Portugal News and Discussions

[wjfox]

Portugal's PM Costa stuns with majority win in snap election

January 31, 2022

LISBON, Jan 30 (Reuters) - Defying all odds, Portugal's centre-left Socialists won an outright parliamentary majority in Sunday's snap general election, securing a strong new mandate for Prime Minister Antonio Costa, a champion of balanced public accounts.

The result, boosted by a higher than expected turnout despite the coronavirus pandemic, comes as a surprise after the Socialists had lost most of their advantage in recent opinion polls, and means Portugal will have a stable government to oversee the application of EU pandemic recovery funds.

The vote was called in November after Costa's hard-left former Communist and Left Bloc allies joined the right in striking down his minority government's budget.

The two far left parties paid the price, losing more than a half of their seats, according to exit polls.

https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/po ... 022-01-30/

[Ozzie guy]

I probably come off ass an asshole trying to police language, I don't like how the bourgeoisie have managed to redefine the word socialism to mean lots of welfare and state programs.

I don't even know if it was deliberate, fox news probably started calling hippies socialist when telling the audience look those liberals are bad.

[Tadasuke]

Without any social welfare, a widening gap between the poor and the rich tends to happen. Probably because the poor are not so good with money, but that widening gap can lead to social unrest in the long run. The rich can get richer easier than the poor, because of prior and new investments, contacts, knowledge and profit motive.

[caltrek]

I don't like how the bourgeoisie have managed to redefine the word socialism to mean lots of welfare and state programs.

I think socialists themselves have participated in that redefinition. In the 1940s, Frederick Hayek wrote a rather devasting critique of central planning and control in his The Road to Serfdom. Many conservatives appropriated his ideas and pointed to the inferior economic performance of centrally planned economies. They often took Hayek's ideas to an extreme. Yet Hayek also critiqued the problem of developing monopolies in the private sector, insisting that government should promote competition over monopoly. He differed with more progressive minded folks only in thinking that government control over monopolies was a solution that was worse than the problem.

Progressive minded folks realized that absolute government control over the means of production and overly centralized planning was not a solution. In its place, old anti-trust ideologies reemerged. Even more progressive ideas regarding syndicalist solutions such as enhancing the power of organized labor and labor co-ops and communes emerged. These developed as alternatives to capitalism as currently being practiced. They were often embraced by those that called themselves socialist. Ironically, they probably better fit Hayek's ideas more than the conservative heirs to his ideology.

Socialists such as Michael Harrington also placed greater stress on the democratization of society. Harrington argued that Marx himself equated universal suffrage with socialism. The Democratic Socialists of America was established with ideas like that at its base. Socialism became equated with furthering the right to vote and a greater say in developing workplace policies. I believe that these became a more compelling alternative to the centralization of control one finds under what can be called monopoly capitalism. This extreme economic power of monopoly capital also translates into extreme political power.

While Hayek argued that competitive capitalism was essential to protecting democracy, actually developing monopoly capitalism has established the foundation for fascism. A fascism which allies itself with the mob. A mob that is manipulated by big lies and well financed political campaigns. Of course, even some extremely wealthy individuals oppose this fascist tendency. So, divisions manifest themselves up and down the economic stratum.

I could go on, but I will let you all digest what I have written for the time being.

[erowind]

Hayek was marginally a democratic socialist in his early 20s before his writing had major influence and his ideas were formed. Citing a liberal austrian economist as a socialist from the inside of the movement changing the definition of the word is hardly accurate, especially a figure in cohort with Carl Meng. Hayek cared about poverty, he never found Marxian economics appealing.

There are countless socialist theoretical writers that were Hayek’s contemporaries and since. I’d argue it’s exaggerating to call him a socialist at all and no better than what conservatives do. His wiki article accurately calls him liberal outright.

As for DSA, it’s a broad tent organization that calls for workers ownership of the means of production in its founding documents, and organizes militant unions to that end. The organization has a mix of radicals and social democrats despite its entryist tactics in the democratic party, a trotskyist tendency for that matter. DSA is hardly any less radical or in cohort with austrian economics.

If you want a criticism of economic determinism from an actual socialist of the 20th century why not mention Antonio Gramsci instead of pretending an Austrian economist is a socialist?

Edit: Caltrek responded before I could make my post less rude so I'll just leave it. Apologies for the "you" at the end there.

[caltrek]

^^^No, no no, no. I had no intention of labeling Hayek as a socialist. My intention was to show how socialists responded to conservative critiques such as that posed by Hayek. Of course, Hayek himself was no socialist, certainly not when he wrote The Road to Serfdom*. Thank you for your comment so that I could clarify that point.

*Hayek did, however, seek to address socialists by his critique.

Edit: I haven't read Gramsci in a long time, but if you think he had something of significance to add to the conversation, then please be my guest. My memory of reading Gramsci, or at least about his writings, gave me a generally positive though by now very vague feeling for his perspective.

[weatheriscool]

[TanishaTanTan]

Without any social welfare, a widening gap between the poor and the rich tends to happen. Probably because the poor are not so good with money, but that widening gap can lead to social unrest in the long run. The rich can get richer easier than the poor, because of prior and new investments, contacts, knowledge and profit motive.

[weatheriscool]

Portugal to hold snap election in March after resignation of PM

Portugal’s president has called a snap general election for March following the shock resignation of Socialist prime minister António Costa triggered by a corruption investigation.

President Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa announced the March 10 date after Costa quit this week hours after public prosecutors executed a number of arrest warrants and raids in an investigation into possible corruption and malfeasance by public officials.

The Socialists won an outright majority in the most recent vote in early 2022 and had been leading in the polls, but their standing against the centre-right opposition Social Democrats is likely to have been hurt by the corruption scandal.

The election also means the possibility of more gains by the hard-right Chega party, the country’s third-largest, which has risen rapidly in just four years by tapping into public grievances over graft, immigration and low pensions.

https://www.ft.com/content/211442e6-560 ... c43bbf46e5

[Time_Traveller]

Portugal election sees above-average turnout in very tight contest

MARCH 10, 2024 3:09 PM CET



LISBON — Slightly more than a quarter of Portugal’s 10.8 million voters had cast their ballots in the country’s national election as of noon on Sunday, the electoral authority reported.

The participation rate is higher than the 23.3 percent registered at midday on election day in 2022, when Portugal last held legislative voting. That 2022 vote was characterized by a high abstention rates, with nearly half of eligible voters staying home.

National Electoral Council President Fernando Anastácio said the midday figures suggested overall participation might be higher this time around.

This Sunday’s snap election is being held four months after socialist Prime Minister António Costa’s abrupt resignation in the wake of an influence-peddling probe last fall.

Pre-election polls indicated that the center-right bloc led by the Democratic Alliance coalition has a slight lead over the center-left bloc led by the Socialist Party, but neither side is expected to secure a governing majority in the country’s parliament.

https://www.politico.eu/article/portugu ... icipation/