9-01-05, 10:34 am

The Project of Political Resolution being discussed in the party collective hits the bull's eye as it identifies the anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist character of the anti-neoliberal struggle. The document is incisive as it proclaims that there is no viable and lasting ways out of the Brazilian crisis within the limits of capitalism.

Such understanding serves as the grounds to allow the Party to reaffirm its commitment to the struggle for socialism. To the contrary of common sense, according to which capitalism is now in a stage of full recovering and the US imperialism achieved the feat of overcoming structural crises and unbalances, the Brazilian communists dare to renew their belief that the way to face the problems of Brazil and the world in the current historical period is revolutionary and will lead to the achievement of socialism.

That is not properly something new in the trajectory of our Party. In its 7th Congress, in May 1988, we acknowledged that Brazil has reached a historical crossroads, before which either the Brazilian people cut loose from the regime of dominant classes or their fate would be continuous degradation and the national sovereignty being irreversibly compromised. In 1992, in its 8th Congress, which approached the difficult task of evaluating the debacle of socialism and extracting lessons from it, the communists proclaimed that the struggle for socialism was the primary task, what seemed paradoxical to the opportunism spreading in major sectors of the Brazilian and international left in the occasion. Three years after, in the National Conference in 1995, the Socialist Program passed, being ratified in the 9th Congress in 1997. that Program lacks adaptations, but its essential theses serve as guidelines to the Party's political formulation and practical action. The postulate is neither irrelevant nor imbued with a propagandistic sense. It is even less a dogmatic profession of faith. It has strategic and tactical implications and a lively political and ideological struggle revolves around it. The first conclusion that the Party and its left-wing allies derive from it is the need to promote the revolutionary accumulation or forces. In the world's current conditions, such accumulation may be conceived as an arduous, complex and long-term task. It will be achieved with highs and lows, advances and drawbacks. It will demand, before all, the organization of resistance and the struggle against neoliberalism, the opposition to policies deriving from neoliberal forces that pummel the working masses and undermine national sovereignty. It will demand tactical flexibility, the involvement of mass lines, a broad policy of alliances, the formulation of viable programs, the immersion in the real movement, the harmony with the current political reality, the precise evaluation of the level of each battle. And above all, the struggle for socialism will demand the correct understanding of the enemy's character so that one is not misguided by false impressions. The struggle for socialism will take place amid fierce political and social conflicts of the working, popular masses and their allies against the dominant classes and imperialism.

Such understanding, which corresponds to that of a Party able to achieve tactical accumulation without losing sight of the revolutionary reach of its Program, is contrasted with that of a moderate, adapted and permissive left. The latter tries to derive from the perception that the anti-neoliberal struggle has an anti-capitalist meaning the conclusion that there is no short-term alternative since the objective conditions necessary to the struggle for socialism are yet to be created. That is why those sectors view with 'objectivity' or, in different words, naturality, the unjustifiable assents given by the Lula administration to neoliberalism and the abyssal withdrawal made by the hegemonic left-wing forces form all that is similar to deep political and social changes. They have turned the difficulties inside the present correlation or forces of the Brazilian society and the international reality into something unsurmountable and absolute. However, they cannot see that imperialism, in its brutal offensive, is not omnipotent. It threats the world with war, but suffers defeat after defeat and is now deeply isolated. They do not see that Brazilian dependent capitalism has reached exhaustion and that historical crossroads of 1988 has turned into a tragical crossroads in 2005. Yes, there is an alternative as long as we do not see it as an abstract formulation of a new development model ready to be applied in reality, for not even beautiful Athena came out so gorgeous from the head of omnipotent Zeus. Much to the contrary, both imperialism and the dominant classes are the ones without alternatives.

The alternative demands that the forces representing it take the lead in the political and social conflict, organizing resistance and the struggle. The current crisis in the Lula adminstration shows that it is useless to avoid the political conflict disseminating a demobilizing and conservative ideology with empty words, since the conflict imposes itself anyway. The alternative depends on objective factors, but it also involves subjective ones, the first of which is the decision of the Party and its allies not to comply to something that is only apparently obvious and incomparable, but to keep on the daily and long-term struggle that is able to inflict partial defeats on imperialism and the system of dominant classes during the long process of revolutionary accumulation of forces.

From Solidarity Network



-- Jose Reinaldo Carvalho is vice president of the Communist Party of Brazil and the Central Committee’s secretary of International Relations.