On the new article by the Trotskyist Faction (TF) debating with the IWL
Militants from the Revolutionary Workers Movement (MRT) and the Trotskyist Faction (TF), including Iuri Tonelo, André Barbieri, and Danilo Paris, published a new article titled “The Morenist Conception of Revolution and the Historical Crisis of the IWL.” In it, they attempt to link a supposed “deeper crisis of the IWL” to its mistaken conceptions, particularly Nahuel Moreno’s theory of revolution.
We are not going to waste time addressing the alleged greater crisis of the IWL. The TF has been proclaiming our “great crisis” since its emergence and predicting our failure.
Regarding the TF/PTS’s proclaimed greater crisis of the IWL, there is an old popular saying that goes: “You don’t throw stones at trees that don’t bear fruit.” This type of statement seems to respond more to the TF/PTS’s self-proclaimed objectives of self-construction than to a real interest in discussing or committing to the truth. For those interested in learning about the political struggles within the IWL in recent years, we recommend reading the PSTU-IWL statement on the subject, which can be found here.
However, we will not respond to the article in the same tone or manner as the mentioned authors. We believe frank debate is necessary, as well as respect and sincerity in arguments. Readers can judge not only the opinions expressed but also how they were presented.
We want to engage in the discussion about the concept of revolution because we believe there is a fundamental difference between us and the TF, and it is important to clarify the issues. As part of that discussion, we will once again address the topic of Nahuel Moreno and the TF’s baseless accusation of his supposed “stageism.”
Let’s examine a case that is accessible to everyone: the Sandinista Revolution. We will review Moreno’s political stance during this revolution. We could discuss other cases, which we will mention throughout the text. If we focus exclusively on the Sandinista Revolution, it is merely for the sake of brevity.
As we said in a previous article, we believe that the authors have the wrong methodology for judging the past. This methodology is part of the TF’s theoretical tradition, as seen in one of its earliest texts criticizing Nahuel Moreno. There seems to be a deterministic reading of the past, as if historical processes—in this case, revolutions—were destined to unfold exactly as they did, without the possibility of dispute or transformation during their development. This underpins a dogmatic, ultra-leftist theoretical reading that, paradoxically, justifies an opportunistic policy in the present.
Later, we will return to the discussion of specific cases, focusing on Palestine, Ukraine, and Brazil.
Regarding Brazil, we will demonstrate how the MRT’s policy during Dilma Rousseff’s impeachment caused them to align with the bourgeois class-conciliation government of Dilma-Temer, while simultaneously attempting to join the PSOL, one of the parties within that government.
Regarding Ukraine and Palestine, we want to discuss two issues. First, there is a disregard for the struggles of oppressed peoples for their national rights. In Ukraine, this disregard is evident in their refusal to support the Ukrainian people against Putin’s Russia and their right to defend their invaded country by any means necessary.
Second, in the Palestinian case, they ignored the democratic slogans, the most important of which is “Palestine free from the river to the sea,” opposing it until a few days ago with the slogan “Palestine working class and socialist.”
This clearly breaks with the Transitional Program’s methodology, replacing it with an abstract maximum program. In this case, important democratic tasks are abandoned along the way (just as has happened with respect to Putin in Ukraine). The program also wavers historically on several occasions when it comes to unequivocally defending the end of the Zionist state of Israel in Palestine.
In this new article and others that followed our response, the TF attempts to adjust a series of positions without acknowledging their change in position. In our opinion, this is another facet of the TF’s poor methodology. It is a supposed infallibility accompanied by distortions of the opinions with which it debates. This way of debating not only fails to contribute to a productive atmosphere for discussion, but it also makes it difficult to analyze the essence of the differences. This is true in terms of the issue of postwar revolutions, which we will discuss below, as well as other issues beyond the scope of this article. An example is the TF’s recent change of position on China. In our opinion, it is backward, incomplete, and one-sided. Once again, they distort our positions.
Now, let’s move on to the text.
Once again, the theory of revolution
The discussion about what a revolution is—one of our controversies with the TF—can be approached in different ways and from various perspectives: historical, academic, or militant. The way the discussion is approached is not irrelevant.
It is one thing to discuss events 30, 40, or 50 years later, knowing their outcomes and not worrying about responding to each new moment. It is quite another thing to try to understand each turn of those events as they unfold and how to respond to them. It is necessary to determine where and when the changes that brought about a new correlation of forces took place in each case.
In order to do this in a militant, concrete way, it is necessary to know how to identify the political phenomenon being experienced at that moment and the possibilities that it opens or closes.
This is where the discussion about what a revolution is comes in. In our article, we present the following definition by Trotsky from “The History of the Russian Revolution”:
“The most indisputable feature of the revolution is the direct intervention of the masses in historical events. . . . The history of a revolution is, for us, first of all the forcible entrance of the masses into the realms of rulership over their own destiny.”
In other words, a process is defined as revolutionary rather than reformist by the action of the masses bypassing their legal representatives and acting on their own behalf.
In response to this quote, our comrades offered another:
“Revolution means a change of the social order. It transfers the power from the hands of a class which has exhausted itself into those of another class, which is on the rise. The insurrection is the sharpest and most critical moment in the struggle of two classes for power. The insurrection can lead to the real victory of the revolution and to the establishment of a new order only when it is based on a progressive class, which is able to rally around it the overwhelming majority of the people.“
There appears to be a contradiction between the two texts. Is revolution, for Trotsky, the violent irruption of the masses onto the historical stage, or the replacement of one class’s power by another’s? We believe the contradiction is false because Trotsky is talking about two different things.
In the first case, Trotsky refers to the process. How can we recognize a revolutionary process? According to Trotsky, it is when there is a violent intervention by the masses who burst onto the political scene on their own accord. This violent action, outside of legal formalities and official calendars, defines a revolutionary process.
The second quote, from the text “What Was the October Revolution?,” refers to the culmination of the October Revolution in the USSR. In other words, it marks the moment when the proletarian revolution achieved its initial objective of seizing power.
Therefore, the two texts complement each other: one helps identify a revolutionary process, and the other helps determine when a proletarian revolution has triumphed.
One could argue that there is either victory for the October Revolution or nothing. Speaking of victory for a democratic revolution, for example, would be a mistake, an exaggeration, or even reformism. Speaking of a democratic revolution would be a form of stageism or semi-stageism.
From a distant perspective decades later, this argument may seem logical. However, if we examine events in their own time, this statement loses all force and is even contradicted by theorists of the TF itself.
Trotsky devotes three chapters (7, 8, and 9) of The History of the Russian Revolution to the February Revolution. At the beginning of Chapter 8, he writes:
“Lawyers and journalists belonging to the classes damaged by the revolution wasted a good deal of ink subsequently trying to prove that what happened in February was essentially a petticoat rebellion, backed up afterwards by a soldiers’ mutiny and given out for a revolution. Louis XVI in his day also tried to think that the capture of the Bastille was a rebellion, but they respectfully explained to him that it was a revolution.”
In other words, for Trotsky, the events of February—the transformation of the tsarist regime—were a revolution, the February Revolution. He even notes that some confuse a revolt with a revolution.
However, our policy toward these processes differs from that of reformists and stageists in general because we promote the continuity of the revolution, not its mandatory halt in the newly conquered democratic stage. As Trotsky says in The New Course:
“Once the revolution begins—in which we participate and lead—we do not interrupt it at any formally determined stage. On the contrary, we continue to carry it out and push it forward in accordance with the situation as long as it has not exhausted all possibilities.” (The New Course, 6 “The underestimation of the peasantry”)
In other words, our efforts are directed toward the permanent development of the revolution “as long as it has not exhausted all possibilities.”
Does this mean denying the existence of intermediate processes? Juan Dal Maso, a theorist of the TF, addresses this question when discussing the Theory of Permanent Revolution:
“For his part, Perry Anderson raises a kind of “falsificationist” objection: the Theory of Permanent Revolution (TRP) has never been confirmed. During the post-war period, there were anti-imperialist (Algeria) and agrarian (Bolivia) revolutions that were not socialist. Meanwhile, a stable bourgeois democracy was established in India.
Taking a broader view of the 20th century, we also argue that Anderson’s “falsificationism of convenience” overlooks the fact that the TRP does not claim that partial solutions to democratic demands are impossible” (Juan Dal Maso, “In Search of the Current Form of Permanent Revolution”).
Now, it seems that the TF theorist, like us, agrees that partial solutions to democratic demands are possible, though not inevitable. We would add that this is also what Trotsky, Lenin, and Moreno believed.
Now, let’s return to the militant response and the moment in which it is analyzed.
In August 1979, a few days after the Sandinista Revolution triumphed on July 19, Moreno met with the Simón Bolívar Brigades to discuss the situation in Nicaragua and outline a policy for the country and the subcontinent. The text, “The Prospects and Revolutionary Policy after the Triumph of the Nicaraguan Revolution,” is available in the Leon Trotsky Archive here.
First question: What happened in Nicaragua? Moreno says that a revolution triumphed there. Second question: What is the character of the victorious revolution? Moreno responds that it is a democratic revolution. To the third question: What is the task in the face of this victory?Moreno says—and we quote verbatim—:
“None of those present believe that the revolutionary process in Nicaragua is over. Everyone feels—and has said so—that it is just beginning.”
In other words, the democratic revolution’s victory did not end the process; rather, it opened up the revolution.
Is there stageism in that? Some comrades would argue that the terminology is indeed stageist and that Moreno himself speaks of the victory of a democratic revolution. Yes, it is true. Moreno refers to this transitional period of an ongoing revolution as democratic (or bourgeois-democratic). Is this Moreno’s “crime”? Let’s look at a passage from Trotsky:
(…) Without opposing the democratic revolution—quite the contrary—supporting it unreservedly, even in the context of separation (that is, sustaining the struggle but not the illusions), we must fight for our independent position in relation to the democratic revolution. We recommend, advise, and propose the idea of the Federation of Soviet Republics of the Iberian Peninsula as a constituent part of the United States of Europe” (Letter to Nin: “The Soviets and the Problem of ‘Balkanization,'” September 1, 1931).
Is Trotsky right to call the ongoing Spanish Revolution “democratic”? Is he proposing stages? Or is he merely emphasizing that the initial tasks were democratic?
Returning to the reasoning, in August 1979, Moreno was faced with a partially triumphant revolution in an open process in which intervention was necessary.
Identifying whether there had been a victory was fundamental. It was also important to know what kind of victory it was. Otherwise, there could have been a reform controlled by the bourgeoisie and imperialism. Therefore, determining that it was a revolution and not a reform—that is, that the central apparatus of the bourgeoisie and its armed forces had been destroyed by the masses—was essential to assessing the possibilities. On the other hand, defining it as a bourgeois-democratic revolution based on the tasks, directions, and limits of the moment indicated the need to transition to a socialist revolution.
As the aforementioned text explains, the focus is on the need to build a revolutionary party, maintain and extend the militias, build organs of dual power, oppose the GNR (the government that emerged from the Sandinista victory) because it was the main enemy, and demand that the FSLN break with the bourgeoisie and take power.
We do not consider this to be a stageist orientation. Nor do we consider it to be a mistaken orientation for that particular moment, although some aspects are debatable.
Changing your mind without saying so
In our previous text, we criticized the TF for its view of anti-colonial revolutions in “Controversy with the IWL and the Theoretical Legacy of Nahuel Moreno.” We said:
“Furthermore, the TF’s analysis of decolonization processes in Africa is deeply insufficient. For example, they summarize that movements such as the Mau Mau in Kenya and Patrice Lumumba’s struggle in Congo achieved only “formal independence as semi-colonies,” and that Algeria regressed to a semi-colonial bourgeois state after achieving a “workers’ and peasants’ government.” Regarding the Portuguese colonies, the FT claims that petty-bourgeois leaders (such as the MPLA) did not even establish deformed workers’ states.
This interpretation seems flawed to us because it is teleological and deterministic, as if the final result were inevitably contained within the initial stages of the process. It judges the events of the past through the lens of the present, fifty years later. In doing so, the TF disregards the real historical context. What they call “mere formal independence” represented enormous tactical victories at the time. These revolutions, which preceded and followed the Portuguese Revolution (another crucial event ignored by the TF), were significant historical occurrences that unfolded in unexpected ways within the framework of permanent revolution.“
Now, after our criticism, the following passage appeared in a text on the Angolan Revolution (“Classes, State, and Strategies in African Independence, Part 2”), without the TF saying that they are changing their position:
“The revolutionary explosion of the African masses, especially during the postwar period, destabilized the imperialist balance, precipitated political crises in the metropolises, and profoundly impacted the cycles of mobilization in the core countries. For example, there is a connection between the Portuguese colonial wars and the Carnation Revolution, as well as a link between the liberation struggles in the French colonies and May 1968. Despite the limitations imposed by leadership and adopted strategies, we reaffirm our enthusiasm for the historical energy of these masses. Their actions drove national independence and contributed to the crisis of international capitalism..”
In other words, it’s the same idea we express in our text, which is the opposite of what the TF has said until now. We welcome this advance in the author’s understanding of revolutionary processes. However, the most accurate approach would be to explicitly acknowledge the change in position, a step that neither the author nor the publication has taken.
We do not believe this change, nor Juan Dal Maso’s reading of the Permanent Revolution, is accidental. It is reality that is causing the TF’s theory of revolution to crumble while proving Nahuel Moreno, Trotsky, and Lenin right.
However, these empirical adjustments are insufficient. We call on our comrades to reflect on whether their view of the Permanent Revolution and the role of democratic slogans questions the methodology of the Transitional Program and constitutes a schematic view of the Permanent Revolution.
That said, here is a summary
We apologize for the long digression, but we believe there was much confusion in the debate, and clarification was necessary.
In short, for us, a revolution is the violent and abrupt entry of the masses onto the political stage. When a revolution begins, we fight for it to become permanent, meaning we fight for it to not stop at any predetermined stage. However, in fighting to prevent this, we acknowledge that there may be episodic moments in a revolution. As Juan Dal Maso observes, the TRP (Theory of Permanent Revolution) does not argue that there cannot be partial solutions to democratic demands.
Disapproving of these partial solutions does not mean failing to identify and value them. This appreciation evolves over time because any revolution that does not advance, retreats. The Sandinista, Portuguese, Algerian, Angolan, and Mozambican revolutions, among others, were great triumphs of democracy whose progress was interrupted by various agents. These revolutions retreated, some beyond their initial starting point.
As can be seen in Moreno’s extensive writings on these revolutions, he never advocated stopping the revolution at any of these episodic stages. He always defended and sought to guide the politics of his parties and militants to find the necessary support to guarantee the permanence of these processes.
The methodology of explanation given by the authors of the text is deeply marked by determinism. They interpret events from 50 years ago based on current results and have a “political line” for those processes, assuming that they were identical to their final outcome from the beginning. With this line of reasoning, they conclude that the events in question could only have ended as they did and that they were never in dispute. In other words, they act as if there were no alternatives to dispute, or as if it were possible to build an alternative revolutionary leadership without disputing such processes. To paraphrase the Russian historian Vadim Rogovin, there was an alternative, although he said this in relation to the possibility of a political revolution and revolutionary leadership.
Determinism and formalism go hand in hand. This is why we encourage militants and activists to read Leon Trotsky’s “Lessons of October” and recognize that there could have been multiple outcomes of the Russian Revolution of 1917. To see this, one must recognize that the victorious outcome of October in no way dispenses with acknowledging the democratic revolution of February and establishing a correct policy for its continuity. Conversely, this formalist—and even leftist—view often conceals and justifies opportunistic policies. For example, TF criticizes Ukraine and Hamas in Palestine for the wrong reasons, such as questioning the legitimacy of October 7 or the issue of taking prisoners of war. The same is true in Brazil during the Dilma-Temer government crisis and in Argentina during the Cristina Kirchner era.
Once again on the TF’s policy toward Palestine
Regarding the TF’s policy on Palestine, in this new article, we are accused of “exercising what, in logic, is called the ‘straw man fallacy’: reducing the position of the interlocutor to absurdity in order to facilitate the defeat of a non-existent argument.”
This is a very serious accusation. However, readers will see that we never use this fallacy. On the contrary, their article is an example of it.
The struggle for a “Palestine free from the river to the sea”
Regarding the struggle for a “Palestine free from the river to the sea,” our comrades claim that “saying the TF refuses to raise the slogan ‘Palestine free from the river to the sea’ is a deplorable and cowardly way of obscuring the central debate.”
However, the truth is that the TF has always opposed the use of this slogan, at least until now. One of its main leaders, Matías Maiello, said so in November 2023:
“We fight for the full realization of the Palestinian people’s right to national self-determination and for the only truly progressive strategic solution: a working-class and socialist Palestine.”
He never mentioned the slogan “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” in his writing. Around the same time, another leader, Paul Morao, wrote:
“We defend the project of a socialist workers’ Palestine, where Arabs and Jews can live in peace.”
Again, there was no mention of a Palestine free from the river to the sea. Similarly, Philippe Alcoy emphasized the same idea:
“Today, to guarantee the national rights of the Palestinians, we are fighting for a socialist, secular workers’ state throughout historic Palestine.”
Again, there was no reference to a Palestine free from the river to the sea.
When arguing with the TF, we explained our position on why they reject this slogan:
“The comrades of the TF believe that defending the slogan ‘A democratic, secular, and non-racist Palestine from the river to the sea’ is equivalent to defending a ‘democratic stage’ and renouncing the socialist character of the Palestinian revolution. However, they are mistaken because this slogan is currently the primary demand of the program for a socialist revolution in Palestine and the surrounding region. Instead of integrating this slogan into a transitional program—combining it with economic, social, transitional, and socialist demands and giving the Palestinian revolution a regional and international dimension (culminating in the struggle for a socialist federation of the Middle East and North Africa)—the TF replaced it with the slogan ‘working-class and socialist Palestine.'”
We added:
“This serious error in the sense that the TF is clashing head-on with the methodology with which we Trotskyists have approached these problems throughout our history—the methodology of the Transitional Program.”
In their response, our comrades in the TF now say that “the TF proudly raises the slogan ‘Free Palestine, from the river to the sea.'” We are very happy if this is their new position and understand it as a result of the impressive mobilization of millions of people around the world who made that slogan central to the struggle against Zionist genocide.
We also believe that revolutionaries should be willing to recognize and rectify their mistakes. However, the TF comrades not only fail to recognize their mistake but also accuse us of fraud for exposing the positions they defended for so long. Furthermore, they not only fail to limit themselves to that, but also devote themselves to attributing positions to us that we never defended. They don’t even show a single statement, resolution, or article of ours that proves their claims. Then, based on these false accusations, they launch baseless attacks against us.
They argue that the IWL raises “the program of a ‘secular, democratic, and non-racist Palestine,’ opposing the permanentist dynamic and disconnecting it from the programmatic perspective of the socialist revolution.” They also claim that the IWL considers “the existence of an independent, ‘secular, democratic, and non-racist’ Palestine” within the current Middle Eastern framework and approaches “variants of the Arab bourgeois leaderships” politically and programmatically.
These accusations are delusional. Where could they have gotten such conclusions when we defend the opposite? The recent 16th World Congress of the IWL, whose resolutions are published on our website, approved the following:
“We defend the historic slogan of a free, democratic, and secular Palestine from the river to the sea, associated with the destruction of the State of Israel, the struggle for a workers’ government, and the socialist revolution.”
“This democratic slogan is part of the program of permanent revolution. It is linked to the anti-imperialist struggle of the working classes in the region, as well as to solidarity in imperialist centers. The program culminates in the slogan of a Federation of Arab Socialist Republics.”
“The national democratic demand of “Free, democratic, and secular Palestine from the river to the sea” can have a transitional character because its realization requires the destruction of the State of Israel. This will only be possible through a process of permanent revolution combining a new intifada, a new revolutionary process in regional countries (the Arab Spring), armed resistance in Palestine, and mass mobilizations worldwide.”
Does anyone see any sign of “stages” here, the accusation with which the TF assails us day and night and on the basis of which it has downgraded us from revolutionaries to “centrists”?
However, the problem now lies with the TF comrades themselves because, if they persist in defending the democratic-national slogan of a “free Palestine from the river to the sea,” they will have difficulty coherently sustaining their conception of permanent revolution.
Criticism of “Hamas’ methods”
There is an important point in our articles that our comrades in the TF did not address in their response: criticism of the “methods of Hamas.” We are referring to their rejection of the “methods of Hamas.” They avoided the controversy, limiting themselves to saying that, “From a historical point of view, all manifestations of that resistance are legitimate,” a generality that applies to everything and nothing.
Alcoy writes in the cited article:
“This method of attacking the Israeli civilian population is totally reactionary and counterproductive to the Palestinian cause.”
Maiello reinforces this idea:
“These methods greatly harm the Palestinian cause, which is why it is essential to distinguish them from the methods of the proletariat.”
Maiello also strongly opposes taking “hostages” (who are actually prisoners of war), saying:
“What do the Archbishop of Paris, priests, and gendarmes have to do with hostages taken at a music festival where many participants were young pacifists who supported the Palestinian cause? Nothing.”
In reality, rather than contextualizing the “civilian deaths” of October 7, the TF comrades gave them a centrality that can only be explained by the brutal and persistent pressure of the Western media campaign. Alcoy even goes so far as to make moral judgments:
“Rejecting the label of ‘terrorism’ does not relativize, much less justify, Hamas’s crimes against Palestinian and Israeli civilians.”
We argue that we must never equate the violence of the oppressor with that of the oppressed. We cannot describe the deaths of Israeli civilians as ‘crimes,’ as they are victims of Hamas’s military response to the barbarism of Israel, which is truly responsible for their deaths.
We also affirm: “The LIT unconditionally sides with the Palestinian resistance against the genocidal state of Israel and defends its actions on October 7, 2023.”
We believe that by doing so, we are continuing the Marxist tradition of defending the right of oppressed peoples to rebel by any means necessary. We stand with the Palestinians militarily, even though we disagree with the Hamas leadership programmatically and politically.
We believe the TF made a serious mistake by forgetting that Israeli society is completely militarized. Israeli youth are either in the army or are reservists. Even if they were ‘civilians,’ attacking the Palestinian resistance for the deaths of civilians is a mistake.”This is an act of war by an oppressed people at a profound military disadvantage against a nuclear power.”
Regarding the taking of ‘hostages,’ we respond by saying that: “This type of action was used by the Bolsheviks during the Russian Revolution and the Paris Commune. What is wrong with it? Contrary to what the TF claims, taking ‘hostages’ (prisoners of war) was correct and has been central to provoking an internal crisis in Israel and mobilizing thousands of relatives against the Netanyahu government to secure their release.”
We add that “It is difficult for an TF militant to convince any Palestinian activist that taking “hostages” was a mistake. It is no coincidence that this issue disappeared from their press. As is often the case with the TF, they provided no explanation for this, nor did they engage in self-criticism if they changed their position.”
We also explained that: “It cannot be ignored that Hamas is a popular resistance movement without planes, tanks, or ships. They are locked up in the world’s largest open-air prison and have been subjected to a criminal siege and atrocious attacks for 17 years. In these circumstances, Hamas cannot be expected to respect a supposed moral code of combat in its hugely unequal struggle against the occupying army.”
It cannot be forgotten that: “The Israeli settlements around Gaza—and the entire territory of Israel—were built on the plunder of Palestinian land and ethnic cleansing. They are not only colonies built on stolen land, but they also serve the military function of encircling the Strip. They are connected to a vast network of military installations and were attacked by militiamen and largely destroyed.”
Furthermore: “Israel is a gigantic military base where, in addition to the troops on active duty, there are 400,000 reservists and a large number of armed civilians.” We also highlight that: “There’s the fallacious Zionist propaganda massively reproduced by Western governments and media, and then there are the real facts. Some of these facts have come to light in recent weeks, but they were quickly silenced. For example, we know that some of those killed at the music festival were victims of indiscriminate firing from Israeli military helicopters, and as Maiello mentions, some of those killed in the settlements near the Gaza Strip were victims of Israeli troops fighting Palestinian militiamen.”
What about Palestinian fraternization with the Jewish-Israeli working class?
This is another aspect that our comrades at the TF deliberately left out of their response.
In our article, we stated that one of the main reasons for the TF’s criticism of “Hamas’s methods” is that the TF considers them a major obstacle to fraternization between the Palestinian and Israeli working classes. Alcoy expresses this idea when he says that the October 7 attack “further distances any prospect of class unity between Palestinian and Jewish workers.”
Morao, for his part, rightly denounced the false symmetry that French organizations LO (Lutte Ouvrière – Workers’ Struggle) and NPA-C (New Anti-Capitalist Party – Platform C) established between Palestinians and Israeli workers. Maiello himself acknowledges that the Israeli working class is predominantly Zionist, plays a fundamental role in colonization and the apartheid regime, and collaborates strongly and deeply with the bourgeoisie.
Nevertheless, we wrote, “Despite his own assertions, Morao tells us that fraternization between Palestinians and Israeli workers and youth is ‘the only possibility of emancipation for both peoples.'”
Maiello reiterates this idea by drawing a historical parallel with the Nazi military occupation of France during World War II. He justifies fraternization between Palestinian and Israeli workers as an essential task and denounces any act that widens the gulf between them as “directly counterrevolutionary.”
Later, Maiello attempts to justify his policy of fraternization by comparing the Zionism of Jewish-Israeli workers to “the deep racism of American workers that Trotsky encountered in his day.”
He quotes Trotsky:
“99.9% of American workers are chauvinists. They are executioners of Black people and Chinese people. These American beasts need to be educated. They need to understand that the American state does not belong to them and that they do not need to be the guardians of that state.”
We explained that this comparison is forced and artificial because:
“… the Jewish-Israeli proletariat differs from the white American proletariat in its treatment of Black people due to a material, economic problem that transcends and determines their ideologies and politics. Zionist colonization turned the Jewish proletariat into an agent and beneficiary of the theft of land, homes, and jobs from the Palestinian people.”
We also said:
“This does not mean that there is no class struggle between the Israeli bourgeoisie and the proletariat. However, these conflicts are subordinate to maintaining colonial order against the Palestinians. An alliance between the Jewish-Israeli and Palestinian proletariats to end the genocide and liberate Palestine is impossible because of this material difference. Zionism is much more than an ideology; it is a colonial and terrorist state built on the dispossession of Palestinian lands and their ethnic cleansing. It has an apartheid regime and a corrupt, false democracy. A large part of the Israeli population, including workers, are immigrants living on stolen land that does not belong to them.”
We concluded:
“If the TF’s thesis were correct, the Palestinian people and all of us would be condemned to a hopeless struggle. It’s as if the Algerian revolution’s victory depended on fraternization between Algerians and French pied-noirs who appropriated the best lands with the support of the French colonial army.”
As for the hostages’ families’ mobilizations, there is no doubt that they were progressive in confronting Netanyahu and demanding a ceasefire. However, their scope was limited because they did not challenge the principles of Zionism.
We quoted Israeli journalist Gideon Levy to highlight three sinister traits that characterize the vast majority of the Israeli population, including its working class. 1) They consider themselves “the chosen people, with the right to do whatever they want”; 2) As the oppressors, they present themselves as the great victims; 3) They systematically dehumanize the Palestinian population, which is a common element of ethnic cleansing, just as the Nazis did with the Jews.
Opinion polls repeatedly confirm that more than 80% of the Jewish-Israeli population supports ethnic cleansing.
We also stated:
“A free, secular, democratic, and non-racist Palestine, from the river to the sea, can only exist with the destruction of the State of Israel, the return of millions of Palestinian refugees, and the return of land to its rightful owners. This means that many Israelis who have immigrated to Palestine from other countries to occupy Palestinian land, homes, and places will have to leave. Only a Jewish minority willing to live on equal terms with Palestinians will have a place in the new Palestinian state.“
We concluded:
“Victory over the State of Israel will come from the Palestinian people’s struggle, including an armed resistance; the active solidarity of the Arab and Islamic countries in the region, who must confront their cowardly bourgeoisies; and the massive solidarity of workers and youth in the U.S., EU, and the rest of the world. While the collaboration of a small anti-Zionist Israeli minority will undoubtedly be relevant, arguing that fraternization is ‘the only possibility for the emancipation of both peoples’ is completely misplaced and a serious mistake.“
The controversy over Ukraine
Regarding the controversy over Ukraine, before engaging with our comrades in the TF about our profound differences regarding the policy that revolutionaries should adopt concerning the war in Ukraine, we wish to address the criticism they direct at us. This criticism is not only directed at what we do and propose, but also at the brutal tone they employ, which is far from a healthy controversy between two forces that consider themselves part of the revolutionary movement. What are they seeking when they write that the IWL/PSTU “is reduced to echoing the central policy of U.S. imperialism and the NATO powers” and that “it would be dangerously close, within the left, to being a spokesperson for the militarist program of Trump, Macron, Starmer, and Merz”? Having said that, let us enter into the controversy with our comrades.
The nature of war
The nature of the war is undoubtedly the starting point and main basis of our differences. We believe that our comrades in the TF have offered different yet complementary versions of the war.
Version 1:
Emilio Albamonte, the group’s leader, emphasized methodological aspects and wrote, “If it were a question of national self-determination, we would support Ukraine. There is a problem of national self-determination when a powerful nation invades a semi-colonial country.”
For a revolutionary Marxist, this should be a crucial point: siding with the military camp of the oppressed country under attack. However, according to Albamonte, this criterion does not apply to Ukraine because “it is not just any dependent country or semi-colony.” Its ruling classes and the vast majority of the working population “voted, staged a coup, and so on, to become an appendage of the European Union and, if possible, NATO.” According to Albamonte, this made the war a “reactionary war” on both sides.
Conflating the oligarchs with the Ukrainian working class—the majority of the population—is a very crude error for a Marxist when dealing with antagonistic social classes. The working class may suffer from false consciousness for a period of time, which is largely explainable by the absence of revolutionary parties in Ukraine and the EU. This false consciousness may be in deep contradiction with the working class’s interests for a short or long period. However, this contradiction can only be resolved through action, including the military defense of the country against the Russian invasion, the exposure of Zelensky’s pro-imperialist bourgeois government in the process, and the advancement of a revolutionary alternative.
Version 2:
In parallel with Albamonte’s theses, Matías Maiello wrote an article combatting arguments in favor of a “just war” in Ukraine. To this end, he adopted substantial parts of Putin’s version of the conflict, which has been disproven by reality itself. Maiello presents an account of Ukraine in recent years where Euromaidan developed. He describes a Ukraine dominated by the far right and a “low-intensity civil war marked by the existence of a Russian-speaking minority comprising one-third of the population.”
Maiello deliberately confuses a large Russian-speaking minority with a Russophile one. In reality, the vast majority of Russian speakers are fighting Putin, who imposed a regime of terror in the occupied areas. He portrays the “separatist militias of Donbass” and “far-right militias such as the Azov Battalion” as representatives of two opposing sides, as if this accurately reflects the situation in Ukraine. However, the social influence and political weight of the Ukrainian far right are negligible and far inferior to those of many countries in the EU or the United States. On the other hand, there is no doubt that Zelensky’s government is pro-imperialist and associated with Ukrainian oligarchs. However, it is another matter entirely to claim that its base is the far right, as Maiello asserts, following Putin’s propaganda.
Describing the pro-Russian militias in Donetsk and Luhansk, which are marked by a strong Russian far-right presence, as mere “separatist militias” silences the fact that they were organized and led by the Russian army. It also gives them legitimacy, treating them as an expression of a popular movement in favor of annexation to Russia.
Maiello’s identification of the Ukrainian military mobilization against the invasion — the core of which was the mass recruitment of hundreds of thousands of volunteers, mostly workers, into the Territorial Forces — with the far-right Azov Battalion is typical of Putin’s propaganda and inconceivable for a Trotskyist revolutionary.
Final version:
As the war progressed, the final version established by the TF leaders—a kind of official version—is reproduced by the authors of the article with which we are arguing.
They claim that “Ukraine is an oppressed country that was invaded by a stronger power, Russia,” but the invasion “was responded to by a coalition of major Western imperialist states, led by the United States and NATO, in support of Zelensky’s Ukrainian government.” Due to this imperialist coalition, the Ukrainian armed resistance ceases to be a “just war” and becomes a “reactionary war.” National oppression becomes irrelevant, and Ukraine’s war against Putin’s imperialist aggression becomes its opposite: a reactionary war between Russia and ´”the coalition of Western imperialist states.”
The TF comrades claim that the situation in Ukraine is very different from the Sino-Japanese War that preceded and accompanied World War II, in which China received significant U.S. military support after the attack on Pearl Harbor. They claim that the difference is that, at that time, “the powers were divided among themselves over the possession of China. There was no coalition of powers united in the camp of the oppressed nation,” which, they say, is the case now. If the Trotskyists resolutely sided with China’s military in its “just war” against the Japanese invasion, then we cannot side with the Ukrainian military against Russia.
This argument is so fragile that it collapses under its own weight. Russia under Putin must be characterized as an imperialist country—a “regional imperialism” supported by Chinese imperialism.
Albamonte argued that Lenin’s theses in “Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism” were mere “positive science,” not dialectics, and that Lenin was wrong to characterize the Russia of his time as an imperialist power. Based on this, Albamonte and Maiello deny the imperialist character of Putin’s Russia. Now that the TF has begun to attribute “growing imperialist traits” to China, it is reasonable to expect that they will eventually say the same about Russia.
The U.S. and the EU’s intense indirect intervention in the war is evident, as is Zelensky’s government’s pro-imperialist and anti-worker character. However, this does not change the fact that we are facing a war of national aggression by the world’s second-largest military power against a much weaker nation, which it seeks to subjugate by force using extremely cruel methods. This war aims to control the military, economic, and political aspects of a country that is a huge breadbasket, has a fundamental geographical location for energy and commercial transit, and possesses a size and resources that the Kremlin deems essential for its imperialist project of “Greater Russia.” The Ukrainians are fighting a just war: a war of national liberation against a conquering army.
There is no doubt that the U.S .and the EU—each with their own interests—and Russia seek to colonize Ukraine. However, in politics, one cannot confuse the times. What we have now is an invasion by Putin’s Russia. In the face of this invasion, we must support the Ukrainian people in their struggle for freedom and national integrity. We must incorporate this struggle into the battle for a socialist solution within the framework of the struggle for a Socialist United States of Europe. The outcome of the war will determine the working class’s and the Ukrainian people’s capacity to resist their pro-imperialist government and the plundering of U.S. and European imperialism. It will also directly affect the struggle of the Russian working class and the peoples of the Russian Federation and its periphery.
The behavior of Western imperialism
The authors of the article seem to forget that, as was the case with the tsars and Stalin before him, Putin does not view Ukraine as a country, but rather as part of Russia. They also overlook the fact that, in the early days of the invasion, Washington and the EU limited themselves to offering the Ukrainian government the option of leaving the country and establishing a government in exile on their territory.
However, Putin’s initial plans were thwarted by the massive mobilization of hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians, most of whom were workers and many of whom were Russian-speaking, who enlisted as volunteers to fight. During this time, over a million Russians and more than 400,000 Ukrainians lost their lives, but no Americans or Europeans did. There have been large, recent mobilizations against Zelensky’s attempt to control anti-corruption agencies. The comrades of the TF are unaware of this. They are left with a “geopolitics” that excludes life as it is.
Since the beginning of the war, after Putin’s initial plans for a quick conquest of the country were defeated, Western imperialism, led by the U.S., has changed tactics. They began providing limited, belated, controlled, and conditional military support with the ultimate goal of dividing Ukraine’s resources with Russia while attempting to weaken Putin’s regime. Trump exacerbated this policy by disregarding the EU and openly blackmailing Zelensky’s government to quickly sign a capitulation, handing over eastern Ukraine to Putin while reserving the minerals in the Ukrainian-held part for itself.
Our comrades in the TF unquestioningly accept the U.S. government’s version of military and financial aid to Ukraine. They praise the magnitude of this support without providing any concrete assessments and systematically ignore the delays, military limitations, loan nature of this aid, and its conditionality. They present Trump’s abrupt tactical shift, marked by his rapprochement with Putin and his blackmail of Zelensky, as a continuation of Biden’s tactics.
The nature and direction of the war
Curiously, our comrades at the TF, who claim to be Trotskyists, forget to apply the historical lessons of the Trotskyist movement to wars of national liberation.
Looking back at the Second Sino-Japanese War, which began in 1937 when Japan invaded China, we see that the TF’s policy on Ukraine is similar to Shachtman’s Workers Party (WP). At the beginning of the war, Cannon’s SWP (the U.S. section of the Fourth International) and Shachtman’s WP (a SWP splinter group) supported China against Japan. However, after the bombing of Pearl Harbor in 1941, when the U.S. entered the war against Japan and began sending military aid to China, Shachtman changed his policy. He adopted a position of neutrality—a “neither nor” stance—very similar to that defended by the TF with regard to Ukraine.
Morrison, on behalf of the SWP, responded by saying:
“Shachtman’s general proposition is that one cannot support the struggle of a colonial or semi-colonial nation against an imperialist nation engaged in war with another imperialist nation as long as the colonial nation is under the control of its capitalist class.”
“However, the core principle of revolutionary Marxist colonial policy is to support the struggle of colonial peoples against an imperialist oppressor, even if led by the bourgeoisie, without exception during a period of imperialist war.“
This position is even more evident today, when there is no direct armed confrontation between NATO and Putin. Morrison continued:
“Suppose the amount of aid coming from the United States to China is much greater now than before Pearl Harbor. Would this change the character of the Chinese conflict? Even before the official declaration of war, American airmen were fighting for China. Suppose there are many more of them in China now. This is, of course, a more important factor. However, no realistic Marxist would argue that receiving technical or military aid through specially trained officers changes the nature of the Chinese conflict. The important question is who ultimately controls the armed forces and, therefore, the conflict. So far, no one can reasonably argue that it is not the Chinese government that controls the Chinese armies. If a sufficient number of U.S. troops were sent to China and took control of the fight against Japan, then we would have to change our attitude. But this has not happened.“
Morrison addressed a central issue: the circumstances of a just war of national liberation can change in a way that turns it into an inter-imperialist war. This happened in China when the U.S.-Japan war in Asia advanced and US troops entered China, taking control of the Kuomintang troops. We point this out because the question of who directs the war is qualitative. If effective command in Ukraine were to pass into U.S. hands—which implies complete technological control, necessarily accompanied by the intervention of troops on the ground—the character of the war would change. Instead of a just war of national liberation, the war in Ukraine would become an inter-imperialist war. This has not happened and is unlikely to happen under the current circumstances.
Our comrades in the TF fail to analyze the specific circumstances of the war and how it is being conducted. They assert, without evidence, that the Americans have been directing the war through NATO since the beginning.
Clearly, no one can doubt NATO’s influence on the war’s conduct, nor Zelensky’s submission to Western powers, including in the military sphere. Instead of nationalizing the country’s industry to support the war against the invasion, Zelensky focuses on begging for Western weapons. The development of the Ukrainian military industry, with notable advances in drones in recent times, was late, uneven, insufficient, and dependent on private entrepreneurs’ interests.
However, criticizing Zelensky’s submission is different from claiming that the United States-NATO effectively leads the war. This does not correspond to reality and deliberately ignores the strong contradictions and clashes that occurred—and continue to occur, especially with Trump—between the Ukrainian and US NATO military commands.
Throughout the war, these contradictions manifested as U.S./NATO opposition to Ukraine carrying out offensive actions on Russian territory, the disconnection of Starlink satellites on Elon Musk’s orders in September 2022 during the counteroffensive in Kherson and Donetsk, and Trump’s March 2025 orders to cut off all military intelligence support to Ukraine as an attempt to force its capitulation to Russia. This support was only partially restored afterwards. In July 2025, the Starlink connection was lost for hours across the entire front line.
It is useful to consult the extensive report by Adam Entous, published in the New York Times on March 29, 2025. The report shows the sharp contradictions between U.S. officials and the Ukrainian military command regarding the conduct of the war. The Ukrainian military is constantly upset by delays in weapon supplies, attempts to control operations to avoid “provoking” Russia, and restrictions on Ukrainian actions. The report states the following, for example:
“As the Ukrainians gained greater autonomy in the partnership, they increasingly kept their intentions secret.” They were constantly irritated that the Americans could not or would not give them all the weapons and equipment they wanted. The Americans, for their part, were irritated by what they saw as the Ukrainians’ unreasonable demands.”
The significant “Operation Spider Web” on June 1, 2025, against Russian military airfields was executed without informing the U.S. military command.
Regarding the Russian invasion
Part of the text by our comrades summarizes their attitude toward the war:
“The socialist, anti-imperialist left must emphatically repudiate Putin’s autocratic government’s occupation, demand the immediate withdrawal of Russian military forces from all Ukrainian territory, and encourage the Ukrainian population to take an independent position from Zelensky’s pro-imperialist government and the various reactionary nationalist forces subordinate to NATO powers. Similarly, at the international level, they must promote a large anti-war and anti-militarist movement of the working class and youth.“
The first question that comes to mind is what they mean by “emphatically repudiating this occupation.” Comrades can “repudiate” it, even “emphatically,” and demand “immediate withdrawal,” but that is nothing more than a verbal statement.This is because, unlike the Ukrainian military, the TF does not support the fight against the Russian imperialist invasion. For the TF, there is no such thing as a just war of national liberation; rather, it is a “reactionary war” in which one should not side with the attacked or the aggressors. Furthermore, its organizations in Europe participated in campaigns such as “Not a Single Tank for Ukraine,” and supported a call for a general strike against sending weapons to Ukraine in Germany. We believe that the TF’s position aligns with the pacifist views of Lula, Petro, La France Insoumise, Germany’s Die Linke, and Spain’s Sumar and Podemos.
Conversely, is it possible to expose the intrigues and deceptions of NATO or Zelensky’s pro-imperialist government without taking a clear position in the Ukrainian trenches? Is it possible to fight Zelensky with an abstentionist stance of “neither with one nor the other,” placing oneself in “no man’s land”? What does the TF tell Ukrainian workers, many of whom are on the front lines? Should they not support either military side because both are reactionary, and should they only support the Ukrainian side when there is an anti-imperialist and socialist government in command?
In the IWL, we believe that revolutionaries must unconditionally support Ukraine’s military, fighting for the oppressed and invaded nation’s military victory. This does not imply any political support for Zelensky or NATO. We believe it is necessary to oppose and denounce NATO and imperialist rearmament without ambiguity. We must fight against the military budgets of Trump, Macron, Merz, Sanchez, and so on. Within Ukraine, we must confront Zelensky for submitting to Ukrainian oligarchs, Trump, and European imperialisms.
However, this political confrontation with Zelensky can only be effectively carried out on the ground by being “the best soldiers against Putin,” while confronting his corruption and his actions that undermine democratic rights and the rights and achievements of working people. It’s similar to what we did with the Republican government during the Spanish Civil War of 1936–1939: being “the best soldiers against Franco” and fighting for the independent organization of the proletariat and youth. This is how we are currently working to build a revolutionary force in Ukraine.
Mistakes we have no problem acknowledging and rectifying
We have no problem acknowledging and rectifying our mistakes. For our part, we acknowledge that we made mistakes in our policy toward the war in Ukraine. One of those mistakes, perhaps the most significant, was including in our materials the demand that imperialist governments send weapons to resist the Russian invasion in the early months. This was a significant error that was subsequently corrected and formally documented at our 16th World Congress. The reason is obvious: No imperialist government can truly support an oppressed people’s struggle for national freedom. If it intervenes, it does so conditionally, ultimately aiming to subjugate and dominate the oppressed country in accordance with its imperialist interests.
However, we cannot sit idly by as Cannon’s SWP comrades did during the initial phase of the Sino-Japanese War. They resolutely supported China against Japan, providing political and material aid to Chinese workers and the popular resistance. We have campaigns in support of the Krivy Rih mining and metalworkers’ union, as well as the current campaign for the inclusion of comrades Denys Matsola and Vlad Zhuravlev on the prisoner exchange list. They are two class fighters imprisoned by Russian troops during the capture of Mariupol.
On the other hand, while we oppose demanding that imperialist governments send weapons to Ukraine, we also oppose boycotting the transport of those weapons. As Trotsky told us in 1938:
“Suppose that tomorrow a rebellion breaks out in the French colony of Algeria under the banner of national independence, and the Italian government prepares to send weapons to the rebels, motivated by its own imperialist interests. What should the attitude of Italian workers be in this case?” I have deliberately chosen an example of a rebellion against democratic imperialism with the intervention of fascist imperialism on the side of the rebels. Should Italian workers prevent the shipment of arms to the Algerians?” Let any ultra-leftist dare to answer this question in the affirmative. “Every revolutionary, along with Italian workers and Algerian rebels, would indignantly reject such an answer. At the same time, French maritime workers would be obligated to do everything possible to block the shipment of ammunition intended for use against the rebels. Only such a policy on the part of Italian and French workers constitutes revolutionary internationalism.”
In Brazil, the TF gave in to a populist policy of the PT and PSOL
In Brazil, the TF succumbed to the PT and PSOL’s campist policy. Even in this new article, the TF and MRT comrades compare the real coup in Egypt with Dilma Rousseff’s impeachment in Brazil. They call the fall of a liberal-worker government that collaborates with the bourgeoisie, through institutional mechanisms within the rules of the bourgeois democratic regime, which gave rise to a bourgeois democratic government, a “coup d’état” or “institutional coup.”
Impeachment is a legal and political mechanism enshrined in the 1988 Constitution that allows for the removal of an elected president without changing the regime or transferring power to the vice president. If the vice president is unable to assume power, then it transfers to the president of the Legislative Chambers (first to the Chamber of Deputies and then to the Senate), and finally to the president of the Federal Supreme Court (STF).
In their article, our comrades write that, “Throughout the reactionary turn articulated by the mainstream press, Operation Car Wash, the judiciary, and U.S. imperialism—in alliance with traditional bourgeois parties such as the PSDB and the PMDB—the PSTU decided to focus its political agitation on the slogan ‘Out with them all.'” Although they claim to have opposed impeachment, it is a fact that this was never part of the PSTU’s political agitation.”
However, defending the slogan “Out with All of Them and General Elections Now!” is inseparable from rejecting impeachment. Virtually all of the PSTU’s articles, speeches, and pamphlets from that period explain that we did not support impeachment because we advocated removing them all. This can easily be verified in the 2015 and 2016 editions of Opinião Socialista (available in the Leon Trotsky archive). Therefore, to claim that rejecting impeachment was not part of our policy is another distortion of our position.
We said that it was necessary to defeat and remove all of them—that is, the entire line of succession: Temer (MDB—Dilma’s vice president), Cunha (MDB—president of the Chamber), and Renan Calheiros (MDB—president of the Senate). Our slogan fought against the government and the political regime (including the judiciary), resonating perfectly with the working class.
The government was in a deep crisis. In December 2015, the impeachment process was formally admitted in parliament. In September of that year, when only 9% of the population supported the government, the CSP-Conlutas held an alternative rally on Avenida Paulista in São Paulo with more than 15,000 people, calling for an end to all of them. At the time, we of the PSTU explained: “Dilma and the PT are experiencing a huge crisis. Its weakness stems, first and foremost, from the massive break with the government and the PT by the working class and the poorest people.”
At that event, Zé Maria, the national president of the PSTU, said: “The PT government, in the face of the crisis, is ruthlessly attacking the rights of the working class to defend the interests and profits of banks and multinationals. Meanwhile, the bourgeois opposition is demanding even more cuts to workers’ rights and filing an impeachment request to remove Dilma and replace her with Temer, Aécio, or Cunha. And to do what? The same thing the PT is doing: defending the interests of banks and big business. That is why we believe the left’s position that we must defend the government against the right-wing opposition is wrong.” He went on to argue: “Both sides represent the same policies. The right wing is already inside the PT government with ruralist Kátia Abreu, Finance Minister Joaquim Levy, and many others.” The finance minister was appointed by the bankers.
Addressing the MTST and the PSOL leadership, Zé Maria defended the construction of a workers’ alternative: “It is here, in the streets, in the struggles of the workers, that we can build a left-wing alternative to the crisis in this country, not by defending the government.”
In April 2016, when Dilma’s approval rating was at 6%, and Temer and other bourgeois opposition figures were at 11%, we wrote in the newspaper Opinião Socialista: “The working class and the majority of the people want Dilma to go, but they do not want Temer, Cunha, or any other bandit from this Congress to govern.” The will of the working class and the majority of the people is not represented by the National Congress, the bloc defending ‘Stay Dilma,’ or the bloc defending impeachment and Temer’s government. Neither bloc represents the change that the working class, youth, and poor demand.”
Three positions emerged during this time: The first was the bourgeois government’s stance in support of “Stay Dilma” (they argued that impeachment was a coup). The second was the traditional liberal right’s stance (mainly the MDB and PSDB), which supported impeachment and transferring power to Temer-MDB (the vice president of the PT government). The third was our stance: “Out with them all! New elections now!”
Conspiracy Theory vs. Marxist Analysis
In a Marxist analysis, Dilma Rousseff’s impeachment cannot be cited as a coup d’état because of the nature of the political process that led to the fall of the government and the internal logic of liberal democracy.
Our comrades in the TF justify their support for the government by using the PT’s narrative. They repeat the explanation most widely disseminated by the PT bloc, which joined the “coup” thesis and the unconditional defense of Lula against corruption charges. They claim that the Lava Jato Task Force was created and trained by U.S. intelligence agencies (the FBI and the CIA). Allegedly, it was an FBI-orchestrated action to promote a coup in Brazil, change the government and political regime, imprison Lula, and ensure United States takeover of Petrobras and the pre-salt oil reserves, as well as the destruction of Mercosur.
As unbelievable as it may seem, Marilena Chauí, a philosophy professor at the University of São Paulo, first proposed this conspiracy theory. Various left-wing movements have also embraced it.
However, conspiracy theories do not explain events structurally or historically, nor do they consider them as part of a process with an economic background and a result of class struggle. On the contrary, conspiracy theories claim that events are the product of collusion.
According to this explanation, Obama was behind Lava Jato and was interested in destabilizing Brazilian bourgeois democracy. He supposedly trained prosecutors and judges to bring down the PT government.
However, the Dilma and Lula governments never rejected anything relevant to the United States. In fact, Dilma supported the pre-salt distribution project. They willingly accepted extensive “advice” on “public security” and cooperation in “combating terrorism” and “combating drugs.”
A section of the bourgeoisie, especially the PSDB and MDB, took advantage of Lava Jato’s selectivity in targeting only part of the economic and political spectrum when orchestrating the impeachment (because changing the regime was not their objective). The Globo network and Veja magazine did use it against the bourgeois bloc led by the PT and the PT itself, as they did against Crivella for the mayorship of Rio de Janeiro, while silencing PSDB scandals. Many members of the Federal Public Ministry who participated in Lava Jato have a conception of bourgeois law full of exceptions, and Judge Sérgio Moro was never neutral. The Intercept’s investigation and Operation Vaza Jato revealed legal and procedural irregularities, particularly in Lula’s case after the impeachment. However, none of this constitutes a coup d’état.
It is not true that Dilma’s downfall was orchestrated from the United States by Obama. In fact, a curious episode occurred in 2016 when the Legislative Police were accused of obstructing the Lava Jato investigations. They did so by removing microphones installed by the Federal Police in senators’ homes and by placing other devices in a counter-espionage operation with ultra-modern imported equipment. They were also trained by their “colleagues” in the United States. In this case, by SWAT. Was Obama orchestrating espionage and counterespionage in Brazil, advising both sides?
The truth is that the PT governments never opposed the United States. WikiLeaks leaks about Brazil show that under the PT governments, the country was seen by Bush and Obama as the most secure and friendliest to the United States among the BRICS countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa). The U.S. embassy in Brazil resisted Dilma’s fall for as long as possible. Contrary to what the TF says, bankers and US imperialism tried until the last moment to prevent the impeachment. They only abandoned ship when there was no chance of governability.
The idea that an imperialist plot via Lava Jato is responsible for the government’s downfall is neither Marxist, dialectical, nor historical. In this pseudo-explanation, the mass break of the working class with the PT due to the government’s fraud against the class to please imperialists, bankers, and businessmen amidst a severe economic crisis was not what brought the government down. However, the truth is that the political crisis that led to the PT government’s inability to govern occurred primarily due to a lack of social support. This crisis caused its allies to abandon ship.
The struggle between the two bourgeois blocs for control of the state did not reflect significant differences in economic policy or relations with imperialism. In fact, Henrique Meirelles—former head of the Bank of Boston, former minister under Lula, and trusted ally of US imperialism—was Lula’s preferred choice to stabilize Dilma’s government. Meirelles was also the head of the economy in the Temer government.
In March 2016, former PSDB president Fernando Henrique Cardoso told the newspaper O Estado de São Paulo: “Given the government’s obvious inability to function, I believe that impeachment is now the way forward.”
Lava Jato aimed to reform the discredited regime, not overthrow it. This explains why it did not attack the entire political and economic establishment; it preserved 70% of it. The goal was to return power to the PSDB in 2018. However, reality is richer than any scheme, and the party that sank the most with the crisis was the center, i.e., the PSDB.
For those interested in delving deeper into the topic of the supposed “coup” of 2016 in Brazil, we recommend Pablo Biondi’s book A Operação Lava Jato e a Luta de Classes: Forma Jurídica, Crise Política e Democracia Liberal, published by Editorial Sundermann.
The trivialization of what constitutes a coup
In the liberal model of democracy, even in its presidential variant, the legislature has legal supremacy over the executive. This type of regime is characterized by the ultimate dominance of parliament over the government. This institutional configuration dates back to the bourgeois revolutions and is characterized by the law as the highest expression of the general will, the linking of administrative acts to patterns of legality, and the requirement of parliamentary approval for certain governmental measures.
Therefore, the legislative chambers’ removal of the ruler only reaffirms the presupposed supremacy relationship between the branches of the so-called “separation of powers.” This removal can only occur through a parliamentary act and requires an impeachment trial of the government. As with any decision made in the legislative sphere, impeachment is subject to deliberation involving political calculations and, above all, political negotiations, promises, and concessions. A trial for crimes of responsibility is politically mediated by the conditions of the government’s support within the political system, i.e., the constellation of political parties and their reciprocal relations. This renders the legalistic interpretations that abound in left-wing organizations unviable.
Dilma’s government lost social support and found itself politically isolated. With the lowest popularity rating in history—6% approval among the population—the government was unable to remain in power. Ultimately, the decline of the capitalist groups with which it had the closest relations was decisive. This was followed by continuous abandonment by the business community, which had maintained good relations with PT administrations for so long, as well as distancing by party groups loyal to the government only when it suited them. The most important party to abandon the government was the MDB. Faced with this scenario, in which the majority of the Brazilian bourgeoisie abandoned a government that had favored them so much and demanded its early demise for a better economic scenario, much of the left clung to the decadent bourgeois camp—the former ruling class.
Since Dilma’s government was on the ropes, much of the left’s main task has been to save the PT from its circumstantial allies who abandoned it rather than fight to rebuild the working class’s political leadership.
The fact is that there can be no coup d’état without a sudden change in relations between the three branches of government. From a liberal democratic perspective, a regime change can only be verified by subverting the legislature’s predominance over the executive.
The main bourgeois forms of authoritarianism are characterized by an overdeveloped executive branch at the expense of the legislative branch. This phenomenon takes on different degrees and characteristics in regimes such as Bonapartism, military dictatorship, and fascism. It should be noted that these are three different regimes. The establishment and maintenance of this hypertrophy depend on police measures and an intensification of the state’s repressive practices, as seen in genuine coups d’état. This was not the case in 2016, however. The fall of Dilma Rousseff did not require a single curfew because workers did not leave their homes to defend her mandate. They were not prepared to defend a government they considered detestable, despite the PT administrations’ reformist efforts and the TF’s attempts to justify yielding to a campist position.
This confusion about what constitutes a coup, created by the PT and PSOL narrative—to which the TF adheres—obscures the true role of class-collaborationist PT-led governments and leaves the working class and vanguard unprepared to deal with a real coup. The farcical discourse on 2016 may pave the way for a real tragedy in the future. After all, the most dangerous way to underestimate the extreme right—Bolsonarism and the Armed Forces—in 2023 is to make people believe that a coup d’état could occur without any significant increase in state repression or a qualitative change in the political regime, as supposedly occurred in the vote to impeach Dilma.
Therefore, we must give words their proper meaning. If the current generation believes that it survived a coup in 2016 and is capable of dealing with that kind of experience, it will be easy prey.
Lula and the PT use the coup narrative to paint a rosy picture of the past, exempting their administrations from responsibility for the country’s decline and the enshrinement of repressive, Bonapartist mechanisms in the Constitution. These mechanisms include the anti-terrorism law and the Guarantee of Law and Order (GLO) ordinances, through which the Armed Forces can participate in internal repression.
The PT opposed replacing any government via impeachment and even said that Collor’s removal from office was a “coup.”
However, even though the PT and Lula claim that Bolsonaro’s 2023 attempt was a “deepening of the coup,” they know there was no coup in 2016. In fact, Lula’s current vice president, Alckmin of the PSDB, defended Dilma’s impeachment, as did seven of Lula’s current ministers, including Marina Silva (Rede). Does this mean that Lula formed a government full of “coup plotters”? Of course not! However, the MRT/TF perpetuates this false narrative.
In addition to their superficial, purely legal, and one-sided analysis and their distancing from the working class and the strong anti-government and anti-regime sentiment among the masses at the time, perhaps the MRT/TF’s capitulation to this partisan position can be explained by the fact that, at that time, the Brazilian MRT was trying to join the PSOL, a move vetoed by that party’s leadership.
Defining the 2016 impeachment as a coup trivializes the concept of coupism, rendering it irrelevant.
In conclusion
While we were working on this article in response to “A concepção morenista de revolução e a crise histórica da LIT,” Ideas de Izquierda published two series of articles on the Angolan and Nicaraguan revolutions.
These articles acknowledge that revolutions did indeed occur in these countries, influencing reality and the class struggle worldwide. Interestingly, according to the criteria defended in the article to which we are now responding, neither of these events would be considered revolutions since they did not transfer power from one social class to another.
How do the comrades of the TF resolve this flagrant contradiction? With silence, as if nothing were happening. Faced with the urgent need to act concretely—the TF is trying to enter Africa—they are forced to abandon their previous theory and develop a new one without acknowledging the changes they are making.
However, it’s worth noting that despite this essential adjustment—albeit 50 years late—both texts suffer from the problems we identified earlier: judging events by their final results and ignoring the broad possibilities they opened up when they occurred.
We have chosen not to provide a more in-depth critique of the texts on Angola and Nicaragua in this article but will do so soon.
The same methodology—adjusting their positions as they become indefensible and clash with the mass movement and the vanguard—can be observed in the discussion on Palestine. The TF’s contrast between the slogan “Palestine free from the river to the sea” and variations expressing defense of a secular, democratic, non-racist Palestine throughout its historical territory and “working-class and socialist Palestine” disappeared. The TF implied that the former was capitulation to etatism and that the latter expressed a genuine Trotskyist program.
As we demonstrated in the above text, such an interpretation of the slogans can only be explained by a misunderstanding or rejection of the Transitional Program. However, this will also be the subject of future controversy. For now, we are content to point out the method: silently changing position.
