THE BRAZILIAN ELECTIONS
The crushing figures of the vote whereby Janio Quadros won in the recent Brazilian presidential elections contrast with the lack of enthusiasm and echo aroused by the election campaign among the masses. Having among three bourgeois Adhemar — and without an independent class alternative, they felt little drawn to mobilize and take an active part in the campaign.
But in the they voted massively for Quadros.
anti-government candidate, against Lott, the official
The Brazilian masses voted, first of all and above all, against the capitalist government of Kubitschek; they voted, though without great illusions, for a change, for the opposition candidate.
The candidate of the Kubitschek government, Marshal Lott, had the support of the "nationalist" sectors of the petty bourgeoisie and of the national bourgeoisie, also the support of the Communist Party, in spite declarations against communism, against Cuba, and against with the Soviet by the Partido Trabalhista, ex-President Vargas's party, headed by Vice-President Jango Goulart, who is tied up with a sector of the trade-union bureaucracy and again itu Janio Quadros, as the opposition candidate, at first counted on the support of the big bourgeoisie of São Paulo, of sectors of the big landowners, on the good will of imperialism, and the parties that represent these forces, and, as central force, on the UD N.
The third candidate, Adhemar de Barros, as reactionary as these others, could not, nevertheless, support of any important organized political force. His
- and the relatively large received reflect mostly the Brazilian bourgeoisie's inability to organize its own forces and to solve the problems raised for it by the struggles of the masses.
From the beginning, however, the fight was centred between Janio and Lott. And, as ihe elections drew near, it was clear that the majority of the bourgeoisie accepted the victory of Janio as the only way out. Neither Lott's programme nor the fact that he could count on the support of the discredited government of Kubitschek allowed him to nurture serious hopes of winning. But in reality, though the Brazilian bourgeoisie had to accept Janio Quadros, this does not mean that that is the solution to its problems. On the contrary, it is rather the reflection of the insoluble nature of its crisis.
The programme of Janio's team is based on a policy of capitalist development carried out at the expense of the masses living standards and by working together with imperialism, importing capital, possibly carrying out "stabilization" in the Argentine and Chilean style, and favoring large-scale agriculture and exports and the seetors tied up therewith, etc.
But it was not that programme that the masses voted for. During the election campaign, while Lott was keeping on with his anti-communist assertions, Janio was discussing a series of problems that attracted the attention of the masses and are in fact in contradiction with that programme: recognition of the US SR and possibly of Communist China, defense in general of the Cuban revolution, general support for the sliding scale of wages, maintenance of the nationalization of oil, and legality for the Communist Party. He traveled to Cuba, and to the US SR. Even though there is a great amount of elertoral speculation in all this, it is also an indication of the crisis and unsureness of the bourgeoisie itself, one of whose sectors had to resort to such dangerous arguments in order to win the votes of the masses.
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Janio obtained a vote far greater than the sum of the forces of the party apparatuses that were backing him. This gives him greater independence toward those apparatuses, closely tied up with the most reactionary forces. The situation is complicated for the bourgeoisie by the fact that the Vice-Presidency was won, not by the rightwing_ candidate running on the same slate with Janio, but by Jango Goulart, although by a narrow margin that shows the wearing away of the forces supporting him, which were formerly determinant in Brazil. Janio will try to profit by the situation by endeavoring to carry out a policy for the Brazilian bourgeoisie as a whole, without being dependent on any given sector, and manœuvring at the same time with imperialism. He is aware of the fact that the world situation — Cuba, China, Atrica - gives him a greater margin of speculation and manœuvre in his negotiations with the United States. This is, at the same time, his weakness, a rising mass movement which considers this election viewhich feels that it defeated the government in the elections, and which has not given Janio a
In addition, as Frente Operaria, the newspaper of the Brazilian Trotskyists, pointed out on the eve of the elecno bourgeois sector has great solutions for the situation of the country, for economic development, for the crisis in agriculture, for the crisis in foreign for inflation, and, above all, for the social struggles that are rising and developing.
Thr bourgeoisie does not feel at all sure about a Janio government. It does not know exactly what that government will do. Even Quadros himself is uncertain about it. Everyone is aware that his election was the only way out, but merely a provisional way out, not a solution. mediately after it, the struggles began again. Janio Quadros had taken a trip to Europe, to return only in January, when he must take office. He is trying in this way to rèmain apart from these struggles, to avoid taking stands on the problems hotly raised in the country until he takes
The masses unleashed a series of immensely powerful strikes and movements for their demands. This has made the bourgeois crisis more acute. President Kubitschek, at the moment that this editorial note is being written, has asked for the state of siege against the transport strike for higher wages that has paralyzed the country. Vice-President Goulart has come out in favor of the strikers, possibly trying to strengthen his position in the future government. The majority of the members of parliament refused to approve the state of siege. The mobilization and intervention of the masses has thus rendered more acute the internal crisis and division among the bourgeoisie. And this prospect will become accentuated. There is even talk of a military coup to prevent Janis Quadros from taking office. So far, however, the head of the army, General Denys, has succeeded in keeping it away from a direct solution of the presidential problem. The army did not go in for support of Marshall Lott, Kubitschek's ex-Minister of War. That does not mean that it did so out of respect for democracy. The army wants to reserve for itself the role of supreme judge and arbiter in case the conflicts grow extremely acute. Furthermore, Denys feats that if he intervenes directly and takes part in the present crisis of the bourgeoisie, the army itself will be torn by factions and internal struggles - as happened in Argentipa — and will lose its weight as the supreme political instrument of the Brazilian bourgeoisie. The Communist Party will be faced by a crisis deepened by the calamitous failure of its support for Lou, which
FOURTH INTERNATIONAL contributed to isolating it from the masses. The Brazilian Trotskyists had previously proposed a workers' candidacy based on a united front of the trade unions, the peasant leagues, and the student organizations, with the support of the CP. The workers' leaderships did not accept this way
The Trotskyists then proposed that the choice among three bourgeois candidates be rejected, that the vote be denied to the bourgeois candidates, deliberately annuling ballots by writing across them slogans against imperialism, the oligarchy, and the bourgeoisie, for a worker-peasantstudent united front, for a workers' and peasants' government.
All the previous analyses of the Brazilian Trotskyists were roundly confirmed by the elections, including the prediction of the combined victory of Janio and Goulart and the difference between the two in voting support.
On the eve of the elections, Frente Operaria, in a lead article based on an intervention of the Latin American Bureau of the Fourth International, posed the tasks of the revolutionary movement in Brazil in the following terms, which remain completely valid:
The bourgeoisie has no solutions for the situation of the country. The next crises will render even more clear the need for the intervention of the mass movement, independent of bourgeois leaderships.
ward march of the revolution in Latin America will even more pressure in this direction.
defeat of nationalism, as can be foreseen, and of the
Communist leaders, will on the one hand deepen the petty-bourgeois nationalists, couraging socialist tendencies that are already being adumbrated, and on the other hand deepen the crisis in the CP, obliging the left to take new steps forward in the direction of pulling the party out of the field of class collaboration and conciliation with the bourgeoisie.
The revolutionary Marxist workers' vanguard must spur on this process, trying to guide it toward the building of an Anti-Imperialist United Front, of a
Proletarian United Front, and a united front of the masses, including all the trade-union, peasant, and student organizations, to intervene in every one of the country's problems and especially in support of the peasants in their struggles and for radical agrarian
Immediately after the elections, no matter who is elected, the wave of strikes and mass struggles will be renewed with even greater violence. It is necessary to take advantage of this new wave of strikes to adtoward a unified federation of labor, toward putting into practice the worker-peasant alin the parties of the bourgeoisie will, in the coming months, have an influence masses. But the masses in their turn will be able to influence and in fact are influencing the left wings in these parties. It is not excluded that, in the midst of this crisis, left national sectors may appear that seek to a certain extent the support of the masses.
In any case, the future of the working class and the peasants cannot be made dependent on them.
Relying on the most advanced political tendencies and in particular on the development of the Communist left, the revolutionary Marxists must fight with greater tenacity than ever to build a new leadership and a new organization for the masses, independent of the bourgeoisie, and with the revolutionary prois common to all Latin America, includ- 4. 1 11 November 1960
THE INTERNATIONAL