MEXICAN COMMUNIST GROUP ANALYZES BRAZILIAN DEFEAT
[The overthr ow of the Goulart government in Brazil by a group of ultrareactionary conspirators is now being analyzed and discussed among vanguard. currents in Latin America in order to draw the appropriate lessons,’ The following article represents the views of the 'Erente Obrero Comunista de Mexico" (Communist Workers Front of Mexico), 'pyro=Chinese" grouping. The article is an extract from alengthy polemic entitled "Fracasos y Mentiras de los Revisionistas" (Failures and Lies of the Revisionists) which appeared in the March- April issue of the Front!s publication La Verdad Obrera (Workers! Truth), The emphasis appears in the original,
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on March 26, in a document published in the daily “Novos ~ Rumos," the Brazilian Communist party (nucleus that follows the revisionist policy), defined its position in the national political | situation in Brazil with an ecstatic report of a mass meeting held in Rio de Janeiro on March 13, According to the BCP in "Novos Rumos," the meeting "constituted an event marking a new stage in the ‘struggle against imperialism for the political and economic emancipation of the country." As we know, this meeting was organized and convoked by the president of Brazil Joao Goulart and it was he who spoke there with timid phrases, reflecting his vacillating policies, The . document of the BCP in "Novos Rumos" states that "For the Communists, support of the president and the battle which he is opening up to _ reform the structures of the country constitutes the first obligation."
Hardly two- weeks passed and the EVENTS discredited the posi-~ tion of the revisionists, Goulart abandoned the struggle and went abroad without fighting, revealing himself to be unarmed in face of the police and military forces before whom he surrendered without... trying to pursue "the battle which he was opening." The revisionists of Brazil had. to change their position quickly!
-But it is interesting to observe the posture which they had adopted, In reality all Communists know ‘that the first obligation of a Communist is to struggle for the interests of the working class. and the people, through whatever forms may be necessary, organizing and strengthening the leading vanguard of -this struggle: the. Party of the working class, It is clear that. Goulart and his vacillating
government did NOT represent the interests of the working class of Brazil nor the Brazilian people. Goulart represented one of the ruling factions in Brazil which, terrified at the perspective of a revolutionary explosion of the pauperized masses, sought to direct this struggle through small concessions, concessions that had as their ultimate aim the maintenance of bourgeois rule. In Mexico, in the era of the 1929-33 world crisis and the one that followed it (1935-39), which in Mexico signified greater deepening of the crisis, an increase in strikes and the peasant struggle, we had demagogic presidents of the Republic who by means “of ultrarevolutionary phraseology and concessions on paper.and some genuine concessions which were torn from them by the mass struggle, slowed down the revolution-~ ary rise of the masses, diverted them from their essential objectives; and, drawing on the support of the group of adventurers in Mexico who called themselves "left" and "Communist," confused and paralyzed the people's struggle until they succeeded in defeating it and maintaining in-power the bureaucratic bourgeoisie in the service of imperialism. In that epoch what remains clear is the BETRAYAL committed by the fake "Communists" and "leftists" led essentially by the old government agent Lombardo Toledano and his impotent followers Laborde and Campa. It is clear that these people, the latter being reformists and opportunists and the.formor on the government payroll, made a mockery of the "Popular Front" line, and, submitting to the class” enemy, failed to organize the Party. They subjected it to’the bour-~ geois-burcaucratic state, transforming themselves, in short, into simple harmless assistants of the bourgcoisic, The slogan of these traitors was clear: "The first obligation of the 'Communists! (and ‘leftists! ) Was vo support the president in his struggle to reform the structures, They no longer carried out a class policy, but a policy of seo ine the burcaucratic bourgeoisic in the service of ~—
imperialism, Once the mass struggle was: diverted, confused and paralyzed, the end result was that the bureaucratic bourgeoisic stayed in power and again induced docility and conformism among the masses,
The. position of the present leaders of the BCP is analogous (excepting the differences), They have not carricd out an independent policy that takes into considcration, from the point of view of the workers! struggle and the toiling masscs, their own and antagon= istic class forces, the correct characteriza tion of the social.rcgime in Brazil and the burcaucratic bourgeois government, the almost total domination of Brazil's industry, commorce and finance by the ‘North Amcrican monopolics, The Brazilian revisionists have forgotten that the bourgeois state that cxists thore, submissive to impcrialism,. is © dominated by a weighty counterrevolutionary bureaucracy, by bourgcois courts and by POLICE AND MILITARY FORCES that guarantee the landlords and the burcaucratic and intermediate bourgeoisie ruling the country for their own profit and that of their imperialist mastors. The misery and desperation of the masscs compels the rulers of Brazil to carry on verbal demagogy and to attcmpt some timid modifications in the country's cconomy, but the ruling classes are by no moans ready to risk thoir domination NOR PERMIT THE ORGANIZA- TION OF POPULAR FORCES capablc of guaranteeing and carrying forward
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the structural reforms which our ruling bureaucracies advocate but do not grant,
To expect that the class enemy will grant "structural reforms" is an attitude that could be characterized as idiotic and infantile if it were not, as it is, an attitude of betrayal of the working class and the popular masses, committed by those who call themselves "Communists," ;
We genuine Communists must understand that only by eliminating the bourgeois-imperialist, landlord state and the capitalist bureaucracy that makes it up, replacing it by a democratic people's state that enjoys the support of the worker and peasant masses, the support of the petty bourgeoisie and a possible sector of the Npatriotici bourgeoisie -- a state set up by the influence of the ORGANIZED workers and with the support of its own forces -- would it be possible to carry out "structural reforms." To imagine anything else is adventurism, means evading the central problem and confusing and diverting the workers towards positions of opportunism and toward bourgeois policies contrary to the proletariat and the national interests,
The "first obligation" of Communists is to specify the interests of our class and its allies, adopt our own independent policy and organize the class and the masses INDEPENDENTLY, preparing them to struggle IN ALL ARENAS for the essential clags and national objec= tives in the anti-imperialist struggle.
We Communists must recognize that the bourgeois state is based on the bureaucracy, the courts and the physical police and military forces and that only by creating our own force capable of defeating the class enemy can we carry forward the revolution to the benefit of the great masses of the people.
The revisionists have confused bourgeois democracy and its bourgeois power with popular democracy and popular power. And this confusion has grown into an enormity with the dogma of the revisionist and counterrevolutionary. thesis that socialism can always be won through a "peaceful transition," that a proletarian party is not necessary for this transition and that all that is necessary is for the bourgeoisie in power to voluntarily give up its power little by little, making "structural reforms." From this limping, antiproletarian position they draw the slogan of "supporting" the bourgeois | "presidents" of the bureaucratic oligarchy, in whose hands they place the historic future of their peoples and of the working class,.
That!s how far the revisionism goes of the old leaders of the BCP Like Luis Carlos Prestes!