2023-08-13 15:30:12
Some sectors of the left accuse us of minimizing the fight against the extreme right, when we say that workers should not support Lula’s government. But today, if we look at Brazil, we see that it is the government that helps the extreme right.
By: Editorial PSTU Brasil
In recent days we have witnessed a succession of massacres promoted by the PMs. It is there, then, the finger of the Bolsonaro ultra-right, which governs São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro. But, also, from the PT, which governs Bahia, one of the states with the most murderous PM in the country.
The worst thing is that, even in the face of the tragedy of traffic or police violence, which befalls workers and inhabitants of the peripheries, particularly black youth, the federal government does not take any initiative to contain police violence, advance in the demilitarization of the MPs or even addressing the problem of the decriminalization of drugs in order to face the multimillion-dollar business of drug trafficking.
In reality, it was Lula who approved the Drug Law in 2006, responsible for aggravating the imprisonment of poor and black youth, with legislation that perpetuates racism and class prejudice.
Although the PT won the elections with a speech against Bolsonaro’s public security policy, in practice, both in the states it governs and in the federal government, Lula’s party has been reproducing the old racist security policy, at the service of of the rich
It is no coincidence that the government celebrates and considers the progress of the privatization of the prisons as its achievement. It is literally the commodification and profit making of mass incarceration, in a country where only the poor and black are arrested.
Governing with and for the bourgeoisie
In the economic field, the government announced a budget cut of R$ 452 million in Health and R$ 332 million in Education. All this to respect the Expense Ceiling created by Temer. The new Fiscal Framework, proposed by the government, follows the same logic as the Fear Ceiling.
When we denounce and demand the PT government, the pro-government sectors of the left react by saying that Lula is doing everything possible, within the forces he has. This is not true, even because if he really wanted to accumulate more forces to take action in favor of the workers, he would have to confront the bourgeoisie and the capitalists, of course.
But, the sector that has been implementing measures that favor the bourgeoisie, and not the workers, is the PT itself. For example, the Fiscal Framework, as the bourgeoisie likes it, was designed by Haddad and Lula. Not by the right wing of the government.
It is not that the PT is presenting good proposals to the workers and these are defeated by the right. But, yes, that he himself presents measures that please the right.
A government that claims to defend the workers, even when it governs under capitalism, could and should take measures against the interests of the bourgeoisie and, thus, fight for a new correlation of forces.
That is not what Lula does. And not because of a problem of correlation of forces. If not, yes, because the government, due to its alliances, project and composition, belongs to the bourgeoisie and has the support of international monopolies and imperialist countries.
They do not govern for the workers
What prevents Lula from presenting a project for the demilitarization of the PM? Or Haddad to present a social and not a fiscal framework? What is the difficulty in proposing an increase in the minimum wage in the value of Dieese, of R$ 6,676.11, to the detriment of the profits of multinationals and billionaires?
If they threaten to resign, the government should state them, putting them under the control of the workers.
Presenting these proposals from the federal government itself, if the government really belonged to the workers, it would be possible and would mobilize the workers, the youth and the poor. Lula and the PT do not do that because they defend the maintenance of the interests of the bourgeoisie and the deepening of capitalism.
If he wanted to free the workers, he would need to use the State against the bourgeoisie, imperialism and the right, to break the machinery of the capitalist State, relying on the mobilization of the workers and not on governance with the Centrão.
After all, what good is it for a left-wing government to win elections to govern like the right? This only helps the far right. But, even with a “left face”, this capitalist project fails to solve the problems most felt by the people. It is bound, at some point, to demoralize the working class in some way, as we have seen happen recently.
Build an alternative regardless of class
If the workers do not build their own alternative, independently of the different bourgeois sectors, it is more likely that the right will capitalize on discontent against the PT’s current capitalist project. For this reason, the task of building a political alternative that opposes the two bourgeois blocs, both Lula’s and Bolsonaro’s, is posed with a certain urgency.
It is not about hoping that Lula will have a good or bad government. But to know that supporting the government does not help to build a way out for the workers. In reality, she gets in the way; because he leaves us in the tow of a bourgeois and capitalist sector, even making the fight against the far-right opposition much more difficult. Without building an independent mobilization, demanding the government and denouncing its attacks, the situation of the workers could worsen.
Workers need to reclaim what is theirs. For this fight it is necessary to demand that the entities of the movement, such as the CUT, the UNE and the MST, break with the government and with the bosses.
In September we will have the 5th Congress of the CSP-Conlutas, which will serve as a point of support in this fight for a social, union and popular movement regardless of class.
Along with this, it is essential to strengthen a party that defends a revolutionary and socialist project for Brazil and the world, that is a leftist opposition, of the workers, to the Lula government; so that we can even defeat the far right once and for all, instead of “negotiating” with it.
Editorial article of Socialist Opinion published in www.pstu.org.br9/8/2023
Translation: Natalia Estrada.
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