Is Stalinism Dead?

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SOCIALIST ACTION OCTOBER 1989 19 question of land reform. The PT has long stood for undertaking a massive land reform— under worker and peasant control-with expropriations and redistribution of the land holdings of the big agricultural capitalists. But now the PT calls for a limited land reform within the guidelines of the new capitalist constitution.

In addition, the PT dropped the demand for a sliding scale of wages to keep up with inflation. At the party's June National Convention, PT leader Aloíso Mercadante opposed a minority resolution calling for a sliding scale of wages, arguing that it was "irresponsible" and "senseless" to promise something that could not be delivered. This new-found sense of "responsibility" is part of appearing "presidential."

To not demand a sliding scale of wages is to accept the capitalists' program of placing the burden of the economic crisis on the backs of the workers. Unfortunately, this is what the PT leadership has fallen into.

Bourgeois running mate

One of the most important issues facing the 600 delegates at the PT's 6th National Convention (each delegate represented 1000 members) was the selection of Lula's vice presidential running mate. Numerous PT candidates, including leaders from the peasants' movement and from the Amazonian rubber workers' unions, had been proposed by the party's rank and file prior to the convention.

But the Lula leadership caucus (or Articulacão) argued that it was up to the leadership body of the Brazil Popular Front— and not the PT convention to select a vice presidential candidate. Through parliamentary maneuvers, it bureaucratically referred this entire matter to a future meeting of the PT's National Directorate.

Weeks later, Lula announced his running mate: José Paulo Bisol, a leading member of the PSDB (Social Democratic Party of Brazil), a capitalist party that arose last year out of a split within the PMDB (Democratic Movement Party of Brazil), the country's main bourgeois party. Brazil's current president, José Sarney, is a member of the PMDB.

Bisol, moreover, became Lula's running mate without even having to resign from the PSDB. He is a seasoned capitalist politician The PSDB is running its own presidential candidate, Mario Covas, a man who "combines the most qualities to be a viable candidate for the business community," according to a statement by the Sao Paulo Federation of Industrialists. Covas was recently quoted in The New York Times as declaring that Brazil needs "a capitalist shock."

The November presidential elections will be held in two rounds, like in France. Hence only the two front-runners (out of an initial field of 24 candidates) will make it to the second round, which is scheduled to take place Dec. 16.

It is highly unlikely that the PT will make it to the run-off elections. The PT will therefore come under increased pressure to support the "lesser-evil" capitalist politician in the second round. The polls indicate this may be Covas, or perhaps even Leonel Brizola of the PDT (Democratic Labor Party), another capitalist formation.

It is widely speculated that the selection of PSDB member Bisol as Lula's running mate was the result of a deal in which the PT leadership agreed to support Covas, or Brizola, in the second round of the elections.

A rightward shift of the masses?

Numerous leaders of the PT's right wing are arguing that the PT's drop in the pollsand Collor de Mello's sudden rise—-is the result of a "rightward shift" on the part of Brazil's workers and peasants. The Guardian article by María Helena Moreira Alves is one example. She argues that the "political winds have shifted to the right" and that Brazil is entering a period where the masses could be looking for a "rightwing populism—as was the case with fascism in Italy or Germany."

The purpose of this specious argument is to justify support to a "lesser-evil" capitalist politician as a means to defeat the "fascist threat." In her Guardian article, Moreira Alves is in fact quite explicit about this. She writes, "The period between the two votes the two rounds of voting for president] will be marked by political alliances across ideological lines. It is already apparent that the left and the social democrats [that is, the PSDB] will unite behind the candidate closest to their platforms."

If the PT support Editedly Car Il limamore Essays y a Weissman. bigniew Kowalewski, Gerry Foley, Hayden Perry, and Carl Finamore in the second round, it would represent a major step toward the destruction of the PT as an independent workers' party.

While it is obvious that there is a growing polarization in Brazil, with sectors of the middle class moving to the right, it is not true that the Brazilian workers and peasants are moving to the right. The increasing number of strikes, land occupations, and mobilizations by shanty-town dwellers all show that the opposite is true.

The PT has declined in the polls because it has changed its stance toward the workers and peasants. Last fall the PT swept to victory as the representative of the aspirations of the Brazilian masses, but once in office it agreed to administer capitalist austerity. This is the reason the PT's base of support has eroded.

What next?

The right wing course of the PT leadership has not gone uncontested. A sizeable left wing exists in the PT which has pushed for the party to remain loyal to its founding program of independent, working-class politics.

This left wing opposes the popular-front

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SOCiAList ActioN

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Arcollegtion of essays in defense alisocialist deinocracy