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Lula, Brazil and the future of the Left Chapter 3: The political character of the PT.
During
the 2003 election campaign a letter formally addressed to Lula was issued by the
Federal Workers Union of Brazil that approximated to the typical class
consciousness of the PT’s core labour supporters: ‘Comrade Lula. We are
convinced that now is the moment to change course. It is now or never. It was
for this moment that the Workers Party was built 23 years ago and that it has
grown into a mass party of the Brazilian working class. Today, millions of
working and oppressed people are supporting your candidacy because they see in
you and in a PT electoral victory the possibility of moving toward a dignified
future for the youth and for those who work for a living. They see the
possibility of paving the way to the creation of a truly democratic and
sovereign country where it is up to the people and not the IMF to determine our
destiny.’ Class-consciousness
can only really be measured in terms of political movement; it is either coming
under pressure to move to the left or under pressure to move to the right. After eighteen months of the PT in government we can
say on the basis of the accumulated evidence that the class-consciousness of
Brazil’s workers is coming under pressure to accommodate to the political
right. The agent of the pressure is of course the PT government itself, for it
shows no readiness or inclination to alter Brazil’s neo-liberal policy. The
only promises being met are ones that were given to a tiny minority of advisers
and lobbyists representative of the special interest of global finance and of
the domestic trading sector. The workers party is openly operating as a proxy
government for capital. It is already apparent that under Lula’s political
watch Brazil’s extreme class divide in income and wealth disparity is not
going to be narrowed. What has the PT supporting anti-globalisation left to say
about the manifest betrayals of the Lula government?
So
far two explanations have been offered. The realist or pragmatist account
pretends that Lula’s radical government is being held back because of the
unfortunate circumstance of it being bound to the terms of a negotiated
coalition government. This we can dismiss as a very flimsy justification to
continue giving support to a wholly rightwing government. The other more
critical explanation is of a populist type. The populist explanation assigns the
blame for the government’s numerous betrayals chiefly to the personal faults
of President Lula and maybe a handful of his inner circle of acolytes. This
means finding Lula to be just another one of those, by now all too familiar,
populist politicians who clamber to the highest political position by making all
sorts of promises to the working class without ever having the sincere intention
to carry them to completion. A populist explanation of course comes with the
added bonus of saving the good reputation of the mainstay of the PT, permitting
international fellow travellers to continue to support the party. To
a degree the explanation works, Lula’s political leadership is often populist
in orientation, his political persona has always outshone the PT, and many more
people routinely vote for Lula than for the Workers Party. Lula has always
coveted the big prize of the Presidency and turned his nose up at becoming a PT
deputy. Sociologist James Petras recently referred to Lula’s political method
as populist in form and reactionary in content: ‘For
the poor he enacts emotional scenarios accompanied with acts of personal
compassion, he cries real tears faced with child poverty. Abruptly he follows
with a major reduction in social spending and massive transfers of wealth to the
creditors. He meets with the MST and playfully puts on one of the
organisation’s hats and then in a press conference ridicules their agrarian
reform programme, reassuring the big agro-exporters with increased subsidies.
Lula has mastered the pseudo-populist demagogy of the US ex-President Clinton by
telling people he feels their pain while he proceeds to push one regressive
measure after another.’ While
it is a recognisable fact that under the supremacy of Lula the PT has taken on a
few populist traits like the double discourse of making irreconcilable promises
to opposing class constituencies, the more effectual political truth is that the
PT is a not the expression of a typical Latin American populist movement; a mere
party machine for a charismatic leader. The PT is workers party that was forged
out of the spontaneous class-consciousness of workers - of the new unionism of
the 1970s; it did not come into existence to lay down cleared paths for would-be
career politicians. In the early years the winning of elections was secondary to
initiating the class struggle. Yet after 23 years of steady electoral growth the
PT is now synonymous with a minor army of elected officials that comprise a
managerial layer that no longer thinks in terms of deepening the class struggle
against capital. Brazil’s institutional system certainly favours the worst
populist tendencies, but Lula’s government is acting against the historic
majority line of the PT and enjoys the loyal support of a large majority of the
party membership. This means that any proper analysis of what has gone
tragically wrong with the Lula/ PT government must come to terms with the
changed class basis and political profile of the PT over time.
For
the socialists who established the PT and the CUT the most essential achievement
was establishing the political independence of the working class. Before the
formation of the PT and the CUT the working class were represented by political
parties and unions that subordinated all workers political activity to
maintaining a class alliance with the so called national bourgeoisie. The
Communist Party had stuck to a popular front strategy of accommodating to the
national bourgeoisie on the grounds that Brazil was a ‘dual society’ both
capitalist and feudal. The most class-conscious workers were instructed to think
that the reactionary feudal elements were the main political danger to the
working class and a class alliance with the capitalist bourgeoisie was the basis
of a progressive political movement. The Brazilian national bourgeoisie invented
left wing populism specifically to exploit the advantage of an absence of
independent class-consciousness among workers, going so far as to establish
State controlled unions and political parties that subordinated the interests of
workers to building national capitalism. "We want a Workers Party which, as the PT's founding documents put it,
'arises from the aspiration for the political independence of workers tired of
serving as foot-soldiers for political parties committed to the preservation of
the current economic, social and political order; a party that harbours within
it the will for emancipation of the popular masses; a party that truly seeks to
offer a political expression for all the exploited and oppressed in the
capitalist system. We are a party of workers and not a party to fuel illusions
among workers. We are a party open to all those seeking to help the cause of
defending workers and their program, and this is why we want to build a
structure of internal democracy where the collective decisions, leadership and
program are decided by the ranks of the party.' (excerpt from the
PT's February 1980 Manifesto, Collegio Sion, Sao Paulo)"
With
the formation of the PT a section of Brazil’s workers had taken a giant
political leap forward in class consciousness.
One, because it grew out of a recognition that the workers required a
political party and a union movement that stood for the independent class
interest of workers and two, that the workers movement ought to be led and
controlled by workers themselves. In the beginning the PT intended to establish
its credentials as an independent political party of workers’ class interest
by giving primacy to supporting workers struggles in contradistinction to
setting up an electoral machine: ‘Participation in elections and parliamentary activities will be
subordinated to the objective of organising the exploited masses and their
struggles.’ However this did not mean
that the PT began life as a Marxist led workers party. The primary of class
struggle was an expression of the condition facing the new trade union movement
of the time and not an imputation of revolutionary theory. In the formative
years about 60 percent of the party membership were recruited from the ranks of
the new workers unions. The party differed from a Marxist party not least
because it started with an open door ideological policy. Various Marxist
intellectual groups joined but their ideological influence was countered by the
ideas stemming from a range of savants like Irma Passoni, the Catholic activist
and founder of the Cost of Living Movement, economists Paul Singer and Eduardo
Suplicy, the art critic Mario Pedrosa, and the educationalist Paulo Freire, the
originator of the ‘pedagogy of liberation’. The
essays of political scientist Francisco Weffort especially influenced Lula and
his trade unionist activists. Weffort argued that in a society scarred by an
authoritarian culture, democratic values in themselves were revolutionary, that
the ‘Marxist’ standpoint equating bourgeois democracy with class domination
was inappropriate for Brazil. The early PT voted down the concept of the
‘dictatorship of the proletariat’ on the grounds that it was
‘insurrectionist’ and democratic centralism on the grounds that it was ‘vanguardist.’
Despite the ideological indeterminateness of the PT, during the 1980s,
Brazil’s organised workers maintained a high degree of class combativeness.
There were no less than four general strikes, in July 1983, December1986, August
1987 and March 1989. The numbers of workers participating in strikes increased
over the course of the decade, the first involved around three million workers,
the fourth about 20 million. The
election of President Collor de Mello in 1989 brought full throttle
neo-liberalism to Brazil for the first time. The new neo-liberal prescription
set the conservative bourgeoisie on the offensive, inducing three years of
economic recession that hit the unionised working class hard. Industrial
production dropped from a 3% growth rate in 1989 to minus 4.4% in 1990 and
unemployment in the unionised sector rocketed from 8% to 16%. Production,
employment and wages all deteriorated in the midst of the neo-liberal onslaught.
The new offensive contributed to a great fall off in strike activity: in 1990
some 12 million workers had participated in some form of strike activity, in
1991 the number of workers participating fell to 8.8 million and in 1992 it fell
again to just 2.5 million. The number of workers affiliated to the CUT
federation fell from 20 million to just 8 million. The offensive also brought
about resurgence in ‘pelego’ unionism, the traditional form of populist
trade unionism whereby employers covered the costs of the upkeep of the union in
return for workers cooperation. In 1991 a sector of the union movement regrouped
to form a right of centre union federation called the Forca Sindical that
brought together several thousand of the smaller unions, with memberships of
less than 500. As things stand today only around 20% of Brazil’s workers have
any union and hence legal recognition.
The
downturn in the class struggle impacted on the PT by shaking up its social
composition, political practice and ideological definition. For most of the
1980s the PT had acted as a kind of co-sponsor alongside the new union
federation and the MST for the general strikes against government policy.
However in the 1990s the PT staged a definitive electoral turn and became mainly
orientated to winning State elections and proving itself to be a party of
responsible government. The PT changed from being a party of tendencies but
still supportive of workers struggles, albeit with the handicap of an
indeterminate socialist programme, to being a party led and managed by a petty
bourgeois layer of officials adopting the programme of international social
democracy. The
years of economic recession had seriously eroded the class-conscious and union
base of the early PT. The largest decline in union membership occurred in the
industrial and banking sectors, between them they lost over 600,000 jobs in the
1990s. The above sectors constituted the class-conscious social base of the
early workers party. In the 1990s union leaders supported by the PT union
grouping Articulacao Sindical steadily surrendered to ‘new realism’, seeking
social partnerships with business in the form of Sector Chambers. The once
vanguard metal workers union became the smallest and the most conciliatory union
in the CUT federation. Of the ten
largest CUT affiliated unions, six are now ‘moderate’ education based unions
that have consistently favoured the ‘new realism’ and four are social
security based unions. In May 1995 Vicentinho the President of the CUT, (a
former official in the metalworkers union), was able to win a majority for
passage of a resolution devised by the union leaderships, indicating that the
union federation would discuss with government its proposals concerning all
labour related matters, proposals that had only a few years previously provoked
general strikes. The main result of the resolution was that the CUT started a
process of negotiating social security reductions with the neo-liberal
government of Cardoso. The
changed economic condition and the much reduced level of union opposition
provided an opening for the opportunist tendencies within the PT to come to the
fore and propel the party into a solely electoral strategy.
By the end of the year 2000, there were some 3,000 PT members who were
elected government officials: deputies, senators, councillors, mayors etc. The
elected PT officials now employ another 7,000 party members. The 10,000 public
office holders enjoy salaries and pension way above those of average workers.
They also provided the party with a large fraction of its financing, $20 million
of the party’s funds out of $60 million in the year 2000. In a study presented
by the Folha de Sao Paulo newspaper (11/5/2000) approximately 80% of elected
officials or of those who worked for one, belonged to Lula’s tendency;
Articulation. As the electoral turn took hold the PT also began to seek out
donations from businesses; unions are not legally permitted to finance political
parties. Today there is no bar on capitalists becoming PT members or even from
contesting elections on behalf of the Party. Brazilian elections are almost as
costly as they are in the United States and the PT needs all the money it can
raise to contest them. In summary we can say that following the electoral turn
of the mid 1990s the PT rapidly acquired a sizeable bureaucracy with a defined
role of working within the existing institutional framework of the Brazilian
State.
F:
The Redefinition of Socialism The
PT is often thought of as being something of an exception, a political party of
a new type: ‘the workers party defies
definition. Union leaders created it, rather as European social democracy was
created at the beginning of the twentieth century but it does not fit any model,
not even that of the British Labour Party with which it has some similarities.
Margaret Keck, author of the seminal study of the workers party called her work
‘the study of an anomaly.’ In contrast with the Labour party, the PT never
had formal links with trade unions, nor is it funded by them.’ (Bernardo
Kucinski: Politics Transformed. Lula and the workers party in Brazil ed Sue
Branford) The
PT was deemed to be anomalous because it succeeded despite presenting itself as
a socialist party at a time when socialism everywhere else appeared to be in
disarray. Just as anomalous, it was a political party that was organised around
opposing tendencies. The PT even provided room for the various strands of
Trotskyism and Maoism to openly organise their own tendencies from within.
At its first national congress in 1981 the party approved a code of
ethics for its members that was raised above the actual political programme. At
all levels the rank and file had many opportunities to participate in
deliberation and decision making and competition for leadership posts was based
on proportional representation of slates running candidates.
The institutionalisation of tendencies made for a public image of a
political party that seemed to be in a perpetual state of rancour. From 1983 to
1993 Lula’s slate called Articulation was generally in overall charge of the
party, yet in 1994 Articulation split over the question of the significance to
be given to electoral work and it lost control of the party. By 1995
Articulation was back in control, since when it has consolidated its dominance. A
crucial turn for the PT was taken after the 1994 Presidential election setback.
In the middle of 1993 trust in bourgeois politicians hit at a new low after the
impeachment of President Collor for soliciting bribes. The impeachment process
was widely followed on television, only the PT seemed to be to be free from the
endemic corruption. It was widely touted that Lula would win the new election.
In fact he did not even manage to make it into the second round as in 1989. His
vote only increased marginally from 16% to 22%. Lulled by the high poll ratings,
the PT leadership were taken by surprise by the election result and looked
around for an explanation and found it in middle class perception of the party
as being ‘too left wing’. Immediately after the election setback, Jose
Dirceu was elected to the Presidency of the party with a warrant from Lula to
bring about a major revision to the party’s version of socialism. A strategy
was drawn up to reduce the ideological and organisational influence of the
PT’s left wing. The
changes to party organisation and programme were modelled on ones all too
familiar to those with knowledge of the changes enacted by the political parties
of European social democracy. The subsequent party congresses voted yes to
almost all the changes asked for by Lula and Dirceu. The party’s National
Directory created a Citizenship Institute as an extra-party policy making
organisation in 1996 to allow Lula to formulate his personalised election
platform free from the normal party channels of accountability. The Citizenship
Institute now employs about a dozen full timers and is financed by corporate
sponsors. The Institute has since become the primary source of policy making for
the PT. During the recent election campaign the media took the statements and
publications of the Institute as the real basis of PT policy rather than the
official publications of the party. In 2000 the party leadership reformulated
the statutes of the party to introduce direct membership election for the
important positions within the party and for the membership of the National
Directory (the equivalence of the British labour party’s NEC), to eliminate
the influence of the activists. It also introduced a new statute permitting the
party Presidency to revise party policy on any given issue by asking for a
plebiscite of the paper membership. The changes extended the term of office for
the position of party president and other leading positions from two to three
years. These changes consolidated the overall hold of the Articulation slate
over the PT. G:
The November 1999 PT Congress The
1999 Congress passed a new ‘Programme for the Brazilian Democratic
Revolution’ that stated that social reform would have to be carried out in
Brazil with the wide support of other political parties and social actors: code
word for a programme of popular front style government. The
election to the National Directorate listed five slates. *Democratic
Revolution: the slate of the Articulation tendency got 44% of the votes. *Socialism
or Barbarism: grouped around Left Articulation, got
21% of the votes. *PT
Movement: got 13% of the vote. *Our
Time: the slate grouped around the DS tendency got 10% of the vote. *Radical
Democracy: the slate of the rightwing got 8% of the vote. The
leadership slate around Lula got everything it wanted from the Congress
including changes to the programme and statutes. The centre right bloc of the
party comprising the Democratic Revolution, PT Movement and Radical Democracy
had at least a 60% majority whenever a vote was called. The resolution put to
the Congress by Radical Democracy slate was that all references to the word
socialism be removed from the PT programme.
This was rejected by the congress but it was indicative of the general
perspective. The Congress rejected a proposal by a left slate for the party to
support the campaign led by the MST around the slogan ‘Out with Cardoso and
the International Monetary Fund’ on the grounds that the PT was seeking
coalition alliances with other political parties that would not never ware such
a campaign. The
political weakness of the PT left at the congress of the party was equal only to
its very embarrassment. In its submission to conference the PT left had called
for a programme demanding the suspension of the national debt, and the re-nationalisation
of the privatised industries, the submission was dismissed. The leadership
mercilessly ridiculed the proposal on the basis that the left controlled
government of Rio Grande do Sul had itself independently decided not to suspend
making its own contributions to the national debt or to renationalise private
industry, or even expand the health and education services, or provide public
sector job relief for the unemployment. The PT leadership also made it clear
that it was in favour of forming popular front governments at all levels of
State institutions. The PT left had
little basis for opposing electoral pacts with the political representatives of
the bourgeoisie, as the left controlled government of Dutra and Rosseto in Rio
Grande do Sul was itself a popular front government even in self-designation. In
fact it depended on the support of the capitalist PDT to stay in office.
H:
The Retreat of the Left Wing When the PT was formed most
of the anti-Stalinist left joined, there was no bar on entry and so they
organised openly. The leading Trotskyist tendency at the time of formation was
the ‘Morenista’ PSTU but it was expelled in 1993 for refusing to abide by
rules drawn up by the National Conference of 1988 banning tendencies from
running their own newspapers and having their own finances. The DS of the Fourth
International is now the major left tendency operating within the PT but its
growth has been bought at a price and its policy of offering critical support to
Lula is now at the crossroads. On December 14 the National Directorate of the
Workers Party (PT) voted to expel three PT federal deputies (equivalent to
members of the House of Representatives) and one PT federal senator, Heloisa
Helena. These expulsions marked a new political situation for the PT and for the
left within it. The
four dissidents defended themselves before the PT by maintaining that opposition
to privatisation had been the erstwhile position of the party as evidenced by
votes at all previous PT
national conventions. The action to discipline the four nationally elected
leaders of the PT was approved by the PT's National Directorate by a vote of
13-7 and was later referred to the PT's Ethics Commission for determination of
the sanction to be applied. The Ethics Commission of the PT, by a 4-2 margin,
called for expelling the four dissident PT leaders. The
overwhelming control of the Articulation leadership faction was manifest at the
first meeting of the National Directorate after the election triumph of Lula and
the PT. In March 16th 2003 two proposals were tabled for discussion. The
leadership proposal endorsing the neo-liberal economic programme received 54
votes or 70% of the whole and the dissident proposal received 21 votes or 28% of
the whole. The vote over the expulsions of the left deputies merely confirmed
the politically weak minority position of the left within the PT. The PT had
been so much transformed that all talk of the PT coming to power on a socialist
programme is so much washed out nonsense, as is calls for support for its
‘democratic and popular program … that answer the aspirations and hopes
raised by the victory of Lula, as well as the changes expected by the people.’
The PT is now a party of right wing social democracy. In strictly scientific
terms it is a bourgeois workers party, a party that depends on the votes and
support of the organised working class but is in no way made accountable to the
working class or advances its interests.
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