A Warning to the Radical Left
In a typically brilliant work of conjectural analysis published in Brasil de Fato, Valério Arcary, the legendary Marxist historian who broke from the Workers Party (Partido dos Trabalhadores/PT) in 1994, warns Brazilian radicals from repeating errors of the past, which transformed some of them into useful idiots for regime change during the long coup years of 2013-2018:
Unfortunately, a segment of the radical militant left does not agree that we need to buy time, much less that we need Lula. Some declare themselves independent of the government, while others adopt the strategy of left-wing opposition. Independence means criticizing what one believes is wrong while prioritizing the defense of the government against bolsonarismo. Those who argue that the government maintains an intact neoliberal economic policy and relies on the bourgeoisie against the workers have chosen to be in opposition.
There is a grain of truth in the criticism of Galípolo’s policies at the Central Bank and Haddad’s fiscal framework, which slow down growth. But it’s not that simple. The truth is that the government’s economic policy is hybrid, combining fiscal adjustment with a wide range of countercyclical measures and progressive reforms. Neoliberalism is the strategy of Milei’s government. Lula’s government is a reformist one—that is, a “weak” government based on class collaboration.
Taking an opposition stance ignores the fact that the only realistic alternative is being replaced by the far right. Given this balance of forces, taking a job in a ministry and accepting government discipline would be a mistake. A party can’t have one foot in and one foot out. It would be disloyal for those in government to denounce the government. But it is a grave error to bet on a strategy of wearing down the government, as if we were in 2005 and not 2025 because it disregards the fact that those who benefit from Lula’s erosion are inevitably the far right.
For those who may not be familiar with Arcary, he’s one of Brazil’s few intellectuals who was both exiled by the US-backed Military Dictatorship (in 1966) and participated as a student activist in Portugal’s Carnation Revolution of 1974.
A founder of the PT, he left in 1994 to form the Trotskyist United Socialist Workers Party (Partido Socialista dos Trabalhadores Unificado/PSTU). When PSTU decided to support the bourgeoisie in its Coup against Dilma Rousseff, Arcary led about 1/3 of the party in a migration to the Socialism and Freedom Party (PSOL), creating a new internal tendency there called a Resistencia, (the Resistance).
His analysis is timely. From 2013-2018, bourgeois media and foreign foundations suddenly took big interest in the “Anti-PT left”. As in Serbia during the destruction of the socialist party a few years earlier, a group of Rosalux-affiliated young, charismatic Youtubers popped up out of nowhere with thousands of followers. All the sudden, these smiling young people were giving perfectly scripted lectures about Marxism on YouTube. As their audiences built, they became progressively more anti-PT, essentially aiding capital to weaken it during a long, US-backed coup period.
Meanwhile, Brooklyn’s middle class left chimed in, as Jacobin published 38 consecutive articles attacking PT from a “radical left” perspective. As Sean Mitchell, Bryan Pitts and I wrote, to its credit, when Lula’s political imprisonment neared, Jacobin’s coverage significantly improved. Looking back, I am certain that this improvement had something do to with intervention by the late Michael Brooks.
With elections less than 2 years off there are new opportunities for “former supporters” who criticize the PT. With Brazil’s most influential daily newspaper and its media group, Folha, now openly supporting Bolsonaro, it’s only a matter of time before it gives the same kind of Op Ed page space to these kinds of opportunists as it did from 2013-2016.
This first appeared on De-Linking Brazil.
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