Brazil: For the Workers United Front to Break the Popular Front
The following is translated from our Brazilian comrades of the Grupo de Trabalhadores Revolucionários do Brasil (GTR-BR)
In the country’s political polarization, workers don’t have a side. The side Lula and Bolsonaro represent is actually two sides of different sectors of the bourgeoisie, competing in the face of the political instability generated by the international capitalist crisis.
Brazil is a semi-colony on the international stage, with capitalism dependent on imperialism, historically tied to American imperialism, and in the last decade, like many other semi-colonies around the world, it has become increasingly dependent on Chinese imperialism.
Trump’s attacks on Brazil are part of the US strategy to regain control of the region, threatened by the growth of Chinese influence in Latin America. The attack is now economic, but, as even a Trump administration spokesperson has stated, it could be military! Which, in a way, is already happening against Venezuela!
As we said in our article for the International Leninist Trotskyist Tendency:
“The SCO meeting in China in early September was the final straw for Trump when he realized that not only had he lost the “great game” for Eurasia, but that he was now threatened by the expansion of the BRICS into the US’s “backyard,” as declared by the Monroe Doctrine in 1823. In a desperate attempt to shore up US power in the Western Hemisphere and halt the expansion of BRICS power in his backyard, Trump tactically retreated to defend US interests on the hemispheric front, recognizing that the survival of his global hegemony requires defending US interests on the “home front.””
Clearly, Bolsonaro and Bolsonarism represent the sector of the Brazilian bourgeoisie that is pro-US imperialism and is willing to serve its interests in the region. Meanwhile, the majority of the Brazilian bourgeoisie, the so-called “democratic” bourgeoisie that helped overthrow Dilma Rousseff and later preferred Lula to Bolsonaro, concerned about their dealings with Chinese imperialism, are trying to control the Lula administration to remain “neutral” in the inter-imperialist dispute between the US and China. Neutrality is becoming increasingly difficult. The more the dispute between the imperialists intensifies, the more pressured the semi-colonies become.
In the imperialist era, there is no possibility of a semi-colony becoming independent from imperialism. The national bourgeoisies fear the workers and a socialist revolution more than imperialism. Self-determination and independence are only possible with the expropriation of the bourgeoisie and the seizure of power by the working class. Therefore, Lula’s “defense of national sovereignty” in the face of US attacks is a propagation of bourgeois nationalism that does not imply “independence” from imperialism. We have no doubt that Lula, like Maduro in Venezuela, clashes with American imperialism, but only to submit to Chinese imperialism. Brazil remains a semi-colony, increasingly dependent on Chinese imperialism.
As we stated in our article “Venezuela and the New American Revolution”:
“As revolutionaries, we know that the ultimate test of the balance of power is between imperialism and socialism. It is necessary to analyze the developing situation and apply our revolutionary program to transform the impending war between American imperialism and a weak semi-colony, Venezuela, supported by imperialist Russia and China, into a class war where the workers and peasants of the hemisphere unite to defeat both imperialist sides and overthrow the national bourgeoisie to create a socialist republic of Venezuela as part of a union of socialist republics of the Americas!”
Lula’s bourgeois nationalism for “national sovereignty” is yet another counterrevolutionary aspect of the Workers’ Party government that serves to divide the class on the continent, removing from the horizon of the Brazilian working class any movement of solidarity with the workers of Venezuela against the US attacks.
The September 21st demonstrations against the “Blindagem” Constitutional Amendment (PEC), which would have exempted politicians from legal action, drew widespread support from the population and demonstrated that the working class is ready for struggle. The bourgeois nationalism of Lula, the Workers’ Party, and the reformist left links the Brazilian working class to its “progressive” and “democratic” bourgeoisie, dividing workers in the country and across the continent, as demonstrated by the absence of solidarity with the workers of Venezuela and Palestine in the demonstrations.
The workers’ movement has been completely co-opted by the Workers’ Party (PT), and the government sees no way out other than through institutionalization, abandoning direct class struggles. Workers need class independence, new leadership emerging from the struggles that breaks with reformist leadership and wages a struggle outside the decaying bourgeois institutions.
Lula, the Workers’ Party, and his government are agents of the bourgeoisie, subject to imperialism, whether American or Chinese. Despite the dispute with the Bolsonarist sector of the Brazilian bourgeoisie, they are not the “lesser evil.” They are forces acting within the workers’ movement, diverting class action toward bourgeois institutions, demobilizing and demoralizing the working class, and paving the way for the far right and fascism. Castro-Chavismo in Latin America is an obstacle to the workers’ struggle, ending class independence and promoting a grand International Popular Front with Chinese imperialism.
There is no difference between being a semi-colony of the US and China; class interests can only be served by a workers’ government, which can only be achieved through socialist revolution, expropriating the bourgeoisie, and seizing power. This requires a global party of revolution, with firm leadership that does not capitulate to reformism.
Brazil GTR 26/09/2025
