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By Alternativa Socialista/PSOL – ISL, Brazil
While the crisis and the class struggles become more intense in Brazil, a moment in which the organizations that call themselves socialists should be more active, the PSOL is going through its 7th National Congress, more anti-democratic, where the majority leadership (field of the PSOL in all its struggles) furthers the order of lowering its flags to ensure a place as the left wing of the Lulopetista classes conciliation. We present a first assessment of the ongoing congress.
The 7th National Congress of the PSOL, the party we built as an internal current, is held between the months of April and September. It is a congress marked by deep inequalities and the advance of the more anti-democratic elements of the party. From the beginning, from the Movimiento de Izquierda Radical, together with other currents (adiacongressopsol.com.br), we have positioned ourselves against the holding of this congress in a year of pandemic, without the majority of the population being vaccinated, consciously paralyzed by the genocidal government of Bolsonaro. Regardless of that, the field of the PSOL of all the struggles (built by the currents of Primavera Socialista, Revolução Solidária[1], Resistencia, Insurgencia, Subverta and other minor ones), the majority in the National Leadership, decided to have a congress with drained online debates and on-site voting, pointlessly risking the militants, to move further with their project of “re-foundation” of the party.
The moment the PSOL is growing the most is also the one in which the party is facing a crossroad: keep on being a reference for the vanguard that screams for the For a Bolsonaro on the streets (29M, 19J, 3J, 13J, 24J) and boosting a possible alternative with other forces of the classist left; or destroying its foundational program and sinking once and for all as the left-wing counselor of the historically failed project of the PT, in other words, being one more among many who deceive the working class with securities in capitalism in its decaying phase. We say crossroad because this is what is fundamentally at stake in the course of the congress.
To be or not to be the last wagon of the Lula 2022 train
That is the question. The wrong path followed by the PSOL camp of all struggles in publicly demarcating its antagonism to the pre-candidacy of Glauber Braga for the Presidency of the Republic, of the party itself and built among many hands (manifestoglauber.com.br), throws our organization into ostracism. There is no doubt that the fundamental and immediate task is the overthrow of Bolsonaro in the streets; at the same time, the PSOL must arm itself politically in all spaces. Does the pre-candidacy of Guilherme Boulos for the governorship of São Paulo in 2022, which we evaluate as verticalized and mistaken, mean abandoning the struggle for Fora Bolsonaro today? The policy of the majority side is disarming the party by throwing it into the Lula 2022 campaign.
With the estimated polls on the elections of 2022 pointing to Lula in first place with a good lead against Bolsonaro, who could lose even to Ciro Gomes (PDT) and João Doria (PSDB) in the second round, the PSOL field of all struggles acts in unity to guarantee the last wagon of class conciliation, behind the wagons of the “progressive” bourgeois sectors that Lula is trying to ride to guarantee his victory. Of all this, the most regressive turn comes from the currents which claim to be Trotskyist and which today are responsible for sustaining the majority of the leadership. On the one hand, unfortunately, the conversion of the Insurgency/Subversion (two of the three official sections of the Unified Secretariat) into an auxiliary line, erasing once and for all the past opposition to the former majority camp of Socialist Unity. On the other hand, the Resistance, fruit of a split of the PSTU and subsequent unification with another organization, fulfilling the role of being the uncritical sector in defense of Lula 2022: sharing messages from the networks of the former president, participating in spaces of the Petista campaign, such as Call Lula / Plan for the Reconstruction of Brazil and, when Lula commits some “slip”, making themselves available to be the new advisors of the left.
The participation of socialists in bourgeois elections is a bridge between tactics and principles. We fight opportunism where everything in the electoral field is tactical, in the same way, sectarianism where any movement escapes from principles. There is no principle in having our own candidacy, in this crucial moment of the Brazilian crisis we must launch all our forces in a class front in the streets and of course in the elections with an anti-capitalist program. The collective pre-candidacy with Glauber Braga opens the debate, it does not close it, and precisely this was one of the objectives of the congress. The support to Lula next year offers as the only option the adherence to the program of class conciliation, there is no progressive possibility of rupture of any sector of this space. Even in a minority, the PSOL cannot be diluted in the illusion that Lula will solve the crisis that today ravages Brazil.
A part of the population harbors the illusion that Lula can solve the problems we face. We respect and understand that this experience is possible. That is to say that the Lulismo cycle has not yet ended, due to innumerable factors that do not fit here. But at no time can the socialist currents use the subjective factor, in fact an element of this factor, to justify going after the immediate consciousness. First because it is also real that another part of the population is still living the disappointment with the Petismo, and second because Lula will not solve the objective conditions of the Brazilian crisis. The previous conditions that made economic growth possible, considerably for the bourgeois sectors, in the PT governments no longer exist and cannot be artificially created with the stroke of a pen, which will not even happen. Only a radical break with the recipes of capital will give Brazil the possibility of getting out of the peripheral condition and offer the majority of the population truly dignified conditions with a socialist government. The dynamics of this era of capitalism will push the working class, the poor and the oppressed more and more to absolute misery and total barbarism.
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The PSOL we want
The 7th National Congress of the PSOL takes place at the worst moment and in the worst way. It is anti-democratic by excellence by separating the spaces of debate of the theses and the national/state contributions from the voting. The online debates that have already been closed have been drained, being far away from the militant organic life. The result will be that the affiliates will vote without having followed at all the crucial debates for the party. This logic is only of interest to those who are already in the majority, the PSOL field of all struggles. It is urgent to form a unity of all the national and regional currents to give the consequent battle in defense of the foundational program and therefore against the project of “refoundation” of the majority field. We, from Alternativa Socialista and the Radical Left Movement, call on the comrades of the MES, the Commune, the APS, the Centralidad del Trabajo, the CST, the LSR, Alicerce, Fortalecer el PSOL, the Brazilian Revolution, the regional currents and the independent militancy to unite in this unity in defense of the PSOL.
The immediate task is to defeat the corrupt and genocidal Bolsonaro gang. For this, we need a radical PSOL, umbilically linked to its base and capable of connecting with the vanguard that shows itself ready on the streets to throw Bolsonaro and Mourão out. We do not want to be part of the class conciliation train.
[1] Current recently founded and represented by Guilherme Boulos.