Lula and the Democracy of the Wealthy

The Superior Electoral Court (TSE, in Portuguese) stopped Lula’s candidacy based on the Clean Record Act (Lei da Ficha Limpa, in Portuguese), adopted by the National Congress, supported by the PT and sanctioned by Lula himself in 2010, while he was in office. The court also decided that the PT has 10 days to switch the presidential candidate and it allowed Lula’s participation in TV programs, as long as he is not a candidate.
By Mariucha Fontana
We are reaching the core of the “Free Lula” campaign – an electoral campaign since its origin -, either Lula as a candidate or Lula’s candidate (Haddad).
Certainly, Lula was discriminated by Justice, since Aécio, Alckmin, Temer and many others should also be imprisoned or condemned. If the Clean Record Act, adopted by the Congress with the PT’s support, were actually applied, none of them should be able to run. The TSE, which contested Lula’s candidacy, refused to remove Temer from office (once again with the PT’s support) when it voted in favor of filing the process that contested all the candidates elected in 2014.
As we always say, we cannot support impunity for all the corrupt, as the PT holds. Nor can we support bourgeois justice or the Lava Jato, as others hold, since it will not imprison all corrupt because it is not neutral, it is part of the capitalist state. If it were “neutral” and fair, Alckmin should also be convicted and imprisoned, as well as Temer & Co. Therefore, one may neither hold the PT’s policy of freedom for the corrupt, nor the bourgeois justice’s imprisonment of some corrupt and corrupters. We must demand that Alckmin, Temer and others be investigated and punished.
This is the democracy of the wealthy with its “three powers” managing the system of capitalist exploitation. These three powers only solve the differences among the different bourgeois sectors, which in normal times accept solving their conflicts through these means. The current capitalist crisis has set the regime in crisis and the dispute among the wealthy toughened. Fights and splits among them increased and the mobilizations of those below grew. However, the bourgeois block of the PT, where bourgeois politicians (including many “pro-coup”), entrepreneurs and bankers participate, also includes organizations of the working class. This makes it harder for the class and the poor, who are the majority of the country, to have independent action from the bourgeoisie.
The campaign in favor of “Free Lula”, fulfilled in this sense, the role of deviating and stopping direct mobilization of the working class for its rights and for the overthrow of Temer and the corrupt Congress. The necessary new General Strike to stop the labor reform and overthrow Temer did not succeed because except the CSP Conlutas, the other labor federations and social movements followed the PT leadership and the “Free Lula” campaign, which is the PT’s electoral campaign in 2018. They fulfilled the same harmful role in the teamsters’ strike, instead of calling for a General Strike to overthrow Temer and the labor reform. Once again, they deviated the struggle process towards bourgeois grounds: bourgeois elections. Even so, as in 1989, elections express with distortions, the balance of power of the great social, political and class struggle polarization, just as the significant inter-bourgeois division.
The selectivity of bourgeois justice contributed for Lula and the PT’s strategy of the false narrative of the coup. Actually, even impeachment, by leaving the social war began by Dilma against the working class in Temer’s hands, opened the possibility of electoral recovery of Lula and the PT. Otherwise, the PSDB may have been found in a very different situation.
The “Free Lula” campaign was always an electoral campaign in defense of a capitalist program and of class collaboration. Joining the PT, the PCdoB, the PSOL and others. This front acted to defend the former governments of the PT as “progressive” administrations, helping the PT recover its electoral space, including building Haddad as Lula’s new replacement. Even Lula himself refused to advance the negotiation for home arrest, which would free him from prison in Curitiba, to be able to continue with the strategy of Lula as candidate or Lula’s candidate.
Whoever remains in a superstructure analysis may believe that since the PT is growing in the polls, the balance of power is now shifting in favor of the workers.
However, from a structural point of view, the balance of power remains the same. The working class and the poor are furious with Temer, just as they were before with Dilma, due to the social war of the administrations since 2013, which have been attacking workers and their rights. A social war that capitalism continues to demand and all the candidate representing different factions of the market, including the PT, will continue to apply in favor of the privileged, unless the working class defeats them through direct action. Numbers show that the working class never fought so much since the 1980s. However, to overcome the traitor leaderships is a process, a path that the class just began. On the meantime, the “left” holds the class should setback and remain in the bourgeois field of class collaboration proposed by “Lulism”.
Another electoral scam in sight?
All candidates running today, except Vera, are planning to attack the working class since they will pay the foreign debt and stand for the private property of the great entrepreneurs in times of the great capitalist crisis. We are not in times of capitalist growth, as in Lula’s time, which allowed deceit.
Bolsonaro, Alckmin and Marina will violently attack the workers if they are elected. Nonetheless, Ciro and Haddad, Lula’s candidate, will also do so.
The PT and Haddad promise the employment levels from Lula’s time, when capitalism and the raw material boom was in its peak. They pose a speech of a supposed coup, but they ally in 13 states with the “pro-coup” of Temer’s MDB (Dilma’s vice-president), like Eunicio de Oliveira and others. They tell the people that they will guarantee rights. However, as the “O Estado de São Paulo” and “Valor Económico” newspapers reported some days ago, Haddad spoke with the “GDP”, those representing the 1% who control economic power and consider him harmless for the bankers, as we already knew. Haddad also guaranteed to the bankers to carry out the Social Security reform. If elected he will carry out a new electoral scam, as Dilma.
Neither dictatorship, nor the wealthy’s democracy may improve the life of the majority
The PT and the PSOL stand for the democracy of the wealthy. They believe it may be fair and guarantee “social sovereignty”, in other words, a government of the majority, through votes and the election of the Executive and Legislative powers, or incorporating “participative” mechanisms.
The bourgeoisie may choose a military dictatorship or a democracy of the rich to manage the system. The capitalist system has different forms of organization. One of them is the democracy of the wealthy, the other, the military regime (defended by Bolsonaro, even if as Trump, he is a right-wing populist, in other words, electoral extreme right). When the bourgeoisie chooses dictatorship, it imposes its governments by force. It does not allow elections, worker parties to be legalized, nor freedom of organization, meeting, protest, opinion, etc. Fascism, even worse than dictatorship, uses methods of civil war against the working class and its organizations, and massively kills workers and their leaders. In these cases, the working class must carry out unity in action in struggle with any sector, even the bourgeoisie, to stop an authoritarian regime, which will make its organization and expression impossible. However, this unity is in struggle, it must never be political support.
The democracy of the rich guarantees the control for economic power. It guarantees a system that actually takes sovereignty from workers and the poor, for it to be exercised by those “elected” every 4 years, in the elections we know.
All governments, whether dictatorship or New Republic (Collor, Itamar, Fernando Henrique Cardoso, Lula, Dilma and Teer), ruled for the same 1% of the population. They were governments of the ruling class, although with differences among themselves. They represented in different circumstances, different sectors of the ruling class, which in all represents 1% of the population.
Bourgeois elections are a game with marked cards; they are anti-democratic. As a government system, the democracy of the rich is not a democratic representative system. It is not an actual government of the majority. It is just a mockery and a disguise. A system where the minority rules.
There is no true “social sovereignty” in the democracy of the rich. The majority of the people does not rule, just “those elected”. Elected by economic power of the 1%. Then, those elected rule everyday for “market”. The people are summoned to legitimate the system every four years, in individual voting, in campaign filled with lies, and with uneven conditions to run. Therefore, the Congress is very corrupt and the Representatives act as they will once elected.  It does not represent the people, because it will not be held accountable.
It is important to remember the so-called “left”, which is said to be democratic, that the representative system uses the name democracy and calls itself “representative democracy”. In other words, the democracy of the rich is a regime to rule the capitalist system.
Therefore, the workers and the majority of the poor people must stand for social councils. This is the only way for workers to rule, every day, from the rank and file and have power to make decisions about everything. Workers’ democracy is truly democratic.
Is an electoral scam also a coup?
The PT and the PSOL say there is an exception regime in Brazil today, in other words, a dictatorship. According to them, there was a “coup”. A coup also means a change of regime, of ruling system, a situation where the bourgeoisie needs to end any democratic freedom. Since this did not happen, they made up there was an “institutional coup”. This type of dispute, which they call “coup”, is part of the nature of the democracy of the rich. This type of coup also took place during the PT administrations. Or, was Dilma’s electoral scam before 54 million voters a “respect for the wish of the majority”? All bourgeois governments give this type of “coup”, including Lula’s and Dilma’s.
Another trap and anti-democratic measures were the changes in the electoral law, which took place with the PT’s support. These measures work in favor of the great parties and stop any electoral renewal, besides leaving ideological, non-corrupt parties like the PSTU in semi-illegality.
Coherence has no price: 16 is rebellion! For Vera from the PSTU!
The most important task in the electoral process is to defend class independence, the need of a socialist project and a Rebellion, so that those from below may overthrow those above. This is a need. Today, it is only expressed through the only candidacy that stands for a socialist project and does not belong to any bourgeois block, whether class collaboration or not.
16 stands for Rebellion.