Revolutionary Expectations and the Fight Against Austerity - Catarina Principe on RAI

On Reality Asserts Itself, Ms. Principe talks about growing up in Portugal expecting the promise of the social state to be fulfilled, and becoming an activist in the fight against forces dismantling the achievements of the Portuguese revolution

- July 17, 2015

PAUL JAY, SENIOR EDITOR, TRNN: Welcome to Reality Asserts Itself on The Real News Network. I'm Paul Jay.

If there's one question that activists from Ferguson to Baltimore and beyond are asking, it's what comes next, how do we sustain this movement. Well, we thought it'd be interesting to hear from an activist who's active in Europe, where there has been upsurges and downsurges, I guess--I'm not sure that's a word--downsurges in the movement, and have also built broad united fronts, and in some places have had breakthrough electoral victories and other places not.

So now joining us to talk about the left movement in Europe is Catarina Príncipe.

Thanks for joining us.

CATARINA PRÍNCIPE, SOCIAL ACTIVIST: Thanks for having me.

JAY: Catarina is a social activist from Portugal. She's an organizer with Left Bloc in Portugal, Die Linke in Germany, which means The Left. She's written for Jacobin magazine and contributed to an anthology titled Portugal, 40 Years After the Revolution. She's currently studying and living in Germany.

Thanks for joining us.

So, as everybody knows that watches Reality Asserts Itself, we always start with sort of a personal back story and then get into some of the issues. And that's what we're going to do today.

So you're born in Porto in Portugal.

PRÍNCIPE: Exactly.

JAY: And so in 1974 there is a revolution in Portugal. The Salazar dictatorship is overthrown. And that was a very big deal at that time, to have that kind of a breakthrough in Portugal.

You grow up sort of with that as--I should ask you the question: how much does that imbue who you are and the culture, atmosphere you grew up in, that you were living in revolutionary Portugal?

PRÍNCIPE: I wasn't living properly in revolutionary Portugal anymore. The revolutionary process ended in '75. But I think it is important to say that although the revolutionary process ended in '75, the structures of the state and of the Portuguese democracy are much influenced by it. So we come from 50 years, almost, of fascist dictatorship, a very, very impoverished country, into a country with a functional social state, free education, free health system, a free health system, universal health system.

JAY: Well, and compare that to the United States and that's revolutionary.

PRÍNCIPE: Okay, if you want to put it in those terms, yes, that's true.

JAY: And compared to what was before under Salazar.

PRÍNCIPE: Yes. So, yeah, we, I mean, my generation, we normally call my generation the generation expectations, because we grew up with the idea--or in a full-developed social state and with the idea that we could study anything, do anything, had any kind of job, and, like, the future was there, open for us.

JAY: And when you're a kid, university is free; when you're growing up--not when you reach University, but when you're a kid, the expectation is, I can go to university for free.

PRÍNCIPE: For free, study anything.

JAY: Which was one of the products of the revolution.

PRÍNCIPE: Precisely. Like, there were universities and Portugal before the revolution, but they were mainly for a very, very small elite. And after the revolutionary process, higher education opens up for everyone. So there is a--like, class composition in university changes completely from the end of the '70s on.

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