Brazil: A coup
by imperialism against the workers and the tasks of the communists in the new
cold war
By Humberto
Rodrigues, “Folha do Trabalhador” newspaper, Communist Workers Front, Brazilian
section of LCFI.
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| Brazil’s President Dilma Rousseff sworn in for the second time in 2015, now facing impeachment, dismissal and possible jail in a US imperialist sponsored constitutional coup. |
The impeachment
push to overthrow the government of the PT in Brazil has been orchestrated
since 2013. It is a parliamentary coup d’etat to take out the PT government at
any cost. Corruption crimes of which the PT was accused have been proven to be
practiced by all his tormentors and on a much larger scale. The bourgeois
opposition lost the last four presidential elections in 2002, 2006, 2010 and
2014. These political representatives of the bourgeoisie, supported by
imperialism, can only regain the presidency of Brazil by subverting the
functioning of the current presidential government system, even though
Brazilian bourgeois democracy is extremely limited. This was only possible
after the unification of the entire bourgeoisie as a class against the PT,
aggravating the dictatorship of capital.
The economic crisis
is also an instrument of political struggle. It was not only the reduction in
imports of commodities by China that weakened the Brazilian economy and caused
the recession. The fall in oil prices to one third of the amount that it sold
at two years ago (a barrel of oil dropped from $110 to £30 US dollars) was
caused by manoeuvres performed by the US. The main objective was to weaken
their opponent petro-states, many of whom are organic members or associates
politically the BRICS, whose economies rely on that commodity, such as Russia,
Venezuela, Brazil, Bolivia and co. The US became the world’s largest oil
producer in 2015, surpassing Russia and Saudi Arabia, starting to export too,
which Washington had banned since the oil crisis in the 1970s.
Petrobras, the
Brazilian state giant oil company has consistently been the victim of legal and
speculative attacks (judicial operation anti-PT “Car Wash”). Behind these
attacks are the rating agencies and investment risk assessors of big finance
capital; speculators like George Soros and the brothers Koch, magnates of US
oil, which also fund the scam artist NGOs in Brazil, the same as those who
supported the coup in Ukraine.
The strategic
plan to sabotage the economy has been a “war effort” to overthrow the PT and
get rid of this obstacle to expansion of the exploitation of workers by
imperialism. The Federation of São Paulo State Industries (FIESP), the
landlords of the Confederation of Agriculture and Livestock of Brazil (CNA),
the media monopoly of the “Globo”, the owner of the drinks multinational AmBev,
Jorge Paulo Lemann, the richest bourgeois in the country, sabotaged the
economy. They threatened lock-outs if the impeachment was not approved, they
gave collective vacations to their workers, caused the recession, sponsored the
coup, the demonstrations, hyped up the panic about the Zika virus emanating
from the poor, thus expanding the size of the protests and guiding its
political and legal representatives in conspiring to overthrow Dilma by all
means. This is real “bullying” by political forces and the media. Result: the
wealthy middle classes, driven by public opinion became a con man’s army. The
erosion of parliamentary support for the government of the PT in Congress fell
to less than one third of the parliamentary vote against the impeachment.
As it was in
1964, the current Coup is not only the product of disputes between two wings of
the Brazilian bourgeoisie. Imperialism is supporting the wing of the ruling
class which is the majority. On the other hand, increasingly isolated, it is
the PT. The coup of 2016 wants to oust the PT government and marginalise the
party, but the main target is the workers and their historical social
conquests. The capitalists in Brazil seek restore their profit rates by the
overexploitation of the masses,
The 1964 coup
in Brazil was the first of a series to install military dictatorships in the
Latin American continent in the 1960s and 1970. That was a preventive manoeuvre
of imperialism during the Cold War against the then existing workers’ states to
prevent the expansion the influence of the Cuban revolution on the continent.
Now, in a more sophisticated and orderly manner, imperialism holds
parliamentary coups in Latin America. We live in another cold war, the enemies are
new bourgeois powers and the current scams seek to re-impose US influence on
the continent, which is visibly weakening in the twenty-first century.
THE CRISIS OF
2008 IN US AND EUROPE OPENS UP SPACE FOR EXPANSION OF THE INFLUENCE OF BRICS ON
THE PLANET
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| Victory for India at BRICS Summit |
1) an
unparalleled mass of workers and energy resources;
2) because
unlike the semi-colonies that are unable to resolve outstanding bourgeois tasks
and live subjugated by imperialist oppression, China and Russia held the
bourgeois historic tasks during the period in which they were workers’ states,
through bureaucratic or distorted proletarian dictatorships;
3) the crisis
of 2008 and the economic downturn of imperialism opened space in the world
market for China to spend to import from other countries what the imperialist
metropolises in recession stopped buying, and for Russia to broaden its energy
sales (gas and oil) and weapons in better condition.
In 2009, China
became the largest exporter and importer of goods to Brazil. Since 1500
Brazilian trade has been dominated by the successively dominant capitalist
powers on the planet at the time, Portugal, England and then the USA.
In 2015, the
economies of the five members of the BRICS account for 20% of world GDP and the
exchange between them corresponded to 250 billion dollars. Capitalist relations
between the BRICS states are dominated by the export of goods, especially
commodities and on the export of capital. The bourgeoisies of China and Russia
has imperialistic pretensions, but they are not as yet imperialist. For
Marxists, imperialism is characterized by the export of capital and is the
expansionist policy of finance capital. Thus, capitalist relations between the
BRICS themselves and between BRICS and other non-imperialist countries are relations
of bourgeois exploitation of workers, against which we fight, but not relations
of imperialist domination. In every fight, we always take the side opposed to
imperialism. However, even though in this fight we are on the side of the
oppressed country or people against imperialism and its agents, we always
pursue our struggle to build a revolutionary workers’ party for the conquest of
workers’ power.
THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK
When it
recovered from the acute phase of the 2008 crisis, thanks to growing poverty
and wage reduction of its working class, the US resumed the initiative in the
geopolitical field and tried to restore by all means, especially economic
blackmail, their commercial influence and lost policy. The coup is the most
violent form taken for the resumption of this influence when the governments of
countries dominated by imperialism do not peacefully cede to imperialist
interests.
Before being
triggered in Brazil in 2013, several coups were performed under this strategy
in smaller countries such as Honduras, Paraguay, Libya, Ukraine, Thailand,
where governments approached the BRICS or governments that are near to the
Bolivarian of Venezuela and Bolivia. These were the blows against the periphery
of the BRICS.
The coup is an
expression of imperialist counter-attack. We are living in the second wave of
imperialist counter-attack now against the very members of the BRICS,
imperialism moves all his pawns, trade war, speculative attack, economic
blockade, sponsors challenging candidates and harassment by civil war. To
resist this counterattack many countries form a resistance block headed by
Russia and China. This began the conflict intensification which is the new cold
war, this time between capitalist states. This cold war already sees conflicts
and indirect military disputes, as in Syria, Ukraine and Yemen. The conflict is
heading towards a Third World War.
PHASE TWO OF
THE COUNTER-ATTACK OF IMPERIALIST IS A RACE AGAINST TIME TO COMBAT THE
DE-DOLLARIZATION THREAT
the de-dollarization threat
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| Rival mobilisations, the pro-imperialists mobilisation the wealthy and well off middle classes and the working class and poor mobilise against the coup and against US imperialism |
If the
artificial ballast imposed by the military superiority since 1971 is
dismantled, then the “Super Imperialism” acquired by the US and spoken of by
Michael Hudson, the Bretton Woods Agreement established with England at the end
of World War II is lost. (Hudson, M. (2003). Super imperialism: The origin and
fundamentals of US world dominance (2nd ed.). London, UK: Pluto Press.) That is
why there is such a great struggle to prevent the establishment of alternative
currencies, or multilateral organizations to replace the IMF and the World
Bank.
In April 2016,
the imperialist counterattack entered its second phase. Honduras, Paraguay,
Thailand, Libya, Ukraine, were on the margins of the BRICS. Now, the attack is
directed against the weakest members, beginning with South Africa and Brazil.
The replacement of the dollar standard for gold immensely would be immensely
beneficial to South Africa. Imperialism lost a battle for Zuma’s impeachment in
South Africa and won another in Brazil against Rousseff, already salivating by
its strike against Petrobras.
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| Liliana Ayalde, Dilma and Lugo |
In Brazil, the
scam artists have infiltrated and hijacked the demonstrations began against the
increase of public transport tickets in 2013. In August of that year, the US
appointed as ambassador in Brazil Liliana Ayalde, who had orchestrated the
parliamentary coup that ousted Lugo in Paraguay in 2012, and had been expelled
from Bolivia in 2013, accused of trying to make another coup against Evo
Morales.
In March 2014
the first overt phase of the judicial operation “Lava jet” opened. It was,
aimed at cutting the PT ties with certain sectors of the bourgeoisie,
especially owners of construction companies, which are commercially associated
with the Lula and Dilma governments in conducting major infrastructure projects
in Brazil and nearby countries of BRICS-funded Brazilian capital, Cuba,
Venezuela and African countries. This unprecedented arrest of members of the
big bourgeois, who employ more than one hundred thousand workers, can only be
explained as part of a war operation orchestrated by much more powerful
capitalist interests, by imperialism itself. It certainly was not the work of
the proletarian dictatorship. The aim is to isolate the Workers’ Party by
forcing prisoners to perform the work of bourgeois technocrats and by “winning
vigilantism” on the streets to produce evidence to criminalise Dilma, Lula and
the PT. This judicial operation, commanded by a young judge in collaboration with
the CIA and the FBI, was mounted in the state of Paraná, the state’s best
federation controlled by the PSDB party born of a rupture of the PMDB that best
represented the interests of imperialism since the fall of Collor in the early
1990s. [1]
THE CRISIS OF 2008 RUPTURED THE “BALANCE
OF INTER-STATE RELATIONS” AND OPENED THE PERIOD OF AN INTER-CAPITALIST COLD WAR
“In the economic sphere these constant disruptions and restorations of the equilibrium assumes the form of strikes, lockouts, revolutionary struggle. In the sphere of inter–state relations the disruption of equilibrium means war or – in a weaker form – tariff war, economic war, or blockade.” Trotsky, ‘Report on the World Economic Crisis and the New Tasks of the Communist International’ 1921
The 2008 crisis
enabled the existence of a new balance of power in the relationship between
states. Although this continues to dominate the planet, imperialism does so in
a less favorable situation, cannot do to Syria in the second decade of this
century what they did to Afghanistan and Iraq. Obama may act as ostentatious as
Bush and but is forced to resort to what some analysts is calling “hybrid war”
[2]. The last of the direct military intervention of the troops of imperialism
that resulted in the overthrow of a ruler was in Libya. Since then, he has been
acting increasingly via mercenary agents who are increasingly barbaric (the
Islamic State) and fascist (Ukraine), etc.
The 1964 coup
in Brazil was driven by the US as a preventive measure, in the midst of the
cold war of the US vs. USSR, after the triumph of the Cuban revolution, the
first anti-capitalist social and anti-imperialist revolution in Latin America.
Washington feared the contagion of the continent by the Cuban revolution and
orchestrated coups and dictatorships in most Latin American countries, starting
with Brazil.
The 2016 coup
in Brazil, with its similarities and differences with other devious manouvers
carried out in the current decade, is also part of the preventive reaction of
imperialism amid the current cold war. The fact that the US is going through
its presidential elections influences the parliamentary-judicial way and the
gradual pace that this struggle is taking as they await the changing of the
commander-in-chief of the imperialist forces. Not surprisingly politics is now
dominated by the White House’s efforts to gain time in the diplomatic field for
the reestablishment of relations with Cuba, for Iran’s nuclear disarmament and
for the ceasefires in Syria and Ukraine to work. At the same time, imperialist
agents, supported by such instruments of hybrid warfare as the mainstream
media, are making advances in Latin America by using the political exhaustion
of the semi-bonapartist and populist governments in Argentina, Venezuela, Bolivia
and Peru to overcome electoral defeats via parliamentarian machinations.
THE PT CAPITULATES TO THESE
CONSTITUTIONAL COUPS AGAINST THE PRESIDENTIAL ELECTIONS TO INSTALL THEIR GOVERNMENT
TO LEGITIMISE REPRESSION
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| Vice-President Michel Temer (PMDB) is merely a stand-in for the real pro-imperialist plans of US imperialism and its Brazilian agents |
The vice
president conspirator against Rousseff Michel Temer (PMDB [1]), will be
composed of almost all the parties of the system and will have a majority in
both houses of Congress, but cannot muster the strength to impose the coup
program that advocates privatisation, wiping out democratic rights and social
programs, etc. Temer attempts to strangle the social movements by economic
means and by criminalisation. He will support the “anti-terrorism” legislation
which was commissioned by the US and adopted by Dilma. This is a
pre-bonapartist provisional government of fear, an intermediate step towards a
government supported by a police-military dictatorship, legalized at the polls
and supported by a greater middle class social consensus in the midst of a witch
hunting process aimed at wiping out the PT.
Sectors of the
bourgeoisie and imperialism coupists in Brazil are preparing for the post-Temer
regime. So these scammers feel the need to hold new election to legitimize
their new repressive regime, which imposes the program of the coup by getting
rid of historic rights and the winning the renewal of full control of the
country by imperialism. Today there is almost a broad political consensus from
the party of the “Democrats”, the main party of the military dictatorship from
1964 to 1985, including Lula and sectors of the PT, to the pseudo-Trotskyist
PSTU (LIT), who are all advocate early elections. This is a “democratic” trap
that at this moment only legitimize the coup.
WE MUST WIN THE BATTLE IN THE STREETS TO
DEFEAT THE MANOEUVRES FROM THE TOP
Without
understanding the international and basis of this coup attack, the PT keeps on
digging his own grave, betting on conciliating the bourgeoisie.
Although it has
become bourgeoisified in recent decades, the PT was reminded that it is a
bastard party born of the bourgeois parties in Brazil. Rousseff was a guerrilla
fighter who took up arms against the military dictatorship. And Lula, although
he originated from the proletariat, only advanced socially because he achieved
state office. The rules governing the relations between the countries in
peacetime are different from the rules of war. Under the command of
imperialism, the PT was isolated within the bourgeoisie.
All attempts of
PT to prevent the coup through the bourgeois methods of class collaboration
failed. The PT project is lost because the rules which worked during “Pax
Americana” and allowed the social pact to operate during a decade of the
federal governments of the PT do not work anymore in the current cold war.
The PT relies
more in the palatial negotiations between the bourgeois and not on the strength
of the working population, whom the PT is afraid awaken to struggle and which
it can no longer control. Thus they abuse their own social base and believe they
can keep doing this without being punished by history. However despite all
theirs betrayals, mistakes and capitulations, the struggle against the coup
becomes more powerful every day. This bourgeois cowardice of the PT seems to be
leading us, the worker, to an increasingly expensive tragedy. There is no
shortcut to the class struggle. At this moment either we crush the putschists
or we will be crushed. This is not to make a choice between street fighting and
“institutional struggle”. The parliamentary or judicial struggle is where
imperialism and the bourgeoisie enjoy a huge advantage. Without giving ground
to the enemy in any arena, we put all our best efforts into wining a real fight
on the ground where the masses can participate fully with their fighting
methods, protecting our occupations, offices and members against right-wing
attacks, sweeping the fascists off the streets, organizing strikes in every
workplace against phishers and any attack against our achievements and rights.
Thus, the victory in the “enemy camp” will be a by-product in the victory of
the masses in the streets. If the enemy does not capitulate in the
institutional field, as it has done several times in history, its resolutions
will not avail to the mobilised people organised to enforce their historical
interests. No government will be sustained, no law will be implemented against
this power.
NO TRUST IN THE PT! BUILD THE GENERAL
STRIKE SUPPORTED BY POPULAR COMMITTEES WORKPLACE INCLUDING EDUCATION AND
HOUSING!
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| The PT’s Dilma and Lula: From euphoria to despair, not able or willing to mobilises their social base in the working class they rely on parliamentary manoeuvres and conciliating the coupists; a recipe for defeat. |
In their fight
against the coup, the most organized section of the working class come to the
fore in the greatest saga of struggle against the rightists of all the history
of Brazil. Sectors of the vanguard of the class that were quite during the last
few decades have now begun to move powerfully in 2015 and 2016. This is very
important and needs to be harnessed by the revolutionaries, despite the fact
that the PT and the CUT have rehashed the old Brazilian Popular Front,
established in 1989 and abandoned the class struggle in favour of this broad
bourgeois fronts with businesses, industrialists and parties that have been the
backbone of the bourgeois governing elite since the military dictatorship.
Forges such as the PMDB, who aim to use the mass movement as their bargaining
tool to pressurise the coup bourgeoisie to a negotiated solution within the
frameworks of the three powers of the capitalist state. However, this limited
policy is not enough to stop the march of reaction.
Nor will
general strike bravado without the actual construction of the general strike
offer any real resistance to the head of the imperialist offensive. It is
necessary to organize the working class, the youth and all the masses at each
workplace, students and neighbourhood to face up to the coup creating popular
committees units of the anti-imperialist united front, against the coup and
against the fascists.
These
extraordinary bodies of mass organization will build the confidence of the
masses in the new political directions which will be able to take the fight
against right-wing attacks and the new government coup to a truly political
general strike. These committees, on the outskirts, trade unions, schools and
universities must get rid of the bureaucratic protection and pro-government of
the BPF leaders addicts and be based on the broadest workers’ democracy. Only
thus can they function as instruments of struggle to protect us against the
attacks which threaten our to social programs historical rights.
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| Build popular committees against the coup, Folha do Trabalhador banner - São Paulo |
Despite the FCT
warning against the coup since 2013, the PT and Communist Party of Brazil
(PCdoB), which controls most of the mass organizations, only make meaningless
bravado and thus demobilise popular resistance. Thus the offensive of the
pro-imperialist right moves on to eliminate one by one the main labour and
social achievements of the history of the country’s class struggle. In this
offensive by imperialism against the workers, the workers’ leaders capitulate
to the coup, disarms popular resistance and calls on the masses to avenge the
coup by voting for Lula in early elections in 2017. It is a trap for the
proletariat which is conducted by PT.
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| Build popular committees against the coup, Folha do Trabalhador banner - Rio de Janeiro |
Once the strike
is finished, the coup government will stress the witch hunt against the very
same PT, Lula and the whole mass movement for many years, to ward off any
possibility of the return of PT and any leftists to government. One of the key
measures of this strategy is the forfeiture of political rights of Lula, who
may end up stuck down like other PT leaders already are. The PT is now a
bourgeois party with mass influence able to defend themselves. It has long
ceased to be a useful political tool of struggle for the workers. Now is
tactically valid to establish a. anti-imperialist united front against the coup
with the PT, the CUT, the MST, etc. But in this alliance the goal of the
Trotskyist revolutionaries is to explain patiently to the masses what the
outcome of the PT class collaboration policy is and to thus help them to
overcome their illusions in Lula’s party. During their own struggle to defend
their historical rights against the pro-imperialist right, the exploited and
oppressed masses should march for their own political organization
independently. They must fight for the construction of the revolutionary
workers’ party.
Notes
[1] The Party
of the Brazilian Democratic Movement, PMDB, is a bourgeois party. It was
created in 1965 to be the legal opposition of the bipartisan regime established
by the military dictatorship. The Brazilian Social Democracy Party (Portuguese:
Partido da Social Democracia Brasileira, PSDB) is a political party in
Brazil. The third largest party in the National Congress the PSDB has been the
main opposition against the administrations of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and
Dilma Rousseff. With the imminent collapse of the military dictatorship in the
early 1980s, a group of left-wing intellectuals were mobilized to create a
leftist party. Some of them attempted to work with the labour movement, led by
Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, but the group split over ideological grounds. The
democratic socialists joined the labour movement and founded the Worker’s
Party, while the social democrats remained in the Brazilian Democratic Movement
Party (PMDB) and would later split to create the Brazilian Social Democracy Party
(PSDB)
[2] According
to Andrew Korybko, international political analyst and journalist, “the hybrid
wars occur when the US combine together their Colour Revolution strategies and
Unconventional War in order to create a unified toolbox to implement regime
change in target states. When an attempt to Colour Revolution failed, as
happened in Syria in 2011, the replacement plan is to implement an
Unconventional Warfare built directly on the social infrastructure and the
previous organizational methods.