AND – Who ‘joins the right’, paleface?

JAILSON DE SOUZA NOVEMBER 26, 2022

Who ‘joins the right’, paleface?

In a note entitled “Will Lula’s government be an instrument of imperialism?” Published on 15/11, the Diário da Causa Operária (DCO) accuses the newspaper A Nova Democracia of favoring and adhering to the right. To give credibility to the thesis, it resorts to the usual opportunistic expedient, of collecting isolated phrases like scarecrows, going so far as to suggest that this tribune is favorable to the “spending cap” for the simple fact that we have analyzed that since the same ( or other “fiscal anchor”) “a stony clause for the establishment of the ruling classes” and since the future government is a coalition of opportunists with the traditional right firmly committed to “stability” and to the impulse of bureaucrat capitalism, it will not be able to comply thoroughly its promises, the announced measures being a mere maneuver so as not to burn out as soon as he began his term.

The DCO raises doubts about whether or not the next government will be an instrument of imperialism. In a recent editorial (titled “They want a government of speculators, we of the workers”), it affirms that the financial market and the bourgeoisie “want Lula’s government to serve the speculators”, but it emphasizes that “this is not possible since Lula was elected by the population, not by the bourgeoisie” (?). There is no known government that, arising from an electoral farce, has not been elected by the population, and that says absolutely nothing about its class character, as any schoolchild who participates in a serious leftist movement knows. But, patience. Let the facts show those who, referring to the vanguard of the working class, continue to be deluded by the verbose cleverness of the standard workers of imperialism. Those who allow themselves to be carried away by the old vaunted opportunist reformist, which for many years predominated in the leadership of the PCB and reissued by the range of opportunist parties and organizations that make up the so-called Popular Brazil Front: that of taking over governments for their appearance or for what that they say about themselves, that there are conservative sectors in them, but there are also progressive sectors.

However, we find it more alarming that the DCO and the PCO are being so faithful to Trotskyist logic, of being an auxiliary line of fascism and the extreme right, although nothing very different was expected. Like Trotsky, whose exclusive practice, beginning in the 1930s, was to denounce “the horrors” of the dictatorship of the proletariat in the USSR during the anti-communist conspiracies of the Nazi-fascists, the PCO decided to obey tradition and began to defend that the extreme right had “democratic freedom” to attack the prevailing democratic freedoms in the country.

Let it be clear, gentlemen: you defend an obstinate anti-communist movement, with operational leadership centralized in the president of the republic and his and others’ far-right circle. A movement that is reproduced through directives in consolidated groups of extreme right-wing local politicians, deeply-seated fascists, landowners, “militiamen” (in the countryside and in the city), military police and reservists of all kinds from the Armed Forces. Around these, the masses are mobilised, mainly from the petty bourgeoisie, frustrated with the rottenness of this old democracy, and many of them come together through territorial or intimate relationships. The masses have been educated for years in a sophisticated anti-communism, incessantly bombarded by the media and press monopolies, which today more than ever claim to be “champions of democracy.”

Let’s look at the DCO’s note titled “Wow, how many crimes do the Bolsonaristas have, my God!” There it mocks the serious denunciations against the extreme right, equating the demonstrations for a fascist coup and for the military regime with the just popular demonstrations for the simple fact that they are similar only in the forms of struggle (road blockade, public demonstrations, etc.). Beyond the bourgeois formalism of the thesis – of ignoring the antagonistic nature between the content of the coup acts and the content of the popular protest, foundations of materialist dialectics –, the DCO still intended to give us all a lesson about the State:

“The fact that the STF is beating so hard on the claim that the demonstrators are anti-democratic and are committing a crime is a very strong warning to the left. This sector of politics seems to refuse to realize that if it is valid for one, it is valid for all, that is, if the right can no longer protest, then neither can the left, and the STF will see to it that it happens.”

Now friends, it was necessary to consult the classics of Marxism to discover the gross error in stating that “what is valid for one, is valid for all”, this being the elementary premise of the Marxist theory of the State, the one that is learned in the first footsteps of revolutionary militancy. Where does historical experience show that the left, by guaranteeing the freedom of action of the extreme right, now also has it? Our Trotskyist teachers forgot that if the extreme right obtained the support of the other power groups of the ruling classes, it would be, ultimately, by not proposing alterations in the system of Power (the class character of the State and how the dominant power the classes really hold power), but only in the system of government (the way in which the Power of the ruling classes is organized to exercise domination: demo-liberal or fascist); and the left, once it is revolutionary and not like the PCO and other opportunist parties, would never have and will never have such freedom, precisely because it goes beyond its limits, even though the extreme right has unrestricted freedom! The class character of the State, gentlemen, is the minimum, it is what separates the Marxists from the anarchists and from the revisionists who worship democracy, without any adjective, as a universal value!

By the way, the revolutionary left will have less freedom the more freedom is granted to this fascist mob, because freedom, like democracy, is not a universal value, gentlemen, but with class content and, for that very reason, their freedom consists in the exclusion of the freedom of the revolutionary masses, and vice versa, since with freedom the fascists tend to achieve greater success in their purpose, which is precisely to cease the democratic freedoms of the people as much as possible.

Therefore, the freedom of the coup plotters, we do not defend it even one millimeter, that is why it is better that the democratic liberties of the popular masses be imposed. If and when, under the pretext of fighting the fascists, the Federal Supreme Court suspends the liberties of the popular masses, more than we are already permanently fighting this whole system of oppression and exploitation, as well as this whole electoral farce, we will fight it with even more energy from the fact that democratic freedoms have ceased for the masses, not for the fascists. Thus, the popular masses are educated to differentiate between the revolutionary camp and our enemies, and to defend their democratic liberties with the utmost intransigence, not because they are universal values, but because they are historical conquests of humanity, conquests of struggles, mainly, of the exploited and oppressed masses in defense of their most basic rights, as Lenin stated in State and Revolution, that there are achievements of humanity that the masses no longer accept as lacking; They are conquests that the popular classes use to wage the class struggle in better conditions. With this degree of formalist weakness, it is not surprising that you are subject to the personal direction of Luiz Inácio and treat him – in practice – as the highest leader of the working class, for the mere fact of being a metalworker.

You, who say so much on behalf of the working class, are teaching them that the fight for socialism and the fight for fascism are identical. Watch out! If they are so identical, the masses themselves may prefer the fascists, who have done more than you. Take advantage of the advice: this does not go well with your “workers’ party” image.