“Our programmatic basis rests on one principle: the rescue of the workers’ and excluded political independence. We do not create a new party to promote class conciliation.. Our alliances to build an alternative seek to weld unity among all sectors of the working people […] Our party rejects joint governments with the ruling class […] Lula surrendered to his former adversaries, and turned his back on his combative historical social bases. He became an agent in defence of big finance capital interests”. […] “I will vote for the tax reform; I will vote for all the government’s agenda […] you can’t make a storm in a glass of water.” (Federal Deputy Guilherme Boulos, a PSOL leader, in the programme Estúdio i, Globo News, May 2023).
The CST (Socialist Workers’ Current), one of PSOL founding parties, decided to leave. We left because the PSOL definitively rejected the political independence of the working class. The PSOL tore up its socialist programme to support and compose the Lula/Alckmin government together with representatives of bankers, agribusiness, multinationals and sectors of the far right, such as Defence Minister José Múcio Monteiro (PTB), Tourism Minister Daniela do Waguinho and other Bolsonarists. By decision of its National Directorate and the policy of its majority tendencies, the PSOL holds positions in ministries, in the deputy leadership of the government in the Federal Chamber and is a member of state (provincial) governments with a broad front. The Lula/Alckmin government has just voted in the National Congress a fiscal “arcabouço” (Fiscal Framework, a set of measures and rules to which the conduct of fiscal policy must adhere), with votes from far-right parties, and several of its ministers support the environmental rollbacks, such as the Minister of Agriculture Carlos Fávaro, defender of the Temporary Framework (PL490). In the past, the PSOL rejected the governments of conciliation with the ruling class, today it integrates and supports them. The CST remains consistent with the programme we have always defended. We did not launch the PSOL to promote conciliation with the bosses, but to fight them. Precisely for this reason, today we break with PSOL.
The PSOL supports and sustains the Lula/Alckmin government, which applies a harsh fiscal plan that favours the bankers and the financial system
We know that there are many workers and young people who have expectations of the government and may find our position “too extreme”. We want to continue this debate, and for that, we need to compare expectations with reality. Lula/Alckmin broke their promise to end the spending cap, instead approving the Fiscal Framework that limits funds for health, education, and more. It is a project that orients economic policy until the end of the mandate to pay the debt of financial capital, which today consumes most national resources, damaging all social spheres. Symptomatically, the explanatory memorandum of this Fiscal Framework bears the signature of a banker, the Ministry of Finance secretary, Gabriel Galípolo (of the Fator Bank and advisor to the FIESP). The majority leaderships of the CUT and CTB claim that the problem with the Framework is the amendments made by the rapporteur. It is a fact that the legislator rapporteur worsened the project, but that does not erase the “original framework”, born as an austerity plan. This mechanism appears in Lula’s 100 days’ speech and in a letter from the Ministry of Finance sent to the IMF and the World Bank. The worsening of the project occurred because of the governability pact with the “centrão” (deputies belonging to various parties and responding to centre-right policies), which appointed the rapporteur of the project and still received R$ 3 billion in parliamentary amendments. Far from diminishing the “imperial power” of Arthur Lira (Chamber of Deputies president) and confronting the “secret budget” as promised in the campaign, the government supported Lira and maintained the release of amendments. They agreed to the substitution with the government, so much so that the PT and Fernando Haddad (finance minister) celebrated the approval. Bovespa (Sao Paulo Stock Exchange), Febraban (Brazilian Federation of Banks) and multinationals are happy. The IMF and the World Bank, organs of imperialist plunder, applaud. Even Bolsonaro supported the Lula/Alckmin Fiscal Framework. Unfortunately, the PSOL is a part of the government that implements this austerity plan, that maintains the economic policy that benefits banks, the financial system, big business and the imperialist multinationals.
The link to the government prevented the struggle against the Fiscal Framework
Lula/Alckmin government has the support of the CUT, CTB, MST, MTST and UNE leaders. There was no national protest against the Fiscal Framework. They are also part of the government. There was no Plenary of Popular Struggles, no enlarged meeting of the Forum of Trade Union Centres, no CONEG of the UNE, etc. The thesis of the “amendments”, presented in the trade’s note union centres, turned out to be paralysing. Their majority of leaders boycotted the few events that took place. The same problem manifested itself in the PSOL, which did not put its parliamentary weight at the service of the struggle against this attack. The PSOL’s line with REDE (the party of Marina Silva, the current government’s environmental minister, with which it maintains a block) was to propose “changes” to improve the original bill. Only after the rapporteur added his proposals and rejected his amendments did the PSOL vote against the bill, but without pushing for mobilisation. By voting against the Framework, the PSOL did only its obligation, i.e. the minimum, for those who claim to be leftists. But it is striking that the PSOL needed to justify its vote to the broad front. All so as not to lose government space and in the coalitions of 2024. To oppose Fiscal Framework and ensure the working class’ goals, we must free ourselves from the Lula/Alckmin government.
The Lula/Alckmin government favours agribusiness and multinationals in the countryside
After the Fiscal Framework approval, they were enthusiastic to pass other issues. With the Lula/Alckmin government leaders in the House and Senate support, Ministers Rui Costa and Alexandre Padilha reached: a) Release of the government’s vote in the deliberation on the emergency regime in the “Temporary Framework” that attacks indigenous peoples; b) Release to its fate the Ministry of Indigenous Peoples, whose dominant position is held by Sonia Guajajara of the PSOL, who may lose the prerogative of land demarcation; c) Withdraw from the Ministry of Environment the Rural Environmental Registry, the Water Agency and the Water Resources System. And this was organised by the rapporteur of MP 1154, Isnaldo Bulhões of the MDB, a member of the allied base, to favour landowners, cattle ranchers, mining and logging companies. Though some of these measures can be reversed, it is a fact the government has accepted them. Previously, peasant and environmental movements criticised the unbridled release of toxic agro-chemicals, which benefit agribusiness and the US, European and Chinese companies that manufacture these products. There were more than 100 releases under the responsibility of the Minister of Agriculture, soy producer Carlos Fávaro/PSD. This strengthens the enemies of the landless who want to use the ICC to criminalise land occupations by the MST (Landless Movement) and the FNL. And, at this moment, the Lula/Alckmin government itself is considering changing its mind about oil exploitation in the state of Amapá. The PSOL-REDE federation knew about all this firsthand.
Keeping silent about these deals and not denouncing them at the time is serious. The situation is: when a left-wing party enters a capitalist government; it does not change that government or take it to the left. In reality, it becomes a party that legitimises the capitalist order and the alliance with the bosses. The “palaces” condition the policy and action of the PSOL. This process led to the approval of the “Temporary Framework” in the Chamber of Deputies.
The Lula/Alckmin government does not fight the extreme right in depth.
The economic and socio-environmental setbacks show the class character of the current government.. They show the Lula/Alckmin government’s sub to imperialist and multinational plans. However, no voice from the PSOL bench or its main tendencies defends the exit of the government and the vice-presidency in the Chamber. The president of the PSOL and MP Boulos reaffirmed that the PSOL belongs to the allied base. And they justify the PSOL’s participation in the government by the need to “confront Bolsonarism”. We disagree. Let us take a closer look at this issue, since many workers and young people honestly believe in this thesis. The Lula/Alckmin government did not use its strength to call for mass mobilisations against the far right. They took matters through institutional channels, making us believe the reactionary judges of the STF would fight the far right to the end.
Jair Bolsonaro and General Augusto Heleno (Minister of State, Bolsonaro’s Head of the Institutional Security Cabinet) are still free. There are no big Bolsonaro business owners with confiscated assets. Instead of ending the GSI (Institutional Security Cabinet), the body that sheltered the coup plotters on 8th January, only a few dismissals took place. According to the Army High Command, the General returned to command the GSI. The thesis of joining the broad front to defeat the far right is false because the Lula/Alckmin government does not intend to crush them, but at most, to isolate them and negotiate with them, seeking agreements and pacts. The broad front leads a government in collaboration with our class enemies and includes a sector of the extreme right in its conservative governance. Logically, in the face of a Bolsonarist attack on the Lula/Alckmin government, we in the CST will defend it, as we did on January 8, but without giving political support to the government or losing our independence. We believe that it is essential to return to the path of street mobilisations for the arrest of Bolsonaro and the coup plotters on January 8, against the amnesty of the neo-fascist leadership of the Armed Forces, something that, as we have seen, goes against the policy defended by the broad front government. Only in this way can we fight to crush Bolsonarism and throw it into the dustbin of history.
The PSOL was born in the struggle against Lula and PT’s fiscal austerity plan in 2003
The PSOL could not falter facing such a government. It is already the third Lula government and the fifth PT government. We found the PSOL in 2004, since then 19 years have passed. We were expelled from the PT for fighting against the maintenance of FHC’s pro-imperialist economic policy expressed in the Real Plan, for not accepting the targeted social policies of the IMF and the World Bank and for voting against the pension reform that attacked public servants. Our comrade Babá, a CST leader and at the time a PT federal deputy, together with Luciana Genro and Senator Heloísa Helena (then a PT senator) refused to vote for the privatisation of public service workers’ pensions and supported the Federal Public Service strike. They became known at the time as the “radicalised ones of the PT”, and thus triggered the creation of the PSOL. Expressing governance frankly, Lula himself stated that he would like to “change” the dissident Geddel (PMDB MP) for the “radicalised Baba”. This was because one of the first criticisms of his government was Deputy Baba’s pronouncement that he did not trust Minister Palocci even as a doctor, since the “fiscal plan would put the country in the UTI”. This was the founding profile of the PSOL, which Baba and CST maintain to this day. The PSOL’s own legalisation campaign counted on our militant forces, guaranteeing 40 per cent of required membership cards, a campaign organised by our comrade Silvia Santos, Pestaña, who passed away recently, and other members of our leadership, such as Mariza Santos, of PSOL PA.
The PSOL was born fighting against measures such as high interest rates, primary surplus, “autonomy of the Central Bank”, release of GMOs, pacts with Sarney, Jader Barbalho, Benedito Lira and the corrupt mechanisms of the bourgeois regime. PSOL fought against budget cuts, the destruction of the forest code, and the Belo Monte Dam. We fought against the repression of the strikers in Jirau/Santo Antônio, the military invasions in the Maré (popular community of Rio de Janeiro), the anti-terrorist law, as well as denouncing the Dilma/Levy austerity measures. We do not accept the repression of the June 2013 days. The pacts of the PT with the PL, the PP, the IURD, agribusiness and the MDB, of Sérgio Cabral, Eduardo Cunha or Michel Temer, strengthened sectors of the right and far right, the same former allies who carried out the impeachment against Dilma. Many of them were part of Bolsonaro’s government, like the military, who led the invasion of Haiti in alliance with imperialism in the PT governments. Lula and the PT repeat the same mistakes with the strategy of class collaboration, which generates demobilisation and defeats for the working class, favouring the right and the far right. The founding project of the PSOL was expressed in a party of militants, grassroots nuclei and democratic congresses, something that is increasingly abandoned.
By entering the government, the PSOL has definitively abandoned its independence
There will be sections of the PSOL who may say that we are acting rashly. But non-negotiable principles for the working class are at stake. The struggle in the PSOL has been going on for a long time and the CST has always defended class independence in the PSOL. In the last year and a half, we fought for the PSOL not to be part of the Lula/Alckmin broad front. Our comrade Rosi Messias, the national coordinator of the CST, a founder of the PSOL, a militant of 8M and of workers’ and popular struggles, systematically presented this resolution in all the Party forums, even having handed over her position in the National Directorate in protest at joining the broad front. In the board meetings of December and April 2023, we opposed the PSOL’s entry into the Lula/Alckmin government with ministries and integration into state governments. But, unfortunately, the new profile of the party was consolidated in the broad front and in the Lula/Alckmin government. We know that there are still valuable comrades on the left who claim to be socialists within the PSOL. But the PSOL’s entry into the Ministry was, and still is, an issue that all the forces do not debate. There is no bloc demanding the departure of the government and the positions transfer. And, unfortunately, all the major forces are in the broad front of negotiations for 2024 (which includes Eduardo Paes, Barbalho, PSD, MDB and União Brasil). This policy is already being put into practice in Belém do Pará, the capital city governed by PSOL, where the mayor’s office is a ‘partner’ of Governor Helder Barbalho. The upcoming party congress legalises majority fraud and prevents democratic debate. Debate plenary sessions across the country will be held in a single month, which prevents real oversight. In these plenary sessions, members do not take part in the political debate, and can only arrive when it is time to vote. No identification documents will be required at the time of voting. Massive affiliations supported by the state (provincial) governments of the broad front that make up the PSOL permeate all this.
In this structural scenario – integration into the central government, the organ of class domination of the bourgeoisie shows there is no longer any real internal struggle. The PSOL irreversibly sealed its fate by joining and supporting the capitalist government of Lula/Alckmin. It crystallises in institutionalisation, with no focus on the class struggle, as a party of desks and advisors. They tied the PSOL to the parliamentary logic, to the weight of the monumental and millionaire party fund and the paid electoral point men. We know that the current PSOL will continue to elect mandates, but it will never again play the role it played at its foundation as a tool of the independent left.
The struggle continues! Keep up the struggles and the battle for a socialist left independent of the bosses!
The CST (Socialist Workers’ Current), as an independent socialist and revolutionary organisation, does not approve of this project and does not allow itself to be fooled by this kind of growth linked to the rulers and alliances with the bosses. We will continue in the strikes, like those in education happening now and in need of support, in the strikes for wages and other struggles of the working class, youth, women, black people, environmental struggles, LGBTQIA+, indigenous peoples and all the exploited and oppressed to grow our struggles against fiscal austerity and the Temporary Framework, for our economic and social rights and against the far right, promoting unity in the struggles. The CST continues to propose a broad unity of action, uniting those who want to stop the Fiscal Framework (Arcabouço), the Temporary Framework, support the educators and the workers’ and popular agendas. We demand the CUT, CTB, UNE, MST, MTST, Frente Popular Povo Sem Medo and BrasilPopular to hold a day of struggle (with leaflets, assemblies, shift delays and strikes). We will continue in the marches, factories, union and student congresses, fighting for the independence of the left, unions and movements from the Lula/Alckmin government, governors and mayors, in search of a new democratic and fighting leadership for the working class and popular sectors). This is the battle that our union leaders of CSP-CONLUTAS, Diego Vitello (Metroviário –rail worker from Sao Paulo- SP) and Adriano Dias (Correios RJ), are now fighting together with all the other leaders of Union Combat fighting in SINTUFF, SINTSEP-PA, SINDTIFES, in Asseio, SEPE, Apeoesp, Sind-UTE, SINDIFES, CPERS, bankers, road workers and other sectors. And this is also what our UNE director Cindy Ishida and all the revolutionary youth of Vamos à Luta are doing at the base of universities and schools.
We will keep defending the founding banners of the PSOL, now abandoned; we will continue to fight against the bourgeois governments and for the political independence of the working class. To strengthen and broaden a class-conscious and consistent left programme, like the proposals that our comrade Bárbara Sinedino, a leader of the CST and SEPE-RJ, stands up for in the struggles and defended in the last Senate campaign in Rio do Janeiro. Instead of a broad front with business people, bankers, old foxes of capitalist politics, we defend the need to build a Left and Socialist Front with those who are not part of the government of class conciliation headed by Lula/Alckmin to act together in the struggles and also in the elections of 2024. We continue to defend the mandates of the socialist left as points of support for the struggles and classism, as we did in parliament when our comrade Baba held that office. Fleeing from any self-proclamation, we will keep on trying to unite revolutionaries in Brazil and in the world together with the International Workers’ Unity – Fourth International (IWU-FI). To fight for a workers’ government, without bosses, for Brazil, Latin America and for a socialist world. We invite you to discuss our vision and talk about the socialist and revolutionary proposal we put forward here, taking part in the meetings and plenaries of the CST, making our newspaper known, helping to finance our organisation and building with us this political project of the independent left.
Brazil, 5 June 2023
Socialist Workers’ Current (CST), the Brazilian Section of the International Workers’ Unity, Fourth International (IWU-FI)
