Thu Mar 28, 2024
March 28, 2024

Dilma’s Impeachment: “Don’t cry for me, Brazil”

A few days ago, the Brazilian Senate voted the definitive impeachment of Dilma Rousseff. So it removed her from the charge of president, for the now Constitutional President Michel Temer to take pose.

By Alejandro Iturbe.

This has had major repercussion, not only in Brazil but around the world, and the printed and digital media are full of analysis on its meaning and the perspectives. In this frame, the PT (evicted from the government) denounces this and cries about what happened. But what calls the attention is most of the left wing not part of the PT (so far taking position as “left opposition” to their governments) repeats and even augments these cries.

Such is the case of the Federal deputy Iván Valente (one the PSOL main leaders), who posted a video on his Facebook affirming this was a “day of mourning for Brazil”. In the same tone, leaders of other organizations talked about a “very sad” or “somber” day.

The PTs speech

Let us start with the matrix of these cries, so the PT itself. When the legal and parliamentary process that would lead to Dilma’s destitution started, the PT denounced it as a “right wing coup” (thesis that Dilma kept until the end, in her last speech as president during the session of the Senate).

It actually was a speech in the sense the philosopher and thinker Michel Foucault used this concept. To him, the production of a “speech” was given because of “certain number of procedures with the function of avoiding the heavy and fearsome materiality”of the facts. That is to say, the true reality and its processes.

What “materialities” was the PT trying to “avoid”? The first one is, after years of loyal service to the bourgeoisie, the latest discarded it as a tool to execute control of the State and the government, in the frame of the economic, social and political crisis Brazil is living. And it was doing it through the mechanism of the political constitutional bourgeois regime (the PT itself tried to strengthen), by not modifying its essence or institutionalism.

The second one is, for the frustration and the anger of the masses by the promises of “change” that were never implemented, and the harsh attacks the economic crisis was forcing to impose serving the bourgeoisie (despite Dilma promised, during her reelection campaign, to “never do this”), the masses stop considering the PT as their party and government. The people broke massively with the party and the government (and even started struggling against it).

The speech of the “coup” was an attempt to “avoid” (or ease) these two realities. On one side, to tell the bourgeoisie they were still necessary, and on the other, to call the masses to not break (or stop the break), because there was a “bigger evil” to confront.

Actually, during all this process, the PT never acted as who is facing a real coup: it always kept itself inside the game of “institutionalism”, and the demonstrations called were actually an element serving this game. At the same time, it did not manage to revert the break up of the masses, based on the fair feeling of betrayal. The masses who voted for Dilma did not want her back. Because of the combination of these elements, the demonstrations against the alleged coup were reduced to merely superestructural facts of the PT apparatus and the militancy of other left wing sectors.

Discarded by the bourgeoisie in the current situation, and abandoned by the workers and the masses, the government of PT died with no glory (although with a lot of unjustified sorrow by its militants and most of the left). This is the only logical explanation to the fact a corrupt and discredited Congress to destitute Dilma without the masses moving a finger to defend her.

On the other hand, the “mask of the coup” fell in front of other “materialities” showing the truth of what happened. One of them (an image is worth more than a thousand words…) is the picture of Dilma nicely chatting with senator Aécio Neves (one of the main figures of the “pro-coup right wing”) during a quarter of the session in which she was removed. The second one is the fact the PT, in more than one thousand municipalities, conformed electoral alliances with “pro-coup” parties for the coming elections. The third one is the destitution was given maintaining Dilma’s political rights as ex president (a high salary for life, two cars and eight employees, paid by the State), and she can run for political charges (she already announces she will run for Senator in Rio Grande do Sul in 2018). Certainly, a very strange attitude, of both sides, in front of a “coup”.

And what about the non-PT left wing?

The non-PT left wing bought and repeats the PT speech. It even strengthens it and gives it a more dramatic tone. In the already quoted profile of Iván Valente, we can see and article whose title speaks for itself: “The coup of 2016 is the major step back of Brazilian democracy since 1964” (date of the military coup that overthrew João Goulart and imposed a bloody dictatorship that lasted until 1985).

Other organizations mitigate this definition, and talk about “institutional” or “palatial coup”, supported by a “reactionary wave” of the reality. But the analysis and the political conclusions go in the same direction: the workers and the masses (and also the left wing) have suffered a major defeat. Even worse, a defeat without struggle, as the masses would have been won by the proposals of the right wing, or at least they are passive and demoralized in front of the coup. This would be the reason why the bourgeoisie and the right wing are “at the offensive”, and we are “defensive” and must act in consequence.

A chain of false arguments

The analysis and conclusions of the left wing are a chain of arguments following an incorrect reasoning.

The first argument is the “coup” is characterized by the fact the vote of 61 senators is worth more than the ones of the 54 million Brazilians who voted for Dilma. The fact the accusations against Dilma were not prooven is an aggravator for the “coup” frame. This is, directly, an embellishment of the bourgeois democracy and its institutional mechanisms. The concept of Marx and Lenin is completely abandoned here: “even the most democratic one of the bourgeois republics is a dictatorship of the capital”.

Of course, for the masses, a bourgeois democracy with certain liberties and the right of v ote is much better than a dictatorship. This is why, when there are real coups, we defend such political regime and their governments against the coup. But this does not eliminate the fact the bourgeois democracy in itself is based on permanent deceits and“coups”to the wishes and the will of the masses.

Dilma, for example, was elected in 2014, saying she would never attack the conquests and rights of the workers. But as soon as she took pose, she named several representatives of the high bourgeoisie as ministers of very important Ministries (like the economist Joaquim Levy for Treasury, and the representative of the agro-business, Kátia Abreu, for Agriculture), and she started attacking the conquests and rights. Was this not a coup to the popular will of the 54 million Brazilians who voted for her? By the way, let us say, Michel Temer and a series of “pro-coup” deputies and senators were elected as part of the PT lists in 2014 (so, in this election Dilma and the PT would had already been preparing the alleged coup of 2016).

Nevertheless, the main problem is the incorrect methods used by the left to define what we call the “relationship of forces”among social classes. It is an analysis that only considers the superestructural facts: a supposedly progressive government with popular support is removed, to be replaced by another one, more reactionary and from the right wing. We have said already that, to us, this does not mean a coup, as it is given through the inside of the current political regime, not modifying it. But the essential is we consider the relationship of forces should not be measured in the superstructure but in the ground of class struggle.

And the reality shows that since the mobilization of June 2013, the regime of domination of the Brazilian bourgeoisie shows elements of deep crisis; a situation that could not be closed by the election of 2014 nor by Dilma’s impeachment. On the contrary, Temer’s government (because of its own contradictions and its lack of masses support) is weaker and more fragile than Dilma’s.

The other central component of the equation is the workers and the masses have not been defeated in struggle. Since 2013, there is a process of considerable increase of the number of conflicts and strikes. If this process does not move forward and make a leap, it is not because of the masses (and their supposed defeat or demoralization) but because of the policy of the leaderships of the main class organizations, such as the CUT and other Federations.

This fact (the masses struggle) goes together with one of the most progressive and positive elements of reality: the rupture of the masses and the workers with the PT and its policy of class conciliation with the bourgeoisie and the imperialism. The great obstacle impeding the growth and development of a true revolutionary, socialist left is finally falling.

Of course, the first process does not automatically implies the second one, but it offers much better conditions for it. Instead of relying in this progressive course of the masses consciousness, most of the left (with the arguments of fighting the coup and the reactionary wave) holds tight to the PT their governments during its agony and fall. This is the reason for its somber tone in front of Dilma’s destitution. Beyond their intentions, they end up playing the role of an overflow basin, stalling the construction of the revolutionary alternative the workers need.

And now what?

These leaders and organizations pose that, now, the center is to struggle against the government and for the “Out with Temer”. We completely agree with this, and we act consequently, encouraging and acting (with no sectarianism) in every struggle going in this direction (like the joint rally of the Union Federations on last August 16th, or the struggle against the dismissals in the Mercedes Benz plant, in the ABC region).

In this frame, we want to make some considerations. The first one is, for us, it is about seriously struggling to defeat Temers’ measures and the government itself. For example, through the construction of a General Strike to take this struggle to a triumph.

Because, even in the frame of unity of action against the government, it is necessary to differentiate from the PT and the CUT, which pretend to “struggle”by actually serving their true policy: let the government to Temer to do the dirty work of adjusting the people, while preparing the electoral front for Lula to be elected again in 2018. Most of the non-PT left wing considers this differentiation as “sectarianism”.

At the same time, the struggle against Temer’s government and its measures must be placed in the perspective of a much more offensive strategy: the taking of the power by the workers and the masses. Thus, not only defeating Temer’s government but the corrupt, putrid regime serving the capitalism, to impose a new regime (based on completely different institutions), and initiate the construction of a new type of State, serving the workers and the masses instead. That is to say, the strategic perspective of the socialist revolution.

A great part of the left wing has abandoned (or never had) this strategy, and therefore, to them it is just about “resisting”and “radicalizing democracy” (through the inside of the bourgeois democracy institutions). Other tendencies affirm they still have this strategy, but the “relationship of forces” and the “backwardness of the masses consciousness”avoid posing it now, as a present strategy. In both cases, the proposes are limited then to “resist”for a long period in name of much more limited goals.

We are not “religious” neither “voluntaristic”: we know the socialist revolution can only happen by the combination of a series of objective and subjective factors. We also know the masses begin their struggle by the most felt necessities and not strategic goals. What we are saying is: the Brazilian masses are not defeated, they are making an accelerated experience with the reality of capitalism and its consequences./ We fully trust their strengths, as much as their capacity of learning from reality and move forward on its consciousness and organization. In this frame, the strategy of the socialist revolution must be as present as ever, and should be postponed for an uncertain future, as proposed by most of the Brazilian left wing with its cries and laments.

In this process, Dilma’s destitution will only be an episode and not “the tragedy” or big defeat the left poses. Paraphrasing the opera “Evita”, we have to say: “Don’t cry for her, Brazil”.

***

Translation: Sofía Ballack.

 

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