Workers Party scores big gains in Brazil's municipal elections

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steelworkers in Volta Redonda fight back army. Five workers Read these Socialist Action pamphlets! 16 SOCIALIST ACTION JANUARY 1989 On Nov. 15, the 70 million Brazilian voters who went to the polls in over 4300 municipalities dealt a severe blow to the ruling party that replaced the military dictatorship three years ago. At the same time, they voted in great numbers for the parties they considered to be on the left, primarily the Workers Party (PT) led by Luis Inacio da Silva (Lula).

The majority party in the government, the Brazilian Democratic Movement Party (PMDB), virtually collapsed in the country's municipal elections, losing control of Brazil's major industrial centers. "The PMDB took a drubbing," stated the Nov. 19 issue of The Economist. "With inflation close to 900 percent this year and living standards crumbling, the governing party left Brazilians thoroughly disenchanted."

But the "swing to the left," as The Economist called it, is what has the Brazilian ruling class and its imperialist sponsors most worried. The Dec. 26 Los Angeles Times, for example, noted that "José Sarney's unpopular transitional government hangs on with little apparent direction or public support. Leftist parties are gathering in strength in a rush for power."

Sarney himself sent out the most ringing alarm signal when he stated, "The country is moving toward totalitarianism. We will take off for a socialist revolution. ... Brazil today is on a slope to the left, and there are no forces on the horizon capable of reversing the situation." (San Francisco Chronicle, Dec. 26)

PT gains ground The Workers Party (PT)—a militant and independent party that arose out of the massive strike movement of the late 1970s and that has an estimated membership of 500,000—was the biggest winner in these eiections. It has emerged as the second major party in Brazil, after the ruling PMDB.

The PT's mayoral and city-council candidates won in almost all the cities of the state of Sao Paulo, the most industrial state in Brazil. Luiza Erundina, the PT's mayoral candidate, won the election in the city of Sao Paulo (population 14 million).

The PT mayoral candidates also came in ahead in Porto Alegre, one of the country's largest cities, and in numerous cities of Brazil's interior, a predominantly rural region where the right-wing parties have traditionally ruled.

The Democratic Workers Party (PDT), In our next issue:

For reasons of space, the announced article by Gerry Foley on 'The Armenian Upsurge and the Struggle for Political Revolution' will be published in our next issue. which is led well in the elections, winning in Rio de Janeiro and four state capitals in Brazil's Northeast.

The PDT is often referred to as the secondlargest "leftist" party in Brazil. But is not a working-class party. It is a populist capitalist party with some influence in the trade unions. In a number of cities, the PDT ran candidates in alliance with the PDS, the party of the military dictatorship.

Not an electoral movement But the sharp swing to the left in the elections was more than an electoral movement. It was the electoral reflection of a powerful strike movement that had preceded the elections.

One week before the elections, for example, there were 1.5 million workers out on strike. Seventeen of the 20-odd government ministries were on strike; the national administrative apparatus was paralyzed.

The strikes had been provoked by the bitter austerity policies implemented by the government at the behest of the International Monetary Fund (IMF). These policies are aimed at guaranteeing interest payments on the $112-billion foreign debt to the imperialist banks.

An agreement signed earlier this year between Brazil's finance minister and the IMF called for drastic cuts in public spending (meaning the dismantling of the entire public sector) and a freeze on wage increases.

The government reacted to the strike wave by sending in the army to Volta Redonda, a steel complex 90 miles from Rio de Janeiro that had been occupied by the 700 striking workers.

On Nov. 10, the army assassinated five striking steelworkers. But the government strategy backfired. Despite the army intervention, the strike continued. Unable to dislodge the workers, the army was forced to leave the premises.

The day after the army attack, moreover, 80,000 oilworkers went out on strike in solidarity with the steelworkers.

Administering capitalist austerity?

On Jan. 1, 1989, the newly elected mayors and city councils will take office. The 36 municipalities run by the PT-particularly the city of Sao Paulo-are bound to be at the center of the nation's political attention.

The central government has already declared war. In early December Finance Minister Mailson and President Sarney announced that 25 percent of the federal budget previously allocated to all municipalities (not just those controlled by the PT and PDT) will be withdrawn in order to meet the payments on the foreign debt.

Brazil's cities are already on the edge of financial collapse. If on top of this, 25 percent of the state subsidies are removed, the cities won't have enough money to meet even one month's payroll.

were killed in army attack.

Sao Paulo has 138,000 public employees. If PT mayor Luiza Erundina were to accept the 25-percent reduction, it would mean having to implement the austerity policies and lay off a large percentage of its city employees. This, as the government hopes, would tremendously discredit the PT in the eyes of the workers.

The PT already went through a similar experience three years ago in the Northeast city of Fortaleza (population 1 million), when the PT candidate was elected mayor. The national government responded by financially strangling the city, forcing the city's public workers out on strike.

The PT mayor of Fortaleza was incapable of organizing a national fight against the government in defense of Fortaleza. This, in turn, led to a serious crisis inside the PT and a major setback for the PT in that city.

It is obvious that the administration by the PT of the city of Sao Paulo will pose all the issues raised in the case of Fortaleza, but this time at a much higher level.

The challenge ahead Administering capitalist austerity 1s viously unacceptable. So what is the proposing in Sao Paulo and elsewhere?

A big discussion has opened up in the PT about how to approach the municipalities. Related to this discussion is how to approach the upcoming presidential election, which is slated for Nov. 15, 1989.

Some of the more conservative leaders of the PT have argued that the PT must administer the municipalities to the best of its ability so as to demonstrate that the PT can competently conduct the affairs of state. This, they argue, would place the PT in the best possible position to win the Nov. 15 Lessons of Working Class Defeats An Analysis of the Popular Fronts in Spain, Chile and Peri To order and for list of 16 other Socialist Action pamphlets, write to:

3435 Army St., Rm. 308, SF, CA 94110 presidential election.

At a meeting of the PT's National Executive Committee on Dec. 10-11, Lula and a sector of the party's trade-union leadership strongly opposed this view. They argued that unless it held state power, the PT would be forced to betray the aspirations of the masses if it tried to administer the municipalities. Consistent with this view, Lula and a series of organized revolutionary-Marxist tendencies inside the PT endorsed a resolution that called for early presidential elections to get rid of the Sarney government. That resolution was passed by a vote of 31 to 29. Organizing "popular councils"

Another strategy that has gained ground in the PT is the one proposed by Luiza Erundina during her election campaign in Sao Paulo. Erundina called for the formation of "popular councils" in the city's neighborhoods and districts. The councils would organize the population to fight for their demands and to assist the PT mayor in promoting policies in the interests of all the poor and oppressed.

Prior to the Nov. 15 elections, Erundina held seven mass "popular assemblies" where the people discussed their problems and formulated the concrete demands they wanted her to champion as mayor. These mass meetings won her tremendous support among the city's estimated 8 million shantytown dwellers.

The Brazilian capitalists have understood the deep revolutionary implications of Erundina's call for "popular councils." An article by a prominent right-wing lawyer, Bueno Magano, in the Dec. 10 A Folha de Sao Paulo warned: "What is particularly threatening about this proposal [for popular councils] is related to its cultural content. This question of popular councils originated in Russia, where the word council meant 'soviet.' The soviets were the springboards for the Russian Revolution, and with the victory of the revolution, they became the instruments of the government." Now that she has been elected mayor in the nation's largest city, Erundina, who considers herself a "radical Christian and a Marxist," will have a major challenge ahead. Though she won a majority of votes for mayor, the PT has only 37 percent of the votes on the Sao Paulo city council.

It is most probable that the right-wing ob- parties will form a bloc against the PT mayor PT to prevent her from implementing her program. To confront this likely boycott, Erundina will have to actively promote the popular councils, seeking to transform them into an instrument of self-organization and struggle against the central government. It will also be necessary for Erundina to appeal to other municipalities to wage a common fight against the 25-percent reductions in subsidies to the municipalities.

This is the only perspective that will permit the PT to continue to grow as an independent workers' party and to fully assume its revolutionary role in Brazil today.

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He was fondly known as The Little General. Workers will remember Max Geldman as a socialist who devoted a good part of his life to the interest of the working class, the unemployed, and the homeless. On Dec. 2, 1988, Max Geldman died of a heart attack in Los Angeles. He was 83.

What they said about Joe Hill was true of Max: "Where working men defend their rights is where you'll find Joe Hill."

Max was a leader of the Federal Workers' Section of Local 574 in Minneapolis. This was part of the Teamsters local that led the great strikes there in 1934. He was never a paid official. He gladly gave that period of his life to the interest of the poor and unemployed-those workers thrown out of work by the ravages of the terrible Depression of the 1930s.

The role that Max played in the work of the unemployed was a major factor in the victory of the 1934 Minneapolis strikes. To quote Jack Maloney, a leader in the Teamster struggle there, "Without the aid of the unemployed, the strike could not have been won."

Max Geldman came out of the Communist Party when Trotsky broke with Stalin. He Max joined the Communist League of America, and when the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) was formed, he played an outstanding role in building that party. He was a branch organizer in Chicago, Philadelphia, and Newark, N.J.

In 1939-40, Max was one of the key leaders in Minneapolis in the fight to uphold the SWP's Trotskyist program against a petty-bourgeois opposition current. Ironically, in 1983, the present SWP leadership undemocratically expelled Max from the party in a purge of the Trotskyists.

"The real conspiracy"

In spite of terrible blows leveled at him by the capitalist class, Max never wavered in his belief in a socialist world. Twice he was sent to prison. The first time was because of his participation in the Works Progress Administration strike of the late 1930s. A few years later, he was sent to prison with leaders of the SWP and leaders of Teamsters Local 544.

The following is a speech by Max given at a banquet in Minneapolis on Dec. 18, 1943, in honor of the 18 convicted leaders of the SWP and Motors Transport Workers Union Local 544-CIO:

"This world is now not fit for human beings to live in, and it is necessary to build a new and a better society. We are convicted of conspiracy, even though we openly publish our views, sell our papers and pamphlets, hold public meetings, and try in these and all other possible ways to disseminate our program.

"The real conspirators in the world today are Roosevelt, Churchill, Stalin, and the other big-wigs who meet behind closed doors and never tell the people what they discuss and decide.

"There will be other trials-and then these culprits will be put on trial. I hope to work with the majority of the people and with my comrades against this real conspiracy.

Fought for his ideals Max was a keen student of the revolutionary movement. His knowledge helped him to recruit many students and workers into the Trotskyist movement. He was an educator, student, and fierce fighter for his ideals. He also loved the arts, music, paintings, dancing, and the writings of great artists.

Max was a devoted family man. He married Goldie Cooper, a great comrade. They had two children, Sherry and Michael. Goldie died in 1952. Michael died when he was 26 years old. These losses were terrible blows to Max. He married Shevi a year later. They had two children, Marla and Mark. Max and Shevi lived together for 35 years.

Those who knew Max and worked with him in the labor movement grieve his loss. We also revel in the thought of the complete life that he lived. We hold our heads high in his memories. He helped pave the way to a better world. He and his comrades raised the class struggle to a higher level. Max will not be forgotten. He is already a part of socialist history.