By Verónica O’Kelly, Alternativa Socialista-PSOL / ISL, Brazil.
In October 2nd elections Lula won but he did not manage to overcome 50% plus one, thus there will be a second round where he can win. Bolsonaro, after four years of a government of war against the working people and the poor, losing social grassroots and being isolated by the national and international big bourgeoisie, mainly in response to his deadly policy adopted in the pandemic and environmental depredation, got 43%. None of this was enough to convince the electorate that voted for the current president, demonstrating the rejection that still exists in an important part of the Brazilian masses against the PT, Lula and this project that has governed for 14 years at the service of the banks, agribusiness and national and multinational companies. This, together with the demoralization that the neoliberal right wing of the Tucano tried to provoke against the PT by allying with the ultra-right in the institutional coup of Dilma. After having done what they did, they had a miserable electoral vote, leaving the avenue clearer for the ultra-right. Nowadays the task of the first order is to defeat Bolsonaro in the streets and at the ballot box. Here are some notes to contribute to the debate in the revolutionary left.
The program of the banks, agribusiness and corporations is useless to defeat the far right
We are witnessing an electoral campaign with a left blocked in the mass media and with little visibility in front of the masses, to the point of being ridiculous to have to see and hear the mdbist candidate, and agribusiness entrepreneur, Simone Tebet raising banners in defense of women’s rights. Feminists, antifascists, ecosocialists, indigenous people had their voice weakened in the megaphone of the bourgeois elections and this means a danger for the construction and strengthening of our struggles.
But what we did see and hear a lot in this electoral campaign was the government program of the usual ones, the capitalist bourgeoisie that is causing hunger, environmental destruction, misery, death and wars all over the planet, and that in Brazil is expressed in a more and more unbearable way for the exploited majorities.
Today this pre-electoral thesis has been confirmed in every sense. The Frente Amplio is of no use to defeat the Bolsonarist extreme right, and on the contrary, it provokes, sooner or later, if this is accompanied by the disappearance or weakening of the socialist and classist left as a political alternative of the masses, is its strengthening.
To defeat Bolsonaro is a fundamental task. Preventing him from winning the elections and remaining in government is an urgent one. His existence and survival as a project of political power, whether in the presidency or in the majority of the legislative chambers, as he has now become after these elections, represents a danger to fight. That is why we call to vote critically for Lula and call on the class left to unite and defend an anti-capitalist program in this campaign, calling to occupy the streets as we did in 2018 with the massive mobilizations of Ele Não, or in 2021 with the big Fora Bolsonaro acts. Only by strengthening a socialist and anti-capitalist left pole will we be able to defeat the extreme right once and for all in Brazil and in the world.
Lula, the PT and the masses
An important element that we must discuss, in order to approach a better political characterization with its consequent orientation, is that that political project that emerged from the heart of the ABC Paulista, from the workers’ struggles of the 70’s and 80’s, and that governed for 14 years, no longer has the same influence on the Brazilian masses as in those times. Moreover, they capitalize a great rejection as a product of the disappointment provoked in the working class, popular sectors and a vanguard of the left that believed and trusted in a project that over the years has degenerated and has been assimilated to capitalism, with all its evils.
This disillusionment of the masses is still present in Brazil, to the point that almost 50% of the population still believes that Lula, Dilma and the PT are responsible for the bad living conditions experienced by the majorities in the country. But, as the adaptation is irreversible, Lula insists on campaigning defending an abstract democracy and a great past, without being able to say clearly how he is going to solve the problem of unemployment, housing, misery and hunger suffered by the people. This is because if he were saying the truth, he would have to explain that his program as a response implies more austerity, counter-reforms and attacks on the working class to answer to the interests of his real allies, the capitalists who hold economic power and lead the political courses of the governments that decide not to cross their limits.
Democracy? for whom?
It is nothing new to say that for those who suffer the exploitation and oppression in this system of capitalist domination, the institutions have demonstrated their commitment to the bourgeoisie as the ruling class, and the maintenance of its power in the State. This is how justice and judges, parliament, government, politicians, and even the presidential figure, have been losing credibility in broad sectors.
Bolsonaro expresses a policy of liquidation of democratic and social conquests. His militaristic, militia-like, repressive, xenophobic, misogynist, racist character and attack on the working class and its conquests, is the mark of his government and political project. From this place it presents itself against the institutions, taking advantage of the discredit they have, installing an “anti-system” discourse and posing as an alternative a more repressive, less democratic regime, of white and Christian supremacy and which guarantees the power of a bourgeois minority in power.
The Lula-Alckmin campaign focused its propaganda and electoral agitation on the defense of democracy and all institutions, uncritically of course. It is obvious that bourgeois politicians like Alckmin, who has already been governor of the state of São Paulo twice, the biggest in Brazil with almost 50 million inhabitants and national economic center, who has led and provoked massacres in the peripheries and occupations, like that of Pinheirinho, repressed public workers to approve the loss of labor rights, attacked social rights and promoted the privatization of health and public education, among many other neoliberal and anti-popular measures and policies, will defend the institutions without a single hint of criticism.
The best democracy is the one that expresses the will of the exploited and oppressed majorities, the one that gives voice to the voiceless. The one that appears in the street when we fight against austerity or attacks, the one that appears in every factory, neighborhood or university when mobilization arises. That is why we, together with other organizations, form the Coordinadora Povo na Rua, build the mobilization and insist that it is in the struggle that we will defeat Bolsonaro and his project, without any confidence in ballot boxes and institutions, it is with the struggle that we will defend our democratic conquests and from this struggle, we will build real democracy.
The PSOL and the Left Front that did not attend, missed the appointment.
Before the elections, the radical left of the PSOL, in which we take part, gave a political battle for its own candidacy. This battle was based on the political characterization that, in the face of the polarization between two bourgeois projects (one of the extreme right and the other of the center), it was necessary to present a candidacy for the presidency to vocalize a program of defense of the conquests and solutions to the problems suffered by the working class and the popular sectors, and thus polarize (truly) with Bolsonaro’s project.
The waiver to present its own candidacy to the presidency and to the government in a large part of the states of the Federation, made the left weaken in the electoral political debate. The PSOL was the only left-wing party with the capacity to participate in the presidential debates in the media and to use TV and radio advertising, besides having received a millionaire Electoral Fund. All this capital could have been placed at the service of making visible a leftist political alternative in front of the masses, but the majority leadership refused. This is already a mistake, but it is aggravated by the existence of Bolsonaro.
The example of the Portuguese elections of January this year is graphic and allows us to understand this dynamic. The “geringonça” (alliance between the Socialist Party, the Communist Party of Portugal, the Greens and the Left Bloc) that guaranteed the government of the Socialist Party in the previous period, washing its program and adapting to social democracy, dissolved in the last elections and the result was that the PS obtained the absolute majority in parliament, growing substantially, while the other parties went backwards, lost votes and parliamentary representation. Worse still, all this is accompanied by the great growth of the extreme right of Chega! which went from 1 to 12 deputies.
On the other hand is the sectarianism and self-proclamation of the left, which was divided. The Socialist and Revolutionary Pole (led by the PSTU), UP and the PCB refused to form a Left Front to dispute a sector which, although it was difficult to capture due to the disparity in the distribution of the Electoral Fund and the non-existence of space in the electoral propaganda on TV and radio, would surely have been disputed with greater force than it had, with a minuscule, divided and marginal left.
In short, they missed the appointment and this becomes a task to be solved, a challenge for the next period, that regardless of the government that emerges from these elections, the socialist left will have the responsibility to build a unitary left alternative in the country.
Vote 13, go out to the streets and build a revolutionary party.
We enter the 2nd round of the elections with the main task of getting Bolsonaro out of the presidency. We call to defeat this government and its extreme right project with the struggle of the working class and the poor people. We call to vote 13 and to defend, together with the classist left, a program in favor of the 99%. And we say, very clearly, that without the construction of an independent tool, of the working class, with a socialist program, an internationalist and revolutionary perspective, the extreme right and all the projects that pretend to attack our conquests, will not disappear. And that, far from it, they will be reinforced by the absence of a completely opposite project of society, a society in which the workers rule and put in place a socialist system. That is why we militate and we invite you to do it with us.