Theses of Revolucao Socialista to the 8th National Congress of the PSOL
“NOTE: We dedicate this document to the 700 thousand victims of the genocidal management of the health crisis, carried out by the Bolsonaro misgovernment and his genocidal gang. We also pay homage to the fighters of our own party who fell ill and passed away because of Covid-19. This is the only way to honor the memory of those who were victims of this modern holocaust. We can’t allow a rebellious party, fighter and radically positioned against class conciliationism, to now embrace those responsible for the genocide of health.”
1.Capitalism is going through its worst crisis in history, a systemic crisis, greater than all previous crises. The economic, political, socio-ecological, health, ideological and world hegemony crises combine and feed a crisis of civilization, with no possible way out through the margins of the system.
The world economic crisis, which began in 2008, is the biggest since the Great Depression of 1930. The world economy had not yet managed to recover when the Covid-19 pandemic paralyzed and deepened the crisis even more, taking a new leap with the war in Ukraine. No recovery is in sight. The IMF, WTO and OECD predict a new global recession, or something very similar, probably as early as 2023. Since the root of the crisis lies in the downward trend of the rate of profit, capitalism has no other way out but to increase exploitation.
This explains why capitalist governments apply a permanent economic counterrevolution against the working class and destroy the environment, even to the point of no return. Capitalists do not have a plan B, that is why, where they cannot apply their austerity plans, they use repression and try to discipline the sectors that mobilize and struggle.
2. “Ecosocialism or barbarism” is the slogan that best represents the present moment. We have never seen the capitalist system destroy everything at such an accelerated pace. Global warming is only increasing and causing environmental catastrophes that take the lives of the working class and the poor population, displaced and forced to live in the margins of the cities, in poor living conditions. Agribusiness and the extractive industry advance over forests, rivers, mountains and oceans, polluting, killing and depredating everything to guarantee the production of goods that enrich 1% of the world’s population and leave the remaining 99% without a future.
The productive matrix of capitalism, besides destroying our planet, produces inequality, poverty and hunger. In order to extract and accumulate gold and other precious metals or stones, a good with almost no social utility, it pollutes rivers and water reserves, condemning entire populations to diseases and death. Nowadays, livestock and wheat production are the highest in the history of mankind, but hunger in the world is only increasing. The indigenous peoples of the Amazon defend the jungle from the machines that cut it down in record time, while murderous miners attack the native peoples day after day.
There is no future without completely changing the logic of capitalist barbarism. To build ecosocialism, to plan the bases of a society without inequality and violence, to democratically organize production, distribution and consumption is one of the main tasks of the exploited masses of the world. A militant, revolutionary and internationalist task in defense of our present and future.
3. Progressiveness does not prevent the growth of the extreme right and neo-fascism. Every project that sets out to radicalize democracy, stop neoliberalism, redistribute wealth or somehow improve the conditions of the masses, without destroying capitalism, has ended in bitter failure. All the self-styled “progressive” or “nationalist” governments ended up applying the same austerity recipes as the neoliberal governments. Great leftist projects, such as Syriza in Greece and Podemos in Spain, or radical figures such as Gabriel Boric in Chile and Pedro Castillo in Peru, also became administrators of austerity when they came to government.
Not only is it impossible to implement major changes in favor of the majorities within capitalism, but even the most moderate measures are not tolerated by a system that is sinking with exploitation, austerity and repression. There is no room for any Keynesian economic policy, as some analyzed during the pandemic, nor for reformist concessions.
Thus, governments of the front-amplists, or of class conciliation, like the Lula-Alckmin government in our country, come to power accompanied by social support, generating expectations in the masses, but quickly the illusions are shattered. This frustration leaves room for the extreme right, which presents itself to the masses and gains a social base for its barbaric political ideology. For the same reason, the projects of the right and the extreme right when they come to power also fail and fall. In the same way, they do not fulfill the expectations of change and solutions they promise.
4. Frente Amplio government and its capitalist project for Brazil. Bolsonaro’s electoral defeat meant a popular victory. But the fact that he was defeated by the electoral route, and not by the weight of mobilization, makes it less forceful than necessary to put an end once and for all to the extreme right and its project against the working and poor people. That is why we, militants of the Socialist Revolution, promote the mobilization for Out with Bolsonaro, together with the coordination “People in the Street”. At the same time we warn about the danger of the policy of the PT and Lula, of disarticulating the mobilization in the streets in order to channel the rage against the ultra-right through the presidential elections of 2022.
Lula, the PT, the PSOL and all the left of the regime, defend an illusion: to reform capitalism by reconciling interests between the classes. Capitalism has nothing but misery and destruction to offer humanity. The illusion of doing “what is possible” within the margins of the capitalist order means abandoning the task of defending the interests of the majorities in favor of satisfying the demands of the market and the bourgeoisie that controls it. For this reason, already in the first semester, the Lula-Alckmin government demonstrated which are the interests it defends.
Fiscal scheme, emptying of the ministries of Environment and Indigenous Peoples, continuity of the New Secondary Education, maintenance of the militarization of schools, privatization of the Belo Horizonte Metro, refusal to annul the privatizations and the Counter-Reforms that take away rights, the support to agribusiness and to the extractive and polluting industry are the main measures adopted by the federal government in these first 6 months. All of them in favor of the rich and powerful, large landowners, bosses and bankers and that means adjustment against the people.
5. The struggles of the working class. All this has provoked a process of mobilization that, although incipient and avant-garde, begins to express a weariness of the government and its support bases. The mobilization against Bolsonaro’s government, together with his electoral defeat, has encouraged the people who are not content to accept crumbs, who defend their conquests.
Thus was expressed an uprising in education for the repeal of the New Secondary Education (NEM), against the militarization of schools and which forced the government to partially suspend its schedule for the implementation of the New Secondary Education, after Lula himself had publicly stated that he was against its repeal,but, this uprising was insufficient to ensure the demilitarization of schools. This process was combined with the struggle of the education workers for salary cuts, with the Federal District as the vanguard, which gathered more than 11,000 educators, approving the strike of the category, contradicting the union leadership of the CUT.
The union leaderships aligned with Lula’s government, at the head of the main trade union centers and unions, do everything to discipline their rank and file and avoid mobilization. They call to trust the government and to “be patient” so that everything “turns out well”. Thus, as long as the emergence of new leaderships with sufficient weight to overcome the current ones is not expressed, we will continue to see struggles that arise and are erased by the bureaucratic leaderships that isolate and wear them out. It is necessary to promote and accompany each process of struggle, demanding that the union leaderships respect the decisions of their bases and mobilize to achieve the victory of each category. This is how the working class and the poor people will be able to strengthen themselves and face the attacks of the extreme right and of any government that tries to attack their conquests.
It is our task to strengthen the mobilization in defense of the gains and rights that we still need. Only in this way will the government “not work out well” for the businessmen, bankers and bosses, but will work for the working majorities.
7. For a militant PSOL in the struggles. Without participating in the processes of struggles of our class, there is no party of the workers and poor people. It is in these processes where we fight against the leaderships that try to confuse or defeat the militants who advance in their consciousness and organize to fight.
A party of affiliates that only participates formally as a numerical electorate, without organic militancy in the party, a party that limits its action in elections and in parliament, is destined to fail as an emancipatory project of the exploited, to become easy prey for adaptation to the bourgeois order, assimilating itself to the capitalist logic of maintaining the regime that sustains the exploitation and oppression of the majorities.
We defend a PSOL of organic militants in the party, in the struggles, mobilizing, accompanying and building them. Rebelling against oppression, exploitation, violence and injustices that capitalism produces and governments apply. Militants who come together to strengthen each struggle and build the political tool to dispute power and, from there, to turn everything around and set up a government of the working and poor people, of those who have never governed.
8. The political adaptation is accompanied by a change in the internal method, with the anti-democratic mechanisms of the parties of the regime. The political diversity expressed in the different internal tendencies of the party was guaranteed by a democratic method of functioning. This is being destroyed little by little, arriving at the 8th National Congress of the PSOL in 2023 with a regiment of a party of affiliations, not of militancy.
It will be a Congress with fewer voices, because the majority leadership managed to vote a more restrictive regulation, leaving militants, leaders and tendencies that founded the PSOL out of the leadership bodies. Some have disaffiliated in recent times, which makes this congress even less pluralistic and democratic. We elaborate on this dynamic with deep concern and understand that, if it continues, the process of disillusionment and consequent disaffiliation will advance, definitively liquidating the founding project of the PSOL.
9. What to do? We, Revolucao Socialista, result of a recent merger between a current of the PSOL and the International Socialist League in Brazil, continue betting on the construction of the PSOL of the origins. Although we have points of coincidence with the comrades who have recently disaffiliated, we believe that it is a mistake to abandon the dispute for the political project that managed to regroup the socialist left, once the PT frustrated the expectations of broad sectors. There is a great dispersion in the Brazilian left and, unfortunately, both the opportunist and centrist errors, as well as the self-proclaimed and sectarian ones, have made it impossible to strengthen the socialist left within the PSOL and the emergence of something new from outside.
We are committed to building the unity of the socialist left, necessary to implement an independent and socialist political project. We must overcome dispersion and accept the diversity that exists among us, respecting the differences, without hegemony. No one is self-sufficient and reality demands greater efforts. While capitalism advances in its systemic crisis all over the world, in our country we are experiencing its deepening with the increase of poverty and hunger. Although the Lula-Alckmin government tries to convince that with democracy everything is solved, the exploited, oppressed and impoverished masses are not willing to lose their conquests and that makes struggles arise in every corner of Brazil. Our task is to strengthen each one of these struggles and build the political tool capable of positioning itself as an alternative together with the masses, raising a program to respond to the crisis, where the capitalists pay for their own crisis:
- National plan for the generation of public employment. Reduction and distribution of the working day, without wage reduction, to guarantee full employment.
- Price control against inflation, high prices and capitalist speculation, with sanctions and expropriation.
- Repeal of all counter-reforms.
- Re-establishment and restructuring of the strategic enterprises of the national economy, under the control of the representatives of the workers and users.
- End of the payment of the “debt” to bank lenders, the “bolsa banqueiro”, with emergency application of public money to SUS, job creation, fight against hunger, education, housing and public safety.
- Definitive revocation of the New Secondary Education.
- Immediate minimum application of 10% of GDP for Education, completely public, with progressive increase to meet the needs and expansion of services.
- Immediate repeal of all reactionary laws and/or attacks: “gender ideology”, militarization of schools, and/or school “without party”.
- National application of the Teachers’ Floor, PCCR(V), for all educational categories, incorporation of the continuous bonus in the basic salary.
- Increase of the National Basic Teaching Floor to twice the Dieese salary.
- End of outsourcing and labor precariousness in the categories of maintenance and operation of educational infrastructure.
- Strengthening of the Unified Health System (SUS) 100% public, universal and of quality.
- Approval and implementation of the National Nursing Floor.
- Creation of a policy formulation council for the national, state and municipal SUS, composed of representatives of public health workers, specialists and users, with revocable mandates.
- Creation of a state industry to produce vaccines, medicines, supplies and equipment for users.
- Expansion of Primary and Specialized Health Care networks.
- Agrarian reform to end the hunger of our people and against large-scale export agriculture and agribusiness, the cause of desertification.
- Democratic economic planning at the service of social needs and the preservation of nature: an end to the chaos of the market economy, unbridled profit in the exploitation of workers and the corruption of public goods.
- Socio-environmental reparation of all affected areas and communities, financed by the companies responsible for the destruction.
- Strengthening and financing of family agriculture, responsible for the food on the plates of the people.
- Prohibition of garimpo, control of mining and nationalization of the mega-mining sector.
- Prohibition of the use of toxic agro-chemicals.
- To stop global warming through a plan of qualitative and immediate reduction of greenhouse gas emissions, seeking their elimination. Urgent control of the agricultural and livestock industry.
- Stop male violence and femicide. Emergency budget for comprehensive and free assistance, guaranteeing shelters for women victims of violence.
- Legal, safe and free abortion through SUS as a basic right of women over their bodies.
- Comprehensive sex education, with gender and sexuality diversity.
- Recognition and socialization of unpaid domestic work with the right to retirement.
- Creation and strengthening of comprehensive education from the infant stage.
- Popular restaurants and public laundries.
- No more violence, transfeminicides and transphobia.
- Strengthening of the network of support houses for women and LGBTQIAPN+ with control of social movement organizations.
- Against all discrimination against the LGBTQIAPN+ community, complete rights equality.
- Creation of a quota system in public and private workplaces.
- Secular state and cancellation of all privileges and public subsidies to religious institutions and religious and private education. Against all types of religious fundamentalism. Complete and definitive separation of Church and State.
- Stop the persecution, imprisonment and extermination of black people. Justice for the victims, their families and full public assistance.
- For the self-organization of indigenous peoples and movements in defense of their territories and for the right to self-declaration in the urban context.
- For a quota system in public and private employment.
- Guarantee universal access to 100% of public education in all its stages with the right and expansion of the quota system.
- Concrete implementation of the Law for the compulsory teaching of Afro-Brazilian, indigenous and quilombola history and culture.
- Guarantee universal access to 100% of public education at all stages, with the right and expansion of the quota system.