AND – PCO, from political opportunism to blatant counterfeiting
JAILSON DE SOUZA
DECEMBER 13, 2022
PCO, from political opportunism to blatant counterfeiting
In the 1930s, instead of showing solidarity with the Integralists and pampering them, the revolutionary left fought them, as recorded in the historic Batalha da Sé, the Revoada dos Galinhas Verdes!!! Note the difference between revolutionaries and a revisionist party. Photo: Wounded Integralists. AND Database
“When we talk about the fight against opportunism, we can never forget a peculiar trait of all contemporary opportunism in all fields: its indefinite, diffuse, elusive character. The opportunist, by his very nature, always avoids raising problems in a concrete and resolute, seeks the result, slides like a snake between points of view that exclude each other…”
Lenin
Diário da Causa Operária (DCO) recently published a new text entitled “A Nova Democracia and the feverish belief in the bourgeois State”, in which it intended to point out the inconsistency of A Nova Democracia in defending democratic freedoms and not the extreme right . In addition, he stated numerous times that there are contradictions between the Lula government and imperialism, which would supposedly show the dogmatic error of AND‘s analysis, which would not be seeing the obvious.
The first impression is that the author has not read, or has not understood, at least the second half of our text, which he is dedicated to refuting. Let’s do it by steps.
First, the DCO accuses the AND of not attaching importance to the defense of democratic freedoms and other things: “for A Nova Democracia this class character [of the State] is nothing more than an abstraction, exactly as it is for anarchists [sic]. They say, the ‘State is capitalists [sic], therefore, no matter what the policy of that State is, it will always be against the people’. The position of A Nova Democracia is the pure cream of anarchism, with the difference that a consistent anarchist would not defend a STF measure. (…) For the comrades of A Nova Democracia there is no such thing as politics, it doesn’t matter if legislation is more or less democratic, hence the anarchist position of the group that refuses to participate in elections. Politics for them is just an abstraction, a dogma. (…) By advertising that it is not necessary to have democratic freedom, by saying that it does not matter to defend the guarantee of democratic rights, A Nova Democracia is collaborating to establish a climate favorable to an authoritarian State in the country”.
As we said, it seems to be DCO’s own method to invent positions, attributing them to others, to “destroy” opponents. Of the set of criticisms above, all are based on falsifications, except for our fight against electoral farce. Where did the DCO get any defense on our part about some repressive measure by the STF, in the criticism we wrote, or anywhere else? Where did they get that statement from, other than their arbitrary manipulation? Where did the AND defend that “it doesn’t matter if there are more or less democratic rights”? We want them to demonstrate, cite where their accusations are proven, without this intellectual trickery, typical of lazy disqualified people.
We will demonstrate just the opposite. In an Editorial published on October 25, AND stated: “Are democratic rights, civilizing freedoms, even if they exist in tatters, are they expendable? In no way. They are fundamental, because the popular masses need them – and demand them, as evidenced by the numerous protests against the summary execution of young people in the favelas and the numerous seizures of large estates by peasants, who demand their right to land. Without such rights and freedoms, the struggle for the emancipation of the simple worker, the simple peasant, would become more difficult. The question is: how to defend them?” Where is the assertion here that democratic rights and freedoms are dispensable, that they do so much, if not in the miserable manipulation of our Trotskyist sophists?
The same Editorial also reads: “Will the extreme right, civil and military, armed to the teeth and frustrated by an eventual defeat, disappear, like magic, once the results are announced? And the exception laws, which have become customary under the pretext of fighting Bolsonarism, will they not be used against true democrats by this aristocratic and reactionary judiciary?”. Is this what it means to defend “more power to the STF”, or that “the STF is fighting fascism”, gentlemen? Don’t you see the sterile counterfeit?
Second, the DCO claims that “A Nova Democracia advocates that this bourgeois state repress right-wing ‘extremists’” and that we claim “all the strength of the capitalist state against the right”; moreover, he accuses AND of defending that the STF is fighting fascism. The excerpt quoted above already dismantles the cunning manipulation. And a careful reading of our criticism notes that we do not defend the tightening of laws to repress fascists, but rather, we condemn the fact that the DCO defends freedom of action for coup leaders, and we emphasize that “we do not defend it [the freedom of coup leaders ] not an inch, so much the better for the democratic freedoms of the popular masses to be imposed”. Because? Because, historically, the policy of revolutionaries has always been to exploit the existing contradictions between the fascists and the reactionary demoliberal sector within the dominant classes, to isolate the most reactionary and offensive sector, seeking to preserve the widest possible and lasting democratic freedoms (political very different from that practiced by the delusional opportunism of the PCO).
We condemn the practice of the DCO and the PCO of making open and explicit political defense of the extreme right, on the grounds that this imposes a brake on the restriction of democratic freedoms. What does the error consist of? It consists in believing that there is proportionality on the part of the old State in dealing with the extreme right and the revolutionary left, which is false! The revolutionary left does not guarantee freedom of action for itself by defending it to the extreme right. Because? Because the revolutionary left threatens the class dictatorship of the big bourgeoisie and the landlords, and the extreme right, no, only threatens to change the form of this dictatorship; it follows that, under certain circumstances, the extreme right can achieve freedom of effective action, but the revolutionary left, after a certain limit, will not have this freedom even if all other forces do. Therefore, if revolutionaries want to preserve democratic freedoms for the masses of the people and for their struggle, they must fight for the preservation of the democratic rights of the revolutionary masses and democrats (in short, of the forces possible to unite in the united front of revolutionary classes), and the more they fight firmly and unite with the masses, the wider and longer these freedoms will last. But, it is obvious, revolutionaries should not fight for the “democratic rights” of the ultra-reactionaries to last as long as possible (!!!), there is no reason to do so, it only serves to empower the most reactionary sector. That the extreme right is the “new bogeyman” to advance the exception laws, this is obvious and we have already stated this, but it does not mean that the fight against the extreme right is unimportant (combat, read, for the movement revolutionary and popular), and thinking this way can be linked to the fear of becoming a target. The fact is: it is a stupid mistake to explicitly defend and mobilize to guarantee freedom of action to the greatest enemies of the working class, the extreme right, whose plan is to eliminate the freedoms of the working class and the people. The result could be just like the PCO issuing a note of support for lumpen Bolsonarist Daniel Silveira, as has already happened, in practice, as a united front with the sewer of the fascist reaction.
Never in history have communists defended freedom of action for fascist groups that advocated the establishment of an anti-communist military regime, when these began to be repressed; and that did not stop the communists from defending freedoms and guaranteeing them for the people. Imagine how absurd it would be if the P.C.B., in 1938, demanded freedom for Plínio Salgado, head of Tupiniquim Nazi-fascism, and defended the legality of the Integralist Action, because this would supposedly favor the struggle for freedom of Luiz Carlos Prestes and for the legality of the Party . Wouldn’t a tactic like that seem pathetic and puerile?! In contrast, what did the P.C.B. do? It fought for democratic freedoms, for the freedom of the workers’ and people’s movement, the right to strike and association of the working class and the people, the end of state persecution of communists and the Communist Party, for the freedom of Prestes and of all democratic and revolutionary political prisoners. In other words, it did not defend freedoms for ultra-reactionary forces (and it also did not applaud, as we do not applaud, the arrest of fascists); rather, it defended the freedoms of the masses, democrats and revolutionaries. Look at the very concrete class character of politics. As for the Integralists, instead of showing solidarity and pampering them, the revolutionary left fought them, as recorded in the historic Batalha da Sé, the Revoada dos Galinhas Verdes!!! Note the difference between revolutionaries and a revisionist party.
Third, the DCO states that we consider that “there is a bourgeois formalist relationship between democracy and capitalism”, and with a triumphant and full of will air, they quote Lenin to round off the debate. But we don’t even know where the author of the text took this polemic from, since in our criticism the “bourgeois formalist relationship between democracy and capitalism” was never a point… the text, which we cannot fail to consider to be pure and simple manipulation. What we said was, literally, that the bourgeois formalism in which the DCO incurs consists in “ignoring the existing antagonistic nature between the content of the coup acts and the content of the popular protest”, insofar as the organ attributes to both the same meaning, when it compares the acts of the extreme right with the forms of struggle of the proletariat, starting to consider that one must defend the right of the extreme right to carry them out, because, otherwise, it will not be possible to defend the right of the people to carry out them. This was bourgeois formalism, not between “democracy and capitalism”. The above logic, from the PCO, is false, because the seriousness of the acts organized by the phalanxes of Bolsonarist militiamen should not be minimized just because they use methods common to the working class or because sectors of the masses take part in them, but rather denounce the counterrevolutionary content that exists from behind and not condemning the form, showing the masses that one should not have solidarity with anti-communists nor support them, because they are anti-communists, their greatest enemies!
Fourth, regarding the future government, the DCO claims that Lula is not supported by imperialism, and that the future government has not given any sign that it will be a government aligned with the ruling classes (imperialism, in short). On the contrary, for the DCO, the bourgeoisie is frankly worried because Lula is a reformist.
The DCO writers should try to find out about the electoral period. Have you forgotten the range of support that Lula received? The landowner Simone Tebet, the prince of the reactionaries Fernando Henrique Cardoso, Helder Barbalho, Renan Calheiros, Omar Aziz; Henrique Meirelles, Edmar Bacha, André Lara Resende, Pedro Malan, Pérsio Arida, Armínio Fraga, Octaviano Canuto (former director of the World Bank and IMF); Candido Bracher (former president of Itaú Unibanco), Marisa Moreira Salles and Maria Alice Setúbal (both linked to Itaú). These are just the examples.
CNN, in a publication entitled “Businessmen say that Lula committed himself to maintaining what is working”, on September 29, reported: “At the dinner organized by Grupo Esfera, on the night of this Tuesday (27), in São Paulo , Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, PT candidate for the Presidency of the Republic, is committed to maintaining what is working. The information was found by CNN with businessmen who participated in the meeting”. At COP27, in his speech, Lula stated that the latifundia will be a “strategic ally” and that heavy investment will be required so that they do not need to deforest.
Now, just look at the transition team and see how PT and Lula’s “reformism” tends to be. In the economic area, the banker André Lara Resende and Pérsio Arida, to stay in two of the “Real Plan”; in the area of Education, Neca Setubal, heir to Banco Itaú; Ana Inoue, from Itaú Educação e Trabalho; Anita Gea Martinez Stefani, from the Instituto Natura monopoly; two representatives of the Lemann Foundation, which promotes counter-reforms in education; seven representatives of the Getulio Vargas Foundation (FGV), a private education monopoly, etc. Not to mention Geraldo Alckmin, a real government commissioner.
For the reader, there is no doubt about the tendency of the next government – and not an “abstract” tendency, as the PCO accuses us of, because everything above is quite concrete, acknowledging or not the PCO’s misguided logic.
That there are points of contradiction between the financial market and any government does not mean anything, by itself, about the class character of the government. Every relationship is contradiction, and contradiction is not the same as antagonism, as Lenin said. The Bolsonaro government’s relationship with imperialism was also full of contradictions: Yankee imperialism was against its policy of questioning the elections, just as it was against its policy of forcing a lower price of gasoline and creating permanent spending at the end of its mandate. The editorials of all the newspapers also tried to frame him in public opinion. Is Bolsonaro being against imperialism? No, this is simply how imperialist domination and the most powerful sectors of the ruling classes make themselves heard in their disputes to hegemonize the policy of a given government.
In summary, the PCO needs to deal better with its paradoxes. First, it defends that the Lula government should be supported in order not to help the right and to preserve rights; but it actively defends the right of the extreme right to act, whose plan is – among other things – to corrode, through coup pressure, the Lula government and democratic rights and freedoms… The PCO goes against the grain of the best traditions of the labor movement. The PCO accuses AND, but it only distorts our positions to “seal” and try to show itself as the champions of controversies. This is the senile disease of revisionism, ranging from political opportunism to outright falsification.