By Alternativa Socialista
The government´s conservative project and closure of the democratic regime is ending. Bolsonaro´s conservative militias, homophobic, misogynist, xenophobic and anti-worker agenda found the limit of the resistance of the masses who refuse to surrender rights and conquests. Today there is little of that government that threatened with the possibility of a rise of the extreme right. The break with the PSL, the departure of Sergio Moro, the break with the STF and the legislature, the contradictions with active sectors of the Armed Forces, the agreement with the centrão, the Queiroz prison, the tragic increase in Covid-19 deaths and, most importantly, the rise of the mobilization that escalated from cacerolazos to expressions on the streets with marches and rallies throughout the country explain the situation.
The Class Struggle Intensifies
The capitalist world has been going through a deep crisis since 2008. With the Coronavirus pandemic accelerating, this crisis is the most important in almost a century. For millions throughout world, and fundamentally in “imperialist example” countries like the United States and Europe, the system reveals itself as it always was: exploitation, contamination, hunger, disease and death for the majority, against profits and wealth for a few. The result is an increasingly polarized world, on the one hand a brutal offensive against the working class in search of more exploitation in favor of the richest 1%, and on the other the response of the 99% who rebel, stand up and fight. The fabulous mass uprising in the United States, in the midst of the pandemic, with numerous acts of international solidarity, intensifies a period of struggle.
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In Brazil, the rejection of the conservative agenda, of the neoliberal reforms, of the thousands of deaths, are the fundamental basis to stop Bolsonaro. The anti-fascist mobilizations in defense of democracy, with the Black anti-racist movement at front, are a powerful engine of the growing rejection of the government that plunges it into its irrepressible crisis. In a domino effect, it causes a crisis in the fragile Brazilian bourgeois democratic regime that emerged after the last military dictatorship. With all this, the analysts that predict the government’s victory over the masses have no basis in reality. They express a defeatism sustained by electoral calculations, with eyes set on 2022, that promote as their final objective the policy of class conciliation as a strategy – like the PT, Lula, the CUT and the main unions do.
The Absent Leaderships
People’s anger cannot be stopped. Even with Brazil bitterly occupying the second place in Covid-19 deaths in the world, the mobilizations take over and the balance of forces shifts in favor of the workers and the poor, accelerating the government´s crisis. Today, more than ever, ousting Bolsonaro, Mourão and the entire government and its austerity, is on the table. To achieve this, it is necessary for the political and union leaders of the working class to decide to do so. The organized anti-fascist football fan organizations stepped up, in the absence of the workers’ leaders, to organize and call the mobilizations, causing a new scenario in the government crisis.
The fabulous strike of delivery application workers showed the strength of the working class youth who are not willing to accept the bosses’ exploitation. With the applications, a new form of job insecurity was born and also a new form of resistance, organization and struggle. They are not the only ones who are fighting. São Paulo Metro workers are on a war footing against Doria´s ultra-right wing, the chemical workers of São José dos Campos continue organizing assemblies in each factory, forcing the employers to implement security measures against the pandemic. Teachers are facing off against attacks by governors in many states, and many other sectors are fighting and organizing to prevent governments and employers from unloading the full weight of the crisis on their backs.
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Unfortunately, all the examples we name are also examples where the main leaders are absent or play a negative role in trying to prevent the struggles from moving forward and succeeding. The fight that millions of workers are putting up lacks the support of the main union federations, like the CUT or the CTB.
They should abandon this stillness and call convene an action of national and unified struggle of all categories to strengthen all the struggles that are taking place. Now is when we need the call for a general strike for our struggles to succeed and to oust the Bolsonaro government to secure our lives
Leaders Looking to 2022
While we are witnessing a rise in mobilization, the PT and the PCdoB maintain their eyes on 2022. Their policy is to moderate the streets and present themselves as an electoral alternative to the Bolsonaro government. They play and negotiate with our lives. That is why they do not call for mobilizations and in the labor movement, where they have responsibility of leading the main federation, the CUT, and important unions, they do nothing while workers confront employers and governments.
To explain this policy, they raise the thesis that the Bolsonaro government is fascist and strong to defeat the working class and advance its neoliberal austerity plans. A thesis that has no real basis in the current situation but serves to build a “broad front” with sectors ranging from right to left that defend “democracy.” The rally “Rights Now” (dreaming of emulating the powerful 1984 campaign, “Elections Now”) is a clear example of this policy. In short, defend democracy as the axis to form a political front with those who attack our rights.
As we have said on other occasions, it is correct and necessary to build the widest unity of action in the struggle to overthrow Bolsonaro and his austerity. To guarantee the greatest possible unity on the streets to defeat the government. In the field of political struggle, it is also essential to build a front of all the organizations of struggle that defend class independence as the only possible alternative to achieve a workers’ government.
Debates in the PSOL and the Construction of a Political Alternative
Some comrades in the PSOL agree with the policy of the PT and the PCdoB of a “Broad Front Against Fascism” – Guilherme Boulos, Marcelo Freixo and Fernanda Melchionna mistakenly participated in the “Rights Now” event alongside people like FHC, Michel Temer, Tasso Jereissati and other enemies of the workers. In the pre-electoral debates and early elections, these positions are being expressed and in some municipalities there is even progress in electoral agreements with the PT. In the opposite trench, along with other currents that make up the Radical Left Block, we are fighting against this mistaken policy, defending the party´s foundational anti-capitalist and socialist program and betting on democratic debate in the rank-and-file.
In Alternativa Socialista, we are convinced that the only way to oust Bolsonaro and Mourão is to promote and strengthen the mobilizations, and build a political alternative capable of contesting the government, that defends the rights of workers, women, the youth, native peoples and the peripheries. A political alternative as a tool for the thousands who fight in the streets, with all their strength and with the firm conviction that the only way to defend our rights is to turn everything over. An anti-capitalist, feminist, eco-socialist and internationalist political alternative. We invite you to join this objective and the construction of Alternativa Socialista and the International Socialist League.
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