A NOVA DEMOCRACIA BRASIL: Editorial – Wolves without disguise

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A NOVA DEMOCRACIA BRASIL: Editorial

Wolves without disguise

The struggle of the deaf in the snake pit between the so-called “economic wing”, linked to Paulo Guedes, and the “military wing”, headed by the generals of the Planalto, won in the non-renewal of the current president of Petrobras, Roberto Castello Branco, and his replacement by another militiaman, an unprecedented episode. The Brazilian tragedy, which is approaching 250,000 dead in the context of the pandemic, takes on the appearance of a grotesque comedy when we see out of Bolsonaro’s mouth the slogan “Oil is ours”, while the democrats and humanists of the occasion, through the columnists of the press monopoly, make the indecent defence of the all-powerful “god of the market”, on whose altar it does not matter that the interests of the vast majority of the nation are sacrificed. With regard to economic policy, the defenders of “democracy” are, you see, to the right of the captain of the jungle. The current pricing policy practised by Petrobras deserves only one adjective: criminal. This policy is the responsibility of the Bolsonaro/Guedes government itself, which continued with Temer’s spurious policy of dollarising the price of oil and oil products, automatically linking their readjustments in the domestic market to the oscillations that occurred globally. As any schoolchild knows, the price of energy production impacts on the entire production chain, with immediate and perverse effects on workers. To make matters worse, this dollarisation is taking place in a context of sharp devaluation of the Brazilian currency, which makes fuel more expensive, reinforces inflation and famine, which in turn hits the purchasing power of households and constricts the economy, in an iron circle that strangles the country, to the benefit of a handful of national and foreign speculators and the export sector, especially agribusiness, which becomes more competitive as the real becomes cheaper against the dollar. Inflation, therefore, which affects those who live on wages with particular violence, is a structural disease of the Brazilian economy, whose ultimate basis lies in the monoculture latifundia on the one hand and the subjugation of imperialism on the other. And the problem is so serious that Brazil is capable, these days, of combining high inflation with recession, in a kind of marriage of misfortunes that devours people’s standard of living. In all respects, therefore, the old song that sees rising popular consumption as the villain of inflation is false. This skyrocketed in 2020, simultaneously with the deterioration of the average income of Brazilians, which fell by 20% in the same period.

As we can see, we are facing a much broader problem than the issue of the truckers, which in fact, as this Y says in its editorial, is explosive material in the national situation. Because not even Bolsonaro, the bravadoiro, will be able to carry out his populist wink to the end, on pain of losing Faria Lima’s support and seeing the government fall. And it is interesting to realise that for these perfumed murderers, the thousands of lives sacrificed in the pandemic, the crime of wounding humanity in Manaus, the sabotage of vaccination, the open defence of fascism and torture, the fact that millions of Brazilians go hungry or have to resort to wood and coal for cooking (because the price of cooking gas has also shot up, which also has to do with the dismantling of refineries by the federal government) are worth nothing. Until then, the yuppies were “closed with Bolsonaro”, and were celebrating the approval of the “autonomy of the Central Bank” by Congress, a mechanism that seeks to safeguard economic policy from “pressures”, i.e. from the concrete situation of the masses, as is now seen, for example, albeit in another sphere, with respect to Petrobras. But, it is enough to name a figure of their displeasure (so far, only that has happened) that they threaten to gnaw at the rope, bring down the share price and predict all kinds of instabilities.

In fact, the ideal regime for these parasites, who live in rich enclaves, as luxurious as they are guarded, is that of Pinochet. Bolsonaro dreams of this too, and it is the programme he will implement if his coup succeeds. The problem is that, to get there, it is necessary to raise a massive base, something that is not achieved in this way.

Bolsonaro’s commitment, our Bonaparte as a boteco, is first and foremost to himself and his gang. Harassed by the investigations into the crimes he committed before and after assuming the presidency, he has in the coup d’état not only a political project but the only card of personal salvation. Think concretely: leaving Planalto, without the resources that the office offers him, he will not have the strength to face the avalanche of accusations that await him, and prison will be his just destiny. Therefore, staying in office, including re-election (as a mere intermediate stage of the coup, or even as an excuse to carry it out) is for him a matter of life and death. For the generals, as corrupt and genocidal as they are, the problem is presented from another perspective, since, as a caste, their life does not depend on this or that government, but will be assured until they are overthrown and buried by the revolution. For them, we said, the problem is political: they intend to impose a fiscal and budgetary policy that serves their counter-insurgent objectives, whose immediate tactical problem is to stop the imminent social explosion, an environment in which they can lose control of the situation to the Bolsonarist extreme right, in addition to seeing the authentic democratic and revolutionary forces strengthened in this process. Because of this, and also, as a background, because of the organic link between the Armed Forces and the big bureaucratic bourgeoisie, which rests on very objective causes (for them it is key, even to maintain the status of main force in the South of America, to avoid the complete dismantling of the national industrial park), the generals are due to the comprehensive economic intervention of the state, which corresponds, in the superstructure, to a greater centralisation of power in the executive. The mere fact of seeing in their performance in government the pursuit of money and profits, or adherence to Bolsonaro’s values, as the petty-bourgeois moralist does, has nothing to explain. Today, the generals and the captain converge, even if they pursue different objectives, for the same defence of greater political centralisation/economic intervention. They are sort of inseparable enemies.

For revolutionaries, the only consistent position is to denounce both the reactionaries inside and outside the government relentlessly and immutably. No concession to the humanists of the occasion, the armchair democrats, who, in the name of defending the “constitution”, defend the continuity of their privileges! Down with Bolsonaro and the military government, genocidal and surrenderist, guilty of hundreds of thousands of deaths and hunger! The only alternative is the struggle and the independent mobilisation of the popular masses themselves. Apart from that, there is only the road of successive massacres and betrayals, in the hands of the bandits in uniform or tie.