The economic situation in Portugal: origins and perspectives

Abstract

To understand the present crisis in Portugal one needs to analyse its economic situation. But this analysis, in terms of a certain present, would have no sense without looking to a recent past, before and after the 25^th April 1974. On the other side, the economic crisis in Portugal is not a simple oscilation in income and employment as those that are observed in the development of the advanced capitalisms. As a result from the class struggles during 1974 and 1975, the rules of the economic and political game became precarious and the crisis is exactly made of a tumultuous process of transistion and adjustment, developing itself in an aleatory way and having not yet found any point of stabilization. Taking this presupposition for a starting-point, the author examines successively the model of a growth preceding the April revolution of 1974, the qualitative changes in Portuguese economy in 1974-1975, the external dependency and the main problems concerning the present economic situation, the possible alternative answers to the crisis. Concluding, he calls the attention to this point; in the end, the so-called economic situation will be more determining than determined as regards to the unfolding of the social and political process, exactly because there is not yet any stable system of power with a corresponding social support, satisfactorily defined.