New book on Nicaragua Now available!

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14 SOCIALIST ACTION SEPTEMBER 1989 Nicaragua Dynamies ol ans Unfinished Revolution by LOS CE CAMPEBIOB To order, write to: Walnut 308, San Francisco, CA A penetrating analysis of 10 years of the Nicaraguan Revolution.

"Nicaragua:

Dynamics of an Unfinished Revolution (176 pp.) provides thi key to understanding the situation in Nicaragua today.

Written by Socialist Action editor Alan Benjamin (in collaboration with researchers at the ITZTANI Institute in Managua), with an introduction by Rod Holt and Jeff Mackler. Price: 7.95.

Publishing Co., 94110. Include With public opinion polls showing that more than 70 percent of the population had no faith in the government, and with Brazilian workers increasingly fed up with debt payments and cutbacks, the CUT (the Unified Workers Federation, linked to the PI) and later the CGT (the General Workers' Confederation, linked to the Brazilian Communist Party) called a general strike for March 14 and 15.

Thirty-five million workers (about 70 percent of the country's workers) responded to the strike call. Their central demand was for a 40 percent minimum-wage increase. In addition, workers demanded wage indexing, a price freeze, an end to unemployment, a national collective work contract, agrarian reform under workers' control, a halt to debt payments, and the resignation of Sarney.

The strikers in Brazil's major industrial centers were joined by many thousands of agricultural workers in Brazil's rural Northeast. Throughout the country, industries were paralyzed. Public services and the finance sector were hit hard. No corner of the country was left untouched. At the Volta Redonda steel mill, the strike was 100 percent solid.

The government tried to stop the strike, then had to deal with it—and the generals, who took notice. The generals demanded that Sarney go on television and denounce the strike. Instead, Sarney chose to send the justice minister.

After the strike was over, with only a few of the strikers' minor demands met, the capitalists counterattacked, wasting no time in condemning the strike and trying to explain it away. They even claimed that PT-controlled municipal councils shut down transportation and thus forced the strike to appear bigger than it was. But transport workers struck even

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... Brazil (continued from preceding page)

tend their struggles into the political arena and challenge the reformism of the traditional "left" parties.

In the November 1988 municipal elections, the PT went from having three elected mayors to 36 throughout the country, and from 170 municipal councilors to 2000. The PT won in almost all of the cities in the state of Sao Paulo, the most industrialized sector in Brazil. In Sao Paulo, Brazil's largest city with 14 million people, PT candidate Luiza Erundina was elected mayor.

Many cities in the interior of the country went for the PT as well. These mainly rural, peasant-populated cities had traditionally voted for rightist candidates. In many other cities, the PT came in second, scoring larger percentages of the vote than ever before.

The PMDB (Brazilian Democratic Movement Party), the "liberal" party of the Brazilian bourgeoisie and the party of the president, lost almost everywhere. This was nearly a death blow to the Sarney government, reflecting the failure of his policies.

The Brazilian ruling class responded to this stunning victory for the PT with a series of explanations designed to minimize the left's gains. They claimed that it was a "protest vote" in the aftermath of the Volta Redonda massacre. They claimed that the workers were just countering Sarney's refusal to increase their wages.

And Sarney himself warned that political centrists must unite for the upcoming presidential election, lest the left come to power nationally. "The country is moving toward totalitarianism," he stated. "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 that situation."

Indeed, the working class had used the elections as an extension of their strikes. The elections showed the tremendous potential of the PT to represent the will of the Brazilian masses. Voters saw the PT addressing their aspirations and responding in action to the government's assault.

A major issue facing the PT has been the administration of the cities in which they elected mayors or gained control of municipal councils. The case of Luiza Erundina in Sao ... Poland (continued from page 20) the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe.

In this letter, Gorbachev called for greater economic cooperation between Eastern Europe and the capitalist West "now that the old barriers between different economic systems are being destroyed." He continued, "Our perestroika is inseparable from a policy aiming at our full participation in the world economy. The world can only gain from the opening up of a market as big as the Soviet Hoping to be bailed out Solidarity and the PUWP are banking on massive aid from the United States and other capitalist countries to bail them out. The Walesa leadership asked for $10 billion over Paulo illustrates the role played by PT governmental representatives.

Erundina's election capped the PT's victory throughout the state of Sao Paulo-the capital city and 13 others that represent 15 million people and virtually all of its most important urban centers, including the giant ABC industrial triangle. With the election, the PT became the dominant political force in greater Sao Paulo. And it put on the PT's plate a new responsibility-municipal administration.

Challenge to PT mayors The Sao Paulo directorate of the PT passed a resolution last December that articulated some of their goals for municipal governments. It included improving living standards; exposing the limitations of local administration, stressing that Brazil's basic problems could only be solved through workers' power and an end to capitalism; creation of organs for direct participation by workers in municipal matters; and support from the PT municipal administrations to workers' struggles in their localities.

The resolution correctly stated that "the fact that the PT has won some towns does not mean that the workers have taken power in their cities, much less in their country. ... Luiza Erundina majority of the reforms exist only on paper (so that it is convenient to answer with a polite 'no' to Mr. Lech Walesa if the Polish government sends him to pass the hat in the countries of the West).

"But once the effects of the reform are observed—brisk growth in unemployment, major flow of Western investments, drastic monetary reforms-then it would be worthwhile to offer the kind of help that would be agreeable to bring: capitalization of interest payments above certain percentage on the benefit of exports."

In short, the capitalists want to be assured that property relations are well on their way to being overturned and that Poland is reduced to a pauperized "Third World" country dependent on Western imperialism.

But the increased mobilization of Polish workers for better wages and working conditions may compel the imperialist governments to speed their economic aid to Poland. [Power] remains in one way or another under the direct control of the bourgeoisie. ... In practically every case we will face city councils where the majority of councilors will be in the service of the ruling class, and who will mount a furious resistance to the PT's municipal administration."

In Sao Paulo, Erundina faced a municipal council of 53, of whom the majority formed an opposition bloc. This was coupled with local capitalists who control public-sector businesses such as the buses, waste disposal, and so forth.

On top of this, the Brazilian government allocates portions of its foreign debt to the municipalities. Sao Paulo's is 6.5 percent, or $7.8 billion. Over the last year, the IMF (through Sarney) has demanded that 25 percent of this figure be repaid. In addition, Erundina's Sao Paulo was left with a debt equal to one-third of the city budget, as well as a number of unfinished public-works projects.

There are an estimated 200,000 children in the city without schools to attend. Thousands of people live in shantytowns, and the homeless occupy vacant land in the city (called "land invasions") and face repression from the police and army. Erundina, just after the election, was photographed being dragged away by police during one occupation she was supporting.

PT leadership shifts under pressure Erundina's initial response was to call for the establishment of "popular councils" in the city's neighborhoods and districts, which would represent the interest of the workers and poor in the formation of policy. Brazil's capitalists called these "soviets" —a reference to the workers' and peasant councils that formed prior to the Russian Revolution of 1917—and denounced them. [See Socialist Action, January 1989].

Erundina's perspective of establishing these "popular councils" was extremely progressive. But her perspective, and that of the PT, changed as the party began to rise in the presidential polls after the municipal elections.

Soon, Luis Ignacio da Silva (Lula), the PT's presidential candidate, was concerned about appearing "presidential" and showing that the PT could lead the country. It wasn't long before appearing "mayoral" became a driving force for the PT in Sao Paulo and other cities. The danger of co-optation was becoming imminent.

and Anna Walentynowicz, among others, have loudly opposed the "round-table agreements." Gwiazda, who was elected vice president at the first national congress of Solidarity in 1981, accused Walesa of "dream[ing] of converting Poland into an immense pool of cheap labor and a good market for the capitalist West."

But it is at the regional and local levels of Solidarity that the divisions have been the sharpest. In Szczecin, the great majority of Solidarity's rank-and-file activists are demanding that regional and national elections for leadership positions in the union be held to defeat the Walesa leadership and its supporters.

In Lodz, the totality of the regional leadership, which had been named by Walesa, was repudiated by the citywide Solidarity leadership and by the region's rank and file for signing the agreement with Jaruzelski. They also demanded an emergency second national The pressure to become a good and efficient administrator caused Erundina, for example, to drop the perspective of forming a common front of mayors to repudiate the payment of the foreign debt apportioned to the municipalities—a tool used by the national government to strangle the cities. The decision to "meet debt obligations" openly contradicted the PT's longstanding position that the debt must be rejected at the local and national levels, and that the masses must be organized against the debt.

Erundina-along with most of the other PT mayors—also backed off from using their positions to organize a national fightback against the Sarney government and against all aspects of imperialist and capitalist domination.

Calls from trade union leaders and minority currents in the PT for a national march on Brasilia, the nation's capital, and for an extended general strike to win the unmet demands were received with little more than lip service by top PT leaders and elected officials.

Worse still, Erundina increased prices for transportation to meet operating costs, rather than organize politically to overcome the maneuvers of the private bus owners. She refused to implement a decision passed unanimously by a convention of the Sao Paulo PT that called for the creation of a Public Fund for Urban Transportation (FPTU) to be collected from a tax on the city's wealthy residents.

Similar price hikes in public services—as well as the decision to lay off thousands of city workers—were implemented by a majority of the PT mayors.

The PT has become caught in a web of "administering" capitalist austerity. This has led to a serious decline in the standing of the PT in national polls. And it poses the very serious question of whether the PT can and will continue to grow, retain its independence from the ruling class, and lead the Brazilian workers and peasants forward.

This is the backdrop against which the current presidential campaign is being played out. (National elections are to be held in November.)

In next month's issue of Socialist Action, we will examine the campaign, the candidates, and the programs of the parties. And we will closely examine the recent electoral front formed by the PT, a front which represents a sharp break from the independent political course charted by the PT since its inception.

(to be continued next of workers and students who want to combat the neo-Stalinist bureaucracy, and to build in Poland—in the East as well as in the West— a new socialist alternative."

The workers who have been mobilized by mass strikes over the past two years will be looking for solutions to the austerity imposed on them by their leaders. The conditions are ripe for the PPS-RD to become a pole of attraction for the militant sectors of the Polish working class.

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To understand today's events: POLAND: