Brazil – Movement For A New Workers’ Party Is Launched


ONLY ONE year after the Presidential election victory of
"Lula" (Luiz Inacio da Silva) of the Workers’ Party (PT) a new
movement has been launched by former PT activists, trade unionists and
socialists. Their task is to build a new workers’ socialist party in Brazil to
act as an alternative to the capitalist programme that the Lula government and
PT leadership has implemented since coming to power.
TONY SAUNOIS of the Committee for a Workers’ International
(CWI) reports on this important development.

ON 19 January 2004, in Rio de Janeiro, representatives of
various left-wing socialist organisations, (including Socialismo Revolucionario,
the Brazilian section of the CWI), together with trade union leaders,
intellectuals and four former PT parliamentarians (three deputies and one
senator, expelled from the PT for voting against the government pension reform)
met and launched the ‘Left Democratic Socialist movement’.

One of the first objectives of the new movement is to
collect the 500,000 signatures required to legally establish a new party.

This movement represents an important new phase in the
struggle of working-class activists and socialists in Brazil and has important
lessons for other countries where new mass socialist parties of the working
class are needed.

Betrayal

THE LAUNCHING of this movement follows a protracted swing
to the right by the PT and its leadership and a rapid decline in its active
membership. Lula’s election victory was greeted with tremendous enthusiasm and
high expectations by the mass of Brazilian workers. It was, after all, the
first time the PT had won a presidential election.

Moreover, Lula, a former metal worker and street
‘shoe-shine’ was the first president to come from a working-class background.
This alone gave renewed hope to Brazil’s oppressed.

During the election activists around the PT had opposed the
rightwing shift by the PT leadership and were concerned about what it would
mean for the new government. Many workers and poor however hoped that this was
just an ‘electoral tactic’ and that once in power Lula would revert to the
radical socialist policies historically defended by the PT.

They voted for the PT, not because of the rightward turn by
the leadership. They voted Lula to reject the ‘neo-liberal’ policies of the
former President, Fernando Henrique Cardoso, or FHC as he is known. However,
they have ended up with FHC’s policies implemented by Lula.

Immediately the new government set about demonstrating not
to the poor but to the capitalists, International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World
Bank that it could be trusted.

The government even signed an agreement with the IMF giving
it more concessions than it actually demanded! The government supported giving
greater independence to the central bank and appointed Henrique Meirelles,
former executive of the Bank of Boston, as its director.

A vicious pension ‘reform’ was introduced which raised the
age of retirement and attacked all the previous gains made by the federal state
employees. This ‘reform’, originally proposed by FHC was at that time opposed
by the PT!

University fees are to be introduced and the government
wants to introduce a labour reform programme attacking the unions and workers’
rights.

Amongst the proposals being considered are withdrawing the
additional 13th month holiday pay which is paid each year and weakening of
trade union rights to organise in the work places. Such is the opposition that
is likely to develop to these proposals the government has postponed them being
implemented until 2005 – after all regional and local elections!

New Labour II

THE PT in government has become more and more ‘New
Labourised’, a process which had begun before the election. This development
has a particular twist of historic irony. Former New Labour minister Peter
Mandelson visited Brazil during the first Presidency of Cardoso between
1994/98. He denounced the PT as representing the past and supported the
capitalist Cardoso.

As David Fleischer, a political commentator at the
Institute of Political Science at the University of Brasilia pointed out:
"It is like Britain in 1997 when old Labour became New Labour. New Labour
did a lot things that old Labour would be shocked to think about."

The rich elite (Brazil is one of the most unequal
countries) have been fully reassured by Lula’s first year in office. Lula was
praised in the Spanish daily El Pa’s in an editorial (The Lula surprise –
5/1/04) for the "strict fiscal and monetary policies" carried out by
the government.

A rich shopper followed by half a dozen servants leaving
the elite fashion store Daslu in Sao Paulo, where designer shoes sell for
US$1,500, expressed her relief and was quoted in the Financial Times
(31/12/03): "Lula seems to have come to his senses. I thought I was going
to have to move to Miami"

The fears of the elite of a Lula government have proved
unfounded. Lula immediately sought to reassure the ruling class and imperialism
that his government would be safe for them.

For the working class and oppressed the first year of Lula
has meant disappointment and anger. Lula has carried out policies against the
working class and acted as a capitalist government. The promise of 10 million
new jobs within the first four years has been abandoned.

In the first twelve months unemployment rose by over
800,000 to 13% nationally. In the largest city Sao Paulo it has reached 20%. In
Rio de Janeiro, 160,000 people applied for 1,000 job vacancies as rubbish
collectors. The queue of applicants stretched for miles!

At the same time the standard of living of those in work
has declined with the level of real wages falling by 15% during the first 12
months of Lula’s government.

Class struggles

THE ATTACKS by the government have begun to provoke
struggles by sections of the working class. The most significant of which was
the strike of 600,000 federal employees whose bitter struggle against pension
reform lasted more than one month. Other sectors such as the metal workers and
24,000 car workers from the ABC industrial belt around Sao Paulo have also been
involved in struggles.

The scene is now set for major struggles against the
introduction of university fees. Meanwhile, teachers in Sao Paulo are preparing
an important wages campaign.

It is against this background that the ‘Left Democratic
Socialist Movement for a new party’ has been launched by socialists, activists
and trade unionists in Brazil. In December 2003, 7,000 activists, union leaders
and intellectuals signed a petition concluding that a new socialist party is
necessary and that it is no longer possible to fight for socialism inside the
PT.

Lula still enjoys the support of over 60% in the recent
polls. His working-class origins and the hope that things will change is still
giving Lula a diminishing fund of goodwill to draw upon amongst a layer.

He is also trying to present more radical credentials on
international questions – especially by linking up with the populist President
of Argentina, Nestor Kirchner, to make a limited challenge to US imperialism
during the recent all-Americas trade negotiations.

However, Lula’s support is declining with each new
anti-working class measure announced by the government. Amongst the federal
state employees and other layers of working there is already a burning anger at
the betrayal of the PT government. Amongst these workers there is widespread
support for the idea of forming a new party and the union leaders are
supporting the new movement.

Prospects

THERE WILL be big opportunities for the new party to
develop with the increasing opposition to the pro-capitalist policies of the
Lula government. The next phase of the process of building the new party is to
get nucleuses of it established at work places, universities and in the working
class communities. Local assemblies are being organised in the states
throughout Brazil. Local branches are beginning to be formed in offices,
factories and at universities.

A national meeting of trade unions is also being planned.
The ‘Left Democratic Socialist Movement for a new party’ has correctly agreed
that the new party will be open to all who " …reject being seduced by
the palace privileges and who defend the independence of the working class in
the face of the bourgeois… It is open to all those who are clear of the
absolute incompatibility of satisfying the demands for social justice and the
radicalisation of the democratic process within the limits of the capitalist
system. It is open to all who define themselves as being ‘left’ and identify
with socialism and democracy as a strategic, explicit and permanent
objective."

The new party will be formed by activists who have broken
from the PT or are not members of it. It will, however, also appeal to those on
the left of the PT and PT voters to join it some of whom are waiting until
after the local and regional elections before deciding what to do. There is the
prospect of another wave of splits from the left of the PT during 2005
following regional and local elections in 2004.

The new party, when established, will be inclusive and the
right for all tendencies and factions to openly operate within it is clearly
established.

There are many obstacles still to be overcome. Achieving
the necessary 500,000 signatures in order to legally register the party to be
able to fight elections will be a big test. It will not be possible to do this
before the local elections later this year for legal reasons. However, the
first steps towards the launching of a new party represents an important step
forward for the working class in Brazil and also has many important lessons for
socialists internationally.

Socialismo Revolucionario, the Brazilian section of the CWI,
is playing a significant role in helping to establish this new party and at the
same time is fighting to win support for its own revolutionary socialist
programme and polices.