Fighting
for a
socialist
São Paulo
LUIZA ERUNDINA's victory is the most important element in the recent Brazilian elections. If the victories in other towns in the state of São Paulo and elsewhere were bigger, it was the fight in São Paulo itself that raged the hardest. (José Correa is a member of the PT's town executive in São Paulo.) JOSÉ CORREA
N OT ONLY did the PT win in the
capital city of this state, but also in thirteen other towns which, taken together, represent 15 million people, or half of the total population of the state and almost all of its most important urban centers. Together, these make up a gigantic urban complex with São Paulo at the center: the capital itself, with more than ten million inhabitants; Santo Andres, with 560,000 people; São Bernardo, another 560,000 people; and Diadema, with 320,000. Outside of the São Paulo metropolitan region, there is Campinas, with 900,000 inhabitants, Santos, with 460,000 people, and Piracicaba, with 250,000.
In governing the major cities in the most important state of the federation, the PT must today take up the huge challenge of consolidating a quantitatively and qualitatively larger and more politically and ideologically cohesive social base in order to become the majority party in Brazilian society and to win the support of the broad masses to its proposals.
It has managed to win a very important springboard for achieving such a goal. The PT is by far the dominant force among the 17 million inhabitants of the 39 municipalities that make up greater São Paulo, with its seven million wage earners who produce 20% of the Brazil's GNP, about $61 billion. (In comparison, Cuba's GNP is $15 billion, and Nicaragua's, S2.7 billion.) And in this region, huge social contradictions are growing: 35% of the population live in favelas (shanty-town slums), 50% have no sanitation, and homicide is today the major cause of death for adults.
Concretely achieving the PT's potential to become the majority party is a process that is dependent on two things. The first is the party's capacity to govern the towns satisfactorily, meeting the needs of the majority of the population, especially in São Paulo itself. The second is its ability to offer the masses a credible alternative for dealing with the crisis that is gripping Brazil.
Programme for municipal government
The following are some of the goals set down in a resolution on the municipal governments won by the PT, which was adopted on December 2, 1988 by the regional Directorate of São Paulo:
• the improvement of workers' living standards at the municipal level;
• continuing to expose the limitations of local administration, always stressing that the basic problems of the Brazilian people can never be resolved unless we put an end to capitalism and the workers take power;
• the creation of openings and channels to encourage the growing organization and direct participation at the municipal level of workers in all matters that concern them;
• support from the municipal administration to the workers" struggles against all governmental bodies of the state and the country, and against capitalism.
It is important to be pinpoint the significance of this victory even more closely. As the resolution cited above states: "The fact that the PT has won some towns does not mean that the workers have taken power in their cities, much less in their country. Power is something much broader than
BRAZIL that. It involves control of the essential means of production, of the state apparatus in its entirety and of the means of mass communication. All of these, as of today, remain in one way or another under the direct control of the bourgeoisie. Confronting the economic muscle of local elites
"At the municipal level, power is largely outside of the control of the mayor's office The economic muscle and strength of local elites, with their power of social cohesion, continue to exist, even if they were dealt a blow by the loss of their control over the municipal executive. At the level of the instruments for running local government, in practically every case we will face city councils where the majority of councillors will be in the service of the ruling class, and who will mount a furious resistance to the PT's municipal administration."
In São Paulo city, out of 53 councillors, 16 are PT, (plus two who are members of the PCB and the PCdoB, in the local "People's Parties" coalition with which the PT proposes to form a party coalition in order to govern the city.) The PSDB, with which the PT will have very difficult relations, has five council seats, and the PDT, one. This means that Luiza Erundina will have to run the city government with a council minority, and already an [opposition] bloc has been formed led by councillors Brasil Vita from the PTB, and Antonio Sampaio from
So, there is a possibility that the PT will have to face up to a legislative blockade of its management, if the presidency of the São Paulo city council falls into the hands of a councillor from the right.
But that is only one of the difficulties that the PT will encounter. It will also face maneuverings of the capitalist sectors whose activity is linked to the public sector (bus 15 companies, waste disposal, dumps, and so
• #157 International Viewpoint
International Viewpoint #157 • February 20, 1989
BRAZIL on), as well as the pressures of the federal and state government, a media campaign and other threats.
There is an underlying logic in the whole administrative machinery of a municipality, and this is even more the case in São Paulo, with its 130,000 civil servants. These are apparatuses designed to support the accumulation of capital, auxiliaries in the management of social manpower from the bourgeoisie's point of view. They operate according to another kind of criteria than those necessary to meet the social needs of the popular classes.
So it is correct to say, as does the São Paulo Directorate's resolution, that "in this context, the social contradiction that we must face up to, and our major challenge, is to transform a political and administrative apparatus that was conceived with the aim of reproducing domination of the working class at the local level into a tool for struggle and for winning the workers' mediate and long-term demands. Taking up this challenge means forging a link between the immediate situation and strategic goals, and governing effectively without changing ourselves into administrators of
"This means avoiding the dogmatism that would result, for example, if all we wanted to do was use the town hall in order to denounce capitalism. But also to avoid the pitfalls of reformism, which consist, at best, in improving the conditions for the reproduction of labour power at the local level. In sum, this means governing in the framework of capitalism, but at the same time making the PT municipal administration into an important element in building up the strength of the workers with a perspective of going beyond capitalism."
At the head of the São Paulo city government, the PT will need to accomplish its goals through a combination of solutions to various problems. The first and most urgent of these is that of the budget left behind by the preceding administration, (Jânio Quadros, PTB.) Only 10% of local taxes stay in the hands of the municipal government - the rest goes to the state and federal governments. For 1988, the budget was $2,217 billion. This is close to the bud16 get in Chile under Allende in 1972 (S2,5 billion), but it is wholly inadequate to meet the needs of this metropolis.
The municipal debt is around a billion dollars, and for 1989 a deficit of 25% is expected, and that figure will rise even higher if the budget Sarney has submitted to congress is passed, since it provides for payment of 25% of the foreign debt of the states and the municipalities. Moreover, there are also arrears on current-account payments amounting to $210 million. Most of this is owed to the five big public works companies with which the mayor had signed contracts, and there is no way out of this obligation. In addition, there are arrears owed to the contractors who pick up
What is more, the state government is to throw back onto the municipal government a part of the services and expenses in sectors today still blocked by the state, such as health and education. A large part of the budget is also committed to current expenses, mainly wages, and there is the danger that it will be further drained by the "arrangements" that Jânio Ouadros has left behind. The PT, therefore, is going to find itself in a more than precarious budgetary situation with this debt time-bomb for the first year of its administration.
Administrative reform is essential
An administrative reform, involving the elimination of various secretariats and a redefinition of the role of others, modifying the functioning of the administration as a whole, and a real decentralization of the municipal "machine", is essential to achieve a genuine reordering of priorities. Such a reform, among others, will only be possible in the intermediate term, to the extent that the PT takes in hand the reins of administration, p.ans a new structure and breaks the existing pattern of inertia.
It will also be necessary in the medium term to prevent the basic needs of the popular sectors — such as transport, education, health and housing - from continuing to be a source of profits for the capitalist groups. Effectively nationalizing these services means ensuring that they function efficiently at an adequate level of productivity. This is the necessary precondition for undertaking a political and ideological struggle against neo-liberal ideas and those that state enterprises are
The effectiveness of the PT's public administration will be intimately linked to the mechanisms of popular control and participation it is able to institute at the municipal level. This applies to the problems of democratizing the running of the state at the municipal level, both through the direct involvement of the population in administration and through institutional channels for mass participation. (This will mean either in specific sectors - councils for health care, parents of high-school students, transport users, or more generally community or budget councils — and through the participation of state employees in setting objectives for state enterprises and public investment.)
The democratization of information, "administrative transparency," is an essential precondition. Cooption of leaderships and the development of paternalistic methods of work are a major risk for the PT today. But it is also in these areas that it has accumulated the most experience.
The most important question the PT has to answer is undoubtedly that of "people's councils." Organizing the masses of working people of the cities on a territorial basis independently of the state is a challenge of historic dimensions that the PT has to meet. Discussion is needed in the party about its independent character, definition of its role in the "area of civil society," as well as a careful description of the forms of people's organization suited to democratizing the running of the state.
Making such an organization into a real power, an organ for mobilization and struggle based on direct democracy, a "fourth branch of government," will depend there-
• the level of activity and experience of major sectors of the mass movement;
• the possibility of centralizing the various people's movements that are today limited to sectors in the regions;
• the compatibility of these movements with possible forms of participation directed toward democratization of administration, which tend to become the political reference point for masses in struggle;
• the capacity of the PT administration (without ceasing to expand its education, because it alone has the materials means for this), to preserve a real, and not merely formal, independence from the councils.
PT must not neglect party-building
Another question is that of assuring an institutional cover capable of offering a formal legitimacy and of integrating all these elements in a more permanent way. The new municipal charter that the city council is to draft can play this role, if our proposals are already minimally implemented, and if the PT has sufficient strength to backup their adoption.
The PT has to take on all these tasks, without however neglecting the building of the party. The party cannot be allowed to decline or to merge with the PT municipal administrations. This also involves beefing up an activist intervention, which has fallen back a bit lately among the mass of members.
The process that is opening up is rather complex. The stakes are enormous, as are the dangers. But the possibilities opened up mean that it is worth taking these risks and throwing ourselves into the struggle for the victory of the PT administrations, especially in São Paulo. *