Only working men and women know how difficult it is to live in Brazil’s cities. There is a lack of hospitals, beds and doctors. The schools suffer, abandoned to their fate, with poorly paid teachers, while those in power advance in their plan to militarize schools, which worsens education and increases the oppression of students, teachers and parents (read more here).
By: Julio Anselmo
The lack of employment, leisure and culture for youth is appalling. Cultural and leisure spaces are concentrated in expensive areas, with prohibitive prices for those who have to work to support themselves. In short, cities offer nothing to young people, other than despair for those who have to combine study and work, who are trapped in precarious schools and in poorly paid jobs, without rights, and susceptible to oppression and violence from the police or crime.
Taking the money and the city away from billionaires
Today’s cities only work for capitalist billionaires. It’s where business flows. They control everything from public transportation companies to construction companies that operate in real estate speculation, taking over the “desirable” areas of the city and evicting the working poor to faraway places.
We are not talking about the owners of small stores, bakeries, or little corner bars. We are talking about the owners of multi-million dollar companies, the real estate funds, the controllers of pension funds, the big bankers and the big capitalist companies that dominate our country.
Less than 0.01% of the population keeps all the wealth produced by us workers. According to Forbes magazine, there are 62 billionaires in Brazil with more than one billion dollars (5.6 billion reais). This handful of people is made up of owners of large companies that control the country’s economy, dominate national politics, and also shape the city according to their interests and business.
That is why, at the same time that there is the Fiscal Framework created by the Lula government, which demands a reduction of funds for social areas, pressure is increasing for the privatization of schools, hospitals and public companies, such as Sabesp (sanitation and water), just as the Bolsonarist governor of São Paulo, Tarcísio Freitas (Republican party), is doing.
PSTU candidacies: in defense of working class control of the cities
The focus of the PSTU candidacies in this election is to show how, in order to have a city at the service of the workers, it is necessary to defeat the capitalist billionaires and not to govern in alliance with them. If it is the workers who produce all the wealth of the city, why can’t this wealth be used and controlled by them?
Evidently, it can. But, for that, it would be necessary to take the money away from these multimillionaires who, just because they are shareholders and owners of large capitalist monopolies, control the economy and also the politics of the cities and the country.
It would be possible to have cities with zero tariffs in transportation; popular housing for all those who need it, and to take people off the streets and offer them decent jobs and fair wages. It is possible to have cities where there is access to employment, education and leisure for youth and the guarantee of quality public healthcare.
Change the city and fight against the far-right in a coherent way
Which candidacy really proposes to confront the capitalist billionaires? Nothing is expected from Bolsonarism and the far right. They openly defend the interests of the big capitalist billionaires, privatizations, and attacks on workers. They represent the worst of the Brazilian and international bourgeoisie. They even have a project of military dictatorship for the country.
Lula and the PT claim that they want to include the poor in the budget and tax the rich more. However, the Fiscal Framework proposed and implemented by Lula has the opposite logic. Therefore, in practice, the government does the opposite of what it says.
They govern with and for the capitalist billionaires who are making a lot of money with the Fiscal Framework and all kinds of tax benefits. If they really wanted to prioritize the poor in the budget, they should not only say so, but do so, by ending the Fiscal Framework and confronting the capitalist billionaires, and not governing in alliance with them.
The PT says it deserves their support because they present, with the Broad Front policy with the capitalists, the only viable alternative against Bolsonarism. But the fact that the PT supports right-wing candidacies in 37 cities is proof of the level of adaptation to the capitalist order and shows how, in fact, they cannot even fight the far right.
In truth, by administering capitalism, they contribute to the disorganization of the workers and the demoralization of the activists, which helps Bolsonarism.
A candidacy with a program against the capitalist billionaires, to guarantee the interests of the workers of the cities, and to fight coherently against the Bolsonarist right, needs to position itself as a left and socialist opposition to Lula’s government, strengthening an alternative of class independence that is revolutionary and socialist.
