THE CRISIS IN THE COMMUNIST PARTY
By CLAUDIO RAMOS
70 Brazil
The crisis that is opening up in the Communist Party of Brazil, reflected in the extent and depth of the discussions for its Vth Congress, has no precedent in the history of the Communist movement in Brazil.
Annoucing the Vth Congress, the official theses for discussion - which are trying to maintain the present ultra-rightist line — were approved by only 60% of the Central Committee, when "normally" they should have been unanimously accepted and presented as a work that was ready and completed. The rest of the Central Committee required the opening of a broad debate in the press and throughout the entire party, for a period of approximately four months, so as to be able to reach the Vih Congress with better elements for approving a political line.
And so there began a debate that took on the proportions of a regular avalanche. THE CAUSES OF THE NEW CRISIS
There is no doubt that outside conditions encouraged the discussions and rendered them possible. Today a majority group of the party bureaucracy would no longer be able to drown out the divergent voices by appealing to the "infallible word" of the Soviet bureaucracy.
The outside monolithism that facilitated the liquidation of internal struggles has been broken. The line of the international Communist movement can now be seen by the militants as the line of Khrushchev, but also as that of Tito, and especially as that of the Chinese leadership.
At the same time, the rigid structure of the other C Ps of capitalist countries has been broken. An example of this is the attitude of Marinello, leader of the Cuban Popular Socialist Party (Communist), who, in connection with the visit to Cuba of the Brazilian Presidential candidate Janio Quadros, expressed his surprise at the fact that the Brazilian Communists were not backing this candidate, who
Lions, regressive and had such good democratic inten-
But, unlike what occurred at the time of the 1956 rightist crisis, which ended with the split-off of Agildo Barata and his group, it is not so much external factors - at that time especially the XXth Congress - but above all the internal factors that have given the impulse to this new wave of crisis.
In the debates, there are references to Mikoyan, to Chou En-Lai, to Mao, et al, and there is no lack of concern with the fate of the international communist movement. But the centre of the discussion is the national problem and the party's inability to face it.
In synthesis, the crisis originates in the fact that it is absolutely impossible for the militant to put into practice the party's present ultra-rightist line. This is reflected mainly in the general political field, in the trade-union field, and in the peasant movement.
On the political terrain, the problem of the Presidential elections this coming October happens to coincide with the mood of the rank and file, disappointed by the line of support to the national candidates of the national bourgeoisie. As an independent working-class political line does nul enter even remotely into the calculations of the party leadership, the party was faced by the choice between iwo bourgeois candidates: Janio Quadros or Marshal Lott. And Lott ended up by being chosen.
FOURTH INTERNATIONAL
It is completely false to suppose that Marshal Loit fills in Brazil the role of a Nehru or a Nasser, for example. Minister of War in the reactionary government of Café Filho — who followed on the fall of Vargas - Lott has since then leaned toward conciliation with the old groups
Vargas government itself and of the nationalist bourgeoisie Partido Trabalhista Brasileiro (P T B).
But — the opposite of what happened in previous elec-
Lott is not even a typical candidate of the national bourgeoisie, and his demagogic total lack of concern, the electoral campaign, serves to deepen the gulf that lies between CP suppor for his candidacy and an pendent communist line.
Launched as a candidate immediately after a trip to the United States, the marshal took a stand against for the Brazilian CP, refused to go to Cuba,
"a bloody revolution" was being made, declared his opposition to renewal of diplomatie relations with USSR and to the support being given to him by CP. In his speeches, agrarian reform and the need for a general raise | in wages are just never mentioned.
Aill the foregoing causes the CP rank and file to refuse openly to support Lott, or at most to accept party discipline without lifting a finger to further the election campaign.
In the trade-union field, the rightist line advocated a policy of "unity of the movement at any cost" and a line of collaboration with the "nationalist sectors" of the government. The Communist militants were trying to appear as the hyphen between the bureaucrats tied up with the Ministry of Labor and those who had promised support to Janio Quadros and a sector of the bourgeoisie of São Paulo state (see "A acão dos comunistas nos sindicatos,"
Rumos, December 1959). On this account, the needs and hopes of the masses were set aside, and the Communist militants received orders not to raise trouclesome problems government (such as the new minimum wage and the single trade-union federation) and to defend "governmental measures for fighting the high cost of living."
The result was isolation of the CP militants in the facloss of control in some unions and federations, penetration of the demagogy of the bureaucrats tied up with Janio Quadros (the other bourgeois candidate) in the trade-union movement. Suffice it to say that at the Workers' Trade-Union Congress, held in April at São Paulo, it was the Janists who raised the slogans that were most felt by the masses, such as a general raise in wages and the single trade-union federation, taking advantage of the timidity and inertia of the Communists.
On the other hand, as a result of the rightist line that grew stronger through the March 1958 declaration which
La united front with "latifundist interests different from those of imperialism," the peasant movement was relegated by the party leadership to a completely secondary plane.
The appearance of the Peasant Leagues of Pernambuco - a province in the northeast of the country -dently of the action and influence of the CP, and the weight of the peasant problem as a whole, are bringing pressure on the Communist militants, especially in the northeastern provinces.
FOURTH INTERNATIONAL DISCUSSIONS AND PRESSURE OF THE RANKS
The appearance of the Peasant Leagues of Pernambuco line is reflected in the higher organism and from these goes up to the commanding heights.
But there the rank and file cannot find their own channel for expression. They are the motive force behind the crisis, but only the opening of the debate made it possible for them to appear directly — at least in part — in the discussion that is going on.
The articles published in the Communist weekly Novos Rumos by the top leaders generally do not take as their starting point daily concrete experience and the analysis of the party's defeats so as to establish a political line. The verbally violent discussions of the apparatus men employ complicated language. Two sectors may be distinguished.
One (Mario Alves, Jacob Gorender), responsible for the theses presented for discussion, is attempting to maintain, by means of concessions, the political line of the unprincipled united front with the national bourgeoisie, with a prospect of bourgeois development, claiming that there will be the reactionary elements in the government replacement of "gradual reforms and the
The other sector criticizes the theses and the present line, selting as its goal united front with the national bourgeoisie, but based on pressure on that bourgeoisie by the mass movement. It is interesting to note that this sector, not homogeneous, is represented by old names in the party, such as Pedro Pomar, Mauricio Grabois, and João Amazonas.
Basically, though reflecting different tendencies, both sectors in the top leadership show the same inability to understand the problems of the Brazilian revolution and the need to take them as a starting point for formulating a communist policy. Thus both the theses of the right and the programme presented in an article by Mauricio Grabois adrocate as the first point of a political action programme diplomatie relations with the US SR, China, and the socialist couniries, and support in the United Nations for "proposals for preserving peace.
In any case, the current in the leadership that is turning lefi cannot be just brushed aside.
Though its conclusions are not very different from those of the other sector, it nevertheless makes serious criticisms of the ultra-rightist opportunism of the present line and thereby encourages the spirit of rebellion among the party rank and file. The harsh attacks against the "embellishment of national capitalism," the theses on the "peaceful path for the Brazilian revolution," and on the "gradual transformation of the government," are of special importance. Anaiyzing the nature of the Brazilian revolution, in an article titled, "Duas Concepções, Duas Orientações Politicas" (Novos Rumos, May 1960), Grabois, for example, holds a position identical with that of the Chinese, i e, that.
on the political terrain, the new regime must create a democratic state and a democratic and anti-imperialist , government, different, in its class composition and its aims, from all previous governments in Brazil.
Although the revolution, at this stage, corresponds to bourgeois democratic tasks, the new state will not be able to be a modern bourgeois state, directed by the bourgeoisie. Brazil's bourgeoisie, by its dual character — revolutionary and conciliationist — is incapable of solving with finality the fundamental problems of the development of the national economy, of the full democratization of the country, and of effective improvement in the living conditions of the people. The new power must be a power of the united front of the democratic and anti-imperialist forces, led by the working class, and therefore very different from a bourgeois state of that type. This fact originates in the circumstance that the proletariat
71 will have to lead the revolutionary forces and also that the revolution, though not socialist, is an integral part of the world socialist revolution.
But even more imporlant than the analysis of the currents that are appearing in the leadership is an evaluation of the new critical wave that is sweeping through the whole party. The discussion cannot be kept within the traditional schematic limits, and the situation allows the appearance in the party press of the most advanced positions and those that remain halfway but with a visibly leftist position.
Novos Rumos publishes a letter from a militant in Sergipe (a northeastern province), with assertions like the following:
Things seen from Rio de Janeiro, through the congress, are one thing, but here in the interior the panorama is different. I...] For my part, I confess that I don't know whether Fidel Castro is this or that, but the truth is that he is making a revolution in Cuba, fighting against North American colonizing capitalism, fighting against colonialism. Can anyone at this moment in a small Latin American country go beyond Fidel Castro? When it's all added up, which thing is more important for the people: an agrarian reform made under any party banner whatever, or a Communist Party with its arms open to such a progressive bourgeoisie, serving as an instrument so that the latter may climb up, satisfied with the alms of electing a lown councillor here or there?
At the same time there was published an article by a militant from Rio Grande do Sul, in which he observes:
I read the theses, and, like many other comrades,
I had trouble in understanding them integrally. They form a voluminous document that does not take the level of the party into account. I observed that the theses and the March 1958 declaration present a study on the development of capitalism in our country.
Unquestionably this is a merit, for it is very impor tant to know the objective processes which are developing in Brazil. But it is not enough to know this development. is necessary to know from what viewpoint the phenomenon is being evaluated: from the viewpoint of the proletariat or from that of the bourgeoisie. [...] The party and the working class have the duty of opening up a clear prospect for the proletariat. And that prospect must be the conquest, in the process of the struggle, of the leadership of the movement, for which the fundamental condition is the worker-peasant alliance and not the workerbourgeois alliance.
Examples like this are being repeated and will be repeated to a higher degree.
All this reveals how the ranks are this time the great centre of the crisis in the Brazilian C P, even when they cannot express themselves completely and have not yet created an organized tendency.
Unlike what happened in 1956, when the dissidents of Agildo Barata broke away to the right and presented a national reformist prospect without ties with the Soviet bureaucracy, today the wind is inevitably blowing leftward. The party as a whole is not limiting itself to tho theses under discussion, or to the new statutes presented jointly with the theses. It is a matter of examining everything, withou: formalism, from top to bottom. There appeared in Novos Rumos a proposal lo prolong the discussion for a year; this was followed by various voices wholly supporting the proposal, or asking an extension to six months.
Whatever may be the trends of the new crisis, one thing is sure: it is encouraged by the conviction that the party's rightist opportunism has reached a point that has brought it into a blind alley and a danger of a catastrophic liquidation.
72 THE IMPORTANCE OF THE BRAZILIAN C P AND THE ROLE OF REVOLUTIONARY MARXISM
But, finally, it may be asked, what is the present strength of the Brazilian C P, and how serious is its crisis for the country's mass movement as a whole?
The Brazilian C P today is far from having the strength and prestige of the years 1945-50. The betrayals of the Stalinist leadership weakened the party badly, led to disorganization and the loss of control of various trade
Nevertheless, despite the fact that the parly crisis therefore does not immediately have repercussions in the mass it does not lose its fundamental importance, because of the concrete conditions in the country.
In the absence of any other left party that has able forces and is nationally known (the Brazilian Socialist Party is far from having the characteristics of the Chilean or Uruguayan SPs), the CP became a sort of soundingboard for what was happening in the country's political life. The pressure of the working class and of the petty bourgeoisie, the pressure of the national bourgeoisie, problems of the trade-union movement, and the lack of an independent workers' party — all these are reflected in the party discussions. And these discussions, even when they are clamped into abstract analyses about what is "the fundamental contradiction of the country," are for the moment the highest debate on the road of the Brazilian revolution, amid the sterility of bourgeois politics.
The Brazilian CP lost most of its cadres, but the best vanguard elements, with rare exceptions, had their experience therein, and the diffuse influence of the party is still alive in the country.
Broad to building an independent mass workers inevitably passes through the Brazilian CP, and depends to a large extent on how its crisis evolves.
Brazilian Partido Operario Revolucionario (Trotskista) does not yet have the necessary forces and integration to render the process of the crisis much more fecund. But even so its presence in the debate is remarked, and there opens up to it an immense field of work, through a combined action on the CP, from outside and inside.
The ranks of the CP have known how to deduce conciusions about the leadership's line, and refuse to apply a policy inapplicable in practice. But, as is logical, they do not succeed in generalizing the problem and offering an independent way out. Thus, in the electoral field, the militants often refuse both Janio and Lott, but, for lack f any other way out, tend to accept passively the candilate indicated by the party leadership.
In this sense, the campaign of Trotskyism for launching a workers' candidacy for the Presidency of the Republic, based on the trade unions, peasant leagues, popular groupings, and student associations, is today obtaining a very
FOURTH INTERNATIONAL serious echo among the most advanced elements of the CP, who, faced with the false dilemma of Janio or Lott, are steking an independent way.
The work of the POR concentrates on a patient bold action, in face of the new conditions, for building a new left tendency inside the C P. Revolutionary Marxism has a fundamental role in the formation of this left, which, though not Trotskyist, will be able under Trotskyist in. fluence to become a genuine pole of attraction, an independent political line, setting out from the masses' immediate needs toward more general conclusions.
Today a few cells are spontaneously raising the question of the need to present their own theses in opposition o the theses for discussion, emphasizing that the articles of Grabois, Pomar, et al are inadequate to serve as a platform for an opposition in the party. Therein lies one of the sources of a left that is seeking to organize itself with its own programme; and the better the work of the revolutionary Marxists is oriented toward bringing this crisis to maturity, the faster this evolution will be. PROSPECTS FOR THE BRAZILIAN C P
At present there is no possibility of the Brazilian C P's again becoming the bureaucratic and monolithic party of the past.
Not only do external circumstances prevent this relapse, but also the extensiveness of the discussions, in a party of bureaucratic structure, has set going a ferment that is in the long run uncontrollable.
These events in the party, after three years of apparent and scope that not even the revolutionary Marxists foresaw to their full extent. Is is hard to determine, at the present point, the exact road that will be taken by the CP. But the strong pressure from the left permits asserting that it is possible it may become a centrist party, of a type distinet from those existing up till now.
On the other hand, a strengthening of the Brazilian C P depends fundamentally on an organized tendency that takes the mass movement as it is, boldly raises its most immediate an independent prospect. either left or right "sectarianism," so much talked about, consists precisely in the inability to fuse movement with ones revolutionary wanting to transform it into a field for manœuvring or simply winning over cadres.
Be this as it may, at the present stage the action of the Trotskyists, in the direction of building an organized left inside the Brazilian CP, is the surest and most effective road for building a real mass workers' party to fill the enormous void between the objective possibilities of the Brazilian revolution and the lack of a consistent leader-
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