By Paulo Ferreira

Months ago, I wrote an article “The Portuguese Estado Novo Was Socialist” outlining the socialist characteristics of the Portuguese Estado Novo (New State), that existed from 1933-1974. It was almost unprecedented, and today I return to elaborate on points I previously built.

Salazar, according to Jaime Nogueira Pinto, stressed, “…the primacy of the group over the individual, of social organicism based on the conviction of corruption and malicious inclination of human nature, and, consequently, on the need for the authority of the church and the state to protect everyone from everyone/everybody, and everyone from themselves… Marked by deep, anthropological pessimism. (pp. 230-231, Portugal Ascensão e Queda)”

This is in line with the core tenets of Jansenism and Augustinian anthropology that man—owing to his depravity—is past salvation through his own volition and only through divine grace can anybody be saved. Because of the Fall from Eden, we are condemned to committing sin, irrespective of the free will we possess, imbued in each of us by God. Without discipline from above—vertical political power—humanity is doomed to social ruin and fierce competition leading to conflict.

From Salazar’s perspective, the nation had to be organized to prevent it from dissolving into differing factions. He had had a very negative experience of party politics in the First Republic. Only through corporatism or corpus—in Portuguese, the terminology is “corpo”—or different bodies of the nation, can Portugal not just redeem her sinful past but resuscitate her future potential. Ironically, by rejecting the class struggle, it accidently subscribed to the Marxian notion that a class struggle would supposedly break out between employers and employees, with only the state able to harmonize social divergences. Labor Day was celebrated in 1934 and 1935 to bolster social peace in the workplace.

To achieve this end, hundreds of unions and guilds proliferated over the decades in Portugal, often mandatory, grouped into federations representing various professions, industries, and trades, whose function was supervised by corporations, ultimately arbitrated by the government to promote harmony between labor and capital. There were 11 corporations, consisting of agriculture, fishing, livestock and animal products, forestry and wood products, mining and extractive industries, manufacturing, construction........

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