Showdown in Rio Grande
* Brazil On October 25, voters gave the Workers Party (PT) an increased role in local and state governments across Brazil. This is particularly true in the southern state of Grande do Sul, ' where the PT is led by radical left currents. Ernesto Herrera The confrontation between two irreconcilable political projects is now taking place in a national scenario marked by the economic crisis, savage austerity measures imposed by the neoliberal government of Fernando Henrique Cardoso and international capital, and a social resistance that is undergoing a radicalization.
On 7 November 1998, the Rio Grande' state leadership of the PT presented its first balance sheet of the
Contrary to the adaptationist outlook that prevails in many sectors of the Latin American left - and even among leaders of the PT - the evaluation and the leadership's proposals don't leave any room for
"Our victory was achieved within a climate of deep going political class struggle," says the resolution.? " won the elections thanks to the powerful political movement that we built around our proposals and our candidacies...
"Our victory is the victory of a radically democratic political project that seeks to re-establish the state's responsibilities in regulating the economy, promoting development on the basis of distributing wealth and social justice and attending to society's demands for improving the quality of life...
"The intense class struggle that characterized the electoral dispute and the social mobilization that guaranteed our victory will not be dissipated in this new stage of government.
"The declarations of the barons of local industry and business associations, the position of major media interests, and the behavior of the conservative legislators in recent days, sets the tone of how they will relate to the new elected government.
"On the one hand, there is an attempt by sectors of big business to isolate our government. But on the other side, there is a vast social mobilization of the social sectors that assured our victory."
The state leadership of the PT 2 International Viewpoint #307 January 1999 anticipates a scenario of confrontation and advances the need for a strategic programmatic proposal. The text affirms that "the period will impose a dynamic of social struggle in defense of the democratic and popular government.
[This is] a government that beyond administering the state, and seeks to be a creative
Educadores e
Educadoras da and active participant reforma agraria in a national context marked by a growing process of pauperization and marginalization.
"We face the challenge of posing a left alternative that is a political and cultural reference point for promoting the country's democratic forces and popular forces.
Rio Grande do Sul now has a left government that isn't content with merely administering public assets decently. Rather, it will fight for a favorable correlation of forces with the neoliberal right, in the framework of a true class struggle between labor and capital.
With this in mind, the resolution emphasizes that one of the new government's key initiatives must be the "construction of a broad mass movement that ideologically confronts the policies of
[President] Cardoso and the ruling classes and assumes the task of defending and building support for the policies of the democratic and popular government of Rio Grande."
The state leadership of the PT proposes three initiatives:
• to launch an audit of the privatizations, with participation from the
• to make the 1 January 1999 inaugural ceremony, when compañero Olivio
Dutra takes office as governor, into a large popular demonstration.
• to call a broad national conference to oppose the federal government's fiscal package and agreements on state debt
A solid municipal record
This victory and the popular mass support obtained can also be explained by the successive PT governments in dozens of municipalities throughout the state and, in particular, its capital, Porto
Alegre.
The policy of promoting mass participation in formulating the budget has been a key factor in organizing and mobilizing civic associations as well as tens of thousands of residents around political, economic and social demands.
However, problems
A lustiça are now multiplying brasileira e e campo
Entrevistas:
In addition to black-
Leonel Brizola mail from the right e D. Demetrio business and the community, the popular government will face the open hostility of the state Legislative Assembly. The neoliberal parties have a large majorıty: 55 deputies to 20. To make matters worse, the outgoing rignt-wing governor has left a huge mess for the PT to sort out.
Our Latin American correspondent
Ernesto Herrera discussed these problems with compañero Miguel Rossetto?
the new deputy-governor.
• The victory of the Popular Front in Rio Grande has a great importance for the left in the region.* But we must be realistic. You take office constrained by the conditions imposed by the Mercosur free trade zone. Miguel Rossetto: That's true. On a whole range of questions, from the Mercosur to cultural questions, there's a need to define and promote an agenda, in this case through our base in the municipalities.
Our position is to clearly take the offensive in this regard, along with the compañeros in Uruguay and Argentina. [This leads to] an agenda that will undoubtedly be very full. But we think this offensive strategy will also be a way of opening spaces right here in Rio Grande. • The first thing that stands out in this "transition" period is the strong debates on what you call fiscal .blackmail. There's something interesting here. The liberals, the neoliberals, have two ideological axioms: the idea of a balanced budget, on the one hand, and the idea of the state as an incompetent, backward, bureaucratic public power, a cumbersome machine, on the other.
But if we just take the example of Rio Grande do Sul, we see that the outgoing neoliberal administration is a scandal, even if it is gauged from its own viewpoint and proposals. This is a government that raised taxes, and sold 5 billion reales (1 real =US$1.20) in public assets, (telecommunications, electricity, and insurance companies).
That is the equivalent of this state's annual budget, and more than 10% of state GDP. The outgoing administration expanded the internal debt, the state's consolidated public debt, which rose from 7 billion to 17 billion reales.
So, if you take the question of the balanced budget, even from the perspective of their liberal premises, it's clear that everything is a fraud.
The funny thing is that it is the PT - in the Porto Alegre municipal government -that has a balanced budget. In four years of neoliberalism in Rio Grande, the right increased taxes, sold off public assets, got deeper into debt, and destroyed public services.
What type of state did they build in these four years? It is a classical situation: the state was an instrument for transferring public profits to the large monopoly groups; it was a state that surrendered to the logic of finance capital and the neoliberal project.
It was a state designed to pay debts and sustain finance capital. I want to insist on this. It was an instrument for transferring public resources to the big economic groups, such as General Motors, Ford. A state that transferred public assets to the monopoly groups, a state that financed these groups, a state that renounced its regulatory capacity, its capacity to serve, to provide society with basic public services.
And at the same time, the administration cut the budget. They raised taxes, raised money through privatisation, and still cut the budget?
diminished the role of the budget: all their ideas for modernizing industry involved cutting taxes on private companies. And the entire debate on new investments was based on brutal budget slashing and transferring public resources to the private sector. Meanwhile, all kinds of taxes on the population were • A similar debate took place at the beginning of the Mercosur... Yes. It was a classic European-commonmarket type debate. One of the first measures adopted was a regulation to prevent the large economic groups from doing as they pleased with state finances.
There was a lot of concern about industrial relocation, when the large businesses move their operations from one juristiction to another, because of more attractive fiscal, environmental or labor regulations. This is also a problem inside Brazil. Big capital applies pressure, and the states compete to reduce their public expenditures, in a spiral of cuts in labor, environmental and fiscal constraints on big business. • There is a rumour that you will freeze public sector wages for the first 12 months of your office The state of Rio Grande do Sul is bankrupt. The state has an average monthly deficit of 110 million reales. In addition to this there are debt payments to the central government, debts that are un• Is this the reason you are discussing whether the debt should be paid or whether to declare a moratorium? Exactly. What I'm trying to say is that the balance sheet of the neoliberal administration is a complete disaster. The economy is growing at an average annual rate of 1.3%, which is totally mediocre; profitability has fallen in agriculture, industrial production has declined, and 850,000 workers statewide are unemployed. In addition, we are witnessing a process of brutal impoverishment outside the state capital.
Any development project based on budget cutbacks and the transfer of resources to the private sector is a project of sectoral concentration and, at the same time, of marginalization.
This is why the impact of this policy of re-centralizing resources in the federal government imposed by President Cardoso strips state and municipal treasuries of resources for development. This procontents americas
2
Brazil: Showdown in Rio
Grande
• interview with Miguel Rossetto
6
USA: New Directions on the subway
• Steve Downs
Mexico: Zapatista referendum
9
• Jess Kincaid
Vasia
10 Philippines:
The new workers' party
• interview with RWP-P leaders
Socialist Party of Labour
12
• Reihana Mohideen
India: rewriting history
12
• Achin Vanaik
14 Palestine & Israel: Behind the
Wye Plantation and Oslo accords
• Tikva Honig-Parnass history
17
60 years of the Fourth
International
• Charlie van Gelderen
20 In defence of communism
• Daniel Bensaid reviews
32 When abortion was a crime:
women, medicine and law in the United States, 1867-1976
• Leslie J. Reagan
(reviewed by Dianne Feeley)
34 The economics of global turbulence
(NLR 229, May 1998)
• Robert Brenner
(reviewed by Andy Kilmister)
International Viewpoint #307 January 1999 3
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* Brazil cess has two prongs: a financial centralization and, at the same time, a policy whereby the federal government abandons all responsibility for infrastructure, financial improvement, and social welfare, and creates a climate of political pressure to impose its project on the state governments.
Let me explain this a bit better. If our government doesn't privatize, it will not be able to finance the budget, or obtain financial resources. This is what, objectively. is under debate, because the snag 1s that neoliberal policies remove all political and financial autonomy from the state governments and, therefore, it is impossible to put the program the people voted for into practice.
Of course, for the liberals, this is a completely minor question; they don't care what the people vote for.
What they are interested in is signed contracts of a colonialist character; especially debt renegotation contracts. These already commit 13% of the state budget - and impose penalties if the government doesn't meet the contract terms. These sanctions would increase the payments to 17% of the budget.
This means, quite simply, that if we do not privatize, if we don't sell off Banesur (the state-owned bank) for example, this act of defence of a state will increase our debt repayments from 13 to 17% of the state
It gets worse than that. If the state government doesn't meet the 13% payment, the new contracts allow the federal government to stick its hands into our coffers, and directly withdraw the funds to pay this public debt. • It looks like the future will be marked by permanent conflict with the federal government. How does this affect governability? We have inherited a terrible framework. We must deal with an absolute inadequacy of the state. These long-term
International Viewpoint debt agreements eliminate our autonomy in implementing our program.
Our agenda for a national discussion, and our new relationship with the federal government, necessarily entail conflict. Recognizing and managing that conflict will be a key factor in the governability of Rio Grande do Sul.
We must seek governability based on the determined persuit of the commitments of our electoral program.
The ability to apply our governmental program entails permanent debate and conflict with the federal government, and a renegotiation of all these agreements.
We are not going to pay the 13%, we won't sell the public assets, and there. fore. the basis for governability consists of breaking these agreements.
This demands a conflictive relation with the Cardoso government, and at the same time, it entails a permanent process of discussion and mobilization among the people to sustain the governmental
We are a minority in the Legislative Assembly. We have a completely conservative judicial branch. There is a whole oligarchical block united against our program. Thus, we face a scenario marked by an intense internal dispute within the state, and also, an intense political dispute on a federal level.
I'm giving you these examples because they are what give concrete form to our project and make it viable. The question is not only one of an opposition government on a strategic level in relation to the federal government.
All this must be understood in this particular framework. It is not a question of running an opposition government in more stable, calmer circumstances. Our program will not be viable without a policy of confronting the national government. Therefore we will work on the basis of the idea that our government will be marked by permanent conflict. We must have the capacity to maintain, to strengthen, our base of social support.
The risk of isolation is undoubtedly great. For this very reason, the situation demands that we must permanently legitimize our political program. And to do so, more than ever we must develop the idea of popular participation as a source of legitimacy for this program.
From this flows the idea that it is of key importance to extend the policy of mass public participation in budget decisions, of expanding relations with the farmers, with public servants, with the small and medium producers.
This also explains the dispute over democratization of the communications media, the confrontation with the big monopolies. That is, we are aware that the margin we have for implementing our program is extremely narrow. Thus, the increased need for mass mobilizations. • Your fundamental political idea and programmatic proposal is a modification of the relationship of forces, ending the transfer of state resources to private companies, from labor to capital. But this doesn't automatically generate the resources needed to make the program viable and to satisfy the economic and social demands. How, then, are these resources to be generated? That's the problem. It is not just a question of the capacity to finance our projects, our investment policies. That's not where the discussion is at; it's about obtaining the resources to pay the wages of state employees. [The state spends 80% of its budget on salaries]. The problem before us is, for example, the impossibility of paying salaries of state employees in February.
So we have two things that we have to tackle: the question of the debt, which is unpayable, and, at the same time, to reverse a series of legislative measures half price for all new readers!
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that withdrew resources from the state • Are you considering new taxes as a source of revenue? No, not at all. We feel that with a good tax administration, collection of debts, and an internal reorganization of the tax structure, we could hope to pretty quickly recover revenue levels.
We have other minor sources of revenue that would allow for a more comfortable situation in the first few months, such as reducing superfluous public expenditures in advertising, etc. But increasing revenue basically implies fighting tax breaks and improving internal tax administration.
There is an added difficulty: the federal government's policies not only remove resources from the control of state governments, but also increase federal taxes.
In addition, when the economy is in a recessive phase, resources cannot be generated. This explains the major problems that we face in sustaining the state governments in the immediate period.
This presupposes a considerable degree of agreement and coordination with other state governments. And not just with those run by the opposition. In fact, most of the state governments have the same problems. • What are the main problems the state governments face in terms of financing the services they provide? In parceling out responsibilities, a series of key social powers remain in the hands of the state governments. Things like public education and public safety.
This has a serious impact. To give you an idea, in the state of Espiritu Santo, the crisis is so intense that the police are on strike and the governor, who belongs to the PT, had to call out the army to guarantee public safety.
This is the future of this country, because the states are accumulating direct responsibilities to the population in fields such as health, education, and safety. In the framework of the economic crisis, this amounts to a very big social
Over the next few months we envision an intense political dispute over the correlation of forces, discussion and conflict. Keep in mind that this scenario has an absolutely unpredictable outcome.
We have to enter this dispute with offensive proposals and at the same time, try to avoid isolation, both on a national level, and within the state of Rio Grande • Left government opens a space for an strategic alternative to the neoliberal project. But the concrete problems you identify force us to be original in terms of the proposals, Shouldn't you reconsider the timeframe and rhythms of the logic of accumulation of forces and confrontation with the bourgeoisie. Wouldn't it be better to accept two time frames for implementing your The electoral victory improves the conditions for a progressive project. But it does not resolve the crisis.
The great challenge before us is, precisely, the construction of an alternative project as a response to the crisis created by the neoliberals. This is the challenge; there aren't two time frames, there's only one, which is the construction of an alternative project sustained by a vast mobilization and popular participation as conditions for resolving the crisis of governability.
This is so much the case, that more than ever we will have to run a government of resistance and audaciousness.
In this climate of deep crisis, the only way out is implementing an alternative popular project, while frankly telling the population that it's not merely a situation marked by some difficulties, but a deep going crisis that must be radically modified. There is no other possibility, and therefore it is necessary to politicize the debate, politicize citizen participation and the mass mobilization. • In many sectors of the Latin American left which see the possibility of winning elections for the national government - Uruguay's Broad Front (FA). El Salvador's FMLN, or Nicaragua's FSLN, a new idea is taking force: in a framework of a mammoth crisis and the scandalous exclusion of the majority of the population, one of the main problems that these left governments will face will not be the pressure from big business, but the "corporativist" demands of the social movements that will seek to recover wages, employment levels, and all the rights that were taken away by capital and the neoliberal governments. Do you share this opinion? Is popular pressure a problem for a popular, left wing government, or is the real danger this kind of thinking? It is clear that corporativist pressures exist and will continue to do so. The great challenge is, precisely, the degree of politicization; there is no other
But to say that there won't be pressures from business would be very naive. On the contrary, the main threat will come from big business: blackmail, companies transferring their operations, cuts in financing, and so on. These are the main factors that can feed the crisis and generate destabilization of any left government.
Those who think like you describe should ask what this concept of "social corporatism" really means. Does it means that you feel the enemy is also to be found among the workers, among state employees? What type of political approach does this stance lead to? • Some say, for example, that the election of a left government would cause "inflation of expectations" and that this could generate a polarization that puts the very stability of the popular government at risk... That would be underrating the people. It is true that sometimes we cannot satisfy all the demands. In the municipal governments there are times when we cannot satisty all the wage demands.
But that is not the main problem. The key, I insist, is the degree of politicization and mobilization, of people's understanding of what a popular government means. The viability of our program, of our alternative project, is related to the support coming from a broad popular base. This is our base of support and the main source of the government's
Our project doesn't have anything to do with the good behavior of businessmen or capital. A government such as ours is based on the popular movements' active commitment to the program and the defense of this program, which is radically different from that of the dominant classes. And the people understand this perfectly.
For that reason I said that we must have considerable confidence in the people, because in addition, it is on the basis of organized support, of popular participation, of a permanent mobilization, that we can begin thinking of a real fight for hegemony in society and, most definitively, of a substantial modification in the correlation of forces. * 1. Rio Grande do Sul has 10 million inhabitants and a Gross Domestic Product of 56bn reales (1 real = US$1.20). It is Brazil's fifth most important state. 2. In the second round of the gubernatorial elections, the Popular Front and PI candidate, Olivie Dutra obtained 50,78% of the ballots cast (2.84 million votes) against 49,22% (2,76m) for the pro-government candidate Antonio Britto. 3. Miguel Rossetto is 38 years old. He was a mechanic and activist in the steelworkers union in the city of Sao Leopoldo at the end of the 1970s and beginning of the 1980s. He was elected as a federal deputy in 1994. Within the PT, he is a member of the Socialist Democracy tendency, which is identified with the Fourth International. 4. For example, the November congress of the Uruguayan Broad Front unanimously voted to send greetings of solidarity to the new government. 5. The Southern Cone Common Market is comprised of
International Viewpoint #307 January 1999 5
New York City's bus and subway workers are the players in one of the key battles to reform and reenergize the US labor movement. Steve Downs reports on the progress of the radical New
Directions movement within the Transport Workers Union.
* USA
New Tracks
The fight is concentrated in Local 100 of the Transport Workers Union (TWU). The entrenched Willie James bureaucracy is fighting hard against the reformers of the New Directions current [which includes supporters of the socialist feminist group Solidarityl
Earlier this year, the TWU was forced to rerun the local's election, after protests at Willie James' cheating in the December 1997 election.
After a short, intense, and frequently bitter campaign, the ballots were counted on May 21st: Willie James' slate was reelected, but by an even narrower margın than in December 1997. James, the incumbent president, defeated New Directions candidate Tim Schermerhorn by a mere 670 votes (10,252 to 9582).
ND's vice-presidential candidate, Darlyne Lawson, missed winning a seat by only 113 votes. ND's eight other candidates lost by 130-400 votes.
It is easy to put a positive spin on New Directions' results. After all, ND has steadily gained ground from the 3,000 votes it received in its first run in 1988. New Directions picked up an additional seat on the local executive board in the May election, giving New Directions twenty-one of the thirty-six seats directly elected by the membership. However, since the ten top officers also sit on the executive board and are elected at large, the James slate has a twenty-five to twenty-one majority. A polarized union
Local 100 is a deeply divided union. New Directions support comes almost entirely from the members in the subways (roughly 60% of the local's total membership), while the support for the James slate comes from the bus drivers and maintainers (68% of subway workers voted ND while 80% of bus workers voted for the James' slate). This divide grew between the December 1997 election and the May 1998 rerun. ND's vote among subway workers went up relatively and absolutely, but went down among bus workers.
Vice presidents are elected on a localwide basis. The incumbents who will be in charge of four subway divisions (Rapid Transit Operations, Maintenance of Way, Stations, and Car Equipment) lost the vote inside those divisions, but were part of the winning local-wide slate. They will inevitably clash with the division officers and other executive board members, ND candidates who were elected by the members they work with and who view themselves as the 6 International Viewpoint #307 January 1999 legitimate representatives of those division members. The VP appoint the Tand are cos an by tim
ND's influence. New Directions almost won
For over ten years, the managers of New York City's transit system have been working to cut jobs, privatize maintenance work, and undermine the few protections transit workers had won for themselves in the past. Management has sought to implement its restructuring package bit by bit, contract by contract, singling out different sections of the workforce for cuts at different times.
Far from opposing management's plans, Local 100's bureaucracy has embraced them. In 1992, after the membership rejected a proposed contract, thenlocal President Sonny Hall (now TWU President) said that downsizing was inevitable and the union's job was to get something out of it for the workers who
Faithful to this approach, Willie James responded to the Transit Authority's threat to lay off 2,000 cleaners in 1996 by proposing that the contract be reopened. In exchange for a three-year no-layoff pledge, James agreed to the elimination by attrition of over 500 cleaner jobs. He agreed to let the Transit Authority bring in an unlimited number of "workfare" workers to do cleaning work.
James also agreed to a lump sum payment instead of a raise in 1997 and allowed the Transit Authority to absorb the US$40 million surplus in the Health Benefit Trust. The Transit Authority had claimed to be in poverty, with a $200m deficit. One week after the contract was ratified, the TA announced a $356m
New Directions has been the only force in the local that has consistently opposed the leadership's strategy. ND has gained support among the membership by proposing a strategy of organizing the members to resist management through