Rethinking left strategy in Brazil
Joaquim Soriano is one of the leaders of the Socialist Democracy (DS)
tendency within the Brazilian Workers' Party (PT). He was the candidate for general secretary of the Left Slate, which won 46% of delegate votes at the last party congress. He wrote this article as a contribution brazil
In Brazil, neoliberalism has replaced the "national-developmentalism" which shaped the country from the 1930s through to the 1980s.
Internationally, the world moulded under the impact of the 1917 Russian revolution to the internal debate on the situation facing the PT today.
AS WE ENTER A NEW HISTORIC ERA THE moving tides of this passage engulf Brazilian society and redefine its place in the still incipient new world order.! As a part of this re-organization we've seen an important shift within the Brazilian bourgeoisie, not merely in response to the international recomposition, but the result of a long-running political dispute — a crisis of leadership — which lasted from the end of the military dictatorship through to the government of Itamar Franco.2 Now this situation has been overcome with achievement of a new the hegemony within the ruling class.
After several years of representing a democratic and popular solution to the national crisis, we suffered an important defeat in the 1994 presidential election. The bourgeoisie succeeded in creating more favourable circumstances for imposing its project of capitalist reorganisation, of destroying the nation and recolonising the country. We now face a right-wing government which seeks to transform the electoral alliance of conservative forces into an organic power block capable of pushing through a complete reform of the
Brazilian state. This conservative alliance around the PSDB3 and the
PFL4 today unites almost the entire ruling class.
The government led by
Fernando
Henrique Cardoso represents the re-articulation of a strategic bourgeois nucleus much more in line with the imperialist decision- making centres than the military dictatorship, and indicates an unprecedented internationalisation of the ruling class. We have once again to accumulate forces, gather allies, reorganise strategic references, mark out the political and ideological terrain which will allow us to demonstrate to the majority of the population the link between their falling living standards and these neoliberal policies.
All these are conditions for us to be able to take up once again the struggle for power in Brazil. Neoliberal instability
In many dependent countries the state played the part of a partial counterweight to the logic of the world market, permitting some limited autonomy for national decision-making centres and support for national development policies. Globalisation, deregu-
Carnival? No. Neoliberalism lation, and the strengthening of market mechanisms have unleashed a renewed colonisation of the countries on the periphery... The dynamics affecting Brazil and the world are not merely conjunctural; they suggest a change in the very character of the period, both nationally and internationally. It is not only political and social movements which are being reorganized, but the whole of society.
and rearranged at the end of the 2nd World
War has ceased to exist, whilst capitalism is undergoing a mutation comparable with that which marked its passage from the competitive phase of the 19th century to the monopolist phase of theme costs on the capitalists in order to maintain the political unity of the nation, and build up and integrate the different sectors of the domestic market.
All this is called into question by globalisation and governmental campaigns against labour costs and the costs of the public sector.
The least internationalised sectors of the ruling classes suffer, in many countries, a process of destabilisation, but those most penalised are the workers.
In Brazil, this crisis has been nonviolent, though with acute contradictions. The experience in countries like
Argentina and Mexico, with unfavourable much more conditions for the left, shows that the impoverishment and marginalisation of whole sectors and regions can lead to rebellions, as in Chiapas, or it trigger spontaneous can explosions of popular revolt, as in Santiago del Estero in
Argentina.
In Brazil, "adjustment" did not brutally the assume deindustrialising form it did in
Argentina, nor the degree of anti-national pillaging which
EL FiSHEN.
occurred in Mexico. But the opening of Brazilian markets is already provoking
-the collapse of some sectors of agriculture and industry, and may impoverish whole regions.
What's more, neoliberal stabilisation is subject to crises caused by frequent ups and downs in the world economy. In the case of
Brazil, although there is little likelihood of an exchange crisis is the short term, this cannot be ruled out; the continuing large currentaccount deficits, the growing dependency on short-term capital, and a fresh increase in the foreign debt, could all put this back on the
International Viewpoint 13
Brazil
* agenda, threatening to cast adrift the current policy and undermine the economic government's legitimacy.
Thus the neo-liberal model's internal contradictions and structural instability create potential spaces for the left to struggle and develop alternative proposals.
The present challenges
The complete subordination of the media, the considerable degree of unity within the bourgeoisie around the neoliberal proposals, and its control of the institutional terrain (Congress, state and municipal governments, judiciary and the armed forces), mean that any efforts based on negotiating the "lesser evil" or trying to exploit secondary contradictions within the enemy camp, simply end up reinforcing government policies and undermining our own proposals.
To change the situation we need to revitalise social struggles and restore their legitimacy in the eyes of the majority of the population. We need to develop proposals for vanise popular mobilisations and challenge the "official agenda", creating pressure outside of the institutional domain which then changes the balance forces established within it (as the MSTS did in the struggle for land reform). One basic aspect is denunciation of the whole process of neoliberal reorganization, trying to break through the monolithic media blockade on this question. One of neoliberalism's greatest victories is when it manages to eliminate all alternatives, establishing itself, in spite of its economic and social failure for the majority of the population, as the common point of reference for both defenders and opponents of the status quo. The reaffirmation of a global alternative, based on the interests of the workers, is a fundamental condition for confronting neoliberalism in the economic, political and social fields. New agenda
In other words, a new political agenda is needed for the PT and the Brazilian left in general. This would involve: • a reworking of the strategic project for this country, offering an alternative to the disintegration of national perspectives produced by unprotected incorporation into an increasingly exclusionary international order; • a new policy for accumulating social forces, one which will redefine the PT's relations with its broad social base and bring us back closer to the majority who are worst hit by the neoliberal policies;
EMTEMPO: