By Marichua Fontana, Unified Socialist Workers’ Party (PSTU – Brazil)
Revolutionaries and the working class must take the lead in fighting back against Trump-Bolsonaro’s attack on Brazil, a semi-colonial country.
It is no coincidence that the PSTU and the São José dos Campos and Region Metalworkers’ Union, led mainly by party militants, took the lead in defending the country’s sovereignty. They held mass assemblies in factories to discuss the issue and took the initiative to call on all workers’ organizations to organize a demonstration against the attacks.
In this struggle, we must be prepared to unite with anyone willing to confront the attack, including the Lula government.
However, in this battle, it is also necessary to uphold the principle that the working class and revolutionaries must be politically and organizationally independent from the bourgeoisie and, therefore, from Lula’s conciliatory government, which currently represents the majority of the bourgeoisie.
We will continue to be a left-wing, socialist opposition to the government but will fight alongside it against imperialism if it takes effective measures to confront it. Likewise, we will defend measures taken against the imperialists.
The subordination of the country to imperialism and the Brazilian bourgeoisie’s eternal cowardice
It must be said, however, that beyond defending Trump’s non-interference in Bolsonaro’s trial by the Federal Supreme Court (STF), the government has taken no action against Trump’s attacks, particularly the so-called “economic attack,” which is actually nothing more than “economic and political.”
For example, Lula wore a blue cap with the slogan “Brazil belongs to Brazilians,” contrasting with the “Make America Great Again” slogan used by Trump and Bolsonaro supporters. He went so far as to say that “rare earths are ours,” that he would not give up taxing “Big Tech,” and that he could use the Reciprocity Law.
Meanwhile, Vice President Geraldo Alckmin, Ministers Haddad and Simone Tebet, and most of the business community are proposing negotiations with rare earth and big tech companies.
While some companies are announcing layoffs, others are asking the government for assistance to advance labor deregulation, maintain jobs, and reduce wages. They are also demanding that the government pay reduced wages to workers.
Unfortunately, Brazil does not belong to Brazilians. The ruling class is a minority partner in the exploitation of Brazil by various imperialist powers, and with each passing day, it subordinates the country further. This attitude has always been supported by the governments in power, including those of the Workers’ Party (PT). These governments have always governed the country within the limits of this subordination according to the interests of multinationals and imperialist countries. They have even deepened this subordination because they are pro-imperialist.
However, given the magnitude of the current attack, this does not mean that the bourgeoisie and the government cannot be forced to react to some extent. However, we must remember that the struggle against imperialism and for sovereignty is ours, the working class’, and we must take the lead in this battle.
If the government and national bourgeoisie take a position to confront this attack, we will act in unity with them, without losing our political and organizational independence.
Content and form, strategy and tactics
In a situation like this, the essence of our policy toward imperialism or the Workers’ Party’s collaborationist government with the bourgeoisie does not change, but our approach does. In other words, our strategy remains the same, but our tactics change.
We demand that Lula begin to effectively implement reciprocity. If he does so, we will unite in our efforts to combat imperialism. Nevertheless, we will maintain full political independence and denounce and confront any limitations imposed by Lula’s bourgeois, class-collaborationist government during this struggle. That is, if the confrontation materializes.
We will continue to not support the government politically because our strategy is to build class independence. Furthermore, the real struggle for national sovereignty cannot be waged within the limits of the Fiscal Framework, in alliance with the bourgeoisie, or within this system.
Sovereignty can only be achieved through the struggle of the working class and its allies in the countryside and city—including small producers—and through a government of workers and their allies (also in the countryside and city) committed to a socialist project for society, without the bourgeoisie.
Therefore, while we are prepared to join the government in a coup against imperialism, we will remain in the leftist and socialist opposition if the government does so.
Sectarians and opportunists
In his book Popular Front Governments in History, the Argentine Trotskyist Nahuel Moreno uses Trotsky’s definition to highlight that both sectarians and opportunists are united by the same method.
“Opportunist thinking, like sectarian thinking, has characteristics in common. From the complexity of circumstances and forces, they extract one or two factors that seem to them the most important — and which, in fact, sometimes are — and isolate these factors from complex reality, attributing unlimited and unrestricted power to them,” he wrote.
“The clash between sectarianism and opportunism, from a methodological point of view, arises from the fact that one absolutizes an element that is the opposite of what the other absolutizes. Neither pays attention to the fact that both elements are part of reality,” he concluded.
To illustrate what Trotsky and Moreno discussed, let us look at some examples of how sectarians and opportunists behave in the class struggle.
Sectarianism
Faced with an imperialist attack, a military invasion, a Bonapartist military coup, or the rise of fascism, the sectarian refuses to consider the “form” of dealing with the government (i.e., tactics) and refuses to adapt his own.
This sectarian stance can lead to betrayal. For example, Trotsky criticized the ultra-leftist position adopted by Stalinism after Hitler’s rise. Stalinists equated social democracy with Nazism and refused to fight the Nazis alongside them.
In situations like these, sectarians and ultra-leftists refuse to fight alongside the government against reaction. According to Moreno, the sectarian refuses to adapt his slogans and language, trampling on the illusions and beliefs of the masses. In short, he expresses a petty-bourgeois contempt for the workers’ aspirations.
Opportunism, or the “left of order”
However, for both Trotsky and Moreno, opportunism is the main problem in the face of a class collaborationist government, even in situations involving imperialist attacks, invasions, or military coups.
Recently, we have witnessed three distinct moments in the country’s economic situation. First, Lula’s government was pressured by the Centrão, which repealed the IOF (indirect tax) and questioned public finances limited by the neoliberal fiscal framework.
Second, the Planalto, the Popular Brazil Front (FBP), the People Without Fear Front (FPSM), and the entire left supporting the government led a reaction in defense of the government and all its policies. This was supposedly against the “Congress that is the enemy of the people,” or rather, the Centrão.
They defended the income tax exemption for those earning up to R$5,000 and demanded an end to the 6×1 scale. They also demanded the taxation of multibillionaires, gambling, and banks. However, they did not question the Lula government’s economic policy or fiscal adjustment. These are the main reasons for the IOF. In addition to being an indirect tax, the IOF was intended to pay interest on the debt to bankers.
At the same time, they sought to stabilize the government’s finances and make some concessions (with an eye on the 2026 elections), while maintaining the attacks required by this economic policy.
In other words, a “mobilization” was launched in defense of the government and its economic policy without questioning fiscal adjustment. This “mobilization” aims to take to the streets for an electoral campaign in favor of “Lula 2026” and not to advance the class’s struggles and demands, which require breaking with the current economic policy.
Now, imperialism is attacking. Once again, the struggle is to defeat imperialism and achieve the unity of action necessary to confront it while maintaining the political and organizational independence of the working class.
However, once again, a certain “left of order” continues to sacrifice the independence of the working class and the necessary confrontation with imperialism on the altar of political support for the government and an agenda subordinated to the 2026 electoral campaign.
