Next October, General elections will be held in Brazil. The electoral process is to take place in times of relative calm for the Brazilian bourgeoisie and for the Lula administration.
On the one hand, the international economic crisis, which in 2009 caused a 0.2% fall in GDP – interrupting several years of constant growth – seems to give a respite to the country: Guido Manteiga, Minister of Treasury, has announced an increase of between 5 and 6% for 2010. Even though economy has been evidencing some symptoms of cooling and the threat of extension of the difficult European situation is looming on the horizon, the truth is that what predominates now is this panorama and the word “crisis has disappeared from the addresses of the main bourgeois candidates.
On the other hand, elections also will take place against the background of relative tranquillity in class struggle, only shaken by conflicts that take place during the yearly negotiations for wages in the different sectors of workers.
This relative tranquillity is alsoexpressed in the fact that Lula is finishing his second term in office with a rate of approval nearing80%, the highest ever for any president since this type of measuring was started some 20 years ago.
A false polarization
In this way, Brazilian bourgeoisie can once more bet on both ends and impose a false polarization between both of their main candidates: the representative of the PT, Dilma Roussef, and the representative of the right, Jose Serra, former governor of Sao Paulo, for PSDB. The main characters of the first TV debate, very boring, where the former evidenced that, unlike Lula, she did not stem out of the grassroots but out of the apparatus of the PT and she constrained herself to promise a continuity of Lula’s policy while the latter avoided any direct criticism of the government and limited himself to express arguments along the line of “we would have done it better”.
Reports on financial contributions for the campaigns evidence that most of the bourgeoisie increasingly tends to favour Dilma. And the same tendency begins to surface in the opinion polls: Dilma beats Serra by nothing under 5%.
Brazilian bourgeoisie even encourages a false “left” alternative for government through the candidature of Marina Silva (former Minister of Environment in Lula administration for the Green Party, favoured by the negative of Heloisa Helena (who in 2006 obtained more than 6 million votes as the candidate of Left Front PSOL-PSTU-PCB) to run once more. Regardless her “green dress”, Marina vindicates all the economic policy of the PT governments and that of Fernando Henrique Cardoso, stating that she wanted to “draw PT and PSBD together” inside her administration. She even shows off some very reactionary postures, such as her public rejection to the right of free abortion.
Reality is not like that
However, the deep reality, which Brazilian toiling masses are going through, is far from the optimism that bourgeoisie and their candidates are displaying. Unlike the record of profits achieved by the great banks and enterprises during the Lula administration – something he has always been boasting about – Brazil is the country of most unjust distribution of revenue. While the richest 10% keep 50% of the country’s revenue, the poorest 50% barely receives 10%.
Millions of Brazilians live in the squalor of the favelas, with no access to the most elementary public services, crowds of landless peasants and of those who depend on assistance plans, such as the Family bag, just to stave off famine.
The impressive increase of the public debt is also far from this optimism. Foreign debt has accumulated $282 000 million and home debt trebled since 2008 as a mechanism to grant aid to banks and corporations during the crisis; it now stands at about a billion dollars. The deficit of current account (the least beneficial of fiscal incomes) may reach 60 000 million dollars. This means, any worsening of international economic crisis would find conditions in Brazil much more fragile than in the first phase of the crisis.
But there is no mention of that during the electoral campaign. Neither is Lula’s submissiveness of the country and of the Lula administration to imperialism and the role they have been playing as agents of imperialism in several aspects, such as having contributed the main contingent of troops and commanding the UN troops in the occupation of Haiti.
Spreading the socialist programme
To put it in other words, Brazil is a very rich country as far as natural resources and wealth produced by labour are concerned; but as a result of imperialist looting and that of native bourgeoisie, its people are doomed to poverty and their most urgent needs are far from solved In order to change this situation it is necessary to overcome capitalism. That means: we have to achieve a real government of workers to apply a programme that will radically change the social and economic structure of the country; a programme that will include such measures as the non-payment of the foreign and home debt, expropriation without paying any indemnity and nationalisation of the great corporations and national and international banks, a deep land reform expropriating the great landowners and distribute the land, reduction of working hours and a plan of public works aiming at solving popular needs.
In this way, through a state-centralised economic plan, we shall be able to ensure a general wages increase equalling basic market basket, jobs for everybody, triplication of health service and education, decent housing for everybody and land for all peasants. That would mean the need for a socialist revolution. This is the proposal and the programme that PSTU defends and spreads, in spite of the boycott of mass media, especially through his presidential candidate, José Maria de Almeida (Zé Maria), who spoke of that at numerous rallies and seminars on programme held through the country and in a special issue of its newspaper, Opinião Socialista dedicated to a socialist programme for Brazil that is being sold at the gates of factories and companies. PSTU also includes an internationalist an anti-imperialist posture: for the immediate withdrawal of Brazilian troops from Haiti and their replacement by doctors, technicians and other specialists who would help the Haitian people so badly chastised by the earthquake and immediate interruption of diplomatic and commercial relations with the genocidal state of Israel and support for the struggle of Palestinian people fighting to recover their territory.
Fight for the awareness of the workers
PSTU does not believe that socialist transformation will occur through an electoral process or bourgeois parliamentarian institutions. It can only happen as an outcome of a very deep process of organization and struggle of the workers and the toiling masses and by the seizure of power.
However, it is absolutely indispensable for a revolutionary party to spread and defend socialist programme in the electoral processes to discuss it with millions of workers and so wage a dispute for their awareness against the influence of the bourgeoisie. This was, precisely, one of the central points of the criteria that, in the days of Lenin, the III International posed for the intervention of a revolutionary party to use in the bourgeois electoral processes. Because every worker that has been won over for this programme is a step forward in the perspective of a more strategic struggle.
The PSOL abandons the defense of socialism
However, in these elections, the defense of a socialist programme has been basically left in the hands of Ze Maria and the other PSTU candidates. The left-wing candidate who receives most space in the media, the one who could take part in the TV debate, Plinio Arruda Sampaio of the PSOL, has abandoned this struggle explicitly. In an interview for the newspaper Folha de Sao Paulo (01/08/2010), Plinio said, “I do not pretend to implant socialism in Brazil, nor is that the intention of my party at present. I am going to raise a proposal that will fit within capitalism. The only socialized forms we shall have are health and education”. In Plinio’s opinion this is a sample of “sound thinking”.
This nothing but a new version of the old and unsuccessful proposals to “reform” or “humanize” capitalism; they have inexorably clashed against capitalism that refused to be reformed or humanized. At least now it is clear that it was the deep differences in the programme what prevented the re-edition of the 2006 electoral front.
Boost the struggles and the organization of the workers
While spreading the socialist programme, PSTU is trying to link it to the everyday reality of Brazilian workers. On the one hand we try to explain as simply and clearly as we can how these measures are related to the solution of their most concrete needs such as wages, jobs, health, education or housing that can only be solved if these measures are taken. On the other hand, we have to support and boost the concrete struggles of the workers are waging, such as for example, the victorious struggle for a better PLR (Participation in the Profits and Results) and better working conditions carried out by the workers of CAF (Construction and auxiliaries in Railway) in the city of Campinas , or the joint campaign for wages which, following a suggestion of the metallurgic trade union of Sao Jose dos Campos will be carried out by trade unions that group workers in car factories in several regions of the country. Within this framework, it is also necessary to boost united organization of workers and popular sectors to fight for such demands, as the militants promoting the central founded in the congress held last June in Santos city, the CSP-Conlutas (Trade Union and Popular Central) Last but not least, advance and encourage political organisation of workers, especially among the “heavy battalions” of the main branches of production. For example, about 200 oil workers signed up a statement in support for the candidature of Ze Maria while 500 workers of Sao Jose dos Campos, mostly metallurgic, did the same.
In short: in these elections Brazilian bourgeoisie has two main alternatives and several secondary ones. Confronting them there is only one really proletarian, fighting and socialist option: the one presented by the PSTU and Ze Maria.
Fake democracy
Bourgeoisie presents electoral processesas the best expression of “their” democracy it is there that the toiling masses can choose their representatives and their rulers freely. This is totally false. The parties supported by the bourgeoisie have qualitatively greater resources to develop their campaigns compared to what workers’ and/or left parties can have. That is due to the contributions received from the corporations and entrepreneurs to their candidates.
PSTU rejects point blank to receive any financial contribution from bourgeoisie as this would actually mean a commitment or a debt, which sooner or later would be collected politically; as they say it in Brazil “He who pays the orchestra chooses the music”. PSTU pays for the expenses of the campaign with the contributions coming from workers, its members and sympathisers. This is a token of political independence from employers and governments but it is also a clear limitation to our possibility of developing a great campaign in the media. This is further accentuated by the legislation that discriminates the compulsory free time granted in TV in accordance to the number of representatives each party or coalition has in the Parliament.
This means that PSTU receives less than a minute per presentation (3 days a week) while the PT or the PSDB use nearly 10 minutes and 8 respectively. Unlike some other countries, such a France or Portugal, where times are shared out in equal portions among registered candidates, here minority parties are completely discriminated. The same legislation determines that for TV debates of presidential candidates or candidates for such posts as governor, TV broadcaster must invite only those parties that have parliamentary representation. They may invite the others, but they never do. It so happens that TV networks are only interested in inviting options that they regard as reasonable. This was the case of the Bandeirantes Network and the same thing will happen in the Record and Globo. In this way, they clearly discriminate several left parties such as PSTU, PCB or the PCO cannot take part in these debates.
That is why, unlike PSOL that, through Plinio was invited and vindicated the democratic character of the debate, PSTU exposes the discriminatory character and demands participation of all candidates.
Ze Maria and Lula: the same origin, two different backgrounds
Lula and Ze Maria had the same starting point: both of them were initiated as metallurgic workers in ABC region (Greater Sao Paulo) and during the explosive wave of proletarian strikes against the dictatorship in the late 1970s. In some of these strikes, they went to jail together. This was the background when CUT and PT were founded.
Lula used this prestige in these organizations first to put a brake on the strikes and then to boost his race to the top from where he governed for the bourgeoisie.
Ze Maria remained faithful to his class and its struggle. In 1992, he was expelled from the PT for opposing increasingly rightward swerve of the party and the proposal to govern together with the bourgeoisie. For the same reason, in 2004, he split away from the CUT, which by that time had become an agency of Lula administration. In 2005 he gave an impulse to the construction of Conlutas and last June, to CSP-Conlutas.
Ze Maria has also remained faithful to his socialist convictions and is now the only proletarian candidate in this electoral process to defend them with the same passion as more than 30 years ago.
