[From Brazil: Deep thoughts on electoral politics and fighting
fascism] [[link removed]]

GLOBAL LEFT MIDWEEK - SEPTEMBER 29, 2021  
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September 29, 2021
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_ From Brazil: Deep thoughts on electoral politics and fighting
fascism _

'The people want the fall of the coup,’ protesters chanted in the
centre of Tunis along Habib Bourguiba Avenue. Credit,, AFP

 

* _Bharat Bandh!_ The Biggest Farmers Strike
* International Climate Upsurge
* Activists Decry the Danger of Anti-China Pacts
* In Nisku, Alberta, It’s Teamsters vs Amazon
* Thunder in Tunisia
* Democratic Rollback and Renewal
* International Safe Abortion Day
* Parties in Europe
* Venezuelan Campesinos Capture Sugar Mill
* On the PSOL Congress in Brazil

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_Bharat Bandh!_ The Biggest Farmers Strike
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The Hindu (Mumbai)

Farmers blocked highways and rail lines, shut down markets and
institutions in some cities and States and held mass rallies across
the country in response to Samyukt Kisan Morcha’s nationwide strike
call. Trade unions and transport unions also backed the united
farmers’ _bandh_ (national shutdown).

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International Climate Upsurge
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_Kate Abnett_ / Reuters (London)

“The concentration of CO2 in the sky hasn't been this high for at
least 3 million years,” Swedish activist Greta Thunberg told a crowd
of thousands of protesters in Berlin. “It is clearer than ever that
no political party is doing close to enough.”

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Activists Decry the Danger of Anti-China Pacts
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_Brett Wilkins_ / Common Dreams (Portland ME)

“No to military alliances and preparation for catastrophic wars,”
anti-war campaigners from over a dozen nations write in a letter
decrying the new AUKUS agreement. “Yes to peace, disarmament,
justice, and the climate.”

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IN 
[[link removed]]NISKU,
ALBERTA, IT'S TEAMSTERS VS AMAZON
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_Candice Bernd_ / Truthout (Sacramento)

While many Amazon warehouse workers in Europe have unionized, the
company has waged severe union-busting campaigns to fend off union
drives across North America.

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Thunder in Tunisia

IN THE STREETS
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_Erin Clare Brown_ / The National (Abu Dhabi)

LABOR AND PARTIES DEFY PRESIDENT SAIED
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/ Peoples Dispatch (New Delhi)

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Democratic Rollback and Renewal
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_Richard Youngs_ / The Guardian (London)

Small-scale democracy initiatives are taking shape across Europe, and
the grassroots momentum behind them is exciting. But these initiatives
have yet to cohere into a really powerful and radical reform agenda.
Different forms of democratic renewal need to start working hand in
hand. 

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Safe Abortion Day
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_Women’s Group of the International Peoples’ Assembly_ / Peoples
Dispatch

On the occasion of International Safe Abortion Day, women around the
world reflect on the different obstacles to obtaining this fundamental
right and autonomy over their bodies.

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Parties in Europe

NORWAY’S RØDT MOVING UP
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 _Marie Sneve Martinussen and Seher Aydar_ / Jacobin (New York)

DIE LINKE ON THE ROCKS
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 _Horst Kahrs_ / Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung (Berlin)

UK LABOUR IN FREEFALL
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_James Butler_ / London Review of Books

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Venezuelan Campesinos Capture Sugar Mill
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_Ricardo Vaz_ / Venezuelanalysis (Caracas)

Sugar cane growers have occupied the Santa Elena mill in Majaguas,
Portuguesa state. The mill was one of several assets moved to private
sector management in 2019. At the time, the Venezuelan government
transferred a series of state enterprises to governorships which then
signed concessions to private businesses. 

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On the PSOL Congress in Brazil

_Valerio Arcary_ / Forum (Santos, São Paulo)

[_Note:_ The writer is a widely published commentator and active
member of PSOL. This column appeared just before the _Partido
Socialismo e Liberdade_ congress on September 25-26. Translated by
xxxxxx. READ THE ORIGINAL COLUMN IN PORTUGUESE HERE.
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1. NO DRAMA NEEDED

The 2021 PSOL (Socialism and Liberty Party) Congress, this last
weekend of September, must confirm the party’s political strategy,
which is not the same as defining the presidential electoral tactic of
2022. The strategy has been the struggle for the Left United Front to
defeat Bolsonaro, polemicising with the quietist strategy of the Broad
Front: to broaden “until it hurts” (as expressed in PSOL by
Marcelo Freixo [a former PSOL deputy]), as well as with the strategy
of the permanent offensive until the general strike. 

The line of the United Front was deployed in the denunciation of the
institutional coup, the _Fuera Temer_ campaign, the integration into
the Free Lula campaign, the Vamos initiative to expand the discussion
of a program, the formation of the Alliance with the MST (Movement of
Landless Workers) and the campaign of (PSOL candidate)
Guilherme Boulos to the presidency in 2018 and, most importantly, the
strengthening of unity with the PT (Lula’s Workers Party) in the
Bolsonaro Out campaign, which allowed us, since May, to bring about
the actions that changed the conjuncture. This strategy was a
necessary repositioning in the face of a defensive situation, after
the impeachment, after twelve years in the left-wing opposition to the
coalition governments led by the PT.

This turn was not made without harsh controversies that resurface in
the face of each important new development in the situation. But
excesses, exaggerations, the “dramatization” of differences do not
help. Catastrophic analyses on the future of PSOL are false and
therefore dishonest. PSOL, which remains a minority party on the left,
has never been stronger. They will decide, in 2022, the tactic for
that year. What position should PSOL stand for? To be useful in the
fight against Bolsonaro and in the reorganization of the left,
contending for mass influence. There is no project linking PSOL to the
PT. The accusations of a “project subordinate to the PT” are a
straw man created to snare those not paying attention.

2. RUNNING A CANDIDATE FOR SÃO PAULO STATE GOVERNOR

This is one of the central decisions of the PSOL Congress in São
Paulo. The challenge facing the Brazilian left is immense, enormous,
gigantic: defeating Bolsonaro. There is still time to try to pave the
way for impeachment at the end of 2021. Therefore, the militancy of
all struggles, flags and currents must focus on the preparation for
Election Day, October 2, 2022. We have less than two weeks ahead of us
(before the congress). But if Bolsonaro is not dismissed this year, he
will be a candidate for reelection in 2022. We cannot fail to consider
a plan B. The greatest victory of the Brazilian left since the
impeachment was the formation of the United Front in the streets, but
it is threatened in the elections.  They are two different terrains,
but it is good to be sensible, because Bolsonaro’s coup project is
to crush the left. There are two obstacles on the horizon. The
insistence of a majority PT camp on presenting Fernando Haddad for
governor in São Paulo against Boulos, and the insistence of a PSOL
minority camp on presenting its own presidential candidate competing
with Lula, despite Bolsonaro’s threat. Between these two dangers,
the first is the greatest. Because the PT should not ignore that it is
unreasonable for PSOL to forgo a candidacy for president, without a
gesture of compensation. Most PT leaders underestimated PSOL in the
2020 São Paulo mayoral elections. Boulos won a place in the second
round. Don’t make the same mistake twice in a row. The promise of
support for the 2024 municipal elections is a friendly gesture, but it
is not reasonable. No one knows which country Brazil will be in 2024,
if Bolsonaro is not defeated. We can be in exile, for example. The
tactic of running Boulos for governor of the state of São Paulo is a
legitimate and intelligent decision, taking into account the rejection
rate of the PT.

3. BOLSONARO’S STRATEGY: A COUP 

Bolsonaro’s crazy, delirious and amazing speech at the UN was clear.
Neither the differences with the PT, nor the opinion polls should be
the compass of the Marxist left. There is a dangerous “prophetic”
mania in our midst. Marxism is a science when it comes to analysis,
but it’s an art in politics, because it is about winning the
conscience of millions of people. The objective of revolutionary
organizations is not to be right in the abstract, but to win in the
class struggle. Those who want to be right in the abstract must
abandon the struggle for power and stand for the Nobel Prize. Our
electoral tactics cannot rest on our will, nor on the results of
momentary surveys, but on the evaluation of the social and political
relationship of forces. The focus must be a clear positioning in the
fight against Bolsonaro, and everything else is irrelevant. If
Bolsonaro is not defeated in 2021, that is, if from today until
December the mobilizations do not pave the way for impeachment,
Bolsonaro will be a candidate for reelection. But, at the same time,
it is frivolous to consider Bolsonaro only as a folk expression of an
“electoral” neofascism, and to reduce the risks of the coup
strategy to a series of bluffs and phony ultimatums. Unfortunately,
underestimating Bolsonaro could be fatal. This tension will bring
forward the “useful” voting polls in the second round [when the
candidate with the best chance of beating Bolsonaro is evident]. The
“useful” vote is a harm reduction calculation in defense of class
interests.

4. THE DANGER OF A HISTORIC DEFEAT

A lucid analysis of the political situation in 2021 suggests that the
general elections of 2022 will not resemble anything that the
Brazilian left has experienced in the last forty years. The decisive
issue is that there is an extreme right-wing government led by a
neo-fascist current that is in conflict with the liberal-democratic
regime and rocking institutions. Their strategy is to impose a
historic defeat on social movements: the working class and unions, the
feminist, black and LGBTI struggle, indigenous people and movements
for housing and agrarian reform, environmentalists and student youth
– the left as a whole. Keep in mind that the presidential election,
even if it is simultaneous with the state elections, will be
qualitatively different from the dispute over the governors. It will
be different because what will be at stake is something much more
serious than alternation of government. Bolsonaro is a Bonapartist
danger incompatible with the liberal-democratic regime.

5. THREE SIMPLE LESSONS

The experience of the masses with _lulismo_ remains incomplete. It is
true that there are regional, generational and social inequalities.
But the most likely hypothesis is that Lula’s candidacy will occupy
all the political space of the left opposition as an all-encompassing
net. He is the only one with a viable chance of defeating Bolsonaro.
Anyone who imagines that there is an electoral space on the left for
the affirmation of PSOL on the basis of “neither Bolsonaro nor
Lula”, mimicking the speech of Ciro Gomes (a well-known social
democrat), has not learned the most essential lessons of the last five
years. They are three and very simple: (a) The situation remains
defensive, it has not been reversed, because we have taken hard
defeats; (b) It is not possible to defeat Bolsonaro without the PT,
the organizations and the working and youth masses under Lulist
influence; (c) In the face of an enemy that wants to crush us all, the
unity of the left is a necessity, not a trap.

6. STRATEGIC FIRMNESS, TACTICAL FLEXIBILITY

It is curious that the internal opposition bloc that insists on
referring to itself, lovingly, as “the most anti-capitalist”
prefers to reduce the controversy of strategy to the definition of
electoral tactics, forgetting that: (a) electoral tactics are not
defined a year in advance; (b) if a tactic is always the same, it is
no longer a tactic, but a permanent strategy; (c) tactics must rest on
the objective investigation of the social and political relation of
forces. This analysis is just a calculation. But calculations are
hypotheses, a study of probabilities, and they change. Those who fall
in love with hypotheses are wrong. What if Bolsonaro is defeated and
cannot be a candidate? It is not necessary to define, in 2021, the
presentation of a candidacy for the presidency or what the tactic
should be in 2023, if Lula wins the elections in 2022. There is no
relationship between a possible call to vote for Lula in the first
round and participation in a center-left government in coalition with
bourgeois parties. PSOL can ask for the vote for the PT and,
eventually, not subscribe to the program that defines the PT. The
vote, in advance, is just a response to the factional need for
demarcation in order to arouse distrust. It is essential to make
serious calculations to measure risks and dangers and, consequently,
make decisions, not take action based on our preferences, wishes or
desires. No one on the socialist left faces the possibility of
campaigning for Lula, after what happened between 2003 and 2016,
without a bitter taste in the mouth. The story was cruel. Sometimes we
have to choose a “bad” tactic, while respecting principles,
because the other options are horrible.

7. THE DANGER OF THE ABYSS

The launch of a [2022] PSOL candidacy, at this point, ignores that
Bolsonaro is not defeated beforehand, because he scores less than
Lula, and underestimates the immense dread among leftists that he will
hold on to power. Opinion polls are important information, but they
are not the only indicator to evaluate when it comes to calibrating
the political relationship of forces. There are countless electoral
processes in which candidates who very late, less than six months
before the date of the elections, managed to win them. There are still
many imponderables on the horizon. If a minimally consistent third-way
candidacy does not come forth, it is reasonable to predict that a part
of the bourgeoisie dissatisfied with Bolsonaro’s role in managing
the pandemic will regroup. Bolsonaro has already shown that he has a
majority in the middle classes, and is trying to increase his audience
among poor people in the cities and the countryside with _Auxílio
Brasil_ [an income transfer program]. An independent candidacy signals
an equal distancing from the two main candidates, even if every effort
is made to focus the fight against Bolsonaro during the campaign. 
But if you don’t make a programmatic differentiation by criticizing
Lula, what’s the point of having a candidate of your own? This
electoral tactic involves the risk of walking to the edge of the
abyss. An invisible, testimonial and sterile candidacy of PSOL will
not strengthen the socialist left, on the contrary, it will demoralize
it by divisionism before an enemy, perceived by the most advanced
sector of the masses of people and youth, rightly, as terrifying. If
PSOL positions itself in the campaign critical of Lula, for the
balance of the errors of the PT governments of a decade ago, it could
be punished hopelessly in the elections for deputies, even threatening
to invoke the barrier clause (excluding smaller parties), which would
be fatal.

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