Until the end of 1978, the opposition to the Brazilian dictatorship seemed to be an undifferentiated grouping dominated by factions of the liberal bourgeoisie, such as the Movimento Democrático Bragileiro (MDB-Brazilian Democratic Movement), the official opposition party.
Since then, however, differing class perspectives have led to a process of differentiation within the opposition. The appearance of the workers movement in the struggle against the dictatorship-in strikes, street demonstrations, and in the debate over how to carry out the officially sponsored reorganization of political parties-has significantly changed the situation.
Following the May 1978 metalworkers strike in Santo André, São Bernardo, and São Caetano-the industrial suburbs of São Paulo known as ABC-and the later meetings of the metalworkers unions as well as other unions, a proposal to build a Workers Party was put forward. It was proposed as a party "without bosses, without foremen, and without sell-outs, a party that would fight to defend the economic and democratic rights of the workers and for socialism" as "Lula" [Luis Inácio da Silva], the leader of the São Paulo metalworkers, put it in presenting the proposed definition of the party.
Under the pressure of rising opposition to military rule and the economic crisis shaking Brazil, Gen. João Baptista de Figueiredo, who has been president of the country since last March, has proposed a series of political reforms that he calls a "democratic opening." These include the possibility of legalizing other political parties besides the two officially sanctioned ones-ARENA (Aliança Renovadora Nacional-Alliance for National Renewal) and the MDB. It is within this context that the moves to establish a Workers Party take place.
The discussion now taking place on the reorganization of political parties is not simply restricted to the proposal and the initiatives made by the military dictatorship.
Figueiredo is looking for a way to set up a loyal parliamentary majority, as well as to form an independent liberal party that would be based on the bourgeois opposition but would remain an auxiliary of the regime. Through his "proposals for an opening," Figueiredo is trying to come up with an authorized representative with whom he can negotiate and ratify his regime's self-reform. Above all he is looking for a partner who, through a combination of repression and concession, will be able to control and demobilize the workers movement.
Through "reorganization of political parties" the dictatorship hopes to resolve the crisis that the two-party ARENA-MDB system is going through, and to establish new forms of domination that correspond to the new situation, particularly to the rise of the workers movement.
The discussion over whether ARENA and the MDB should be retained or dropped takes place in this context. Numerous possible courses are being proposed. Some call for the possible dismantling of the MDB to benefit Leonel Brizola's populist Brazilian Labor Party. The so-called authentic group of MDB parliamentary deputies is for the formation of a "People's Party."
Others call for maintaining the unity of the MDB as the vehicle for "unity of all the oppositionists." The Brazilian Communist Party supports this proposal. So do the "historic leaders and the moderates of the MDB," who hope to use it to their benefit.
The proposal for a Workers Party is a response to all these proposals.
The Present Situation A "Movement for the Workers Party" has been established and is beginning to set up committees in several regions. The idea has assumed a national dimension, although on an organizational level it is still developing slowly and unevenly.
The proposal for the Workers Party is the expression of the present rise in the class struggle in Brazil. The push was given by what are called the "authentic" trade-union leaders (not to be confused with the wing of the MDB that uses the same designation). They began to develop links with class-struggle currents that arose in recent struggles (administration, banks, teaching, construction, etc.) as well as links with trade-union opposition forces who for a long time were the only organized expression of the workers movement's resistance to the dictatorship and to state control over the unions.
In most of the present struggles the workers are placing their confidence in the strike leaders, the strike command centers that are elected by general assemblies of workers. There are numerous strike command centers and their leaderships ultimately accepted the idea of building a Workers Party.
These leaders have been strengthening the pro-Workers Party nuclei and committees, the majority of which are made up of the leaders of recent strikes, "authentic" unionists, and members of the trade-union opposition. The members of the tradeunion opposition came in following long discussions on the program of the Workers Party and are, on the whole, integrated into the work of building the party.
Meetings of unions, meetings to support and set up the Workers Party, are taking place every week in many regions. In São Paulo, Minas Gerais, Rio Grande do Sul, and Rio de Janeiro the proposal has begun to take concrete shape. Important discussions on the question of how to organize the Workers Party have also taken place in Belo Horizonte-for example discussions on creating nuclei that can intervene in various areas of struggle: in the factories, the schools, committees against the high cost of living, and committees for general amnesty.
The process has particularly accelerated since the Contagem (Minas Gerais) meeting last July 28, which determined the platform and structure of the Workers
Party. In Pôrto Alegre the coordinating committee was enlarged through carrying out massive propaganda about the Platform of Principles and the Program in community organizations and neighborhoods, among unions and political groupings and organizations, as well as within the student movement. There is, for example, a nucleus among bank employees that began several months ago to organize payment of monthly dues, to search for offices to function from and to set up a newspaper.
From August 2 to August 6 a national meeting of trade-union leaders was held in Gragoata (Rio de Janeiro) under the auspices of the Centro Brasileiro Democrático (Brazilian Democratic Center). This was the first such meeting since the 1964 coup. Many trade unionists from cities and from the countryside attended. Despite the absence of representatives of the trade-union oppositions, the meeting was very large and very representative.
This meeting played a preponderant role in analyzing the economic and political situation and especially in analyzing the perspectives outlined for the workers movement. In the face of the severe economic crisis and the austerity that is hitting the working class, the meeting viewed the need to prepare a call for a general strike as one of the central tasks that must be undertaken.
Basic demands of the population-such as the "struggle against inflation, against the increase in the cost of living, for general wage increases, and for job security"-were taken up in the "Gragoata Charter." Several places in the charter contain declarations in favor of "tradeunion freedom and rights," as well as declarations for a "general amnesty" and "against the dictatorship."
The meeting counterposed the slogan of "a free and sovereign constituent assembly" to Figueiredo's proposals for a "democratic opening" and "institutionalization." At the same time, the meeting demanded the "dismantling of the repressive apparatus" and the "annulment of repressive measures." Concerning the situation of the trade-union movement, they came out for trade-union unity and for building a "United Workers Federation."
Their declarations were also completely clear regarding the need to fight for a union structure freed from verticalism— the situation where each union functions in isolation from unions in other fields. This division and atomization of the workers movement is a relic of state and police control over the unions.
Demands for the establishment of "factory committees" elected by union assemblies to negotiate contracts through collective bargaining, as well as for the election of trade-union delegates with job security were among those adopted by the unionists. Also adopted was the demand for the creation of a trade-union coordinating body.
Discussions regarding the Workers Party were an important part of the deliberations that took place in Gragoata. Two proposals were debated-the "authentic" tradeunion leaders supported the formation of the Workers Party, while Communist trade-union leaders proposed maintaining the unity of the MDB. While the CPers explained that a proletarian party, the CP, already existed (since 1922), others called for a fight to legalize the CP and, more generally, to legalize all the parties now underground.
The representative of the São Paulo leatherworkers union stated: "Comrades from the CP, you must leave the MDB. That party is not a workers party. If you cannot get your party legalized, enter the Workers Party as a way of functioning legally. Tendencies will exist within it, because we would be utopians if we did not recognize the different tendencies within the workers movement."
In the course of the debate it was decided that no position would be adopted on this question because some unionists did not agree with the majority, who favored the Workers Party proposal, and there seemed to be no way to force them to take up this slogan among their rank and file.
While it is clear that the proposal to set up a Workers Party is a significant step forward for the working class on the road to its political independence, and while it illustrates the level of organization, combativity, and consciousness attained by the Brazilian workers movement, the proposal still faces objective obstacles and important subjective limitations and deficiencies. We should take note of at least some of them.
1. The first obstacle is the low level of consciousness, political education, and organizational experience of most of the union leaders who call for the formation of the Workers Party. This low level of consciousness is also one of the characteristics of the new layer of fighting, class-struggle unionists who have emerged in the recent struggles against the employers and the dictatorship.
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2. The Brazilian Communist clearly opposes the proposal to set-up the Workers Party and continues to argue for work inside the MDB. Other organizations, centrists such as the pro-Albanian Communist Party of Brazil, the Aliança Popular Marxista-Leninista, and the Movimento Revolucionario do 8 de Outubro are also against this proposal. Only centrist organizations like the MEP (Movement for the Emancipation of the Proletariat) and Trotskyist organizations like the Socialist Convergence and the POC (Communist Workers Party) are politically taking part in the discussion on the program and organization of the Workers Party.
3. Another big obstacle could be the reestablishment of the old Brazilian Labor Party (PTB), the populist organization led by Leonel Brizola. With strong support
from the European Social Democracy and counting on a certain amount of "flexibility" from the dictatorship, the PTB is attempting to make a big reentry onto the political scene and to take over the Workers Party's political space.
4. In trying to build the Workers Party, the class-struggle militants in the unions run up against the maintenance of the vertical trade-union structure controlled by the state and by the dictatorship. The prohibition by law of any trade-union structure that cuts across occupational lines is a major obstacle to the Brazilian the workers movement restructuring unions on a class basis, a process that must be indissolubly linked to the building of the Workers Party as an independent political organ and united front of the working class.
5. Finally, we should note the maneuvers by the so-called "authentic" wing of MDP parliamentary deputies, who are calling for the formation of a "People's Party." Today they are the ones exerting the greatest pressure on the fighting tradeunion leaders who are involved in the proposal for the Workers Party. Several commissions of parliamentarians, intellectuals, and trade-unionists have been formed. Meetings and discussions between partisans of the "People's Party" and supporters of the Workers Party have taken place at the initiative of MDB deputies.
At the meeting in São Bernardo (a suburb of São Paulo), at the one in Vila Betania (in Pôrto Alegre), as well as at the most recent one held in São Paulo, the "authentic" deputies could be heard making the same "realistic" speech. According to them, "we must bring all the oppositionists into a single party," "those who are really fighting the dictatorship should form a truly people's party." In trying to put their multi-class and collaborationist plan into operation, the "authentic" deputies use a weighty argument. Under the projected terms of the dictatorship's "opening" a party must have thirty deputies in the parliament that was elected last November to be given legal status. This means that a party must get thirty members who were elected on the slates of the two official partieg-ARENA and the MDB-to vouch for it or join it. These legal stipulations give a certain weight to the blackmail by the "authentics," who argue that a national political party cannot be set up solely with workers and unionists, but also needs to make use of politicians and members of parliament who know all the ins and outs of public life.
Another big, central weakness of the proposal to build the Workers Party is the slowness and the delays with which it is being built among the ranks, in the work places, and in the neighborhoods. Up to now in practice the movement has been limited to nuclei of "authentic" trade-union leaders and a large portion of members of trade-union opposition groups who have begun to organize and coordinate around this proposal. The current absence of rankand-file organization of the Movement for the Workers Party obviously can only favor vacillation, including opportunist temptations, by the leaders who took the initiative on the question.
While we must not ignore the weaknesses that weigh on the proposal to build the Workers Party, it is equally important to take note of the fact that this proposal has been made and has been increasingly taken up by the whole of the working masses in their struggle against the dictatorship. Moreover, since these struggles of the Brazilian working class increasingly play a central and driving role in the anti-dictatorship movement, the political question posed by the building of the Workers Party, by the objective need shown in the class struggle for Brazilian workers to have an independent political expression on a class basis, becomes more pressing.
There is no doubt in our mind that the dictatorship and the bourgeoisie will utilize every means possible, will carry out all forms of repression and collaboration, sometimes combining the two, to try to dislocate or derail the proposal to set up the Workers Party.
An immediate milestone for building the Workers Party is the wage campaign that will draw together more than 2 million workers whose contracts are coming up for negotiation in October and November. This will obviously be a very important test to establish the viability of the proposal and to set up a rank-and-file structure for the movement for the Workers Party.
In the words of Paulo Skromof, leader of the São Paulo leatherworkers union, this wage campaign can become "the launching pad for holding, within six months, the founding convention of the Workers Party, the first working-class party, without bosses, in Brazil's history."