THE WORKERS PARTY (PT) was extremely successful in the municipal elections last November (see IV 157). The most difficult task confronting it now is managing 14 councils in São Paulo state including the one in the capital São Paulo, a city with a population of 10 million.
The PT's first six weeks at the head of the São Paulo council can be described, using a military analogy, as an occupation of conquered territory, and its defence against harassment and guerrilla operations from an enemy that is still on the retreat. The position adopted by the new administration is related to this situation: exploration of the new territory, the strengthening of key positions that allow control of the area, and a refusal to be goaded into any major confrontations that can be perience in managing a municipal executive. In this context, a series of important measures were taken, although the mass media did not report them (reinstating public employees dismissed by Quadros; beginning to apply a policy of democratization and popular participation).
We are beginning to have a much more concrete idea of the possibilities for widening PT's social base. We are in a position now to relate to sections of the population that the party has had hardly any contact with up until now.
Problems facing the homeless
Thus, until now, those sectors whose activity is directly governed by the municipality were the basis of support for the clientelism of the right. We therefore had to spend a lot of energy on the street-sellers, taxis and members of the Samba schools.
Democracy current in the PT.] JOSE CORREA
A N INITIAL PHASE of the PT's
administration of São Paulo is now being surmounted. This was a time when the bourgeoisie and the big media were waiting for events that they could exploit to provoke a rapid weakening of the PT's municipal team (for example, the paralysis of essential services or a strike by public workers). In the absence of such events, they have turned to other themes such as street-sellers or the nepotism supposedly involved in giving contracts to relatives of members of the administration. This is without counting the pressing problem of housing, which is insoluble in the present context, and which has been brought to the fore by occupations.
This has already enabled our party to draw a lasting lesson: members of the administration and the PT are going to continue to be harassed by the mass media, which is going to use every single opportunity to discredit them in the eyes of public opinion.
In addition, we must have a very respon20 not allow it to become a platfom for play- sible policy towards the mass media, and International Viewpoint #161 • April 17, 1989 ing up the existing political differences in the party. We must rapidly establish the necessary means of communication to socialize information and unify the political understanding of party activists in order to transmit, without distortions, our view of what is happening.
Total lack of municipal resources
The caution of this initial period was likewise conditioned by a total lack of municipal resources, resulting from a major depletion of funds by the previous administration, headed by Janio Quadros. This situation forced us to make agreements, in an unfavourable balance of forces, with the private transport (bus) and refuse collecting companies. In some cases this was at a certain political cost (such as the increase in bus fares). Building up a minimum of financial reserves and organizing popular support for measures opposed to the capitalist sectors ought to get us rapidly into a more favourable situation for taking up these sort of problems.
And this will probably be the case tomorrow for the stall-holders or small traders.
The problems of homelessness cannot be resolved in a municipal framework, but we have to give a very clear perspective to the hundreds of thousands of families concerned. This forces us to demonstrate concretely that we are going to satisfy their hopes as far as possible, and lead their struggles against those who are really responsible for the lack of housing
We are in a better position to measure What it means to lead a section of the state apparatus, a machine that was set up to reproduce the domination of the ruling class and the logic of capital accumulation. To be effective, bourgeois pressure need not necessarily be put on via a boycott or an open confrontation. At present, it tends to be applied through manipulation of the present structure and precariousness of services for the working population, and by the defence of criteria of capitalist profitability as regards the performance of these services.
When we raise bus fares — not only to avoid a confrontation with the bus owners, but also to avoid increasing the deficit of the municipal public transport company -we are applying the same anti-popular policies as the bourgeoisie, and we are prisoners of the logic of capital reproduction in the domain of the municipal administration. Breaking with this logic is only possible
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in the framework of an overall policy that affects all the ramifications of the administration and its relations with the population. This can be done by reversing priorities, but also by renegotiating the debts and putting pressure on creditors, as well as looking for alternative sources of revenue. And by an intense mobilization and mass participation, but with a different sort of administrative machine than we have now.
The result will be pronounced social tension, a sharp political struggle, and an intense mass mobilization headed up by the PT's municipal administration against the governments of the state and the federation. This is the only possible road that can meet the aspirations for change of those who supported us with their votes.
Applying the PT's programme in the administration demands a reversal of the present logic of organization and functioning of the municipalities. The problems of reaching this goal are many, but they start from the fact that the PT has not succeeded, for the time being, in formulating a policy for municipal administration: we have elaborated a number of sectoral policies — proposals on education, health, transport -but not an overall conception that brings together all these aspects and integrates them with other elements such as administrative reform, popular participation, and social communication.
It is indispensable for us to get out of our present defensive position and go onto the offensive. But some preconditions are necessary for that:
• Drawing up concrete measures - compatible and inter-linked - that we are going to try to implement, which are accompanied by details of stages, timescales and proposals for the necessary resources to set them up.
Effective control of administrative machine
• An effective control of the administrative machine, with a coherent leadership that can restructure and re-orient its functioning around the interests of the workers.
This implies an administrative reform that will have to be realized much more rapidly than was first envisaged, in particular concerning decentralization, democratization, setting up channels for popular participation and other forms of public control, replacing personnel who cannot be retrained.
• Building up a base of political and social support organized on a mass basis to back up these initiatives. On the one hand this relates to the municipal leadership's participation in the general political workers' struggle and confrontations with the central goverment, and on the other to the process of setting up People's Councils.
• And, finally, establishing appropriate and collaborative relations between the party and the municipal administration in tackling problems that arise. *
People's
Councils and the fight for socialism
AN IMPORTANT debate is taking place inside the
Workers Party (PT) around the creation of People's
Councils. Em Tempo analyzes the role of
People's Councils as elements of popular control over the PT's municipal activity, and as embryos of popular power following an alternative class logic.
Discussions on this subject will continue in the months to come, with a municipal seminar on the theme of People's Councils scheduled for April 23, followed by a municipal meeting in May.
BRAZIL T HE MAIN strategic question raised by the new situation following the PT's electoral victory concerns the formation of People's Councils. Because of the features of our society, the popular urban movement has to become the central organizer for the camp of the popular forces in Brazil, alongside the trade-union and rural workers' movements. An important section of the urban population is not integrated into the formal labour market, and can only be involved in political struggle via mobilizations for better living conditions and on the basis of neighbourhood organization in the big urban conglomerations.
In the last decade, the PT, the CUT [trade-union federation] and broad mass movements in the countryside have been formed in Brazil. On the other hand, the popular urban movement in the big cities has not progressed. It has even, in many cases, retreated back to the same level it was at during the latter part of the 1970s. Fragmented, sectoralized, regionalized, depoliticized, it is one of the most important areas of support for the bourgeois parties. A significant step forward in the ndependent organization of the urban po under the PT's leadership will be decisiv existing.
Clans, corruption and clientelism clearest demonstration of this. We finc ourselves faced with an overall confronta
Lion with the who stan are in in.
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After the victory of Luiza Erundina [elected mayor of São Paulo on the PT list], Eduardo Suplicy's election as municipal council president and the beginnings of a fight to reform the structures represented an important blow against a crucial bridge linking the bourgeoisie and its mass urban base (the other being the municipality itself). But the ramifications of this structure remain intact — its nervous system extends into every neighbourhood, to residents', cultural and sporting associa tions and so on. The regional administrations are obliged to work with this reality.
The stakes are high: through the formation of People's Councils, we have to measure up to some difficult but absolutely essential tasks that are now facing us: destructuring to the maximum extent this organizational network and the political and economic relations that reproduce bourgeois domination in neighbourhoods; and disconnecting the mass base from this network's elected agents and the representatives of the conservative leaderships and reorganizing them under another hegemony, on a class basis. The setting up of People's Councils certainly implies a reorganization of the totality of day-to-day political relations with the urban population, and could represent a shift of large sections of the masses towards the popular camp, towards the sphere of independent workers' organization under the PT's leadership.
Risk of unbalancing the party's work
The PT's electoral success is very significant. But it carries with it the risk of making this institutional activity the centre of gravity of the party's work. However, this success must go in tandem with the independent organization of workers, the autonomous activity of the masses and popular self-organization.
In order to find this new equilibrium, the party's intervention has to be shifted towards autonomous popular activity. There is also a strategic consideration in all this. The workers' struggle for power in Brazil seems to follow a path combining two aspects that are simultaneously qualitatively distinct and interdependent.
On one side, there is the winning of posts inside existing institutions, parliamentary as well as executive seats (at difgovernment), with the control of limited sections of the bourgeois state apparatus. We know that winning governments is not the same as winning power, even on the federal level, but that this provides workers with better conditions for pursuing
On the other side we have the setting up of forms of popular power — mass, com22 bative and united organization of workers and all the oppressed based on direct International Viewpoint #161 • April 17, 1989 democracy in the workplaces, neighbourhoods or in the countryside. These organizations, originally created as instruments of struggle around immediate demands, can, insofar as the social and political struggle sharpens, develop their character as organs of power. This will only become apparent in another political situation and another relationship of forces (creating a dual power situation vis-à-vis the dominant class institutions of the bourgeoisie).
Only advancing on the institutional terrain will result in not preparing workers for a situation of a struggle for power, which is decisive for those fighting for socialism. The best way of creating the conditions to meet this challenge is from this moment on at each stage to push forward independent mass organization in the broadest and most advanced possible
Laying the basis for socialist democracy
Popular participation has always been one of the axes of the PT's programme. Today we are discussing how the PT administration in the São Paulo municipality can make the biggest contribution to this. But this must be precisely defined. It can take on the character of participation in the bodies or channels of the administration, in the councils or commissions, with the goal of democratizing the management of the state apparatus and socializing information, allowing much greater control and collaboration between public employees and the population concerning the services for which they are responsible. This institutionalized participation, however, does not guarantee the autonomy of those involved who take the side of the working class against the state.
In the city of São Paulo, we have had the pretty negative experience of the Covas administration, which, through various sorts of councils, co-opted a large part of the popular movement, preventing any subsequent possibility of resistance to the initiatives of the Janio government.
This participation only takes on lasting significance for a socialist perspective if it is linked up to other forms of political participation by working people, in the mass organizations and independent struggles, as an expression of popular self-
This is the only way that steps forward in mobilization can express all their energy and authenticity, laying down the basis for a new institutional legitimacy, for a socialist democracy.
The formation and development of autonomous People's Councils as axes of popular participation in the cities that have PT administrations are the best guarantee that the party's presence in the various institutional channels does not lead to "domestication" and cooption of the popu-