BRAZIL: THE NATIONAL SITUATION AND THE TASK OF THE WORKING CLASS
The following is translated from our Brazilian comrades of the Grupo de Trabalhadores Revolucionários do Brasil (GTR-BR)
The crisis of Brazilian institutions has deepened since the impeachment of Dilma and is in an acute phase with the increasingly present discussion of a possible impeachment of Bolsonaro. The fractions of the bourgeoisie are struggling in a dispute for power and for a way out of the crisis that has as its underlying cause the global economic crisis that broke out in 2008 and has been shaking governments around the world.
How to solve a deep crisis caused by a major global recession that has led to misery and unemployment for workers, disputes between fractions of the bourgeoisie and political instability in governments around the world? We argue that at this moment, more than ever, the workers must have their own way out of the crisis, not to be deluded by any of the paths proposed by the various bourgeois factions. The interests of the bourgeoisie are totally opposed to the interests of the workers. Capitalism is in its terminal crisis. Faced with the economic crisis combined with the environmental crisis, for workers to survive capitalism has to die!
What is the solution that the left currents in Brazil propose to us?
Bolsonaro’s popularity is falling. Fractions of the bourgeoisie led by Globo and known corrupt politicians in the national congress are leading a strong opposition to the government with the CPI (Parliamentary Commission of Inquiry) and putting impeachment on the agenda of the day. In the last week, the FFAA (Brasilian Military) have been dragged into open debate once and for all, and will inevitably leave their rifts open, which is increasingly likely… and dangerous.
Bolsonaro has a nationalist and populist policy, supported by the most backward sectors of the Brazilian bourgeoisie, the landlords and land grabbers, the urban petty bourgeoisie and sectors of the police and the FFAA, placing them in several key sectors in charge of the government. He has strong opponents among the liberal bourgeoisie that ruled for decades who imposed on the government the current minister of the economy, so that he cannot advance his privatization agenda, etc. In the Amazon, fascist gangs attack indigenous people and small farmers, expelling them from their lands with the consent of the Ministry of the Environment. In the suburbs of large cities, militias linked to the police control commerce and the lives of workers. The government has maintained Emergency Aid for a year, which covers a greater number of families than the PT’s (Workers Party) Bolsa Família with a higher money value, winning support from a sector of the poor people. Bolsonaro is campaigning across the country, promoting marches with motorcycles and claiming that in 2022 the elections will be fraudulent if the paper ballot is not used and another candidate wins.
The liberal bourgeoisie has been in crisis for years. They have ruled for decades, from the opening of the regime in 1988, and experimented with their version of economics with left liberals in PT governments until Bolsonaro’s victory in 2018. Neoliberalism as a whole is in crisis, it has not managed to overcome the crisis of the Tendency of the Rate of Profit to Fall; profits that have been declining since the 1970s. The 2008 crisis exposed its bankruptcy and protectionism grew with the inter-imperialist dispute having its greatest expression in the accelerating rivalry between the US/EU imperialist bloc and the China/Russia bloc.
In the polls for the 2022 presidential election, Lula and the PT appear to be favored and are expected to be winners in the 1st round. Lula became today’s hope at a time of rising unemployment, inflation, growing misery, an uncontrolled pandemic and famine. That hope is based on the illusion that the boom times of the 2000s growth cycle driven by China’s commodity buying could return. This illusion is nurtured by both the reformist left and the bourgeoisie. Both cannot expose the decay of capitalism in its global crisis. First, the bourgeoisie attributed the crisis to the PT government to overthrow Rousseff, now it relates it to the Bolsonaro government, trying to keep workers imprisoned in their illusions in the bourgeois regime and capitalist system. However, the decay of the system is precisely what causes the population’s great disbelief in the bourgeois institutions, in the State and leads to the political instability we see today.
It is necessary for the workers to advance their class consciousness in the struggle against Bolsonaro with a revolutionary alternative of overthrowing the bourgeoisie and its State and taking power. Any illusion that the “democratic” bourgeoisie can fight fascism and overcome the crisis is a setback in the workers’ consciousness and struggle. The so-called “democratic” bourgeoisie, which today includes Rede Globo and figures such as Renan Calheiros, may even be against Bolsonaro; but faced with a growing discontent of the working class and the bourgeoisie’s incapacity to overcome the crisis, they will not hesitate in using authoritarian measures, repressive forces and uniting the bourgeoisie and its military apparatus to contain our class.
The crisis of the bourgeois democratic regime of the liberal right and left is precisely what brought Bolsonaro to power, and what makes the fascist forces grow, in the absence of a revolutionary and independent workers’ alternative which can channel the discontent of the middle class towards a workers leadership.
In general, differing only in terms of tactics, the left currents follow the PT as the great leader of the reformist left. Faced with the crisis, they place themselves in the position of sustaining the bourgeois democratic regime, and lead their members into an alliance with the “democratic” bourgeoisie, which we call a Popular Front (FP-Frente Popular) policy.Unlike Collor’s impeachment in 1992, the bourgeoisie was unable to maintain the stability of the regime with Dilma’s impeachment. The world situation does not allow it; these instability factors are deepening and lead us to affirm that a possible Bolsonaro impeachment will not restore the stability of the regime. On the contrary, the economic situation will continue to deteriorate, popular discontent will grow and fascist forces will organize.
The bourgeoisie can be divided between democratic, military, Bolsonaro, Third Way, Lula, etc. But they are united against the working class.The polarization continues between Bolsonaro and Lula. The ‘third way’ of the bourgeoisie includes parties like PSDB (Brazilian Social Democracy Party) and PMDB (Brazilian Democratic Movement Party) that ruled for decades, led the neoliberal predatory project and has public figures known to the Brazilian people for corruption and impunity. These are also the “progressive” bourgeoisie with which the PT and the left in general seek to unite in defense of “democracy.”
The PT and Lula’s strategy is clearly to wear down the Bolsonaro government until next year’s elections, in which Lula appears in the polls still winning in the 1st round. PSTU (Unified Workers’ Socialist Party) defends “Out Bolsonaro and Mourão”, probably with the policy of “New Elections” which they already defended in 1992. There are also some currents like the PSOL (Socialism and Liberty Party) who think that the impeachment of Bolsonaro will remove the “crazy” and “genocidal ” from power, bringing the “sensible” General Mourão to assume power. As a more radical face of reformism, the MRT (Revolutionary Movement of Workers) (linked to the Argentine PTS – Socialist Workers’ Party) calls for a Constituent Assembly, as its policy has been in the face of the instability of bourgeois democratic regimes in recent years, such as in Chile. Ultra-leftism also manifests itself, “against impeachment” and for “socialism”.
The impeachment is part of the bourgeois democratic regime, even provided for in the country’s constitution, we have no doubt about that. Workers must defend bourgeois democratic measures only when they serve to advance the workers’ struggle. We find it progressive that the workers want to remove a government like Bolsonaro’s, but the means of removal must be in the interests of our class.
We call for a Workers’ Congress to debate a possible impeachment, the methods of workers’ democracy and class independence, and to decide who should take power.
The main barrier to achieving this necessity is the reformist and opportunist leadership of the left. The PT is a party of order, its action is focused on the dispute in the bourgeois parliament, the issue of impeachment and the crisis it wants to resolve in conformity with the bourgeoisie and its institutions. New elections and a constituent assembly is a radical way of shifting the struggles to defend the bourgeois democratic regime, as a way to reach “socialism” in stages. The Mensheviks in Russia in 1917 said that revolution was not possible and defended the alliance with the bourgeoisie and its democratic regime; the Mensheviks of today in Brazil use their same arguments.
We see once more in history the reformist character of the left program. The incapacity of the bourgeoisie to control the economic crisis and the pandemic (in Brazil and in the world,) the intensification of disputes among the Brazilian bourgeoisie (and among the imperialisms in the world,) the regimes instability that leads the FFAA to enter the debate and possible divisions within it and the threat of closure of the regime. This demonstrates the treacherous FP (Popular Front) policy of allying with the bourgeoisie and dividing the working class, deflecting our struggles and denying working class methods of independence, and creating illusions in bourgeois democracy. The same policy is carried out in the international sphere, ignoring the internationalist character of the class struggle, dividing the workers of the world with the Popular Front, especially in defense of Russian and Chinese imperialism as an alternative to American imperialism, but also those who capitulate the “democratic” imperialism ” of the USA.
In the same way that the Frente Popular (FP) as a policy of class conciliation divides the workers and leads to the weakening of the only force capable of fighting and defeating the regime and the crisis in Brazil, the FP with imperialist countries divides the class internationally and weakens the only ones that can end the imperialist wars and the crisis, who are the workers of the world united by the World Socialist Revolution.
For the workers’ struggle, whether in Brazil, France, Syria, Chile, China, Myanmar or the USA, we urgently need a Revolutionary leadership with an International organization. The current global crisis of capitalism, combined with climate change, is terminal. It affirms Lenin’s theory of imperialism that this system is no longer able to develop the productive forces and starts to destroy them. The pandemic came to prove that.
The bourgeoisie with its profit system above all and destruction of nature that causes extreme heat and rain, drought and floods, uncontrolled pandemics and misery, affirms the destructive character of capitalism in its imperialist phase. The bourgeoisie’s inability to contain the pandemic shows that its measures only serve for greater authoritarianism, repression and austerity. Social isolation, a plan for factories to produce materials, equipment and vaccines, access to vaccines for poor countries and other measures necessary to contain the pandemic is a task that only workers can achieve. Instead of fighting the bourgeoisie and imperialism, the reformist left has supported the “lockdowns” of the ruling class that only serve to repress the workers and poor people. There is also the left, which has adopted an ultra-left line of conspiracy theory, which brings them very close to the ultra-right, denying measures of social isolation, vaccination and alleging the “fabrication” of the pandemic by the bourgeoisie.
In order for the workers to advance the struggle, it is necessary for them to break with the Popular Front and the opportunist leaderships, replacing them with the United Front (UF-Frente Unica). The UF is what unites workers, with class independence and methods of workers’ democracy. It must express itself in organizing strikes, picketing, assemblies and forming committees in the workplace. This is the task of the revolutionary vanguard that must urgently build a party with the Leninist-Trotskyist program, to overcome the crisis, the pandemic, overthrow Bolsonaro, save the Amazon, and advance towards the Brazilian and world socialist revolution.
For a National Workers Congress, with elected delegates in workplaces and workers’ communities so that it can decide, with working-class methods of democracy and class independence, on a possible impeachment, the struggle against the Bolsonaro government, and take the power and the measures necessary to contain the pandemic, unemployment and famine!
For grassroots workers’ councils and self-defence organizations to protect our strikes and demonstrations against police attacks, infiltrators and fascist groups!
For a revolutionary party in Brazil, as part of a new International that leads the workers to the World Socialist Revolution!
