With Brazil’s October basic elections approaching, the 2 predominant presidential contenders, fascistic President Jair Bolsonaro and former Staff Occasion (PT) president Luís Inácio Lula da Silva, are competing to persuade nationwide and worldwide capital that every is essentially the most dependable defender of revenue pursuits in opposition to the impoverished Brazilian working class.
The PT’s and Lula’s opposition to Bolsonaro are based not on any want, a lot much less potential, to unravel any of the urgent points dealing with staff—a raging pandemic, spiraling inflation and mass unemployment and poverty. They’ve all the time opposed Bolsonaro as a legal responsibility for Brazilian capitalism. His overt contempt for staff’ lives and residing requirements and his open preparations to take energy by pressure in case of an electoral defeat expose all of the brutality of the nation’s revenue system. This in flip threatens to impress a mass response from under, as in neighboring Chile, Colombia and now Ecuador, calling into query capitalism itself.
A lot consideration has been given by the Brazilian company press and Congressional events within the final weeks to a June 11 Bloomberg report of a leak from the White Home, saying that Bolsonaro advised Biden he would defend “US pursuits” in Brazil, in opposition to Lula, who would defend “Brazilian pursuits,” which presumably, means neutrality in face of the US battle preparations in opposition to China, in addition to the present NATO proxy battle in opposition to Russia.
Lula’s marketing campaign coordinator, Senator Randolfe Rodrigues, reacted to the information with a nationalist, right-wing rant. He as soon as once more appealed to Bolsonaro’s personal navy base, declaring the president ought to be charged with excessive treason for looking for electoral interference by a overseas energy. The ominous implications of US interference for staff’ democratic and social rights, together with the historical past of US-backed coups in Latin America and its numerous victims, was fully ignored.
In what has turn into a ritual within the Brazilian media reporting and official opposition statements, the Bloomberg report has been handled as additional proof that Brazilian democracy is prospering, aside from Bolsonaro himself. With out citing any proof, Globo pundit Valdo Cruz argued that the White Home leaked the report back to mark its distance from Bolsonaro and his preparations for an electoral coup and, in flip, that such “distancing” would assure a peaceable transition of energy after October’s election. Within the phrases of Lula’s former chief-of-staff José Dirceu, “there will likely be no coup due to the shortage of worldwide help for an occasion of this type.”
Dirceu’s assertion embodies the PT’s whole perspective in the direction of Bolsonaro’s plans for dictatorship: they have to be opposed not within the title of social and democratic rights of Brazilian staff, however as a result of they’re “unhealthy for enterprise.” What the PT gives, in flip, is loyalty from unions and the so-called “social actions” in reaching “inside stability.”
Just about ignored by the media was a Reuters report from Could 25 that the PT despatched its final protection minister, Jaques Wagner, for an undisclosed assembly with US State Division officers to debate prospects for a 3rd Lula authorities. Formally, Wagner went to the USA to talk in Lula’s title on the so-called “Brazil Convention” organized yearly by Brazilian college students at Harvard and MIT. Wagner, who’s a senator however holds no official overseas relations capability within the Brazilian Congress, has additionally met with French, and US ambassadors for comparable discussions.
The PT’s promotion of the US and different imperialist powers because the guarantors of democracy in Brazil is a criminally harmful coverage. Given the US-backed 1964-1985 navy dictatorship, this declare is absurd on its face. The PT, which was based within the wake of the mass struggles in opposition to this regime, way back remodeled itself into the foremost instrument to not reform, not to mention abolish Brazilian capitalism, however to defend it in opposition to the Brazilian working class. The PT is single-minded in hiding the true risks dealing with Brazilian staff as a result of it fears a working class insurrection excess of it fears Bolsonaro and his fascist supporters.
Claims of US “help” for democracy in Brazil, drawn from a handful of White Home press conferences and State Division leaks, are much more preposterous in face of the intractable disaster dealing with world capitalism, expressed most intensely in the USA itself. This disaster was the supply of Donald Trump’s January 6 putsch, which loved important help inside the political institution and navy equipment. It is usually the driving pressure behind the US imperialist offensive in opposition to Russia and China, threatening World Warfare Three, by which Latin America options as a key battleground. This world disaster is driving US imperialism to resume its aggression in opposition to a number of Latin American nations, together with its crippling sanctions in opposition to Venezuela, the 2019 coup in Bolivia and the tight grip it maintains over Colombia.
The rationale behind Bolsonaro’s superior preparations for dictatorship was laid out late final month in a repulsive and threatening doc offered by a bunch of ultra-right navy think-tanks, with the backing of Brazil’s vice-president, Gen. Hamilton Mourão, and high intelligence officers. Titled “Nation Mission, Brazil in 2035,” the doc proclaims the necessity to “neutralize the political and social energy” of “radical … ideologies that divide the nation” with a purpose to present the nation the cohesion wanted to claim itself within the geopolitical enviornment dominated by the battle between US and China.
The doc unapologetically embraces a fascist worldview by which “globalism” is the best menace to Brazil. In language harking back to the “Protocols of the Elders of Zion,” it asserts that Brazilian capitalist establishments are affected by a “globalist” outlook and have to be purged. Written within the type of a outcomes and views doc from a hypothetical Brazil in 2035, it portrays as a significant achievement the institution of a an unelected “heart of presidency” (presumably headed by the navy) that oversees the president.
An assault on the justice system, and the Electoral Courtroom (TSE) particularly, consciously specified by the navy manifesto, are the central tenet of Bolsonaro’s preparations for a coup. The president has repeatedly fabricated claims that the Electoral Courtroom is actively getting ready electoral fraud to profit the PT.
Bolsonaro’s cupboard is escalating assaults in opposition to the TSE, with Protection Minister, Gen. Paulo Sérgio Oliveira, publicly denouncing it for “disrespecting” the navy and “ignoring” the observations made on the request of the TSE itself over the security of Brazil’s digital balloting system. Final week, Oliveira declared the navy wouldn’t talk about its “issues” exterior of unique conferences with the Courtroom, which bar different our bodies constitutionally allowed to supervise the elections, such because the Brazilian Bar Affiliation (OAB). Three days later, Justice Minister Anderson Torres made the identical demand on behalf of the Federal Police, setting the stage for a public refusal by each the Military and the Federal Police to acknowledge poll outcomes proclaimed by the TSE.
In face of the unprecedented offensive by the Govt in opposition to the TSE and the revelations that authorities officers have laid out a plan to destroy any opposition after the October elections, the PT’s response is centered on the spineless enchantment for Lula to be elected on the primary spherical, with a purpose to “discourage” Bolsonaro supporters from appearing on the president’s introduced problem to the outcomes.
As for the PT electoral program’s guarantees of “reforms,” the celebration has made clear to large enterprise that they aren’t definitely worth the paper on which they’re printed. For each time Lula guarantees to “elevate” a crippling federal spending cap imposed by a Constitutional modification in 2017, he repeats that businessmen know he has all the time been “fiscally accountable,” recalling the austerity measures imposed from the beginning of his authorities, such because the pension reform that led to an inside purge within the PT.
For each time he claims to oppose privatizations, he repeats that he has “by no means damaged a single contract,” that’s, that no personal revenue will likely be touched in massive combined capital corporations corresponding to Petrobras.
In actual fact, the problems listed by the fascist navy manifesto are the identical as these superior by the PT as basic in its opposition to Bolsonaro, mainly Brazil’s perceived diplomatic isolation and geopolitical weak point, and his lack of ability to take care of “inside safety.” The PT is totally conscious that rising Brazil’s share of world markets and geopolitical assertiveness require brutal austerity and exploitation of the working class, which can’t be achieved with out the suppression of social opposition.
Versus Bolsonaro, it guarantees nationwide and worldwide capital to realize these goals by means of the economic police of the unions. However the celebration can also be conscious that the rotten unions and “social actions” it promotes as social pacifiers won’t maintain again staff for lengthy, and therefore its absolute refusal to level out, not to mention condemn, any of Bolsonaro’s navy co-conspirators.
It is a continuation, and on the similar time a deepening, of the coverage it pursued in over a decade in energy by upholding the amnesty for the torturers and murderers of the 1964-1985 dictatorship, permitting for Bolsonaro himself to thrive as a backbencher in its ruling coalition. As for its aim of pursuing “geopolitical independence” from the US—shared with the navy—it solely reinforces the necessity to obtain “competitiveness” by means of a extra intense exploitation of staff. That features guaranteeing the capitalist income of US corporations in face of staff’ strikes and struggles, with the PT’s Jaques Wagner looking for to reassure the US State Division to not take Lula’s rhetoric as anything than a “smokescreen,” as confessed by PT’s president herself.
Regardless of the outcomes of the October 2 vote, the ruling class will shut ranks in a renewed assault on social and democratic rights. Their protection can solely be mounted in a aware battle for socialism, unbiased of and in opposition to all capitalist events and their political stooges, together with the PT, its pseudo-left apologists within the Socialism and Liberty Occasion (PSOL), and their affiliated unions and “social actions.” That requires the constructing of a brand new management within the working class, a Brazilian part of the Worldwide Committee of the Fourth Worldwide. That’s the job undertaken by the Socialist Equality Group (Brazil).
