{"id":7638,"date":"2017-06-07T12:25:30","date_gmt":"2017-06-07T18:25:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lavozlit.com\/?p=7638"},"modified":"2017-06-07T12:25:30","modified_gmt":"2017-06-07T18:25:30","slug":"what-is-the-correct-policy-for-brazils-current-situation-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/workersvoiceus.org\/es\/2017\/06\/07\/what-is-the-correct-policy-for-brazils-current-situation-2\/","title":{"rendered":"What is the correct policy for Brazil\u2019s current situation?"},"content":{"rendered":"

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\nJUNE 5TH, 2017
\nDebate with parties PO and PTS, from Argentina<\/strong>
\nThe political situation in Brazil is accelerating. At the time of writing this article, 100,000 people are marching in Brasilia demanding the resignation of President Temer and against the regressive Labor and Social Security reforms that the government presented to the Congress. After a plea bargain by the Batista brothers (owners of the giant slaughterhouse JBS) on the bribes to the main politicians of the country (including the President), the Temer administration is extremely worried.<\/em><\/span>
\nBy Alejandro Iturbe.<\/strong>
\n 
\nFractioned and divided (with the decay of its political regime and its parties completely exposed), the Brazilian bourgeoisie is attempting to discuss possible alternatives to escape this impasse and avoid an explosion of workers and the masses that might worsen the crisis. In the Congress in Brasilia, deputies got into a fight, whilst outside workers tried to reach the buildings of the bourgeois power, confronting the repression.
\nIn this frame, the Brazilian left (let\u2019s not consider the PT) is at a stage of unity of action to stop the reforms and take Temer down. The bureaucracies of the main Federations (such as the CUT, pro-PT, and the For\u00e7a Sindical<\/em>) are trapped between their capitulating nature on one side, and the attacks of the bourgeoisie and the government and the pressure from the rank and file on the other. Hence, they are not managing to dismantle the struggles. Both things are positive, because they raise the potential from the actions by workers and the masses, like the great demonstration of March 15, the successful general strike of April 28, and now the occupation of Brasilia. Thus we need to maintain and maximize this unity of action until we achieve the common goal that can establish that base.
\nAt the same time, the situation itself demands a development of the necessary debates among the left regarding two aspects that are linked to each other but are separate. The first is a balance of the analysis, characterization, and policies of each of these currents in the previous period. The second (to a large extent the main point), is which policy should be posed to workers and the masses to move the struggle forward.
\nThis debate is taking place not only amongst the Brazilian left but in Latin America as a whole, especially in Argentina. We are talking about polemics that we have had and have with the two main Trotskyist organizations from Argentina (the PO \u2013 Workers\u2019 Party and the PTS \u2013 Socialist Workers\u2019 Party) who dedicated and continue to dedicate a lot of attention to Brazil through their publications.
\nAn incorrect forecast<\/strong>
\nRegarding the balance, we do not want to overwhelm our readers with lots of quotations, so we will only use the main concepts that inform this debate.
\nOver the last few years, the PO as much as the PTS (like most of the Latin American left) characterized that there was a \u201creactionary wave\u201d in Latin America. This means that the bourgeoisie and its different political expressions (mainly the rightist) were offensive and workers and the masses were defensive. The definition was mainly based on electoral results: Mauricio Macri becoming President Argentina; the harsh defeat of Nicol\u00e1s Maduro in parliamentary elections; Evo Morales\u2019 defeat on the referendum to authorize a new election; etc. So, new and stronger rightist governments were emerging with much greater capability to harshly hit workers through layoffs, suspensions, wage cuts, worsening working conditions, weakening the retirement\u2019 system etc. Even if this analysis had partial elements of truth, globally it is incorrect, and led as we will see, to incorrect policies.
\nFirst, they consider electoral results \u2013 a superstructural phenomenon \u2013 as the main element of reality. Even in this case, they simplify the complex process of the workers\u2019 and masses\u2019 consciousness, which the bourgeois electoral system deforms and distorts. An essential problem, however, is that they did not consider that workers and the masses were not defeated in the class struggle field, on the contrary, they were showing a disposition to struggle (in fact they did struggle) against the attacks.
\nAt the same time, it is completely true that the new right-wing governments emerged to deepen attacks on the masses. But to understand those attacks only as a consequence of the election of these governments means \u201cembellishing\u201d the Popular Front, or populist bourgeois governments in crisis that began the implementation of the attacks in the first place (Cristina Kirchner in Argentina, Dilma Rousseff in Brazil). A great example of this is Syriza, in Greece. So yes, there were harsh attacks, but these were implemented by all types of bourgeois governments, irrelevant of the differences between them.
\nFrom our perspective, we defended that the dynamics of any national political situation is determined by the class struggle, and we saw the masses resisting and fighting. Of course, there was a possible of the masses being defeated. But by deeply analyzing the reality, there was no reason to be pessimistic; on the contrary, we predicted the struggles. The result of those struggles would define the dynamics, not the elections. It is suffice to look at the situation in Argentina, with great and massive struggles and demonstrations and a government that cannot be defined as \u201cstrong\u201d, and check both analyses and contrast with the reality.
\nBrazil: deepening the mistakes<\/strong>
\nThese organizations\u2019 characterization of the \u201creactionary wave\u201d had a special refraction in Brazil: it was not expressed directly through the elections but through the \u201cgreen-yellow\u201d demonstrations demanding the impeachment of Dilma. Their conclusion was even more pessimistic: that the reactionary middle-class were on the streets winning sections of the workers\u2019 movement, and that the majority of the working class were passive before the \u201ccoup\u201d that was being \u201cprepared\u201d on the streets.
\nDilma\u2019s removal from office and the appointment of Michel Temer finally took place. As these currents could not talk about a classic military coup, they used a new category: \u201cinstitutional coup\u201d (same content but different form). The logical conclusion was that the bourgeois dominated regime had strengthened. In reality, these currents did not create anything: they just repeated the speeches of Dilma, Lula and the PT, who invented this category to hide their own failure and explain why the masses did not move a finger to defend their government \u2013 adding a touch of \u201cred\u201d for colour.
\nIn several IWL and Brazilian PSTU articles, we debated this incorrect view. We pointed out that a parliamentary action framed in the Constitution itself that did not modify the bourgeois democratic regime in currency, could not be defined as a \u201ccoup\u201d.
\nWe said that what was happening in Brazil was not a \u201ccoup\u201d but something completely different: it was a struggle between two bourgeois blocs (the PT on one side, the right-wing opposition on the other), to decide who should rule during the crisis and implement with more efficiency the bankers\u2019 and bourgeois\u2019 fiscal adjustment; a struggle that would be defined inside of the regime itself. We also said that, far for strengthening through Dilma\u2019s impeachment and Temer\u2019s appointment, the regime was now even more fragile and the new government was just as weak or weaker than Dilma\u2019s.
\nThis definition of \u201cinstitutional coup\u201d was not only disguising reality, it also had profound political consequences. First: before the impeachment it created a \u201cbridge\u201d to capitulate to the PT and its agonized government, because the center of the policy was to \u201cdefend democracy against the coup\u201d. Therefore, it was a major mistake to call workers and masses to defeat Dilma\u2019s government (and the corrupt Congress and right-wing bourgeois opposition) through their own struggle, as the IWL and PSTU were proposing. We were described as \u201cfunctional to the right-wing\u201d because of our policy.
\nAfter the impeachment and Temer\u2019s appointment, these debates lost weight, as a period of unity of action in struggle began, to take him down. But the definition of \u201cpro-coup government\u201d remained, and continues to have consequences: while the PSTU and the IWL complete the program with \u201cout with them all\u201d (a slogan expressing the struggle against the regime as a whole, its corrupt parties and politicians), these currents limit the call to \u201cOut with Temer\u201d. Once again they act in accordance with the PT policy. They are more to the left than the PT in their speech, but they continue to capitulate to it.
\nIt is necessary to make a precision: even if both currents\u2019 policies match in essence, each pose it differently: the PO is an essentially national Trotskyist party, whose current has little to no presence in Brazil. In many cases, it is limited to extensive articles written by Jorge Altamira (main leader) giving \u201cadvice\u201d on the situation.
\nThe PTS alternatively, try to build an international organization (the Trotskyist Fraction \u2013 FT), whose expression in Brazil is the Revolutionary Workers\u2019 Movement \u2013 MRT. Thus, they develop their positions further. For example, last year they split the FIT rally [Lefts and Workers\u2019 Front] in Argentina on May 1st, to make their own separate demonstration \u201cagainst the coup in Brazil\u201d. During Dilma\u2019s impeachment process, the moment that the deputies of the PSOL started acting like a \u201cparliamentary base\u201d to Dilma and the PT (without any criticism of the government), the MRT continued defending its policy of entering the PSOL. Once again, this is like a chain: the PSOL capitulates to the PT, the MRT wants to enter the PSOL\u2026 and so on.
\nAnother central aspect: the CSP-Conlutas and the General Strike<\/strong>
\nWith the international current of the PTS we had another debate: years ago in Brazil, they changed their name from LER [Revolutionary Strategy League] to MRT, and requested to be part of the PSOL (a frontist, reformist and electoralist party). Beyond the fact that entry did not take place due to the PSOL leadership\u2019s refusal, it is very intersting to read the arguments that justify this orientation.
\nAt the time they said: \u201cThe PSOL is a party which, above all, during the last elections, through the candidature of Luciana Genro and several deputies, appeared as an alternative to the left of the PT for a majority of the masses. Luciana got 1.6 million votes, an important expression of the combat against the most conservative segments of Brazilian politics.<\/em>\u201d[1]<\/a> Thus, the MRT proposal was to \u201cfight for our revolutionary ideas inside the PSOL, to build a strong workers\u2019 alternative<\/em>\u201d.
\nThey added that, on the contrary \u201cthe PSTU, despite raising correct points of program, is resigning to present themselves as the true alternative, by each time being more restricted to a unionism that agitates for a General Strike in propaganda but does not give an answer to the crisis of the PT nor to the class struggle.<\/em>\u201d In a different text, the MRT characterized that because of the difference in votes obtained by both parties in the 2015 election, \u201cwhat must remain clear is that the tendency is for the PSOL to appear as a political alternative before the crisis of the PT, and that the PSTU is consolidating as a big unionist sect disappearing from the political arena,<\/em>\u201d despite acknowledging that \u201cthe anti-government unions of the country are organized in the CSP-Conlutas<\/em>\u201d.[2]<\/a>
\nSo, for the MRT-PTS, what is important is to have political weight and \u201cbe an alternative\u201d to obtain many votes and deputies. On the contrary, if you have leadership weight in the Federation that organizes the most combative unions (meaning structural and organizational weight amongst the working class) but you have few votes, the party becomes a \u201cbig unionist sect\u201d with no political future. This current overlooked a \u201cminor\u201d point: Lenin\u2019s conception that electoral results were very important, but workers\u2019 strikes and struggles were \u201ca hundred times\u201d more important.
\nIt\u2019s good practice to put each organizations\u2019 proposals through a reality check. Far from becoming \u201cthe big unionist sect\u201d, the PSTU (essentially through its action with CSP-Conlutas) has been a main part (although a minority, a real part) of the recent class struggle events in Brazil, such as the demonstrations in March, the general strike in April, and the occupation of Brasilia. This is due in the main to the tireless agitation on the necessity of a general strike as a method of workers\u2019 struggle, against most left currents who considered us as \u201ccrazy\u201d (or \u201cpropagandist\u201d as MRT-PTS did). Meanwhile, the MRT-PTS was nothing more than a \u201csatellite\u201d of the PSOL, which at the same time is a \u201csatellite\u201d of the PT through the People Without Fear Front<\/em>. The role of the PO is even sadder: they limit themselves to \u201cgiving advice\u201d that, furthermore, is wrong.
\nToday, the PTS and the PO have now abandoned the characterisation of a \u201creactionary wave\u201d in Brazil, and completely support the General Strike. We are happy about this, but a bit of political honesty from them, e.g. \u201cwe made a mistake\u201d, would not be out of place.
\nOn the current situation<\/strong>
\nThe PO abandoned the use of \u201ccoup\u201d, while the PTS still use it (such as defeating the \u201cpro-coup government\u201d). Beyond the literary difference both parties agree on a proposal they made to the Brazilian workers and masses, for a solution to the crisis after defeating Temer\u2019s government: to struggle for a Constituent Assembly.
\nOn one side, the MRT leader Diana Asun\u00e7\u00e3o writes, in an article published May 18 on the Argentine PTS\u2019 site Izquierda Diario<\/em>, after analyzing the situation of deep crisis in the bourgeois regime and the deepening ascent process:
\n\u201cWe need a strong general strike to defeat Temer and impose a Free Sovereign Constituent Assembly, that will question deeply the basis of this putrid political regime and change the rules of the game, not just the players. The only way to put the great structural questions of the country in to the workers\u2019 and population\u2019s hands is to impose, through struggle, this new Constituent Assembly, in which we can elect our own representatives and annul all reforms by Temer, Lula and Fernando Henrique Cardoso [FHC \u2013 Brazilian president before Lula]; struggle to stop paying the external debt; to nationalize under democratic workers\u2019 control all the big State companies in the country; to implement radical agrarian reform; and for all judges and politicians to be elected and revocable, receving the same salary as a worker. We participate in the \u201cOut with Temer\u201d demonstrations with this perspective. We believe it is a process than can help workers and the youth to make a deeper experience with the bankers\u2019 and bosses\u2019 democracy, as well as with the democracy that revolutionaries propose: a workers\u2019 government that breaks with capitalism; a democracy based on workers\u2019 self-organized bodies, the only political form capable of turning the workers into the political subject for the entire functioning of the country\u2026\u201d.[3]<\/strong><\/a><\/em>
\nOn the other side the PO (previously quoted article by Jorge Altamira, May 20) in a similar analysis proposes:
\n\u201cThe current question in Brazil is to stay on the streets and encourage a new general strike. Under these conditions, the call for a free sovereign Constituent Assembly will become a superior stage of the workers\u2019 political mobilization, posing the question of power: a workers\u2019 power. In Brazil, as in the whole of Latin America, the solution to the question of a working class leadership is key to transforming the revolutionary crisis of power, and the possibility of a workers\u2019 government<\/em>\u201d.[4]<\/a>
\nBoth reasonings differ. With MRT-PTS, a real necessity (for workers and the youth to make a deeper experience with the bankers\u2019 and bosses\u2019 democracy<\/em>) becomes the argument to \u201ccountermand\u201d a strange proposal: a Constituent Assembly would be, at the same time, a bourgeois democratic body and a disguised Soviet that would embrace the tasks of a workers\u2019 power body, becoming some kind of \u201ctransition\u201d.
\nIn the case of the PO, the argument is that this proposal would be a lever for a superior stage of the workers\u2019 political mobilization<\/em>, and only then would it be possible to pose the question of power<\/em> and the possibility of a workers\u2019 government<\/em>. Both are wrong, although in different ways, both lead to a highly dangerous policy: the struggle for a Constituent Assembly as the center of the program that revolutionaries should present to the masses.
\nThe call to struggle for a Constituent Assembly (body of the bourgeois democracy) can be very useful at two moments: when there is a struggle to defeat a dictatorship of a repressive bonapartist regime, or in the immediate period after the old regime has been defeated and the masses have deep illusions in bourgeois democracy and its institutions, and want a new Constitution to replace the old one. But even in those two moments when this could be a really useful tool, it can never be the center of a revolutionary program.
\nThose two situations have nothing to do with Brazil\u2019s current reality. The dictatorship fell three decades ago, its Constitution was modified in 1988, and workers and the masses are breaking at an exponential rate with the democratic bourgeois regime, whose institutions, parties, and leaderships are increasingly corroding and are in a deep crisis. All of this, in the framework of a growing ascent that continues to radicalize.
\nIn this situation, the main tasks of revolutionaries is to help build the struggle and \u2013 in that framework, as the center of its activity \u2013 to encourage the creation of bodies of self-organization and workers\u2019 dual-power. This is not a task for the future but for the present. The possiblity of defeating Temer through struggle deepens this current necessity.
\nIt is true that in reality there is a strong contradiction: Temer can fall because of the struggle, yet these bodies do not exist. The task, then, is to seed these embryos and determine which bodies have in reality been leading and organizing the struggle, to be able to pose a proposal of workers\u2019 power linked to the reality and comprehensible to the masses. It is precisely in a process of dynamic struggles that these bodies can emerge. Meanwhile, as Lenin said, we need to \u201cexplain patiently\u201d what the real solution is (the seizing of power by workers and the masses).
\nThe slogan Constituent Assembly<\/em>, on the contrary, monopolises the process of struggle and leads it in to the trap of bourgeois democracy: universal suffrage. [Imagine this:] We defeat Temer\u2019s government and also the corrupt Congress through struggle, and then we say to workers that they don\u2019t have to seize power through their own bodies (and that they have the right to) but they need to call a Constituent Assembly to\u2026. vote for a new bourgeois body. Basically, it means setting back what the workers have achieved through struggle. The proposal of Constituent Assembly as the center of the revolutionary program, in this framework, ends up being a mortal trap for the struggle, and a new capitulation of these currents to bourgeois democracy.
\nThis criticism is valid for the PTS\u2019 position (which attempts to cheat real the processes of experience and radicalization of the masses, with an artificial camouflage of a Soviet body through the inside of a bourgeois body) as much as for the PO\u2019s, which tells us that we cannot call the workers to seize the power yet<\/em>.
\nWhy is it that the PO and the PTS-MRT (organizations that claim to be Trotskyist and revolutionary) continue to capitulate to bourgeois democracy? To us, it is because both are affected by a \u201cdisease\u201d with a transparent name: electoralist opportunism. An evil that has already caused \u201cmutations\u201d to great part of the Argentine, Brazilian and worldwide left, which, those who consider themselves \u201csuper-revolutionaries\u201d are not immune to.
\nThis is the corrosive effect of imperialism and bourgeois policy that we have called the \u201cdemocratic reaction\u201d. On the one hand, it is destined to avoid or deviate the struggles and revolutions leading them to the dead end of electoral and parliamentary bourgeois democracy. On the other, it corrodes and co-opts revolutionary organizations that think they can \u201ccheat history\u201d by taking a shortcut that appears easier (votes and deputies) but actually transforms them into something else making them lose their revolutionary nature. It seems to them that life exists through elections and parliament, and everything is ordered from it, even when they still call for \u201cstruggle\u201d.
\nTherefore, the center of their political program for the current Brazilian reality is the Constituent Assembly (ultimately a bourgeois parliament). Thus, the MRT want to enter the PSOL (because they have votes and deputies). This has an expression in Argentina, where the center of their policy is the electoral and parliamentary activity of the FIT, and in Brazil where they hope for such electoral success.
\nTo avoid false debates we have no anti-electoral or anti-parliamentary \u201ccretinism\u201d. As Lenin, Trotsky and the III International defended, we are in favor of participating of elections with our own candidates to diffuse and popularize the revolutionary program among the masses. In the framework of this activity we want to get the highest number of votes we can for this program and, if possible, to choose deputies or parliamentarians to be tribunes of the working class in an enemy organization and help erode and destroy it. But we are completely against making this the main and central activity of a revolutionary party (much more \u201ca secondary support point\u201d \u2013 as Lenin said), or, to measure the advances and weight of a party only \u2013 or essentially \u2013 because of the votes it gets, and not for its structural construction and weight among working class organizations.
\nTo us, the center of our activity goes through the growing workers\u2019 and popular struggles in both countries, and it is from there that we want to build the true solution for workers and the masses.
\n***
\nTranslation: Sofia Ballack.
\nNotes:<\/strong>
\n[1]<\/a> \u201cRevolutionary Workers\u2019 Movement Manifesto, in campaign for the \u201cMRTinthePSOL<\/em>.\u201d No translation available \u2013 translation by us.
\n[2]<\/a> No translation available \u2013 translation by us.
\n[3]<\/a> No translation available \u2013 translation by us.
\n[4]<\/a> No translation available \u2013 translation by us.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

JUNE 5TH, 2017 Debate with parties PO and PTS, from Argentina The political situation in Brazil is accelerating. At the time of writing this article, 100,000 people are marching in Brasilia demanding the resignation of President Temer and against the regressive Labor and Social Security reforms that the government presented to the Congress. After a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13882120,"featured_media":7641,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_crdt_document":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_wpas_customize_per_network":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[27806],"tags":[27661],"class_list":["post-7638","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-internacionalinternational","tag-brazil"],"translation":{"provider":"WPGlobus","version":"3.0.2","language":"es","enabled_languages":["en","es"],"languages":{"en":{"title":true,"content":true,"excerpt":false},"es":{"title":false,"content":false,"excerpt":false}}},"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pdQxqk-1Zc","amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/workersvoiceus.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7638","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/workersvoiceus.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/workersvoiceus.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/workersvoiceus.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/13882120"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/workersvoiceus.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7638"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/workersvoiceus.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7638\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/workersvoiceus.org\/es\/wp-json\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/workersvoiceus.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7638"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/workersvoiceus.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7638"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/workersvoiceus.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7638"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}