President Lula
Lula’s victory in Brazil’s October elections was a massive
rejection of neo-liberalism, but the new Workers’ Party president will not be
able to meet the expectations aroused unless there is a real break with the
policies of Cardoso and the IMF. ANDRÉ FERRARI reports from São Paulo.
LULA POLLED THE largest vote in the history of Brazil and
the second biggest vote ever worldwide. Luis Inácio ‘Lula’ da Silva, the Workers
Party (PT) leader and former metalworker, won the second round on October 27
with 52.7 million votes (61.7%). His opponent, José Serra, the candidate of
president Fernando Henrique Cardoso’s right-wing coalition government and
preferred by big business, bankers and the IMF, polled 33.3 million (38.7%).
The first round of the elections on October 6 saw the PT
increase its seats in congress (from 59 to 91) and in state legislative
assemblies. In the senate too, the PT doubled from seven to 14 senators to
become the third force. In some states the PT now has the largest parliamentary
group, for example in São Paulo, where it has 20 state deputies. In state
gubernatorial elections, the PT made the second round in eight states – after
taking two governors (Acre and Piauí) in the first round – although eventually
it won only one more governorship (in Mato Grosso do Sul).
For the first time, the PT made the second round for
governor of the state of São Paulo, where the PT candidate Genoíno got 41%
against 58% for Cardoso’s Brazilian Social Democratic Party (PSDB) candidate and
current governor Alckmin. In Ceará, PT candidate Airton lost by only 3,000 votes
to the PSDB representative of the local oligarchies. In Brasília Federal
District, the PT lost by only 5,000 votes to the corrupt gangster Roriz,
candidate of the Brazilian Democratic Movement (PMDB). In both cases the PT is
due to take legal action.
The most significant defeats for the PT, however, were in
Rio Grande do Sul, where it had the sitting governor, and in the state of Rio de
Janeiro where the PT gubernatorial candidate, Benedita da Silva, was defeated in
the first round (although Lula still got an incredibly high vote there in the
presidential election).
In Rio Grande do Sul, the PT candidate for governor and
current mayor of Porto Alegre, Tarso Genro, was defeated by the PMDB’s Rigoto,
who was actively supported by all the local conservatives forces. The defeat
reflected a certain decline in support for the PT state government headed by
Olivio Dutra, who had created expectations of major changes but was unable to
deliver. Dutra had lost the PT’s internal primary election and was not even a
candidate. In fact, in many cities run by PT mayors, Lula’s vote was below the
national average. This reflects the frustrated expectations of PT supporters
when local representatives govern within the narrow limits imposed by the
economic crisis.
The defeat of the PT in the Rio de Janeiro gubernatorial
race, on the other hand, was a reflection of the policy of the PT national
leadership, which had previously forced the local PT to support the state
government led by Anthony Garotinho (PSB). The PT later broke with Garotinho
although it continued as vice governor in a terrible situation of violent crime
and chaos in the state. This opened the way for Garotinho’s demagogic populism
to gain an echo and his wife was elected governor to succeed him.
The PT national president José Dirceu has already stated
that Lula must look for support from 14 state governors, of whom only three are
PT ones (in the small states of Acre, Piauí and Mato Grosso do Sul). In congress
also, the PT block and its allies do not have a majority and they are looking
for alliances with sections of the PMDB and maybe the Liberal Front Party (PFL).
Serra and Cardoso’s PSDB won seven state governors, held São
Paulo and gained Minas Gerais, which are both major states, and is set to lead
the opposition to Lula.
The significance of Lula’s victory
DESPITE THE PROFOUND changes in the PT in recent years, the
moderate position of its leadership and their search for alliances with sections
of big business, Lula’s victory reflects a powerful desire for change by the
majority of the Brazilian people.
It was a vote against the results of eight years of
neo-liberal policy under Cardoso, against unemployment, falling real wages,
degraded public services, the consequences of privatisations, and the rising
level of violent crime in the cities due to the crisis. It was also a vote
against Cardoso’s tolerance of corruption involving traditional ‘regional boss’
politicians. Lula’s election was therefore a setback for the national and
international bourgeoisie and a step forward for the Brazilian working class.
The most important consequence is that a new stage in the class struggle is now
opening up after a difficult period for the mass movement during much of the
1990s.
The PT did not win the elections because it became more
moderate and allied with sections of the bourgeoisie. It won because it has a
22-year history of struggle and resistance. This image of opposition to the
system had consolidated Lula’s candidacy as the channel for the mood for change,
so the main concern of the PT top leaders over the last period was to ‘convince’
the international investors. Not a word was uttered during the election campaign
without weighing up its likely impact on the investors. Lula committed to the
agreement signed by Cardoso with the IMF, and reiterated continually that all
existing contracts will be honoured and no unilateral steps taken. Alliances
were made with the traditional parties and regional bosses of the Brazilian
bourgeoisie. Lula’s vice-presidential candidate was José Alencar, a Liberal
Party senator who is one of Brazil’s biggest bosses, and he was supported by two
former-presidents – José Sarney and Itamar Franco. In the second round he
attracted support from even more bizarre sources, such as the old North-eastern
oligarch Antonio Carlos Magalhães (PFL), and the ex-minister of the military
regime Delfim Netto, whose measures against workers’ interests caused the first
metalworkers strikes led by Lula in 1978 and the formation of the PT itself (see
box).
Lula’s programme for government is based on economic growth
and a ‘social pact’ of workers, bosses and government. The social pact became
the great magic wand which would overcome the basic contradiction between the
intention to solve the enormous social problems and, at the same time, meeting
the demands of the financiers and the IMF.
Lula’s ‘Peace and Love’ policy did not generate the active
enthusiasm of previous campaigns such as in 1989, particularly among sections of
the youth. Nevertheless, Lula did have the support of the main workers’ and
youth mass organisations, the main union federation, the CUT, the Landless
Workers Movement (MST), and the national student organisations (UNE and UBES).
In the last phase of the campaign particularly, there was more involvement by
activists in backing Lula.
The campaign was conducted in the context of the Cardoso
government’s crisis and its neo-liberal policies. Serra and the PSDB oscillated
between identifying with the Cardoso government and distancing themselves from
it, beginning with ‘continuity without continuism’ and then switching to ‘change
yes, but with safety’. Their attempts to sow panic about the ‘Argentinization’
of Brazil under Lula, with top artists declaring on TV ‘I am afraid of a Lula
government’, did not have the same effect as in 1998, when Cardoso still had
some support for axing hyperinflation. 2002 was completely different. ‘Hope won
out over fear’, as Lula said.
The PT’s turn to the right has been raised as the main
reason for Lula’s victory in this, his fourth presidential race. But the truth
is that the PT victory reflected the crisis of neo-liberal policies, the
undermining of Cardoso’s support, and the absence of clear alternatives for the
bourgeoisie. The distinguishing feature of the PT in this context was not its
moderation but its past of struggle and consistent opposition to the previous
governments. The mass of the people, moreover, identified with Lula’s personal
history as an immigrant to São Paulo from the Northeast, someone who has known
hunger and unemployment, been exploited in a factory, and watched his first wife
and newly-born baby die in a public hospital, which added to the PT’s past
record as the party of the common people, the only one not wholly corrupt and
not blamed for the current state of things.
Many of the PT rank-and-file, moreover, preferred to close
their eyes to the moderate policy in the campaign. There was and is a very
strong idea that moderation was just a tactic to win the election and that once
elected, Lula and the PT can go back to the combative stance that marked much of
the PT’s past. This expectation reflects the fact that the PT still has decisive
authority among the vanguard and sections of the masses of the working class and
youth. The PT is not just an electoral phenomenon. Although there are now many
more contradictions than before, the PT is still the political leadership of the
workers and peoples’ movements. Lula’s victory and his future government with
bourgeois allies is also a milestone in the sense that it will test the
authority of the PT over the organized social movements and is likely to
encourage a process of recomposition and reorganisation of the left.
Lula and the PT could have consciously worked to transform
the pro-change sentiments into a clearer awareness of what policies could in
fact promote a profound transformation. This higher level of class-based and
anti-capitalist consciousness could have been translated into organisation and
struggle. It would not have undermined Lula’s electoral support but, in fact,
would have created the conditions for a mass struggle, the necessary condition
for real changes. But the actual PT policy was not just an electoral tactic. The
strategy and programme are not socialist but seek to run capitalism better than
the capitalists themselves.
Lula and the Brazilian crisis
THE GREAT CONTRADICTION facing Lula and the PT is the
inevitable clash between the enormous expectations generated and the limits
imposed by the economic crisis and the moderate programme of the PT today.
Brazil is in a very tight corner and nothing was solved by the last agreement
with the IMF in September.
After eight years of Cardoso and an average GDP growth of
2.3%, unemployment is higher than ever. Average income has fallen and social
inequality is still obscene. Violent crime has reached alarming levels. Public
services were wrecked and privatisation only worsened things, as proved by the
electricity rationing crisis last year. The concentration of land in the hands
of a tiny minority continues and there are constantly violent clashes on the
land. There are 52 million people living in the most absolute poverty. Hunger,
endemic diseases due to poverty, semi-slave work, etc, all make Brazil a world
champion of social inequality.
Even with US$90bn coming in from privatisations, Brazil’s
public debt jumped from 30% to 60% of GDP during Cardoso’s government.
Dependence on foreign capital has been taken to an extreme. The constant threat
of ‘default’ haunts the country. In recent months, a moratorium was only avoided
due to the new IMF loan. The problem was just put off but it will return. And
with 80% of the public debt in the hands of domestic creditors, a default would
create a crisis as in Argentina with banks and business failing and enormous
social costs.
The September IMF agreement was an attempt by the foreign
banks to prepare for a possible moratorium in the future. Most credit lines have
been blocked, leading the Brazilian Central Bank to hike interest rates, and the
currency has been more heavily devalued than at any time since it was introduced
in 1994.
The IMF agreement was based on a target of a budget surplus
(of income over expenditure, before interest charges) of 3.75% of GDP for 2003.
This would mean scarce funds for social spending. But in fact everybody knows
that this is insufficient and was only adopted to facilitate agreement between
the presidential candidates. The finance market wants blood and some are talking
of a 6% target. Given the international crisis of the capitalism, the only
possible choice for the capitalists would be to decide which is the lesser evil:
the social costs of more spending cuts or the social costs of a collapse of the
Brazilian economy.
Lula hopes to escape from the dilemma between maintaining
Cardoso’s monetarist policy and seeing the country collapse, by returning to a
higher rate of economic growth through increased exports and a gradual increase
in income to expand the domestic market. In fact, Brazil has recorded trade
surpluses in the last period, but this has been due to a fall in imports caused
by recession and the weak currency and not to a significant increase in exports.
During a recession in the international economy, the aim of increasing exports
will meet with serious obstacles. In reality, if the IMF agreement is kept to,
not even a limited national-development policy is possible in Brazil.
One sector of big business thinks that since the PT has a
broad social basis and roots in the working class, it will be able to call for a
social pact and sacrifices from the people, who have always borne the burden of
crises. Their problem is that the PT’s base in society did not elect Lula for
more sacrifices but to put an end to them. There are enormous expectations in
the new government. Urgent measures to combat hunger have already been
announced. More measures of social assistance to mitigate the gravest effects of
the crisis will be taken. This may have some impact, but they are palliative
measures of limited reach.
Many workers accept the idea of a social pact as a way of
getting more concessions from the bosses and bankers in a peaceful way without
provoking more turbulence in the economy. When it becomes clear, however, that
the larger part of the burden is to be carried by the workers, the probable
initial honeymoon period will end. There is an enormous ‘backlog’ of demands in
the social movements.
Federal civil servants are quite extensively organized and
linked to the CUT; they have had no inflation adjustment for almost eight years.
Several sectors have enormous accumulated losses to make up and they hope to get
back their purchasing power. Another challenge for the new government will be
the minimum wage, which is now a miserable 200 reais (about US$54). Even some PT
parliamentarians are calling for an increase to around US$100 dollars in May
2003, which is not the intention of the PT members in the future government.
The prospect of closing companies and layoffs on a large
scale may lead to very sharp conflicts. The struggle against unemployment has
not reached the level of the battles in Argentina, and the ‘pickets’ movement
there, but the potential is there. Also the demand for land, and for credit to
plant crops, will mean heavy pressure from the landless.
The newly-elected state governors will also be pressing for
debt rescheduling and more social spending. The PT in federal government will
tend to avoid rescheduling at least during 2003, but a financial crisis in the
states could complicate the situation.
The initial struggles may not be directly against the Lula
government, but to press the elites to make concessions. Lula will try to
balance between the two sides but over time he could lose the support of both of
them. At that point, a bourgeois opposition headed by the PSDB and sections of
the PFL and PMDB would try to use the crisis to recover their strength. The 2004
municipal elections will see a hard-fought clash between the forces of the Lula
government and this right opposition.
Lula wants to avoid scaring investors or clashing with the
IMF. At the same time, an aggravation of the crisis in the context of
polarisation in society may push the government to take unorthodox measures,
regardless of his intentions.
In the first few days after his victory, Lula repeatedly
said that he would not ‘betray the expectations’ of all those who voted for the
PT expecting real change. But this will not depend exclusively on the personal
intentions of Lula; what is needed is a policy capable of tackling the economic
crisis without punishing still more the workers and poor. The current PT
programme does not consistently pose such a policy. It is not possible to meet
the expectations of the social basis that elected Lula and at the same time
satisfy the financial market and the IMF.
A left alternative
THE PT LEFT emerged relatively strengthened from the
elections. Although in most cases, its campaigns did not have clear left
profiles, almost 30% of the federal deputies, two senators, and many state
deputies, hold positions to the left of the PT majority leadership. Two
candidates on the left of the PT, Zé Maria (PSTU) and Rui Pimenta (PCO), got
votes well below expectations (400,000 – 0.4%, and 30,000 – 0.05%), reflecting
the strength of Lula’s candidacy despite the PT’s turn to the right.
Overall however, while the left inside and outside the PT is
still dispersed with no firm alternative to the majority leadership, there are
now conditions developing for the left to be reinvigorated. The next period,
with the experience of Lula in government, will see room for the left to develop
against the majority positions. Sections of the PT rank-and-file who believed
that Lula’s ‘peace and love’ policy was merely a temporary electoral tactic,
will reach the conclusion that this is really the long-term strategy of the
party leaders and will look for an alternative. A process of recomposition and
reorganisation of the left will develop in this context.
The key task for the socialist left is to develop the social
movements in the next period. Only great mass struggles will provide the
conditions for the growth of a left and socialist project. The left should
explain that voting in Lula was an important step, but it was just the first. It
is necessary now to take to the streets, mobilize the workers and youth, and
conquer our rights through struggle.
Lula has been declaring that ‘Brazil is changing in peace’
and he promises to govern for all sectors of society through dialogue and
negotiation. But there is no way to tackle the crisis without making some sector
of society pay for it. The balance of forces will determine whether the working
people will once again bear the burden of the crisis or if this time the working
class will defeat the national and international elites – even if this means
overcoming the limitations of the PT leaders in government.
The left should denounce the agreement with the IMF and
demand a government without bourgeois parties or politicians. The real choice
for a workers government would be to stop paying off the debt because the
country has fallen on its knees, or to stop paying off debt to the big
capitalists in an assertion of sovereignty, organizing and mobilizing the
workers and moving forward with an anti-capitalist programme.
Such a programme would have to pose the nationalisation of
the banks and financial system under democratic workers’ control, the
renationalisation of the privatized companies, and the nationalisation of those
companies required to implement an economic development plan to raise the
minimum wage, reduce the working day to create jobs, and meet the demands of the
organized social movements.
The experience of the PT in the government will mean even
more adaptation of the leaders to the capitalist system. At the same time,
however, this will lead to opportunities for a consistent PT left. A settling of
accounts between these two sides is inevitable. The construction of a new mass
workers’ party, a left-wing socialist one, may be posed at a certain stage.
Therefore the PT left should take the political and organisational step of
building a clearly socialist political project and seek unity in action in this
battle.
Polarisation in Latin America
LULA’S VICTORY HAS taken place in the context of major
turbulence throughout Latin America. The workers and oppressed masses have
responded to the crisis with mass mobilisations in Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay,
Peru, Ecuador, Bolivia, and elsewhere. Electorally too, there have been advances
with the coca-growers leader Evo Morales coming second in the Bolivian elections
and ex-captain Lúcio Gutierrez, an active participant in the people’s revolt of
January 2000 in Ecuador, reaching the second round of the presidential elections
there.
Latin America is experiencing polarisation that is also
reflected in the situation of Chavez in Venezuela. The failure of the attempted
coup in April 2002 showed the strength of mass resistance. But if there is no
clear anti-capitalist alternative, the bourgeoisie and imperialism will try
again. Also in Argentina the absence of a left and socialist mass alternative
limits the revolutionary potential of the ‘Argentinean uprising’.
Lula’s victory in Brazil will encourage resistance to the
Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) and neo-liberalism throughout the
continent. Imperialism would prefer to co-opt Lula instead of clashing with him,
but a PT government will lose support by not meeting the expectations of
profound change.
The failure of neo-liberalism means that in many countries
reformist and populist alternatives have emerged preaching national development
on a capitalist basis. The experience of these alternatives in power will show
that they are not able to overcome capitalist crisis. Only a socialist Latin
America can meet the demands of the masses and offer a way out.
The origins of the PT
IN MAY 1978, during the military dictatorship that ruled
Brazil from 1964 to 1985, the workers at Saab-Scania in the ABC industrial
complex of São Paulo walked out and led a metalworkers strike that spread
throughout the industry and opened up a new stage in the struggle of the
Brazilian workers’ movement.
A new generation of Brazilian workers had emerged in the
industrialization of the 1960s and 1970s. The 1978 strike was the beginning of
an ascent of mass struggle that toppled the military regime and heroically
resisted the anti-working class policy of the civilian governments that
followed. In 1980, two years after the historic mobilisation in ABC, the Workers
Party was founded to "create a channel of political and party expression for the
urban and rural workers and all those exploited by capitalism" (PT Political
Declaration, October 1979).
The PT attracted all the best and most combative elements in
the unions, both those led by left forces and the opposition slates in the
‘yellow’, government-sponsored unions. It brought together in one single
political movement of the left urban movements influenced by the rank-and-file
of the progressive Catholic Church, the rural workers’ movements, left
intellectuals, and the remnants of old left organisations, splits from the
Communist Party and the armed resistance to the dictatorship. The PT’s first
official membership card was issued to Mario Pedrosa, former Trotskyist in the
1930s who took part in the Fourth International founding conference in 1938.
Unlike the traditional left of Stalinist origin – mainly the
pro-Moscow Communist Party (PCB) and pro-Chinese PCdoB – or the centre-left
intellectuals (like Cardoso, for instance), the early PT posed the need for a
clear class independence and refused to adapt its policy to the bourgeois
opponents of the dictatorship such as the Brazilian Democratic Movement (MDB).
The October 1980 founding manifesto declared that "the PT is born of the
political will of the workers, who are tired of being manipulated by the
politicians and parties committed to maintaining the present economic, social
and political order". In its 1979 Charter of Principles, the pro-PT movement
emphasized that the new party would "refuse to affiliate representatives of the
exploiting classes... the Workers Party is a party without bosses!".
It also rejected the populist-nationalist legacy of the old
Brazilian Labour Party (PTB) of Getúlio Vargas, a kind of Brazilian Perón. The
PT declared: "The efforts to revive the old PTB... are no more than an attempt
to enlist workers for the defence of the interests of sections of the Brazilian
bosses... We denounce their attempts to deceive the Brazilian workers... and
manipulate them for their own aims" (Charter of Principles, 1979).
The PT emerged at the same time as the Sandinista revolution
in Nicaragua and the Polish workers’ mobilisations against the Stalinist
Jaruzelski regime. The influence of those events led the PT to adopt a critical
attitude to the traditional social democratic parties and to the Stalinist
regimes, at the same time as expressing solidarity with revolutionary struggles
in Latin America. The profound working class roots of the PT, its mass base and
its class and anti-capitalist positions, made the party into the pole of
attraction for the combative left in Brazil and the continent.
After the enormous mass mobilisation throughout Brazil for
‘Direct Elections Now’ in 1984 – rejecting the policy of transition ‘from the
top’ from a military regime to civilian government – the PT refused to attend
the electoral college that indirectly elected Tancredo Neves and José Sarney as
president and vice-president. In fact the PT expelled three federal deputies who
voted for these candidates of the bourgeois opposition to the military regime.
As the party of consistent opposition to the Sarney
government, who succeeded to power after the death of Tancredo Neves, the PT
became the great hope for change for millions of Brazilians. After electing a
number of mayors in the 1988 elections, the PT stood Lula as candidate for
president in 1989, in the first direct elections after the 1964 military coup.
After a campaign with the PT rank-and-file playing a highly active role, Lula
lost by a small margin to Collor, a corrupt adventurer adopted by the
bourgeoisie as their final means of barring Lula.
Subsequently, that electoral defeat, together with the
impact of the collapse of the Stalinist regimes of the USSR and East Europe, the
defeat of the Sandinistas in Nicaragua, and the major capitalist ideological
offensive of the 1990s, all pushed the PT leaders toward more moderate positions
than those of its origin. The PT congress in 1991 marked the beginning of a new
stage for the party, with the majority leadership moving toward a social
democratic stance. The absence of a clear socialist project and the pressure
exerted by the positions the PT had won within the bourgeois state, caused a
turn to the right that was a feature of the PT during most of the 1990s.
The PT lost an opportunity to win the presidency in 1992,
when a mass movement toppled Collor and the leadership supported Itamar Franco,
the vice-president, instead of demanding new elections. Subsequently, during the
Franco government the bourgeoisie began to reorganize and launched the Real
Plan, with Cardoso as candidate for president. Illusions in economic
stabilisation and the end of hyperinflation gave Cardoso a first-round victory
in the 1994 and 1998 elections.
Cardoso’s first government brought Brazil up to speed in
applying neo-liberal policies and managed to curb the mass movement. But the
second government was marked by crisis from beginning to end. It was in this
context that the PT increased its support in the 2000 municipal elections and
has now won the 2002 presidential elections.
The PT today is no longer the same as the original PT.
Nevertheless, a lot of its authority remains in place. Most of the vanguard,
activists and leaders of the mass organisations of the youth and workers are
still PT supporters. The workers’ experience of a PT government will be a
decisive milestone on the road to the construction of a mass left alternative to
the programme of the party leadership.
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