Lula's September 7th
Editorial of the 31st Edition of the newspaper Tempo de Revolucion 15 September 2023
And it was because I put my hand in the future
That in the present I need to be tough
And I can't settle
I want a better country
(Fernando Brandt/Milton Nascimento)
On September 6, preparing to celebrate 201 years of independence, Lula gave a speech defending his government, saying that life had improved in the last 8 months. Yes, Bolsonaro's brutal government came out, the entire “left”, including us communists, collaborated to overthrow him. Of course we wanted to overthrow him before, but it was precisely the PT, the majority of PSOL and the unions that helped bring water to the boil when Fora Bolsonaro took over the country and directed everything towards the elections, towards respect for bourgeois legality. .
After the elections, the tables have turned and now everyone is asking us to trust Lula, because if we make too much of a fuss, the far right could return. Thus, Lula is right in making agreements with Centrão, with the President of Congress, Lira, and even in appointing a right-wing jurist (Zanin) to the STF. You have to trust, they say.
We, the communists, retort: Confidence in bourgeois governments, even if they look like workers, leads nowhere but new defeats. After all, the government's policy, until now, has been the same as Bolsonaro's, without his authoritarian hints and outbursts, but along the lines of Minas Gerais talk. Let's talk or as Lula himself explained:
“That we may have different accents, support different teams, follow different religions, have a preference for this or that candidate, but that we are the same great nation, a single and extraordinary people.” (Rede Brasil Atual, 06/09/2023)
Let's try to explain something that Lula already knows, but he wants to hide: a capitalist nation is made up of different social classes – proletariat, bourgeoisie, petty bourgeoisie mainly – and these different social classes are in struggle. The bourgeoisie oppresses the proletariat to obtain profits, creates a series of oppressive policies to divide workers and maintains an armed and violent state to repress the proletariat.
Are we the same great nation? And the proletarians killed by the PM, mainly in “actions” or “excursions” (as if it were a trip to enemy territory)? As if proletarians don't even have the right to a safe life that at any moment can be interrupted by police violence? As if the police of one state, Bahia, led by your party are the ones that kill the most in Brazil? Ah, in the speech there may not be a preference, but the Brazilian State police do. It only kills the proletariat, especially its black part.
Are we the same great nation? Has inflation gone down? That may be so, but if the price of picanha has dropped, what the poor eat, rice and beans, remains expensive. Because the majority of the proletariat, you know, doesn't have money for steak.
The price of gasoline has decreased, it's true. But the majority of people suffer and sway on crowded buses and trains, which are increasingly privatized and subjected to the profit motive that demands maximum capacity and maximum profit. "The people? Tadinho do people” (Chico Anysio, in a comedy program, satirizing a deputy).
Let's be frank Lula. You got lucky and caught a small wave of post-pandemic economic recovery. However, its policy remains the same. If a minister dared to talk about “revoking the labor reform”, or reviewing the pension reform, he was immediately silenced and remains silent now. The Federal Highway Police is having its procedures reviewed by a commission established by Mr. Minister Flávio Dino and, in the meantime, it continues to shoot three-year-old children… Has everything changed? Let's change everything so everything stays the same. I think we've heard this from an Italian and a long time ago.
The main achievement of your government so far has been the approval of the “fiscal framework” or, according to your speech, the new “fiscal framework to grow responsibly”. And we ask: what responsibility? According to the new fiscal framework/framework, the main responsibility is the same as under the old fiscal ceiling: paying the debt. Ah, this mysterious and cabalistic entity that governs our entire State.
Let's translate: today public debt is the main mechanism for transferring income from the Brazilian State to the richest layer of society, which lives off “income”, “interest”, “investments”. In other words, it is the layer of the rich, the property owners, the large, the super-rich or, translating into proletarian language (Marxist language), the bourgeoisie.
Yes, most of the taxes collected by the Brazilian State are transferred directly to the bourgeoisie. Another part is also transferred to it through incentives and investments for production such as the Growth Acceleration Program (PAC) and only a small part is transferred to the poorest – payment of retirement, pensions, civil servants, health and education . Even these are subject to “political negotiations” where a health clinic or the hiring of a doctor is subject to the needs and interests not of the population, but of the parasitic caste of deputies and senators, who direct the so-called parliamentary “amendments” to the budget for carrying out works that help their mayoral allies.
This is how humanity walks or, better said, this is how the Temer, Bolsonaro and now Lula governments walk. Making agreements with the so-called Centrão to approve not its policy – be it Bolsonaro's or Lula's –, but the policy that pleases... the Centrão, this amorphous grouping that represents the most capacious Brazilian bourgeoisie and linked to imperialism. In this sense, the promises of more universities, more technical institutes, more schools, more hospitals and health centers come up against the need for more “amendments” to satisfy the electoral needs of allies in 2024, the year in which the new budget is made.
It is clear that this will not be done without friction. The bourgeoisie feels that it has to give up something and that is why in the salary agreements at the beginning of the year the tightness eased a little. However, it is in public servants and the public service that the bug threatens to catch on. After all, if salary losses in this category reached more than 30% in the Temer-Bolsonaro years, in the first year Lula gave 9%, which did not replace the entire loss. And the loss continues this year, but no adjustment is foreseen in the new budget.
Against the promises of more health and education, the “competition” (a kind of Enem to enter all areas of public service) will create 8 thousand vacancies. In the last six years, retirements and deaths totaled much more than that. So how can we have more health and education, if we’re not even going to replace the employees who left? The math doesn't add up and reality will show itself sooner or later.
PSOL in the new era
It is in this situation that PSOL, the party of “socialism and freedom” began to flirt with the new government. First, it allowed members to participate in government on an individual level. Afterwards, deputies voted according to their conscience both on the “tax reform” and the new “fiscal framework”. Now, at the end of the day, with the vote in the Senate on the new “fiscal framework” concluded, under the excuse that the Senate improved the text, the entire PSOL bench crossed the Rubicon and voted in favor of the new fiscal framework.
The preparation for your national congress shows this. Most likely we will have a congress that will repeat the formula of the National Directory, under a new guise, but the screws will tighten without the thread becoming worn. The entire bench will, after all, agree so that Boulos is elected, with his policy – repeating in São Paulo the same alliance that led Lula to the federal government. In other words, establish a bourgeois government with the PSOL in the city hall instead of the PT. The entire PSOL militancy sees the path this has taken the PT. And now? Are you going to silently accept this path and accept that Socialism and Freedom are just flags for festive days, but in everyday life we have to accept capitalism?
Communists know their place: alongside the proletariat, against the bourgeoisie. Therefore, we are organizing everyone who wants to carry out this fight in an organized manner. Are you a communist, are you a socialist? Come organize with us, join Esquerda Marxista . This is the flag of your next victory.
https://www.marxismo.org.br/o-7-de-setembro-de-lula/
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