By Alternativa Socialista/PSOL- ISL, Brazil
- The PSOL Electoral Conference, held on April 30, was the representation of the anti-democratic method that prevails in the party today, a policy carried out by the majority leadership with the PSOL Block of All Struggles – Socialist Spring, Solidarity Revolution, Resistance, Insurgency and Subverta. The entire staging was unmasked on the same day with premade “PSOL with Lula” logos and t-shirts and, mainly, with the presence of Lula-PT himself at the event, amid applause and celebrations from the leadership, in addition to the presence of the PCdoB, REDE and PV.
- Despite the cynical policy of the majority leadership of “defeating Bolsonaro” at the national level, not for now, only in the elections, and “defeating the tucanato” in São Paulo, even with the tucano Alckmin as Lula´s running mate, the radical left of the PSOL gave a consistent battle until the last minute in defense of its own candidacy represented by the militant comrade Glauber Braga.
- The PSOL will participate in a broad front campaign, that is, with bourgeois parties and sectors. Alckmin represents a message from Lula to calm the bourgeoisie: the Letter to the Brazilian People 2.0. Lula’s job is to make the electorate digest the tucano, “anything to defeat Bolsonaro;” and Alckmin’s goal is to make Lula minimally acceptable to the dominant reactionary sectors. In the midst of this great dispute, the majority leadership of the PSOL wants to make us believe that it will campaign with its “own program.” This “own program” is summed up in the interventions of the party leadership: only Lula can resolve the situation.
- Alckmin is also the representative of the sectors that have supported Bolsonaro in the presidency since 2019 and have approved the immense attacks on the Brazilian people. Poverty, unemployment, violence, attacks on the working class, women, Black people, indigenous people, LGBT people, democracy. They cynically went for parties of the regime like the PSDB, which, although broken, is umbilically and programmatically linked to Alckmin.
- We understand that the participation of revolutionaries in elections must be a synthesis, not always easy, between tactics and strategy. Limitations placed on the previous results in opportunism, limitations placed on the later, lead to sectarianism. Revolutionaries must act independently and dispute the organization of the working class, calling for a front between class organizations, for unity against the attacks and denouncing the traitors who suffocate the struggles of our people into legal channels.
- Bolsonaro is an enemy that must be fought now. The PSOL´s majority leadership has played a mediocre political role by not denouncing at all the policy of demobilization carried out by the bureaucratic leadership -with Lula and the PT, due to the influence they have- to defeat Bolsonaro once and for all with the “Bolsonaro out” demonstrations in the second half of 2021. The working class and the poor pay for this betrayal with a miserable life. The PSOL, unfortunately, served as a guarantee to leverage the “Lula Presidente” campaign at the time of the demonstrations, when it should have been articulating the spaces of struggle, such as Povo na Rua.
- It is essential to highlight the role played by the Resistance, Insurgency and Subverta currents (which make up Campo Semente) in the composition and direct support of the most regressive sector of the PSOL – Socialist Spring and Solidarity Revolution. The decision of Juliano, Boulos and company to participate in the PT governments in São Paulo and at the national level, is clear. The most that these currents achieved was to postpone the debate for the near future, adding their votes to the resolution presented by the majority, against the opposition, the only one that is decidedly opposed to the formation of bourgeois governments. Not a single denunciation of the liquidation policy was made. Do the leaders of the Campo Semente hide from their rank and file what they vote behind closed doors? Is the membership of these currents in accordance with their leadership? The priority of these tendencies was to passionately defend the alliance with Lula-Alckmin and nothing more than that.
- The comrades of the MES, with a hesitant policy, favored the majority leadership by defending the Federation with REDE, part of the PSOL refoundation project. There is no doubt that REDE is a party most used and financed by the bourgeoisie. In addition to the federation, they did not throw their weight into the campaign for our own candidacy with Glauber, and very shortly after the result of the Electoral Conference, they decided to call for a “critical vote” for Lula-Alckmin. Fortalecer followed the same path. Unfortunately, the comrades cannot challenge the structure of the PSOL because that means challenging their own material dependency on it.
- In this moment of crisis, the PSTU, the UP, the PCB and the left of the PSOL have the responsibility to call on a sector of the vanguard that took to the streets for “Fora Bolsonaro”, to build a unitary program that expresses radicalism and the need to remove Bolsonaro and point to a class based and socialist alternative to the crisis. So that the working class and the poor can govern. In this sense, the self-proclaimed policy of self-construction only serves to disillusion the vanguard and throw it into the lap of the Broad Front movement. In this sense, we defended the Socialist Left Front in these elections, placing Glauber Braga’s pre-candidacy at its disposal.
- The PSOL current Socialist Alternative will not participate in the front campaign for Lula-Alckmin. We will continue with our own program and in defense of a class and socialist alternative. We affirm that the definitive defeat of Bolsonaro and Bolsonarism will not be achieved through a pact with the traditional right, as the left of the regime preaches and, unfortunately, the PSOL accepts. To stand up to the far right, we need an alternative that is class independent and that presents a real way out for working and poor people. We will continue betting and militating for the construction of this tool, even with the PSOL taking great steps in the opposite direction.