Brazil: the Crisis and the Fight Against Reformism
The following is translated from our Brazilian comrades of the Grupo de Trabalhadores Revolucionários do Brasil (GTR-BR)
The instability of the bourgeois democratic regime in Brazil has deepened since the impeachment of Dilma in 2016. The Brazilian institutions have their structures eroded on display. Saving democracy, including bourgeois democratic rights, is only possible through the direct struggle of the working class with its traditional methods of struggle. Replacing the direct class struggle with parliament and bourgeois institutions as the PT and the reformist left does, or replacing it with union bureaucracy as do centrist parties like the PSTU, is the historical betrayal of reformism and the main cause of the crisis of revolutionary leadership of the working class.
The traditional right that led to Dilma’s impeachment with maneuvers inside the bourgeois democratic regime, claiming that the cause of the crisis was the PT, which would be resolved with its departure, did not see the return to “normality” that was expected in the 2018 elections. The 2018 elections, with Bolsonaro’s rise to power as a representative of the extreme right in the country, broke the 25-year polarization between PT and the traditional right represented by the PSDB.
After Dilma’s fall, the government of her vice-president Temer was a government on a tightrope for 2.5 years. Its main moments of tension were the leaking of corruption cases carried out by the same Lava Jato (Operation Car Wash investigation) that had overthrown Dilma. Temer faced a truckers strike that paralyzed the country and a general strike called by the union bureaucracy but with workers’ support.
Bolsonaro today fails to impose a Bonapartist government, that is, to put himself “above the classes” and “appease” the country. On the contrary, it advances through fascism, relying on the ruined petty bourgeoisie and the most backward elements of the Brazilian bourgeoisie, as shown by the video of the ministerial meeting published in the media. But the meeting also shows that Bolsonaro’s radical line is not shared in the government. Most faithful to him are his ministers called by the press the “ideological wing”, the minister of the environment, education, human rights and the economy. Another wing is that of the military ministers and Vice President General Mourão. The “technical wing”, which after Mandetta and Moro left, practically no longer exists.
The Brazilian bourgeoisie is clearly divided and in dispute. The sector linked to the Lava Jato, Globo, the judiciary sector, the congress, Moro, etc., attack Bolsonaro hard. There are daily reports of corruption, actions by the Supreme Court (Federal Supreme Court), Lava Jato and PF (Federal Police) against the president and his children, and attacks on the government in the media. The dissemination of the video of the ministerial meeting is the result of one of these actions.
At the meeting, Bolsonaro, speaking of the economic crisis ahead of him, states it is a “disgrace”, predicts a situation of “unemployment, chaos and social disorder” and warns the ministers of “(political) concerns that everyone must have”. The minister of education spoke of arresting the ministers of the STF (Supreme Federal Court); the environment minister to take advantage of the media distraction with the pandemic to take steps to facilitate deforestation in the Amazon; Damares, minister of human rights, spoke of arresting governors and mayors; and Guedes, from the economy, of privatizing public banks.
The video was released in an investigation by the Supreme Court (STF) of allegations of Bolsonaro’s interference with the Federal Police (PF) made by Moro when he left the government. Bolsonaro’s response was to show once and for all that he is in charge of the PF, since days after the video was released, the PF carried out an operation against corruption investigating the governor of RJ (Rio de Janeiro), Witsel, who is part of the right-wing opposition to Bolsonaro. The governor, who was formerly a supporter of Bolsonaro and flew over the favelas by helicopter firing shots at the communities, now went on television to rage against the action of the PF and in defense of “democracy”.
Witsel cannot be our “spokesman” for democracy! Neither the Globo network, nor Moro, Morão, army generals, Maia or Lava-jato and other “democratic” and “progressive” bourgeois sectors! It is not only the Bolsonaro government that is in crisis, it is a crisis of the Brazilian bourgeois democratic regime, of the reactionary 1988 constitution and its institutions.
We live in a moment of capitalism’s terminal crisis, with the intensification of the inter-imperialist dispute between USA and China that leads us to war, and further accelerated by the pandemic. The crisis of the regime in Brazil only exposes the semi-colonial character of the country, which historically has been dependent and oppressed by American imperialism and today is squeezed between the inter-imperialist dispute between the USA and China. As we said in our ILTT (International Leninist-Trotskyist Tendency) statement:
“The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed the fragility of Bolsonaro’s ability to rule Brazil in the interests of the US fraction only. He does not have majority support and has backed off much of his radical slash and burn of the welfare system and privatisation of state-owned corporations. But his crazy “little flu” stand on the pandemic has put him offside not only with most people, but with most of the state governors who are imposing lockdowns, and many bourgeois and military figures. This compounded crisis has disqualified Bolsonaro ruling as a Bonaparte, strutting above the classes and claiming to represent the people. Now he is a buffoon whose power has been quietly transferred to the army command which will try to find a new candidate to fill the vacancy for a Bonapartist figurehead.
For the ILTT, the bankruptcy and instability of the Brazilian ruling class is evidence that semi-colonial capitalism cannot solve the terminal crisis of capitalism. Only the revolutionary working class can solve this crisis by overthrowing capitalism and building a socialist world.”
Revolutionaries do not fight for democratic rights by defending this rotten and reactionary regime. The war that we have witnessed between the sectors of the bourgeoisie, with both sides using the state institutions to attack each other, shows that with the current regime the bourgeoisie is unable to contain social and political instability in the face of the greatest economic crisis in history. This explains the growth of Bonapartism and fascism as a necessary method for the bourgeoisie to contain social upheavals and the workers’ struggle.
It is already clear that the right-wing opposition headed by Lava Jato, Globo, Moro, STF and sectors of the FFAA (Brazilian Armed Forces) want “Fora Bolsonaro” (Out with Bosonaro). Bolsonaro’s impeachment today is openly defended by various sectors of the right, with more than 30 requests filed in the Chamber of Deputies. At a time when the bourgeois democratic regime is barely standing, can the country endure yet another impeachment? Ultimately the issue will be resolved by the military, with whom this bourgeois sector has no problem joining in order to guarantee “stability” and “democracy”.
Impeachment is also the defended by most the left, PT, PSOL and PSTU that seem at least to have reached an agreement on “Fora Bolsonaro”. The totality of the left today, from the right wing to the ultra left, debates and writes polemics about the way out of the crisis within the bourgeois democratic regime. What everyone agrees on is that “revolution is not possible”. The debate broadcast over the internet between PSTU, MES and MRT is an example of this.
The PSTU is keen to emphasize that Fora Bolsonaro alone is not enough, Fora Mourão is also necessary, so the solution is “general elections now”. The MRT, which agrees that a revolutionary exit is not possible, says that new elections do not challenge the regime and that the exit should be the Constituent Assembly (AC). These controversies were no different during the crises in the Temer government, in which PSTU opposed the PT over “general elections” while the PT defended elections for president only. The MRT, on the other hand, once again represented the left flank of reformism trying to save the regime with a new AC.
Why should we defend a bourgeois democratic regime that collapses, at a time of greatest economic crisis in history, in the midst of a pandemic, in which imperialisms threaten war and the bourgeoisie has no other choice but to attack the working class harshly to pay the price of the crisis? The working class defends its rights, including bourgeois democratic rights, with its direct struggle, the general strike, occupation, pickets, self-defense and workplace committees.
There has never been a reason for the class to stop “going to the streets”, that is, fighting for their rights. Even more in the face of a huge crisis of capitalism, attacks and withdrawals of rights and the pandemic. A general strike is necessary for workers to take control of measures to fight the pandemic in their hands, deciding who will work, with what security, what will be produced. The bourgeoisie has always been clear that it did not intend to contain the pandemic, but only to delay it so that we die little by little, without promoting chaos in the health system.
The general strike is needed to defend jobs and wages and to preserve rights. It takes organization and class independence, with the formation of local and national workers’ committees, occupation of factories and hospitals. Self-defense committees against rising fascism are urgently needed. The reformist left, which is at home and uses the pandemic as an excuse for its betrayal, will soon have to return with its fanfare of “demonstrations”, which in fact has the purpose of containing the struggles, especially at the moment when more demonstrations, protests and the spontaneous resistance of workers increase.
We defend lockdown as a necessary principle to contain the pandemic. But the bourgeoisie “lockdown” is on the one hand to save capitalism itself, and on the other hand to repress and contain the working class. Only workers can guarantee the necessary social isolation to contain the pandemic. That is why the “lockdown now”, without class character, called by the PSTU as a necessary stage, defends the lockdown of the hypocritical bourgeoisie. The world bourgeoisie has understood that repression and authoritarianism is the best way to “fight” the pandemic.
We are seeing the lockdown of the bourgeoisie in countries like India, Kenya and South Africa, in which dozens of workers were killed by the police for “breaking the quarantine” while having to be locked up at home starving! That is why hypocritical, bourgeois and petty bourgeois speeches that the left makes, such as “saving lives before the economy”, lead to the support of people like Bolsonaro, who claims to be very concerned that the people have no work. That is why the social isolation necessary to contain the pandemic must be taken into the hands of workers.
The right-wing opposition to Bolsonaro, in the Lava Jato bloc, Globo, STF, etc., are not concerned with containing the pandemic, and the opening of the economy during the increase in cases affirms this. Their concern for the economy is to maintain the profits of the bourgeoisie. Despite the dispute with the government, they support measures to reduce wages, a rescue package for bankers and attack public servants. Much less are they concerned with “democracy”.
The Broad Front that PT and organizations like Frente Povo sem Medo participate in alongside center-left bourgeois parties like PDT, PSB to “contain fascism”, is a betrayal. The Popular Front (FP) does not fight fascism, on the contrary, it opens the way for fascism. It serves to contain the direct action of the class and divert the struggle into parliament and the regime, allying itself with sectors of the “democratic” bourgeoisie in a FP, the reformist left divides the class and ends workers’ independence, which is the only force capable of containing fascism.
Workers need to break with their opportunistic leaders and union bureaucracy. That is why we need the united front (FU), which brings together the grassroots workers as well as their leadership. The bloc of the union centrals, of which CSP Conlutas is the driving force, is not a FU, because it is based on agreements between unions and political currents, without the participation of the base, which is only called in the days of “demonstrations”. That is, it is a bureaucratic bloc, the result of the opportunistic policy of the PSTU, which replaces the class with union bureaucracy. CUT, Conlutas, Intersindical, must make the FU by mobilizing workers to build workplace and self-defence committees, and the political general strike to defend rights, wages, pandemic control, towards the seizure of power and workers’ government.
The PSTU, as a centrist party, is slipping towards ultra leftism. We saw this in Dilma’s impeachment process. The PSTU did not fight against the maneuver of the bourgeoisie, stating it would not defend the Popular Front (FP) government. Currents such as the MES (PSOL) openly supported the actions of the bourgeoisie of Lava Jato as a defense of “democracy” and “justice” (bourgeois, of course). Now it defends justice and the PF against “the 2 sides”, strengthening security actions and institutions supported by laws such as the Anti-Terrorism Law, which ultimately is used against workers.
The PSTU and many ultra-left currents denied the rise of fascism and the ultra-right and supported impeachment as something “progressive”, because the workers were “breaking” with the PT. To deny the rise of fascism to justify that it would not fight against the maneuvers of the right because that would be to support the FP, shows that the ultra-left face does not differ in any way from opportunism when it supports the FP against fascism.
Once again, the struggle against the rise of Bonapartism and Fascism should be carried out by the independent workers with their traditional methods of struggle. And without any support to the PT FP government. The PT administered the bourgeois state, unable to contain the extreme right and fascism itself. A government that made Belo Monte (Hydro Dam), sent troops to Haiti, established military police bases in the slums, allocated billions to banks and contractors and put the price of the crisis on the back of workers, could not be defended. It is true that the workers’ discontent with the worsening of the crisis and their living conditions pitted them against the government, not with the methods of the bourgeoisie, but the direct struggle of the class.
The opportunistic aspect of the PSTU did not take long to appear, in the 2nd round of the 2018 elections, it called a vote in the FP against Bolsonaro. While making bureaucratic blocs with the union bureaucracy, substituting for the direct class struggle, the PSTU has a sectarian policy against PT and often PSOL, denying a true FU that gathers the base in front of its leadership. In fact, it becomes a counterrevolutionary element, supporting a bloc with the union bureaucracy as the United Front, and preventing the formation of true FU and direct class action, leaving the workers’ movement in the hands of the union bureaucracy!
The global crisis of capitalism is deepening, as is the intensification of the inter-imperialist dispute. The forecast is for a drop of 5.99% of GDP in Brazil this year! The prospect for workers worldwide is one of misery and repression. In Brazil, there were already millions of unemployed, and in the pandemic over 1 million jobs were lost. Our job market is more than 50% informal. They are public health workers scrapped and attacked for decades, no longer guaranteed rights or decent wages, attending to the pandemic without the basics of protective equipment.
From this crisis, the Brazilian semi-colonial bourgeoisie cannot escape except with dictatorship and fascism. Any policy that leads workers to the illusion of the bourgeois democratic regime, that it is possible to “improve” capitalism or reach socialism through parliamentary means, is betrayal.
Workers must unite not only in Brazil, but in the world. The reformist leaderships also promote the division of the world’s workers, as shown by their support for “left” governments like Argentina. Hearing the reformist left talk about Argentina and its government, it gives the impression to Brazilian workers that the pandemic in Argentina is paradise! While in the real Argentina, the government puts the people on lockdown, workers suffer from hunger and repression in quarantine, go on strike and are harshly repressed by the police. The reformist left, as well as dividing the class to ally with bourgeois sectors at national level, internationally promote FP with bourgeois governments, dividing the class. Especially in its support for the China / Russia imperialist bloc, supporting it as an alternative to American imperialism.
The left is beating its head to find a way out of the crisis within the democratic regime, saying that “revolution is not possible”. We say, there is no possible way out of the bourgeois democratic regime and capitalism. Fascism and military coup threatens us, and the only way out for the working class is the socialist revolution, possible and necessary!
