Unify the
struggles to defeat the
coming anti-working
class offensive in Brazil!
By the
Communist League - Brazil
Liga Comunista - Brasil
Liga Comunista - Brasil
Already in
2012 the first reaction against this cost-of-living increase came from
organized workers, when the number of strikes recorded in the country reached
almost 900, the largest number since 1996. The industrial proletariat managed
to recover most of the purchasing power of their wages in relation to
inflationary losses, followed by retail workers and, finally, the services.
According
to the Dieese (Department of Statistics and Socioeconomic Studies) during the
governments of Lula and Dilma (2001-2012) productivity in manufacturing
industry grew by 26% in 2010 and industrial production by 39%. Since 2005, manufacturing
has shrunk 11% (down from 79% to 68%) of the total formal jobs generated in the
production, i.e., while the falling rate of profit in the world and
particularly in the U.S. In Brazil the rate of profit tended to grow thanks to
the overexploitation of the working class.
This data
is important because it is in the sphere of production where material wealth is
created which disperses in the spheres of circulation (financial capital,
commercial capital) and this then feeds the machinery of the capitalist State.
The added value is realized in the market, i.e., with the sale of goods
produced in the factory. The rate of profit caused by this increasing productivity
reached its zenith in 2008 and begin to plummet in 2010.
The Dilma
Government then gave an artificial extension to the accumulation cycle through
the market by the consumption of the population, on the one hand and, on the
other, the reduction of taxes for certain sectors, such as the multinational capitalist
automobile manufacturers. Here it is worth noting that the “apple of the eye”
of production of the PT governments achieved a profit margin of 10%, twice the
global rate of automobile manufacturers. Because of the increase in car sales
in recent years, and profits, automakers accounted for almost 20% of remittance
of profits abroad made by companies from Brazil in 2011. This also demonstrates
how beneficial the slave-like agreement was with Metalworkers Union of São José
dos Campos (CSP / Conlutas) for the imperialist multinational GM. It made vast
profits for their Yankee masters.
However,
the stimulus to consumption was not made by wage increases, but by increasing
credit. By 2012 the debts accumulated by families reached its limit and the
bubble burst. (see box on housing bubble). For more than a year we denounced
the “anti-crisis measures” of Dilma, “killing the thirst with salt water” (the
Bolshevik # 10). We pointed out that preventive Government policies would make
the crisis explode with even more force in the country by leveraging existing
super-speculation to its extreme limits and that a true “time bomb” against the
proletariat was in the making. This would create relative impoverishment by
increasing the distance between the value produced by the worker and the amount
of this wealth from which they acccrue their spending power and this would
create debt bondage. It was clear that such an economic growth based on the
maximum indebtedness of working families, deceptively promoting by “able to
access everything in the middle class” by the PT (the ruling Workers Party),
buying “their dreams of consumption” without any salary compatible for this
would run out soon. These had now changed to middle class status and were
affected by poverty, do you think that they have now become further
impoverished when in reality they were always poor workers who were now driven
by the consumerist wave and need to face the reality that they are still poor?.
Thus the economic crisis arrived in the country late in 2012. Even the
mainstream media bosses and government of Dilma pretended that the situation is
serious only in Greece, Spain, Portugal, etc.., The masses feel that inflation,
loss of access to transport, health, education and the corrosion of their
conditions of life.
THE
IMPOTENCE OF THE DEMONSTRATIONS WITHOUT THE ORGANIZED CLASS AND WITHOUT A
REVOLUTIONARY WORKER PROGRAM
This is how
these semi-spontaneous protests, unconsciously against the increase of these
measures, have become the largest mass mobilisations in recent history of the
country, more than two million people came out to protest and this has spread
to about 600 cities.
However
these sectors who rebel against this social situation have no class
consciousness about the real situation; they are feel that they are in a
situation with no way out. Or they are induced to believe that their problems
lie in corruption, lack of patriotism. This is how bourgeois ideology affects
their judgement. Although for these sectors it is difficult to keep believing in
the myth that they are middle class, it is more difficult however to abandon
this myth. This contradiction manifests itself as both impotence and anger.
This impotence will remain if the working class does not enter the conflict on
its own behalf and reject those who pretend that a “day of struggle” on July 11
is sufficient.
Now the
pro-imperialist media starts to propagandize that Brazil is expensive, that
wages are high and that the labor rights and trade unions are obstacles to the
fall of the “Brazil cost” (profit-Brazil!) blaming the working class for the
high cost of goods (exchange value), on the one hand, and its low quality (value),
on the other. At the same time, the same media employer compares prices and
“value for money” and demonstrates that the goods from the U.S. and Europe are
cheaper and of better quality. This is obviously to make a case for enlarging
and further opening the market to the trade offensive of imperialism that
requires such measures to get out of its own recession. High interest rates and
low exchange rate increases the pressure for Brazil to become an open importer
of goods.
Deindustrialization
in not in our interests i.e. disorganisation which already growing with the
dismissal of workers in the industry and this tends to worsen now with
competition from imported manufactures which are artificially low in prices
since the creation of the Real (economic austerity).
By creating
expectations in the “national bourgeoisie” as “Força Sindical”(the main
metalwork union in Brazil) the Labour movement becomes the spokesman for the
National Confederation of Industry. This same industrial bourgeoisie is
becoming less and less “national” and increasingly a commercial and importing
bourgeoisie. An example is the recent conversion of a national park, which is
to be used for engineering purposes, importing auto parts. It is no accident that
the flagship of the domestic industry are the automakers.
Next the
industrial bosses are preparing to convert the factories into deposits of
imported goods or mere maintenance and technical assistance departments, taking
advantage of the marketing networks of its industries to serve merely as a
transmission belt for a new commercial offensive by imperialism.
Dilma
believed that her anti-crisis policies could avoid the contagion of the world
crisis in Brazil at least until her reelection. The bourgeois opposition itself
had not prepared to replace the PT in the Government before that. Thus, the
massive protests took the entire bourgeoisie by surprise. The rebellion would
be a good time for the masses to take advantage of the confusion in the
bourgeoisie, but unfortunately there was not an organized revolutionary
workers’ alternative to rise up to this task. After its initial surprise
capital resumed the offensive and now imperialism is blackmailing Dilma and the
PT government demanding the resignation of the PT Economic Minister, increasing
the pressure for the arrest of officials that threatens to engulf Lula himself
with corruption scandals, campaigning on the street with “down with Dilma!” promotes
alternative candidates in the Brazilian Social Democrat Party (PSDB) or the
Brazilian Socialist Party (PSB) The polls show that in an election year Dilma
could be tied in the second round with Marina Silva with neither party having a
majority. Dilma has conceded her authority to the Central Bank by increasing
interest rates making Dilma more dependent on the wishes of bankers and
international financiers.
After the
dream of being the 6th world power Brazil has woken up to the nightmare of
suffering a new colonization with deindustrialization, mass layoffs, population
divided at all levels, miserable wages and loss of achievements. Now the ball is
with metalworkers, tankers, postmen and banking employees who in the second
round of their wage campaigns need to unify the struggles and act as the
vanguard of the whole working population.
Therefore,
we cannot place any illusion on current union leaders in the fight to stop this
catastrophe that threatens us.
We need to
organize the workplaces and build working class opposition within the unions
that are under the influence of the PT and other parties employers not only
defend us as they are complicit in the attacks on our rights, such as the CUT defending
the Special Collective Agreement. On the other hand we must not foster illusion
in the PT, PSDB, the PSB or REDE, (the proto-party of Marina Silva) but we must
advocate the construction of a revolutionary workers ’ opposition that seeks to
win back trade unions for workers, as part of the fight to build a
revolutionary workers party in the country that lead the struggle to establish
a Workers and Employees Government.