The PSTU and the Manifesto in defense of the construction of a Socialist and Revolutionary Pole: United Front or support for the Popular Front?
The following is translated from our Brazilian comrades of the Grupo de Trabalhadores Revolucionários do Brasil (GTR-BR)
On last october 7, 2021, the PSTU, (the Unified Socialist Workers Party), launched a MANIFESTO calling for the construction of a Socialist and Revolutionary Pole. A Pole, or a United Front (UF), that brings together the socialist left, is progressive, but here we want to denounce the PSTU, warning that the Manifesto does not fulfill this purpose, and demand a true United Front.
The unity of left-wing organizations and workers is necessary to strengthen and advance the struggle. In recent years, we have defended the United Workers Front as a form of independent class struggle. The workers are the only force capable of defeating the bourgeoisie and fascism. Our defense for the UF can be seen HERE.
The UF is a tactic advocated by Lenin and Trotsky during several important moments in the class struggle. The UF, which brings together the base of the workers’ movement and its leadership, enables unity of action and also confrontation and debate of the organizations’ programs in a democratic way taking in the experience of struggle. For Lenin and Trotsky, the UF served to counteract the Popular Front (PF) policy of the opportunist leaderships, based on the claim that an alliance with progressive bourgeois sectors was necessary to advance the workers’ struggle.
The UF policy was the main policy defended by Lenin and Trotsky against the fascist threat of the Kornilov uprising in Russia in 1917 and the rise of Hitler in the 1930s. To combat Kornilov’s coup, Lenin never defended an alliance with the government of the popular front, he said that Kerensky served only to “support the rifle” to shoot Kornilov. Trotsky defended the united front against fascism, fighting the sectarianism of Stalinism, which accused social democracy of being equal to fascism. And both warned: the PF does not fight fascism, on the contrary, it opens the way for fascism by weakening the class independence of the workers, which is the only force capable of defeating it.
We are facing the terminal crisis of capitalism. The global crisis is ultimately the cause of the Workers’ Party (PT) fall and Bolsonaro’s rise in Brazil. The economic growth of the Lula era is over and the PT cannot continue to give the small concessions and crumbs it made then to the workers. Imperialist capitalism cannot recover the economy other than by exploiting the working class and nature more, and promoting wars. The rise of fascism around the world and the Bolsonaro government in Brazil represents, on the one hand, the need for the bourgeoisie to change its methods to contain workers’ resistance and exploit them even more, and on the other, the lack of a leadership with a revolutionary program that brings the working class to power. To defeat fascism, misery, and prevent a climatic collapse, it is necessary to end capitalism with a socialist revolution.
The Popular Front (PF), that is, the alliance with the bourgeoisie, is what divides the workers, and diverts the class from its traditional methods of struggle, strikes, pickets and occupations, into parliament and bourgeois institutions. To fight the government alongside sectors of the so-called democratic bourgeoisie is to weaken the workers, and create illusions in bourgeois democracy that the crisis can be resolved by reforming capitalism. The liberal bourgeoisie cannot solve the crisis; the failure of neoliberalism to avoid the economic collapse is part of the cause. Today the bourgeois opposition persecutes and imprisons the Bolsonaristas for “disrespecting” democracy and the Constitution, tomorrow they will use the same methods against the left organizations and the struggling workers who do not want to pay the price of the capitalist crisis.
However, the PSTU and its Manifesto does not defend the UF to fight Bolsonaro and the “danger posed by a government that works every day to implement a dictatorship in the country.” Making it very clear in its manifesto, the PSTU defends the Frente Ampla, that is, the popular front in alliance with the “democratic” bourgeoisie: “Tossing out Bolsonaro and his government is the most urgent challenge facing the working class at the moment… Therefore, it is necessary to continue strengthening a broad unity of action in the struggle to continue occupying the streets….”
THE MANIFESTO DOES NOT MAKE ITS AIM CLEAR
If, according to the manifesto, in the struggles of the class and against the government we must be in the Frente Ampla (FA/ “broad front”), what objective does the Pole have? The Manifesto says that revolution and socialism are needed, but if not in struggles, is it to be the Pole for elections?
As we have denounced for years, the bureaucratic bloc of trade union centrals and the “Campanha Fora Bolsonaro” of which CSP/Conlutas and PSTU are part, is not a UF, but a populist front bloc, where the opportunist leaderships of workers keep workers tied to the union bureaucracy and to bourgeois sectors such as Paulinho da Força, Brazilian Socialist Party (PSB), Democratic Labour Party (PDT), etc, serving to curb the direct struggle, strikes and the real UF. Since the outbreak of the crisis in 2008, a “National Day of Mobilization” is called by the centrals at all times of intensifying class struggle (1), dividing the workers base strikes and channeling the struggle for the control of the leadership, where the decisions are made between 4 walls where the workers base does not participate.
In 2016, at the time of Dilma’s impeachment, we already warned that the PSTU’s sectarian policy of not opposing the maneuver of the bourgeoisie to overthrow the PT (Workers Party), saying there was no threat of fascism, was the “radical” face of its opportunist policy, that they would defend the popular front to fight fascism. (2)
The UF must include all the leaders of the movement, including opportunists such as PT, the Communist Party of Brazil (PCdoB), etc, as well as its worker bases. The PSTU goes from opportunist deviations to sectarianism when it campaigns. It is part of populist front blocs and “broad” front (Frente Ampla) with bourgeois sectors and the union bureaucracy in the workers’ struggles. Then it refuses to make the UF with the PT because of its “ reformist program” and alliances with the bourgeoisie. Facing the impeachment, it refused to independently fight the bourgeoisie in a true UF at a time when the ruling class was making an offensive not only to attack the PT, but the entire left and the communists.
For Trotsky, the united front was for unity in action. The PSTU, which needs to proclaim Trotsky and Marxism in order to be credible, has created a new theory to justify its support for the PF, calling it “unity of action.” It is a “Unity of action” very different from the UF, when it makes an alliance with the bourgeoisie.
The Manifesto does not make it clear, but we believe that the Pole is an electoral tactic of the PSTU to try to circumvent its isolation during the bourgeois elections. But as the Manifesto says, the Pole should not be just for elections:
“The alternative we need to build cannot be simply for elections. It cannot have the perspective of class conciliation, the savior of the country, the maintenance and defense of the current order. We are proposing another path: building a Pole for a Socialist and Revolutionary Alternative for our country.”
And as in the fights it makes in the Frente Ampla (“broad front”), the Pole runs the risk of being the left flank of the popular front in the direct fights of the class.
PERMANENT REVOLUTION vs REVOLUTION BY STAGES
The Manifesto, after citing Bolsonaro, Lula and the 3rd bourgeois way for the 2022 elections declares:
“To govern the country, the same criterion of broad unity that is necessary for the fight against Bolsonaro does not serve. The criterion of class independence is fundamental…”
The PSTU’s program is not that of the permanent revolution, but the reformist program of stages. The fight against Bolsonaro will lead us to another bourgeois government or “new elections” until we someday reach the revolution. Hence, the absurd dichotomy that the party makes in the program and tactics between the union struggle and bourgeois elections.
For revolutionaries, the program and class independence are principles which we uphold at all times in the class struggle. The class struggle does not stop and the bourgeois elections are just a moment, unfavorable for the workers, where revolutionaries must participate precisely to defend the revolutionary program and class independence with the aim of reaching and advancing the consciousness of the working class for the revolution.
Whether in the struggle against Bolsonaro or in the elections, the defense of the revolution’s program and class independence does not change, it remains the program of the permanent revolution, where the independent struggle must advance towards the seizure of power. For the PSTU, class independence is only for bourgeois elections, in the direct struggle of the class we can be with the bourgeoisie!
We defend the struggle against the Bolsonaro government as part of the permanent revolution, as the discontent of the workers with their increasingly worse living and working conditions mobilizes to overthrow the government that makes the attacks. We say that mobilizations need to adopt methods of direct action struggles, strikes and picketing, with grassroots organization. That is why we have called for a National Workers’ Congress, a true UF, to debate, organize and lead the struggle in an independent and democratic way, so that the country’s leadership is not left in the hands of the National Congress and the bourgeoisie. The direct actions of the class must advance towards the General Revolutionary Strike, taking over the workplaces and key sectors of the economy, overthrowing the bourgeoisie, towards socialism.
We agree with the Manifesto when it says that to defeat the bourgeoisie it is necessary to destroy the bourgeois state and for the working class to take power with a Workers’ Government. A government that is only possible with the socialist revolution. But what is the proposal of the Manifesto on the tasks and program for the working class to advance the struggle for the Brazilian revolution? Socialism and revolution appear in the manifesto as pretty words, unconnected with the concrete tasks of the class in the current struggles.
As the Manifesto says, the Pole is for the struggle for Socialism and Revolution:
“To end the control that this ruling class has over the country, it is necessary to carry out a revolution from “below” to overthrow that “from above”; a socialist revolution to overthrow the institutions of the state that exists and maintains the people subjugated by banks and big business. This must be done so that the working class and the poor people can take control of political power and govern the country: a socialist government of the working class and poor people.”
For the seizure of power by the working class, its greatest weapon, the General Strike, is needed. The “need to build the general strike” is propagated by the PSTU in the last decade, as pressure on the union centrals where the PSTU/CSPConlutas are together in a bureaucratic bloc, at the forefront of all struggles in recent years.
For the PSTU, as expressed in the Manifesto: “build a general strike, stop the country, the factories and the big companies, make it hurt the bosses’ pockets to force them to withdraw the support they still give to Bolsonaro.”!!!
For socialism and revolution, such as grassroots strikes, the struggle against Bolsonaro, against poverty and unemployment, as the struggles of minorities and youth, must advance towards the formation of committees that organize the struggle regionally and nationally, with a national congress and general strike revolutionary. The general strike must stop the capitalist economy, take over the factories and strategic sectors, until the seizure of power and the expropriation of the bourgeoisie, and not to “pressure” the bourgeoisie for a bourgeois exit with the impeachment of Bolsonaro!
If the workers are not prepared to take power, we do not adopt a reformist program and abandon class independence, feeding the false consciousness of the workers, but we continue in their uncompromising defense, advancing their class consciousness, alerting the class that the “democratic” bourgeoisie is not capable of defeating fascism and reviving the economy.
We are intransigent about the popular front, we do not give it any support, whether in the workers’ movement or in elections. We contrast the popular front with the united front. The Pole as a UF should serve as a unity for actions in direct struggle and make demands and denounce the bureaucratic bloc of labour centrals and parties like the PT that compromise class independence by allying themselves with the bourgeoisie.
As the Manifesto says: “In fact, we are already living in Brazil in anticipation of next year’s electoral campaign” and we see the call of the Pole as the action of the PSTU aiming at next year’s elections. The PSTU is a party with a syndicalist deviation, has its main cadres in the unions where they stay for years and thus maintains the structure of the party. Just as PT and PSOL (Socialism and Liberation Party) divert the struggle to win parliamentary positions, the PSTU manoeuvres for positions in the unions and alliances with the union bureaucracy. This alliance is what prevents the PSTU from forming a true UF, which imposes the responsibility to denounce and impose demands on the labour centrals and reformist parties, including calling opportunist leaderships such as the PT, and its base, to break with the bourgeoisie and become part of the UF.
The Manifesto does not make its objective clear, but in moments of intensification of the class struggle, such as what we are experiencing now, it is a moment where the programs of left-wing organizations are put to the test. Polarization shows where they stand and which side of the fight they are on. These moments are where splits and disruptions in organizations are most likely. After the last PSOL congress, everything indicates that the party will not come out of the 2022 elections in one piece. The UF, as a unity-for-action tool, in which all parties and organizations can compete for its program, is a good path for this moment in which the class increasingly looks for a way out of the attacks it has been suffering.
FOR THE WORKERS’ UNITED FRONT! NOT THE POPULAR FRONT!
OUST BOLSONARO! FOR AN INDEPENDENT WORKING CLASS SOLUTION!
FOR WORKERS’ SELF-DEFENSE COMMITTEES! CALL THE ARMY SOLDIERS NOT TO SUPPORT ANY COUP INITIATIVE!
AGAINST MISERY, INEQUALITY, INFLATION, UNEMPLOYMENT, LABOR ATTACKS, PRIVATIZATIONS! FOR NATIONALIZATION OF THE COMMANDING HEIGHTS OF THE ECONOMY AND A PROGRAM OF WORKS AND JOBS FOR ALL!
RANK AND FILE COMMITTEES OF WORKERS IN STRIKES AND MOVEMENTS!
TOWARDS A NATIONAL CONGRESS OF WORKERS COMMITTEES AND THE GENERAL STRIKE!
FOR A REVOLUTIONARY PARTY WITH THE PROGRAM OF PERMANENT REVOLUTION!
FOR THE WORLD PARTY OF THE SOCIALIST REVOLUTION!
