On the concept of economic independence

Abstract

The expression «national independence» is constantly invoked by the different sectors in confrontation within the Portuguese revolutionary processus. But the meaning of this expression remains obscure frequently. A previous point to be cleared up is that the national independence, understood as the autonomous capacity of decision of a country, cannot result from a plain diversification of external trade. As a matter of fact, in order to get it, a specific strategy of «internal» development is necessary. Such a strategy is necessarily conditioned by a certain number of factors, among which the geopolitical conditions of insertion in the periphery of the capitalist system, the available natural resources, the development degree of the productive forces, the social support for the political power and the project of society aimed to by the last one are to be underlined. In this article some of these conditional circumstances in the Portuguese case are examined, the following points being treated successively: the relations between the question of the transition towards socialism and the objective of national independence; the characteristics of the Portuguese capitalism and of its mechanisms of external dependence; and the draft for a possible project of national economic independence suitable for the Portuguese case.