2023-05-27 19:44:13
My answer to that question is no. In the seventy years of existence of the Soviet Union, the people received rights that have not yet been won in the West. Men and women performed the same jobs and received the same pay. In the 1920s, 600 women already held positions equivalent to mayors, while in most Western countries they did not have the right to vote.
The Soviet Union was the first country in Europe to support reproductive rights. Women had full control over their bodies. School education was free, even postgraduate. The public power provided the students with textbooks and school supplies.
Also the health system was entirely free. The number of drug users was extremely small, and the few who obtained drugs did so through tourists who smuggled them into the block. It was the soldiers who occupied Afghanistan in the late 1980s who infested the Soviet bloc with drugs.
Regardless, the USSR collapsed without a shot being fired. The people welcomed capitalism. Today Russia is one of the countries where social inequality is most alarming.
Soviet socialism failed to change people’s minds to support a caring society. And the social welfare state that prevailed in “Christian” Europe until the collapse of the Berlin Wall failed to change the way of thinking of the people either.
Antonio Cándido said that the greatest conquest of socialism had not occurred in the countries that adopted it, but in Western Europe, where fear of communism led the bourgeoisie to give up their rings so as not to lose their fingers.
With socialism overthrown, the bourgeoisie became emboldened again and revealed its true face: the predominance of the privileges of capital over human rights; rejection of refugees; Privatization of public services; alignment with the warmongering policy of the United States.
The governments of the PT
For 13 years, Brazil had PT governments that guaranteed various benefits to the low-income population: Bolsa Família; minimum wage corrected annually above inflation; Light for All; My House, My Life; HOLIDAYS; university fees; drastic reduction of misery, poverty and unemployment; increase in education, etc.
However, Dilma Rousseff was deposed without the people taking to the streets to defend the government. And Bolsonaro was elected in 2018.
In 2022 he lost to Lula by a difference of only two million votes out of a total of 156 million voters.
According to Freud, “the masses are extraordinarily easily influenced and credulous, they are uncritical, the improbable does not exist for them. (…) The feelings of the masses are always very simple and very exalted. It knows neither doubt nor uncertainty. He goes quickly to extremes; externalized suspicion is immediately transformed into indisputable certainty; a germ of antipathy grows into wild hatred. Whoever wants to influence it does not need logical arguments, but must use strong images, exaggerate and always repeat the same words. (…) The masses respect strength and are only moderately influenced by goodness, which they consider a kind of weakness. He demands of his heroes strength, even violence. It wants to be dominated and oppressed, it wants to fear its masters. Deep down an utterly conservative, it has a profound dislike for all progress and innovation and an unlimited reverence for tradition.”
The one who changes the way of thinking of the people is capitalism, which exacerbates our most individualistic and narcissistic side. And that promotes 24 hours a day the miseducation of society by stimulating consumerism, competitiveness, the ambition for wealth and “every man for himself”.
Noam Chomsky lists the system resources to avoid critical awareness: constant entertainment (you just have to watch television programming); disguising abuses as necessities, such as the increase in transport fares (“measures that are, in reality, harmful to the population because they favor the hidden interests of a minority are adopted as if they were to guarantee common benefits”); keep the public in ignorance and mediocrity, like the coded language used in economics articles; self-blame (I am solely responsible for my failure or my success); convince that the big media know more than anyone else, etc. They are what Chomsky calls “the silent weapons for quiet wars.”
The PT governed the municipalities of Marica (RJ) and Ipatinga (MG) for four periods and guaranteed substantial benefits to their populations. In 2022, Bolsonaro won both times in both cities.
This means that the risk of the right wing returning to the presidency of the Republic in 2026 is real. For more benefits that the Lula government guarantees to the Brazilian people. What then is the output? How to prevent that from happening?
political education
There is only one alternative: an intense work of popular education with the Paulo Freire method using the two precious resources available to the government: capillarity and the communication system. Capillarity means adopting the Paulofreirean pedagogy in the training of federal agents in contact with the most vulnerable sectors of the population, such as Health, the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics, the Brazilian Agricultural Research Company, etc. Why not include a third condition in Bolsa Família, in addition to schooling and vaccinations? That condition would be professional training. In addition to promoting the qualification of the beneficiaries so that they can generate income, the training workshops would use the Paulo Freire method. Women who sign up for training in cooking and sewing workshops, for example, would learn these trades with a method that awakens critical awareness.
The federal government communication network
The other resource is the Brazilian Communication Company (EBC), a powerful communication system in the hands of the federal government, from the Voice of Brazil, heard daily by 70 million people.
TV Brasil, channel 2, a public communication network, has 50 affiliates in 21 states. In 2021 it was among the ten most watched stations in the country. The EBC radio system includes nine stations in two states and the Federal District. The EBC has national radio coverage from 14 affiliated stations. Radio Nacional is a network of EBC stations. It is made up of the following stations: Radio Nacional de Rio de Janeiro (reaching the entire national territory via satellite); National Radio of |Brasilia; National FM (Brasilia); Radio Nacional de Amazonia (based in Brasilia, but with programming aimed at the North region); Alto Solimões National Radio (Tabatinga, AM); and Radios MEC and MEC FM (Rio de Janeiro).
The communication of the federal government also has the National Radio Agency, a news agency that transmits audios produced by the EBC stations and associated stations. According to the state company, more than 4,500 radio stations use the contents of Radioagencia. And Agencia Brasil, focused on activities and events related to the government, the State and citizens, reaches 19 million users per month.
There is also the EBC Portal, an internet platform that disseminates content from the vehicles (Brazil Agency, National Radio Agency, EBC Radios, TV Brazil, TV Brazil International), the Brazil Communication Company and society.
In addition to managing federal public broadcasters, the EBC is responsible for the formation of the National Public Communication Network (RNCP). The purpose of the RNCP is to establish technical cooperation with public and private initiatives that exploit public broadcasting services. Currently the network has 38 stations spread throughout the country.
As part of the RNCP policy, the EBC may at any time request channels for the operation of sound broadcasting services (FM radio), sounds and images (television) and television retransmission for itself or for its associates. They are called consignments of the Union. Currently, 13 vehicles operate in this way throughout the country: TV Brasil Maranhão, with the Federal Institute of Maranhão; TV UFAL, with the Federal University of Alagoas; TV UFBP, with the Federal University of Paraiba; TV UFSC, with the Federal University of Santa Catarina; TV Universidad, with the Federal University of Mato Grosso; and University TV, with the Federal University of Roraima.
Imagine the reader all that network dedicated to awakening the critical awareness of the public. It is enough to change the epistemological key, which is focused only on social problems, and adopt dialectical logic, focused on the causes of those problems.
When we see campaigns in favor of those who are hungry on television, places for food collection or basic basket donations are usually indicated. At no time does the newscast ask questions like, why are people hungry? Why don’t they have access to food? Is it natural that there are fed up and hungry? How to overcome this inequality?
There is much to do to raise awareness, organize and mobilize the Brazilian people. The resources are there. And there is political will on the part of Lula and the General Secretariat of the Presidency of the Republic, monitored by Minister Márcio Macedo. All that remains is commitment, the production of materials for social communication vehicles and a budget for the government to have a network of popular educators of at least 50,000 people.
Taken from Select Firmsthe PL
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