Lula government cornered by its allies and the need for the Workers’ United Front
The following is translated from our Brazilian comrades of the Grupo de Trabalhadores Revolucionários do Brasil (GTR-BR)
The coup attempt in the first week of the government, on January 8, 2023, permeates the political arena and the 1 and a half year of Lula’s government, who governs cornered by his allies from his “Broad Front”, while Bolsonarism is consolidated as the largest opposition and is growing by leaps and bounds along with the international far right and fascism.
Lula’s Popular Front, which was formed to combat Bolsonarism, in addition to the “democratic” bourgeoisie, contains truly reactionary parties, such as União Brasil, which has ministries in the government and has voted against the government’s agenda in congress: “we support the government , but we don’t give it a blank slate”, they say. Parties such as União Brasil, PP and the so-called “centrão” that are part of the government, are parties of the reactionary and conservative Brazilian bourgeoisie, of which many “bolsonarista” elements are part.
The “democratic” bourgeoisie allied with the government, as well as the not so democratic one, has supported Lula to approve the measures imposed by the financial market, such as the “Fiscal Framework” (new rules to maintain the payment of debt interest to the detriment of workers and poor people), and tax reform, but not without wear and tear on Lula and the PT. However, in the other agendas, called by the media the “customs agenda”, which in fact are major attacks on workers such as greater criminalization of drugs and abortion, the Bolsonarist opposition with the support of Lula’s allies who do not give him a “ blank slate”, advance in congress. Including negotiations in which the PT supports the agenda! This became very clear in the processing of the abortion PEC, further criminalizing women.
Lula was elected promising economic growth and social concessions that he had managed to give in his first governments, at a totally different time when the world is experiencing a global economic crisis with wars and inter-imperialist disputes. Ministries of Indigenous People and Women only serve as a bureaucratic apparatus of the bourgeois state to deceive workers and poor people. The indigenous movement saw the time frame decreed, the law that increases the criminalization of drugs advances and women are in the sights of conservatives in the national congress.
The greater criminalization of abortion sparked a great struggle, where women took to the streets in several cities across the country, joining many protesters and making the bourgeoisie retreat. Of course, the media, government and “democratic” bourgeoisie made their speech against the “extreme right” affirming their position of commitment to bourgeois democracy, but what actually happened is that the PT negotiated with the opposition at the congress and allowed the agenda to proceed.
Lula was elected promising investments and economic growth, but what workers see is their living conditions worsening and climate change causing calamities such as floods in Rio Grande do Sul, fires in the Pantanal and drought in the Amazon. In the situation of global capitalist crisis, Lula is unable to make the concessions he made to workers in his first governments and this is the main reason that leads the PT to a greater cornering by its bourgeois allies in the current government, which was not seen in the previous ones.
The dominant bourgeoisie in the country, when it removed Dilma and the PT in 2016, did not imagine that it would bring an adventurer to power, with an extremist agenda linked to landowners and an anti-China ideology. Bolsonaro, in his first year in government, was obliged to reform pensions. After fulfilling his obligation to the financial market and sectors of the national bourgeoisie, he assumed his radical “nationalist” side. Linked to sectors such as landowners and the petty bourgeoisie, they were hostile towards China, a denialist in the Pandemic, and mainly, broke the public spending ceiling rule. The financial market and the Brazilian bourgeoisie, which does not want to lose its business with China and imbalances in public accounts, were displeased.
Historically, the Brazilian bourgeoisie is linked to American imperialism, but cannot afford to lose its business with the giant Chinese economy. On June 30, the Federal Supreme Court made Bolsonaro ineligible for 8 years, thus preventing him from running in the next elections, in 2026. Lula was the only one capable of defeating Bolsonaro in the elections and during the PT’s four terms, despite the economic rapprochement with China remained faithful to American imperialism. Thus, the bourgeoisie that supported him expects the same in Lula’s new mandate.
The “democratic” bourgeoisie and the media pressure the government for the reforms imposed by the financial market and speak out against the “customary” measures put forward by the far-right opposition. However, they put strong pressure on Lula to control public spending and were “perplexed” by Lula’s statements in support of China, Russia and Venezuela, for example, a position that Lula timidly defends and which leads him to “walk on eggshells.”. However, the more Lula finds himself cornered and threatened, the more he has turned to the imperialism of China and Russia and their allies, such as Venezuela and Iran.
Lula managed to approve the tax reform, a demand from the financial market that unites the bourgeoisie, but he still has the challenge of regulating it. He will continue to be cornered by the extreme right and its “democratic” allies in the bourgeoisie. Bolsonaro does not have the support of part of the bourgeoisie who are trying to remove him from the scene. However, with a weakened Lula government as it is, the end of hopes and a popular outcry could lead to Lula being discarded by the ruling elite. Ultimately, the role of the popular front is to contain the mass movement.
Lula appears to be increasingly turning to Chinese imperialism and may adopt an increasingly Bonapartist regime. Lula looks to Chinese investments and the Brics bank as an alternative in the face of ungovernability, low popularity and the corner he finds himself in, knowing that he will have to increasingly attack the working class -. We are no longer in the times of their first governments!
Contrary to what neo-Stalinists and fake Trotskyists who adhere to the theory of a multipolar world led by the imperialist bloc of China and Russia say, Chinese investments are not “win-win”. China has grown at the expense of the decadence of American imperialism, investing surplus capital in the exploitation of semi-colonies, leaving these countries dependent on Chinese imperialism.
In a world in crisis and with an intensifying inter-imperialist dispute, the Brazilian elite’s hope of remaining “neutral” is increasingly difficult. The exploited countries of the Global South are increasingly pressured by the inter-imperialist dispute, shaken by economic and political crises. The USA has been losing this war, and more and more countries are no longer an American semi-colony but are becoming a semi-colony dominated by Chinese imperialism. This is the epoch of crisis, wars and revolutions; the inter-imperialist dispute today between the U.S. and China lead blocs, like the war in Ukraine today, is the confirmation of Lenin’s theory of the imperialist era.
In Brazil, the ruling left, PT and PCdoB, have dominated the leadership of the workers’ movement for decades. They divert independent class struggles into parliament and bourgeois elections. PSOL is lost to the Brazilian revolution. Its petty bourgeois origin has led it to capitulations for a long time, focused on the objective of electing parliamentarians, it receives money from the bourgeoisie, incorporates elements of the police and forms an alliance with sectors of the ruling class, today being part of Lula’s popular front government. The currents that claim to be revolutionary must break if they want to maintain any coherence in their speeches.
Without democracy at the base, the PSTU, CST and other currents that encompass the union movement through Intersindical and CSP Conlutas, succumbed to their support for the popular front in the second round of elections and replaced the independent struggle of workers with the union bureaucracy and its bureaucratic blocs. In the field of international struggle, they capitulate to U.S. “democratic” imperialism by supporting Zelensky’s puppet government in Ukraine. The PSTU, just as it supported the Lava-Jato (Car Wash) maneuver and Dilma’s impeachment, now says that the workers defeated Bolsonarism with Bolsonaro’s ineligibility, creating the illusion that the “democratic” bourgeoisie is capable of defeating the extreme right and fascism. This support for the bourgeoisie and justice disarms the working class against the persecution of the same laws for any fighting initiative it uses.
Revolutionaries urgently need to build a United Front for unity in the struggle and construction of an internationalist revolutionary party. Whatever the dispute between the bourgeois factions, for the workers there is only one way out: a break with their reformist leadership, the construction of independent and democratic organizations that lead them to fight against the bourgeoisie and the bourgeois state. For this, the construction of the revolutionary party is crucial.
We defend a united front of workers’ organizations for full employment and living wages, against attacks such as the new fiscal framework and privatizations, against the criminalization of the workers’ movement and for the unity of all struggles and strikes. We must build committees in places of work, study and housing, organize worker self-defense militias, inter-union councils and call base assemblies. The method must be that of workers’ democracy, and the construction of a National Workers’ Congress. Our objective is to advance towards the political and revolutionary general strike and the seizure of state power. The only way out for workers in the face of climate change and World War 111, which threatens us with imperialist capitalism in its terminal crisis.
Faced with the deepening capitalist crisis and the inter-imperialist war, a new Zimmerwald is needed, an international united front against the war with the position of revolutionary defeatism.
Break with the government and Lula’s Broad Front!
Transform the inter-imperialist war into Class War!
For a World Party of Socialist Revolution!
