[The following is based on an article by Daniel Bensaid that appeared in the June 27-July 3 issue of Rouge, weekly newspaper of the Revolutionary Communist League (LCR), French section of the Fourth International.]
The first national congress of the Brazilian Workers Party (PT) took place at the end of May in São Paulo (see last week's IP/I for background of the Workers Party).
The 400 delegates represented 26,000 members, according to statistics reported at the Congress. The Workers Party has
One "Western diplomat" expressed the branches in twenty-three out of Brazil's twenty-six states and territories. It has fulfilled the legal requirements in twelve of these states, despite the restrictions imposed by the dictatorship.
Achieving legal recognition for the Workers Party before the 1982 elections no longer seems such an impossible task, providing the process of "liberalization" is not reversed. (Of course, nothing is certain, especially since the dictatorship just cancelled the municipal elections originally scheduled for the end of this year, and proposed that the current 4,000 mayors either remain in office or be replaced by without risks.
appointees).
The largest number of delegates at the Workers Party congress represented some 6,000 members from the state of São Paulo who constitute 23 percent of the total membership. There are 3,000 members each in the states of Goiaz and Ceará; 2,300 in Minas Gerais; and about 1,000 each in Rio de Janeiro, Amazonas, and Rio Grande do Sul.
Following the forty-one day ABC metalworker's strike in São Paulo's industrial suburbs, which at its peak involved some 150,000 auto and metalworkers, the Workers Party gained in membership. But along with this growth in membership came more moderate and vaguer positions on the character of the Workers Party.
The Worker's Party's founding documents clearly characterized the Workers Party as a party "solely for workers" that "anoke to win alitinal nower and actohlich "seeks to win political power and establish a workers government based on representative bodies created by the working masses themselves" and as a "party without bosses." It advanced a number of out bosses.
It advanced a number of radical demands, including nationalizations of all foreign enterprises, banks, public utilities, etc.
The programatic document adopted at the national congress on May 29 was much vaguer. It defined the Workers Party as "a party different from those that the power structure imposed upon us in the past and is trying to impose upon us today, a party created by us in order to carry out our struggles, a party of workers."
formulation "a party without
The bosses" disappeared, and no references were made to socialism. The central objective stressed was winning democracy: "A mass party, broad and open, based on the workers in the cities and countryside, the Workers Party is also different in its political objectives: we are fighting for a democracy that will guarantee that workers will be in the leadership at every level, making the political and economic decisions of the country on the basis of their interests and through their rank-and-file structures."
Although the perspective of a united workers federation was maintained in the platform for struggle amended to the program, demands for nationalization and workers control were omitted, as was the call for a Constituent Assembly.
Also the slogan "for a worker's government" was replaced by a more diluted formulation-"a government that advances on the road towards a society without exploiters or exploited."
Despite these developments, the fact that the Workers Party congress successfully took place is a big step forward in the building of a political party based on the Brazilian working class. The Workers Party is still characterized as a party of workers, built through workers' struggles, that is confronting the dictatorship, struggling for an alternative government of the workers and the oppressed. The recent growth of the Workers Party is indicative of the awakening of the young Brazilian working class and demonstrates the possibilities for the future.
The fact that one or another slogan or formulation was deleted from the Workers Party program does not in itself constitute a capitulation. But the formulations adopted tend to blur the class nature of the Workers Party, especially at a time when the Workers Party will have to confront various attempts to further dilute its character. Some of the parliamentary deputies and careerists politicians are already openly raising the idea of fusing with the Democratic Party of Workers (PDT).
The PDT came out of the old Brazilian Labor Party (PTB), a populist organization led by Leonel Brizola, which was in power
In the event of an uprising against Haitian dictator Jean-Claude Duvalier, the army in the neighboring Dominican Republic would be prepared to intervene directly, with U.S. backing.
The text of an agreement between the Haitian and American governments authorizing such an intervention was published recently in Mexico City by Haiti Information, the organ of the Haitian Democratic Committee. It was signed by Duvalier and Gen. Robert L. Schweitzer, the head of the U.S. Army's strategy, and policy division, during planning, Schweitzer's visit to Haiti January 30-31.
The text of the agreement, as published in the June 22 issue of the Cuban Englishlanguage weekly Granma, reads:
"Considering the current difficulty of U.S. armed forces intervening in Latin America and, particularly, in Haiti, where a situation of political and military tension can break out at any moment,
"Considering the material, technical, tactical and fighting numerical weaknesses of the Haitian armed forces, that lack a navy, air force and artillery,
"The Haitian and U.S. Governments propose that, in the event of a true guerrilla front emerging in Haiti, the Dominican Government and armed forces are to intervene directly in Haiti and become the main force fighting against the Haitian
JEAN-CLAUDE DUVALIER
Using Army of Dominican Republic Using Army of Dominican Republic
Washington Lays Plans for for many years before 1964, and includes employers and other well-known figures. Such a fusion would mean the liquidation of an independent working-class formation inside a multi-class populist movement.