future as we look to the past: The Commune lives in us!

As UMLP, we send a warm revolutionary greeting to ICOR and all brother parties present at ICOR Paris Commune 150th Anniversary celebrations. On 18 March 1871, Paris workers established for the first time in history of class struggle, the workers power, the dictatorship of the proletariat. It was the Paris Commune, which with its revolutionary example, showed for the first time to the labour movement that workers can achieve anything if they take their cause into their own hands.

The situations which led to the development of 1871 revolutionary situation are not far from the problems of today as unemployment, ruin of small businesses, indignation at bourgeois class policies; the rulers inability to find solutions for the masses, etc., led to the outbreak of a revolution. This is particularly important in view of the global social crises that we are already experiencing here in Portugal as well, because the masses are becoming restless and the binding forces to bourgeois parliamentarism are clearly dissipating, thus showing that the masses are looking for alternatives.

As UMLP, we propagated the principles of the Commune on several occasions but on April 25^th, the "Carnation Revolution" celebration day, demonstrating through the Commune example that the 25^th was a military coup d'état, we fought against class collaboration and found approval! The Paris Commune showed us the need to overthrow capitalism through socialist revolution because the bourgeois state cannot simply be reformed or subjugated by the people. In Portugal, the 25^th of April of 1974 showed that there is no such thing as a class neutral State and that what happened here was a revolutionary situation with a short power vacuum where at no moment, the working class was in power. The bourgeoisie was in power, fascism was overthrown, but the bourgeoisie remained in power. Marx and Engels drew from the Paris Commune the lesson that, regarding the State, "Revolutionaries must crush it." The Commune, which created the first workers' government, the first dictatorship of the proletariat - the democracy of the workers and the people - became the model of proletarian parliamentarism.

The Paris Commune was thus an earthquake that sought not only bourgeois freedom, as in the so-called "Carnation Revolution", but also a new socialist and internationalist society. Although for a short time, it was an important rupture that revolutionaries were able to achieve in order to establish their own order. By building a new State and solving social problems, Paris Commune inspired Marx and Engels, who supported it and drew the lessons. Lenin and Stalin put it into practice with October Revolution and Mao Tse-Tung in the founding of People's Republic of China.

With Karl Marx, we say: "The Paris of the workers, with its commune, will be celebrated forever as the glorious harbinger of a new society", freed from the exploiters dictatorship, the capitalists, gravediggers of human progress. Long live the Paris Commune!

As in the Paris Commune, let us fight to get rid of the capitalist crises and their consequences once and for all, let us fight for the international socialist revolution. Rebellion is justified!

The revolution of the Paris Commune is a shining example, of a fundamental social alternative to capitalism in crisis and the imperialist world system. For true socialism!

Eternal glory to the fallen proletarian martyrs in defence of the Paris Commune! Long live proletarian internationalism!

Forward with ICOR! Forward with the Internacional Socialist Revolution!