Thu Mar 28, 2024
March 28, 2024

The reality behind the Impeachment of Dilma

The working class wants Temer out and Dilma not to come back

The Senate reaffirmed, by the end of Wednesday, August 31, the impeachment of Dilma Rousseff (PT). It was a farce, featured by the Congress but actually expressing, in a completely distorted way, what happens in the base of the society. The impeachment takes Dilma out but leaves Temer instead, when the working class and most of the people do not want any of them.

By PSTU.

The polarization between Dilma and Temer is false: neither one of both sides express the working class now, neither the wish of most part of the population.

Super-structural analysis

In front of the impeachment, a significant part of the left had a merely super-structural approach to the process. Dilma and the PT, supported by this left wing, argument the “tax pedaling” [pedalada fiscal] or “responsibility crimes” did not exist, and what happened is that a coup was consummated, “not respecting” the 54 million votes for Dilma and her list (including Temer) during the last election.

The bourgeois opposition, led by the PDSB, the DEM and part of Dilma’s list (including Temer) said they were following the Constitution, and the impeachment happened due to a legal and also political problem, as Dilma practiced electoral fraud to her voters.

What is the real problem here? The truth is, all of them are scamming the masses. First Dilma and Temer, as they lied to the workers and the population during the elections, by saying they “would never attack the workers’ rights”. Then, the bourgeois opposition, now supporting Temer, who comes to implement the tax adjustment that took Dilma to lose her social base, as most of the people does not accept it. Thus, none of them represents the will of most of the population. They are in this scam all together.

Most of the people who reelected Dilma in 2014 is against unemployment, shortage, increase of the minimum age for retirement, cut of rights and tax adjustment. Which is exactly what Dilma and the PT began implementing, and what Temer is continuing now.

Another sector of the left wing affirms there is a coup, or a “parliamentary maneuver”, against a progressive sector, which defends the rights. This would be happening due to a “reactionary wave”; that is to say, the masses would be won to the tax adjustment policy, the social security reform, and the program being associated to the right wing as a whole. So the masses would be defeated, or at least completely apathetic, allowing the right wing to sail all the way through this reactionary wave.

What is actually happening below?

What is the problem with such argumentations? Those are super-structural analysis, focused on the figures of the National Congress and not in the reality of the social classes. What is happening below? The truth is, most working class does not want Dilma nor Temer, not because “they turned to the right” but, on the contrary, because it is against the worsening of the life quality, against the measures of the government and the Congress, which charge the weight of the crisis over the workers’ shoulders.

A Marxist, structural analysis must consider the relationship of forces between the classes. As Lenin, we agree the thermometer of the strikes is worth a hundred times more than the voted. And we saw, over the last years, a non-precedent escalade of the strikes. In 2013, we had the highest number of strikes in the history of the country, with the private sector above the public sector for the first time.

The increase in the number of strikes expresses an increase of struggle disposition of the working class, what would pose all the conditions to take ahead a General Strike in Brazil to defeat Temer and this National Congress. The great obstacle for this to happen is, precisely, the fact the main class organizations, the Unions and Federations, are not truly mobilizing to defeat the adjustment and the governments that implement it. The CUT and the PT, on the contrary, tried to mobilize mainly for the return of Dilma, and the masses did not want to.

In the “Out with Temer” of the Frente Brasil Popular [Popular Brasil Front] and the Frente Povo Sem Medo [Front People Without Fear], the return of Dilma was always implied. This is why the working class did not respond to any call made by them, as the class does not want her back.

If we were to apply this super-structural analysis to the process of the Indignados, in the Spanish State, we would stop at a dead-end alley. We would consider it a reactionary demonstration, as the elections that came after such mobilization sealed the victory of Mariano Rajoy (right wing candidate) over the PSOE.

Perspectives

How did we get here? The concessions held by the government of Lula and Dilma (at the beginning of her first turn), in a context of growing economy, were no longer possible to keep. When the economy was growing, the PT benefited the banks primarily, which achieved record profits (as Lula always recalls), and the big landowners and companies. For the workers and most population, only some cheap concessions were possible.

In times of crisis, though, it was necessary to choose. And the PT chose the bourgeoisie and the imperialism. For the working class and the workers as a whole, only inflation, shortage, fall in the job creation and then dismissals (reaching record rates) were left. This is what undermined the social base of the government.

It is also necessary to say is not true Dilma fell because she was no longer doing what the bourgeoisie wanted. She fell because she could not hold the minimum governability conditions to do what she wanted to: continue ruling for the rich, while articulating all the classes.

Impeachment consummated, what are the perspectives? The great economic, political and social crisis tends to deepen. Although the bourgeoisie has a general agreement regarding implementing the adjustment and the reforms that cut and eliminate rights, they disagree regarding who looses more with this process. The discontent of the working class, on the other hand, tends to grow against Temer, as the life conditions worsen.

What will happen now? Temer’s government and the bourgeoisie as a whole will try to impose the adjustment Dilma could not. The working class, on the other hand, is struggling, as holds conditions to defeat this project and even the government. The great challenge is to organize the working class to throw down the package of attacks Temer is preparing, and also the Temer’s government itself

It is necessary for the CUT, the CTB, Força Sindical [Union Strength], as much as the MTST, to respond to the CSP-Conlutas call, to mobilize and impose a General Strike to defeat the adjustment, the social security reform, the labor reform and the government.

It is not only possible but urgent to defeat Temer. This is the need of the class, and we will put all our forces to it.

***

Translation: Sofía Ballack.

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