Elections 2020 and the fight against opportunism on the left
The following is translated from our Brazilian comrades of the Grupo de Trabalhadores Revolucionários do Brasil (GTR-BR)
In November Brazil will have municipal elections. In a year where, like everywhere else in the world, workers are struggling to resist the effects of the pandemic, which has intensified the great global crisis of capitalism; terminal, combined with climate change.
The bourgeois election is a weapon of the ruling class that serves to delude the working masses and maintain their power with a certain stability. In recent years, especially since the crisis broke out in 2008, instability has increased in every country in the world, with governments heavily attacking the working class to pay the price of the crisis. The bourgeois election no longer guarantees stability and Bonapartist and fascist regimes are growing.
The current world and national situation, of global economic crisis, inter-imperialist dispute between the USA and China, climate change and the rise of fascism, is the confirmation of Leninism-Trotskyism, that the imperialist phase is a destructive time for capital. The time of crisis, wars and revolutions.
Bourgeois elections deceive workers that they can change their lives by voting. Faced with a system that destroys the environment, creating pandemics, where global economic crises explode when the bourgeoisie does not increase its profits, and leads to unemployment, misery and violence, as we see today. We affirm once again Marxism, Leninism-Trotskyism, that only direct action and organization of the working class, with a revolutionary program that leads to the end of capitalism with the seizure of power and the means of production, can bring about changes.
The opportunistic leaders and the reformist program are not the “lesser evil.” They are part of the counterrevolution at the moment that divert workers from their own class consciousness and the socialist revolution, to illusions in bourgeois elections and capitalism.
We will give a critical vote to the PSTU, as it is a party from the left-wing camp and is not affiliated with bourgeois parties. As a United Front, we maintain our political independence to advocate our Marxist program and method, as opposed to the PSTU’s centrism and opportunist program. Far from giving any credibility to parliament, we use Lenin’s tactic of critical support to expose the method of reformism and win reformist workers to the revolution.
The reformist left replaces the struggle and organization of the working class for the seizure of power and socialism with the struggle in the bourgeois parliament. The objective is to reach “socialism” by electing parliamentarians and by reforming capitalism. This entire strategy goes through bourgeois elections. The PSTU, as a centrist party, has a radical appearance, speaking of “socialism” and “revolution”, to hide an opportunistic content, which replaces the direct and independent class struggle with the union bureaucracy.
The PSTU has been severely criticized by militants and leftist organizations for not joining the left in the elections. For some years now, the PSTU leadership has been directing the party to its own candidates in the elections. The PSTU leadership says that the party’s “priority” is the “workers’ struggle”, that is, in the unions, where the party says it is open to “unity of action” and alliances with the left. However, in bourgeois elections it is the time to present the party’s program, “a revolutionary and socialist alternative”. The PSTU claims that the parties on the left have a reformist program and are making alliances with the bourgeoisie, so it has no unity.
We agree that the bourgeois elections are part of the domination game of the bourgeoisie and are counter-revolutionary at the time that it deludes the workers that they can improve their lives under capitalism while stopping the direct struggle. Lenin said that “defending the revolutionary program” was the goal of revolutionaries in running for bourgeois elections. Certainly no alliance with the bourgeoisie is conceivable in a revolutionary party. However, with this “radical” form, the PSTU presents a reform program with a method that is not that of class independence.
In the field of direct struggle, which “matters” for the PSTU leadership, the party has been in a bureaucratic bloc with the union centrals for 6 years, since the days of June 2013, when they called a day of the General Strike. For 6 years, CSP Conlutas, directed by the PSTU, has had a policy of permanently calling union centrals for a day of “national mobilization”. And that day of national mobilization has taken place. Always when the workers’ movement becomes more intense, as in the struggles against Temer’s labor reforms, Bolsonaro’s social security, etc. In the “real” movement, the PSTU defends the Popular Front with bureaucratic centrals linked to bourgeois parties such as PDT, PSB, Solidariedade and even the PSOL, as was denounced at the time, in a union in Mato Grosso. For the leadership of the PSTU, if the ally is a unionist, no matter that he belongs to Bolsonaro’s party, he would be a “workers ‘representative” and not a bureaucratic traitor within the workers’ movement and organization.
In the recent strikes of Correios and Embraer, for example, the PSTU program is essentially economic. At most, it requires the nationalization of Embraer or is against the privatization of the Post Office. The “revolutionary” program is for bourgeois elections, where they are the party of “revolution and socialism”.
For the revolutionary, there is only one program which must be defended by the revolutionary party in every space. The program is the same, whether in bourgeois elections or in unions and in the direct struggle of the class. The PSTU’s reformist logic is that workers fight for economic issues (program) and subordinate workers’ independence to the bureaucratic leaders of the centrals (method), in direct struggles. But in the elections, it is a “socialist and revolutionary alternative” that does not form an alliance with the bourgeoisie!
Let’s look at the PSTU program in the elections. The program speaks of the nationalization of companies and transport, governing with “popular councils”, fighting for the end of capitalism, socialist society, etc. All of this was achieved only by electing the “revolutionaries.” No word that the workers ‘committees need to organize self-defense, a general political strike that occupies the factories and controls them, the call to the rank and file of the army to join the revolution, the destruction of the bourgeois state and the construction of a workers’ state.
The PSTU is a centrist party, which is characterized by its “revolutionary” form and reformist content. They are self-proclaiming and sectarian raising the maximum program (elections), combined with opportunistic reforms alliances (unions).
We agree that it is not possible to form alliances with PSOL, PT and other left parties that are making numerous alliances with the bourgeoisie. This is an important criterion of class independence. But that is not what is decisive for the leaders of the PSTU. The PSTU is calling for a null vote in places where it has no candidates, claiming that PSOL does not have a “revolutionary” program. The critical vote is a ‘United Front’, in which there is a unity conserving political independence, precisely because there is no agreement in the program. For the PSTU, elections are the time to celebrate and talk about “revolution” and “socialism”.
We agree with Lenin that the participation of revolutionaries in the elections serves to defend the revolutionary program. However, the revolutionary program cannot be other than that strikes by workers, the social and youth movement must advance towards a general political strike, which with committees by workplace and housing, the class organizes independently, organizes self-defense, pickets and occupations, takes control of the pandemic, the fight against unemployment and famine, taking power, and building the workers’ state.
Workers need a leadership that says that elections do not change the worker’s life, that the PT did not cause the economic crisis, that the crisis is worldwide and shows how destructive capitalism is. That also says that decades of illusions in PT elections and its results proves elections “does not change anything.” Strikes and demonstrations need progress in building workers’ and self-defense committees and a general political strike to fight Bolsonaro, the rise of fascisism, the effects of the pandemic, the economic crisis, unemployment, famine, loss of rights and public services.
Build the New World Party of Socialism on the method of Trotsky’s Transitional Program!
PSOL https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socialism_and_Liberty_Party
PSTU https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Socialist_Workers%27_Party
