Interview with Brazilian PSTU Presidential Candidate Vera Lucía:
Electoral Campaigns from a Revolutionary Socialist Perspective
La Voz: Where are you from and where do you work?
Vera: I was born in a village called Cercadinho in the Inajá town, in the state of Pernambuco, which is located in the Brazilian northeast. Now I live in Aracaju, I was raised there, in the state of Sergipe. I was a shoemaker. Now I work as an educator in the trade union movement
La Voz: Could you talk about your campaign in the PSTU (Unified Workers’ Socialist Party) as the presidential candidate?
Vera: In the face of the political-economic crisis which we are living in here in Brazil, as an outcome of the capitalist crisis, we are in these elections presenting a manifesto in which we are making a call to the Brazilian working class to rebel and to get organized where we live, where we study and where we work. Because we need to organize ourselves in such a way that the ones from below can take down the ones above.
And what is the program that we present to meet the demands according to our needs?
- The non-payment of public debt
- Withholding the remittance of multinationals’ profits, which control 70% of our country’s economy
- Nationalization of the banks
- End of tax exemptions to large companies
- The expropriation of the 100 largest companies of this country, a good part of which belongs also to international capital.
- Agrarian reform – In this country we also need the expropriation of the productive and unproductive latifundia (large estate owners).
- and the reduction of the hours of work without a reduction of wages to a maximum of a 36 hour work week.
Why? All of this because we need to have a public works plan which meets the demands of the Brazilian working class, but that at the same time ensures the right to survival, which is work. Then, with this, we would employ the 27.7 million workers who are unemployed today. And we would have a public works plan which would meet the most pressing demands of the working class, mainly those of the poorest workers and consequently of black people and women, which are public schools, public education, and housing. There is a housing deficit in Brazil of more than 6 millions houses. And together with all of this, [we need] public transport and basic sanitation. These resources would be directed towards this public works plan. But also towards the development of the Brazilian industrial park And achieving the necessary conditions to the development of our country’s economy to meet the demands of the working class, in other words, the demands of those who work, of those who produce wealth, but who are marginalized from it because all this wealth is concentrated in the hands of 31 Brazilian billionaire families.
La Voz: And what is the electoral strategy from a revolutionary socialist perspective?
Vera: It is saying to workers to not have expectations in the bourgeois elections; that those will not solve the problems of our lives. This election is like playing with a marked deck of cards where who wins these elections are the candidates of the big parties financed by large companies and who, because of this, once elected will govern for themselves and not for us.
We then denounce the practice of the elections, the lack of democracy because not all parties have the same conditions to present themselves nor the material conditions to run a campaign. For example, PSTU will have 6 seconds in the [televised] electoral program. In a country like Brazil with its continental dimension, therefore, it is impossible for the Brazilian working class to know our party’s program through the mass means of communication. In the face of this, we made a manifesto and we are distributing it throughout the entire country not only through PSTU’s militants, but also through PSTU’s sympathizers and friends, where we present our programmatic basis which we need for the working class and the poorest sectors in order to meet our needs.
Therefore, it is a call for rebellion. But we say that for this [rebellion], the workers need to organize themselves whether in popular councils, in assemblies or whatever forms it takes.
But it is not only this. The demands and needs of our class, from the smallest like employment,
to any other need, like the right to art, or any other thing, will only be possible when we destroy the capitalist system, destroy the capitalist State and the working class has its own State and builds a socialist society.
La Voz: And to conclude, do you have a message to the United States’ working class?
Vera: Yes, to the United States workers we would like to say that our country is dominated mainly by north-American Imperialism. But that we, the workers from Latin America, from Brazil and from the US are only workers and that our enemies are common enemies, which is your Imperialism. That is, the large business owners of your country, the bankers and the big landowners and those who also exploit our country and that we, the workers, the unemployed of the US, those who are in the worst working conditions, the immigrants in that country, we all belong to the same class, the working class, and we are making a call to the workers from the US that we take a stand, and wage a rebellion, not only here in Brazil, but on an international level. That we defeat the capitalist system and together we build a society that meets our needs. Whether in Brazil or in the US, because the working class from here is the same working class from there.
From Vera’s FaceBook page
PSTU’s 16 points of a socialist program for Brazil against the capitalist crisis:[1]
1 – Repeal of all reforms that take away rights! No to pension reform
2 – For the right to work! Reduction of working hours without reduction of wages
3 – Public works plans to generate employment and solve structural problems
4 – General increase in wages and pensions
5 – Nationalization of the 100 largest companies under workers’ control
6 – Housing, Education and Public health and quality for all!
7 – The field for those who work! Nationalization and expropriation of the latifundio! Revolution and radical agrarian reform
8 – Regularization and granting of titles of indigenous lands and quilombolas[2]!
9 – Arrest of the corrupt and corrupters and confiscation of their goods!
10 – Suspension of debt payment and audit!
11 – Prohibition of profit remittances! Nationalization of the financial system!
12 – End of Fiscal Responsibility Law! For a Social Responsibility Law![3]
13 – Re-nationalization of privatized companies, under workers’ control
14- For the end of the criminalization of struggles and poverty! Repeal of the anti-terrorism law! Demilitarization of Military Police and drug decriminalization!
15 – For the end of all oppression! Against racism, machismo, LGBTphobia and xenophobia!
16 – For a workers’ government based on popular councils
[1] https://www.pstu.org.br/16-pontos-de-um-programa-socialista-para-o-brasil-contra-a-crise-capitalista/
[2] black communities of self-determination
[3] The Fiscal Responsibility Law approved by FHC and maintained by the governments of the PT has the objective of prioritizing the payment of debt in detriment of investments in health and education. It is necessary to end this law and replace it with a law of social responsibility. The ceiling of public spending has the same function by freezing spending for 20 years.