presenting the well-known workers
International Viewpoint spoke to a member of the editorial candidate.
board of Em Tempo (a Marxist revolutionary journal of PT members)
about the political situation in Brazil in the run up to these elections.
Question. Recent years have seen the
Cone dictatorships in clear crisis, with mass movements reappearing on an impressive the same time even the bourgeois press in
Europe and elsewhere has been making apocalyptic speculations about the danger represents for the capitalist system as a
What do you think would be a realistic view of the region at the present time, and how does Brazil in particular
There's no doubt that the crisis is serious, firstly from the economic point of view. In the medium term there is no possibility that the Brazilian debt (which now stands at 100 billion dollars) can be paid: the various 'letters of intent' to the IMF follow one after the other (we're already onto the fourth) and no one believes, even in the government, that the terms of the next one can be
It is clearly impossible to keep
'rolling over' the debt forever, and the on the international system will probably be very great.
Social tension has grown with the austerity policies, the squeeze on wages standards, which all the region's governments have been applying.
The weakening of all these dictatorships
However, one question has very clearly limited the extent of the crisis, and alternative outside the bourgeois fold. In
Argentina, although the situation is far from being stabilised, pretty much channelled into an electoral dispute between Peronists and Alfonsin, with victory going to the candidate best trusted by imperialism, who had been able to present himself as the one the least compromised with the hated mili-
The class-conscious current tary regime.
in the Argentinian workers movement is still extremely weak.
similarities. But it's also true that the
International Viewpoint 9 April 1984 and political leader Lula as their Brazilian dictatorship has been able to lead the process of changing the form of domination. There is a less awful economic situation, repression has not reached quite the same depths, and there has not been a defeat like the Malvinas. It is in a much more favourable position than the Argentinian dictatorship was before the elections, and it may manage to hold on to the system of 'indirect elections' for the Presidency, that is, where the president is chosen by a totally spurious 'electoral college. What's more, questions which in Argentina are explosive — like those of torture and the disappeared, etc., are much less sharp here - both because the extent of these events was less and because the distance in time is greater.
There's no doubt that at the moment it is the most conciliatory sections of the bourgeois opposition who are leading the opposition to the government. The campaign for direct elections in fact it's a lousy term because it's not a question of direct vs. indirect elections, but rather of elections vs. the manipulation of the 'electoral college') has been largely head ed up by the forces of the PMDB (Brazilian Democratic Movement Party) and the PDT (Democratic Workers Party) (1), reduce everything to the question of 'direct elections' and have very little to say about alternative programmes fer government or the interests of the masses, etc. The prevailing tone in the campaign is 'we want an Alfonsin'. All this means is that despite the seriousness of the crisis, the bourgeoisie re-
Nonetheless, Brazil has an important difference, particularly in comparison with Argentina: there does exist here a strong class-conscious current in the workers movement, which is expressed in the unions and in the Workers Party (PT). This opens up possibilities, which we ought to discuss in more detail later. Overall, however, Brazil today has a more stable bourgeoisie, with one difference which may prove decisive: the existence of a class-conscious, class-struggle current
Intersindical de los Trabajadores). (2) However, unlike Brazil, this current still doesn't have its own political expression, a party with mass influence. This is going to be the decisive question in coming
From the outside, it looked as if the deepening of Brazil's economic crisis from 1980-81 onwards, with the staggering growth in unemployment and so really interrupted the wave of struggles which had been developing in the previous two or three years. were the main problems which faced the organisation of the workers and popmovements, and what kinds of solution have been sought?
Beginning in May 1980, with the defeat of the big metalworkers strike in the ABC (3) industrial region, the workers' movement did suffer a downturn. It became clear that strikes by sector or by region were unable to confront the repression unleashed by the bosses and the
The ABC metalworkers held out for 43 days, but were unable to overcome the taking-over of their union, the of all their leaders, the police occupation of the industrial districts, and
At the same time, as the crisis deepened the bosses and the state became
The period that followed, therefore, up until the middle of 1982, was marked by isolated struggles of resistance (many struggles, including strikes, against redun-
-some of them successful), and by the continuing reorganisation of the class. In Brazil there was no central trade union body - that was forbidden
And a national body was essential for the only form of struggle capable of confronting the dictatorship and the employers - the general strike.
The PMDB is the largest opposition party, a broad front headed by sections of the liberal enjoying the support of the In the elections of November 1982 it won the most of the largest states and by far the largest number of votes for local and federal deputies. However, because of the heavily gerrymandered the government held on to The PDT is a small party with social demoelected governor of Rio de Janeiro state.
general strike in by the government, but continues to function
The belt of working-class suburbs around Sao Paulo: Santo Andre, Sao Bernardo and Sao
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BRAZIL
August 1981 saw the holding of CONCLAT (Congress of the Working Class). It decided a platform of demands for the movement, defined the general strike as a necessary form of struggle, and set for 1982 the founding of the CUT (Central Unica dos Trabalhadores). With the presence of some 5,000 delegates, this was the most important trade union conference that had ever been held in
However, in 1982, manoeuvres on the part of the 'pelego'-reformist wing of the union movement a block made up of 'pelegos', the PCB, the PC do B and the MR-8 (4)) succeeded in postponing the CONCLAT which was to have founded the CUT from 1982 to 1983.
In 1983 the situation of the workers movement changed significantly. A new national political scene - with governors of the bourgeois opposition parties recently elected in all the major states and an explosive worsening of the crisis, of unemployment and of sheer poverty, led to much more intense mobilisation: street demonstrations, hunger-raids supermarkets, big strikes in July, leading to a partial general strike about 80 percent effective in Sao Paulo, slightly less in Porto Alegre.
In August, the CUT was founded in
- without the pelegoreformist block, which in November formed its own central body, taking over the name of CONCLAT. (5) The central questions now posed, therefore, are the building of the CUT (trying to draw in the sector organised in CONCLAT) and the preparation of the general strike set for this April.
Q. What about the PT, which emerged precisely out of that first wave of struggle in the late 1970s? How has its role developed?
A. The PT is still, fundamentally, the expression of the class-conscious current in the workers movement. It serves mainly as a pole of reference, and it includes the main leaders of that class-struggle trade-unionism. It is not, as a party, the effective political leadership of
At the moment there are a number of important discussion going on inside the PT about the party's strategic these debates, and what do they imply for the party's immediate tasks, especially in connection with what is obviously the major political development of the day, the campaign for direct elections for
There are three main discussions in the PT at the moment. over the general character of the party it-
Should it try to be the political leadership of the masses? Should it incorporate its members and affiliates as organised militants? Should it draw up a programme of struggles to propose to the
There have been, and still are, many doubts over this. The prevailing idea in the PT became one of a party that
24 represents the social movements', which is their 'political expression' - in other words which didn't seek to be a leader of
Today, a majority of the party's national leadership do believe that the party should lead the masses, but this isn't yet reflected in the way the party's actually organised.
The second is around the question of and a governmental alternative. Should the PT make some sort of pro-
There's still quite a strong belief in the party that this would be premature, that the PT should merely support day-
'step by step'. But there is an the national which is already saying that faced with the seriousness of the crisis the PT should have its own global alternative — a programmatic proposal for government.
The third debate is about how to participate in the campaign for direct elections. The position of the left in the party, which has a lot of support amongst the rank and file militants, is that the PT needs to mark clearly its own profile -with its own programme for government and its own sectors which more or less openly defend supporting one or other liberal bourgeois
This is the immediately de cisive question. It looks probable that the PT will decide on its own candidate. What's more, the campaign for direct elections needs to be widened out to inthe defence of a Constituent Assembly - the only way of preventing any sort of negotiation with the dicta-
It is on these three questions - clarity about the general character of a workers' party, how to take an attitude to the question of power and clarity about the party's independence in the campaign for direct elections - that the influence of the PT in the present political situation will depend. It's true that the party has already grown stronger, as a result of the increasing discredit of the liberal bourgeois state governments, and of the rising level of workers struggles. influence will only become decisive with much clearer policies.
Q. How, then, would you assess the
PT's possibilities for the next few years, and what is the outlook for revolutionary
Marxism within the party?
A. Overall, the PT's possibilities are favourable: it has seen its influence grow in the last year, it has imporved its political positions, and it has begun -timidly
- to organise itself as a real party.
there is a serious problem:
anti-communist (anti-Leninist) attitudes have grown considerably within the party.
There are a number of reasons for this:
the permanent polarisation in relation to the bureaucratic reformism of the
Brazilian Communist Party (PCB), the
Communist Party of Brazil (PC do B) and the MR-8, which is a great source of conthe presence within the PT of many disillusioned ex-Leninists;
the strong presence of sections of the Catholic Church;
- some links, level, with trade unions close to social democracy (which financed the Sao Bernardo congress that founded the CUT).
So far this anti-communism hasn't implied conciliatory, social-democratic type positions - quite the contrary. there any direct, organised influence of social democracy. But it is a risk.
The situation of revolutionary Marxism is therefore a contradictory one: on the one hand favoured by the proletar iat's generally upward course, by the radicalisation of the working-class rank and file, and by the PT's own political development (albeit limited); on the other hand hindered by campaigns conducted within the party against the 'communists
'organisations'. We have made progress, but with limitations. The coming national convention - where the party will take a position on the big questions in debate — is going to be crucial.
At the same time, a promising process of regroupment is occurring on the left of the PT, particularly of those sectors committted to building the party and who identify with communism, Leninism. These are sectors which in the past have fought bitterly inside the PT, and most of them - the old centrist organisations - have gone through big crises. The most spectacular example was that of Acao Popular (Popular Action), which was once the largest organisation to the left of the CP, and which disintegrated to the point of final self-
These have now developed convergent positions on the main questions of the class struggle, especially on the need to strengthen a revolutionary communist vanguard that we can influence its growth. Greater unity between the Leninist sectors of the PT and the most determined class-struggle sectors at the base of the party, those who firmly defend a party of struggles, giving political leadership to the masses, this is possible and probable, and it will be a lever to help the party as a whole move forward. The very need to counter the anti-Leninist campaign has brought the PT's Leninists closer together
'pelegos' are the union structure after the military coup in 1964.
To maintain the slightest credibility some have been obliged to assume a minimum of indepenfrom their former military benefactors.
wrought by divisions between varying shades of but maintaining some basis of strength in var ious union and local government bureaucracies, cultural and intellectual circles
The PC do B is the Communist Party of Brazil, which split from the PCB over the Sino-Soviet dispute but after the death of Mao abandoned
The MR-8, the Revolutionary Moveorganisation which in recent years has adopted ultra-Stalinist positions. Both the latter have a significant numerical presence at various levels
October 31, 1983.
International Viewpoint 9 April 1984
result of capitalist development.
With the expansion of capitalism there is a whole shift of the agricultural economy away from production of basic food crops, often on a semi-communal basis, to cash-cropping and mono-cropping, on
'Women in the global factory' a capitalist basis — usually in the form of large plantations or small freeholdings. Many women in the countryside are forced to become agricultural wagelaborers and often are able to find only migratory and seasonal work. Although
"In Malaysia, mythological spirit, while peering through a microscope. She falls to the floor in convulsions, screaming with 'masuk hantu, spirit possession Within minutes the hysteria spreads up and down the assembly line Sometimes factories must be closed for a week or more while the evi spirits are exorcised...In Malaysia, women have virtually no other outlets to protest working conditions." (Women in the Global Factory, by Ehrenreich, South End Press, Boston)
In their pamphlet, Fuentes and Ehrenreich present a succinct and useful portrait of recent industrialization in the Third World, its control by multinational corporations and financial institutions, and its impact on the women workers in material primarily from Asia (Taiwan, Korea, Malaysia, Centrad America. (especially Mexico), they do a fine job of interweaving a sense of the experiences of individual women with an overall description and analysis of the problem.
Women in the Global Factory focuses on women factory workers - especially in the textile, electronies and microprocessor industries — who are employed in free trade zones. Free trade zones, or export processing zones as they are also called, are areas set aside in underdeveloped countries where foreign corporations (the majority are US-controlled) can set up shop without paying taxes or custom-import duties, and where they are provided with a controlled workforce.
As Fuentes and Ehrenreich say, "Free trade zones - there are now over 100 -mean more freedom for business and less freedom for people. Inside, behind walls often topped with barbed wire, the zones resemble a huge labor camp where trade unions, strikes and freedom of movement are severely limited, if not forbidden. special police force is on hand to search people and vehicles entering or leaving
The majority of workers in these free trade zones are young women, who work usually paid 3 dollars to 5 dollars a day, an income that cannot provide the basic necessities for a single person, let alone for a woman trying to support her children. They are also subjected to particular forms of harassment and exploitation ranging from pregnancy tests (and being fired immediately if they are found to be pregnant), to lay-offs at age 25 (since they are past their "most productive" years), to sexist advertising attempting to attract foreign investors.
A Malaysian government investment brochure advertises: International Viewpoint 9 April 1984 where labor unions are outlawed
Annette Fuentes and Barbara terity of the Oriental female is famous the world over. Her hands are small, and she works fast with extreme care...Who, could be better qualified by nature and inheritance, to contribute to the efficiency of a bench-assembly production line than the Oriental girl?"
One aspect of this new industrial work which Fuentes and Ehrenreich focus on is the health and safety hazards it in-
They point out that the conditions in the garment and textile industries
"visibly unhealthy, rivaling those of any 19th century sweatshop."
dangerous are the electronic and micro-processor industries. Here women are daily exposed to toxic work and high levels of stress. There are no health benefits; vacation or sick days; unemployment or disability insurance; social security; or adequate services such as daycare centers, health clinics and decent housing to meet their new needs. capitalist corporations are really creating global factories (the title of the pamphlet is not just a metaphor) where work is broken down and farmed out on an international basis. The least skilled and most noxious and tedious work goes to Third World countries - especially to
The whole system is of course designed to facilitate increased profit-making.
But Fuentes and Ehrenreich do not fully draw out the implications of this trend. They fail to note that workers in the neo-colonial world are in a less favorable position to unionize and to demand basic rights because they control only a small and easily movable part of the total production process. Changing lives
One of the most serious limitations of Women in the Global Factory is that, in on factory workers, it only touches the surface of the deep transformations occurring in women's lives Africa. Most women in these regions are not yet assembly-line workers, but their lives are just as surely being changed as a still involved in food production, rural women - both peasant and proletarian -often go hungry and they and their children experience life-threatening malnutrition.
Other women find themselves pushed out of the agricultural economy and into the cities, with little chance of even finding factory work. The overwhelming majority seek work as domestic servants, where their low pay is combined with a lack of freedom and often with less than humane treatment. Others who are more fortunate, may find work in the low-paid but ever-expanding service, clerical and within the "pink collar
Many women, however, can find no regular niche in the "new" economy. If still embedded in a traditional family these women may become "housewives," economically dependent on and increasingly subordinate to husbands and other male family members. But most of these women are on their own and try to create their means of survival in the margins of the economy as day-workers, street vendors or prosti-
Capitalist development does not just women economically. forms all aspects of their lives. It causes others have of them - of their roles, their abilities, their persons, their sexuality to generally become narrowed, negative and denigrating. with the explosion of personal violence against women, as well as the military terror needed to keep capitalism intact in places like El Salvador and Guatemala.
What are the solutions to these problems facing Third World women? answers do Fuentes and Ehrenreich
The picture presented in