By MÁRIO MAESTRI*

The submission and manipulation of the world of work

On September 7, each year, the independence of the slaveholders is celebrated, in 1822, and the ability of the ruling classes to keep the world of work and the population in subordination, never as complete as today.

On September 7, 1822, the Luso-American provinces broke with the absolutist Portuguese State, obtaining their independence, as had happened since 1810 with the Spanish-American provinces. However, unlike the latter, they did so in a unitary way. Even today, the reasons for Brazilian unitarianism haunt not only traditional historiography, with difficulty in explaining it. As in the Spanish colonies, little united the Luso-Brazilian provinces. Portuguese America had always been a mosaic of semi-autonomous regions, facing Europe and Africa, with their backs to each other. They exported their products through coastal ports and imported manufactured goods and captives. Contacts between the captaincies-provinces were fragile and there was no such thing as a national market.

Large landowners controlled regional power and lived in subordinate association with the metropolitan Portuguese ruling classes. They felt they were members of the Lusitanian empire, had regional identity ties, were unaware of feelings of 'Brazilianness', unthinkable in the absence of a national entity. Rio de Janeiro was closer to Angola than most of the rest of the colony. In the early 1820s, in the Luso-Brazilian provinces, the same centrifugal forces were at work that exploded Spanish America into a constellation of republics, despite the fact that its ruling classes had Spanish, Catholicism and Spain as their common language, religion and metropolis.

The dreamed independence of the Provinces

During the crisis of the 1820s, the regional ruling classes sought independence from Lisbon and Rio de Janeiro; nationalize Portuguese trade; resist the English abolitionism of the international traffic of enslaved workers; reign over his provinces. They were divided around monarchist and republican, federalist and separatist solutions. In the North, Northeast, Center-South and South, republicanism and separatism were strong. The dominant trend was the explosion of the Kingdom of Brazil also in a profusion of republics like Hispanic America. However, the Luso-Brazilian provinces emerged from Independence coerced by an authoritarian and centralizing monarchy, under the heel of the heir to the Lusitanian crown.

Above all, the large landowners were concerned with obtaining independence and not compromising slavery, the foundation of wealth production in all provinces. Military clashes between the provincial property classes and the Portuguese troops, in the fight for radical independence, and between the provinces, in the definition of the new borders of the different nascent nations, would weaken the submission of the captives and the maintenance of the slave trade. War would lead to the enrollment and escape of captives, as had occurred in the past. The recent victorious insurrection of the captives in Haiti terrified the slaveholders. The new Luso-Brazilian nations that abolished slavery would flog escaped captives. None of them, isolated, would resist the British abolitionism of the traffic.

Independence and a monarchical, authoritarian and centralizing State were brought about by the slave owners of the large provinces and by the powerful slave traders. Republican, liberal, separatist and provincial federalist ideas were repressed and sent to the Kalends. Brazil's independence was the most conservative in the Americas. The Brazilian lords of men and land broke with the absolutist Portuguese State and enthroned the authoritarian heir of the Lusitanian kingdom. They cut ties with the former metropolis and compromised with their mercantile interests and that of their royal house. They replaced the heel of Lisbon with that of Rio de Janeiro. They remained united to guarantee, for another six decades, the harsh exploitation of the enslaved worker. But everything is paid for in this life. Conservative, authoritarian, elitist independence birthed a semi-colonial country. The economy continued to be strongly determined by England, even though the Tupiniquim ruling classes maintained the political reins of the country, functioning as owner-factors of immense slaveholding farms, working in large part for shareholders Europeans. (MAESTRI: 2019, p. 15-34.)

No news on the front

On April 7, 1831, the authoritarian Portuguese prince was defenestrated by exalted liberals. However, power over the country slipped first to moderate liberals and later to conservatives. Initially, small federalist concessions were made, maintaining the core of centralist authoritarianism over the provinces. Across the country, provincial liberals rose up against the central power just to show their pusillanimity. They laid down their arms and submitted to centralism when poor captives and free people joined the struggle. They preferred to be rich captive slaves rather than risk themselves as leaders of free men and workers in their regions. Slavery remained untouched. The scarce regional autonomy granted would soon be confiscated by the forces that would give rise to the Conservative Party.

In 1848, in Pernambuco, the last liberal revolt took place, the Praieira, which continued without proposing the end of the slave order and the alliance with the exploited classes. The success of slave-owning coffee built the long stability of the throne of Pedro II, the last slave sovereign in the world. Abolitionism was the first national revolutionary movement that united captives, freedmen, free poor, intellectuals and even some landowners. He fought for the end of slavery and for the social and institutional modernization of the country. The abolitionist right defended a campaign that vetoed the participation of captives and obtained the abolition of serfdom in parliament. The "Stay at home" comes from afar in our history!

In a very tough fight, enslaved workers and radicalized abolitionism imposed the end of slavery, on May 13, 1888, the great date of our history. (CONRAD, 1975.) The “abolitionist revolution” put an end to centuries of hegemony of the colonial slave mode of production, unifying free and enslaved workers. (GORENDER, 2011.) Conservatism has always sought to confuse the revolutionary abolitionist movement with the signing of the Lei Áurea by the princess of the slave trade, to disqualify the only social revolution so far victorious in Brazil, mainly through the action of the enslaved classes. (GORENDER, 1990.)

Construction of Brazil as a Nation-State

With Abolition, the centralist monarchy, the eternal shield of the slave order, lost its raison d'être. The coup of November 15, 1889, supported by the Conservative Party, against the fragile liberal reformism that won the elections, imposed a landowning republic, elitist and, above all, radically federalist. The new order completely dismantled national reformist abolitionism. In the “Old Republic” (1889-1930), rural oligarchies began to reign almost sovereignly over provinces metamorphosed into states, following the super-exploitation of workers, legally free, but devoid of political and social rights and class organizations. continued the status semi-colonial nature of the country, squandered above all by English capital. The glorious republican army cried pitangas to massacre the Sertaneja Republic of Canudos, in 1896-7.

The “Revolution of 1930” boosted the metamorphosis of Brazil into a nation-state, built around the industrialist bourgeoisie emerging from the Rio de Janeiro-São Paulo axis, which explored the rest of the country in a semi-colonial way, with emphasis on the Northeast and the North. Under the Getulist bourgeois order, only the undermining of factions of urban workers was relativized, used as a support force against the rural oligarchies dispossessed of central political power, without losing their privileges. The latifundium remained intact and labor laws did not reach the rural world. The workers were kept under the restraint of bourgeois populism and the PCB's developmentalist collaborationism. After the “redemocratization” of 1945, controlled by the ruling class and imperialism, the world of work advanced as never before, without managing to overcome the populist and pecebist leaderships that delivered it with tied hands in the 1964 coup.

During the long Getulist period and after the removal of liberal-Castellism, in 1967, by military developmentalism, the semi-colonial submission of the country receded. The industrialist bourgeoisie of the Center-South had inspired and favored those two processes. When Getulism and military-dictatorial developmentalism entered into crisis, fearing the action of the workers, the national bourgeoisie refused to face imperialism, fighting to overcome the semi-colonial character of the country, above all to its advantage. In 1954, he abandoned Vargas, who preferred suicide to calling the workers; in 1964 it deserted national autonomy, preferring association with imperialism; in 1985, it opened the nation wide to the assaults of big capital and imperialism, contenting itself with the remains of the pantagruelic banquet.

The national bourgeoisie proved historically incapable of leading the overcoming of the country's semi-colonial ties, leaving the world of work to transform itself into a demiurge of national independence, already necessarily associated with social emancipation. The armed resistance to the 1964 coup turned its back on the workers, under the voluntarist leadership of the radicalized petty bourgeoisie, on the one hand, and the collaborationism of the PCB, which continued to propose an alliance with the democratic bourgeoisie that had promoted the dictatorship, on the other. The defeat was huge. The impasse was overcome with the entry of workers into the social and political arena. With the resumption of trade union action in the mid-1970s, the world of work knew perhaps the only moments in which it disputed the centrality of the country's social and political life with big capital. Movement that led to the founding of the PT, tending towards anti-capitalism, and the CUT, strongly classist, and the MST.

The relaxation of Brazil as a nation-state

The so-called democratic transition, in 1985, took place once again under the control of imperialism and the national bourgeoisie, supported by the collaborationist opposition. The political leadership that emerged from the great class mobilizations did not manage to stand up as an alternative, calling the general strike for the direct election for the presidency, a proposal that horrified the bourgeois and collaborationist opposition. The defeat of the struggle for “right elections” circumscribed a social movement stumbling block of historical magnitude. He was indirectly elected as an oligarch from Maranhão who had just abandoned the party supporting the dictatorship. The losses of the population, workers, etc., during the long dictatorial period, were maintained. The coup barracks and their criminals remained untouched, ready for a new boat when necessary. Brazil is definitely not for beginners.

With the “redemocratization” of 1985, imperialism and the national monopoly bourgeoisie began the assault on national resources and state companies built mainly during Getulism and post-1967 military authoritarian developmentalism. The internationalization, deindustrialization and denationalization of the economy and national resources, promoted by all the governments that followed 1985, from José Sarney to Dilma Rousseff, radicalized the semi-colonial character of the country, preparing its pathological overcoming in 2016. world of work was national and international. At the end of the 1980s, the world experienced the neoliberal tsunami that opened the doors to the Counter-Revolutionary Era that we still live in. Very soon, PT and CUT surrendered to the delights of the direct and indirect administration of the bourgeois State. (GONÇALVES, 2011.)

The PT metamorphosed into a social-democratic and, therefore, social-liberal organization, managing the State in favor of big capital. From a party of nucleated militancy, it became a black-cloaked apparatus. Tens of thousands of trade unionists, intellectuals, social scientists, politicians, militants plunged with singular gusto into the welcoming vortex of collaborationism, being rewarded for decades as representatives of big capital. In its fourteen years at the head of the nation, PTism has not granted even one structural concession to workers and the population: 40 hours a week of work; stability by length of service; real universalization of health and quality public education; recovery and interruption of privatizations, etc. The minimum wage continued to function as the workers' terrible drink. Also arbitrated by PTism far below its real value, he was never able to sustain a family in a minimally dignified way. What was “possible” was given, the PT rulers said, repeating the bosses’ mantra.

The PT in the federal government subscribed to perhaps the biggest withdrawal ever known by the population of the “Land of Brazil”, through usurious interest applied to credit cards, to so-called overdraft checks, to various loans, etc. It handed over a growing and substantial part of workers' retirement to bankers and smart guys, with payroll deduction through the damn payroll loan. in your Memoirs, Zé Dirceu cynically proposed the “banking of tens of millions of Brazilians” as a great work of PTism. (DIRCEU: 2018, p. 364.) Euphoric with its work, PTism rhetorically put an end to the working class in Brazil, announcing that everyone was now middle class! Proposal for the emancipation of the Brazilian world of work that went around the world. (MAESTRI: 2019, p. 79-277.)

2016: Brazil's globalized neo-colonial reversal

The 2016 coup was not against the PT and, much less, against Dilma Rousseff, who was willing and began mercilessly sucking the marrow from the bones of workers and the population to remain attached to the government. Long ago, the world and capital radicalized their demands and needs. US imperialism, in relative regression and harassed by Chinese imperialism, needs to subject its periphery to the situation of new colonies in the Era of Globalization. We define this process, in terms of our country, as a transition from status semi-colonial to “globalized neo-colonial”, in Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Brazil: 1530-2019. (MAESTRI: 2019, p. 331.) In other words, a country that produces grains, energy, minerals, meat and low-tech industrialized products. A nation that no longer controls its great political and economic decisions, taken abroad, as before 1822.

The disorganization and weakening of the social and trade union movement and, above all, the deboning of the national economy and society had prepared the imperialist boat, which was victorious, without any real opposition, neither before, nor during, nor after its conclusion. PT, Lula, CUT and their gangs made an effort to keep the population off the streets, without confronting the coup d'état. Dilma Rousseff presented herself, of her own free will, shamelessly, to the Senate, in August 2016, to defend herself, legalizing the farce set up by the coup inquisitorial court. When the population began to show a willingness to fight the coup and the Temer government in the streets, collaborationism, with the PT and Lula da Silva at the head, sent everyone home to prepare for the 2018 elections, presented as the path of release. The following year, the Pandemic facilitated and enshrined the “Stay at home! Save lives”, while the workers, the population and the country were devastated. (MAESTRI: 2020.)

The coup was literally delivered by those whom the PT had served in the government. In the end, there was no contradiction with the proposed remedy, but above all with the single dose for mastodon that the coup d'état proposed to apply. The coup demanded a leap in quality that even PT collaborationism could grant or practice. And it was only possible with the general and historic defeat of the world of work and the population. Conforming to reality, petism, appendices and the like were concerned with maintaining themselves as the consented opposition of the new order, something like a neo-MDB, the consented opposition of the 1964 dictatorship. Above all, there was no need to break the umbilical ties with the State, in profound metamorphosis. A break that could endanger the perks that continued to be maintained in the increasingly formal administration of the State, through governors, senators, deputies, councilors et caterva, equally uninterested in effectively combating the ongoing destruction of the country.

Don't touch Lava Jato!

While the coup d'état advanced, a huge part of the left that considered itself radical also refused to fight against it, under the most diverse excuses: not to “support” the PT government; why the coup was a farce, as proposed by Jones Manoel, among others. On April 2, 2016, a few weeks before the coup victory, the youtuber posted on Facebook: “No, we do not provide any support to the PT Government and we did not enter into the hysteria of the coup.” (MAESTRI: 2021.) Even more, it participated in direct support for the coup, as in the case of defending Moro's glorious fight against corruption and for the destruction of Brazilian monopoly capital, in which Luciana Genro, from MES-PSOL, became famous. (GENRO, 2017.) With the coup consolidated, those sectors joined the electoral hoopla, seeking to elect councilors, deputies, etc., especially identity, equally of no use, but remunerated in princely fashion. Choosing is necessary, fighting is not necessary.

PT, PCdoB, PSOL participated in the 2018 electoral farce and recognized the legitimacy of the illegitimate elected. The great apparent paradox is that the election of Chupacabras was functional to oppositional collaborationism, from the right, center and left. With him, it became easier to propose an “anti-Bolsonaro” alliance, with the so-called “Patriotic Front”, “Anti-fascist”, “Broad”, etc., true “House of Irene”, with the worst executioners and exploiters of the world of work, the population and the country. All in order to defeat the fascist threat that proposed to be lurking around the corner. To secure the non-existent danger of a future coup, when the coup had already been struck and was still advancing, courses were organized, books were written, thousands of lives about fascism. The “March on Brasília” of Tupiniquim fascism, it was said, would be supported by military and civil police, militiamen, evangelicals, firefighters, corporals and sergeants of the armed forces, in various Bolsonaristas.

And that's how the country plunged into silence about the structural action of the coup, its responsible and real executors; its living movement of metamorphosis and structural destruction of national society. And above all, the need to fight it to the death was completely obliterated, to the point of eradicating it by the roots, like a weed and poisonous. The enemy was the Chupacabras, who completely lost their nature as a simple “second coup president”, after Michel Temer, who would give way to the “third” — himself, if re-elected, today a more than unlikely reality. A pact was established with the coup d'état of the right-wing collaborationist opposition, which, as always, dragged its left with it. The coup work is accepted, what was done and will still be done, until the elections and after them, in the context of even farcical institutionalization that guarantees that collaborationists of all flavors continue to participate in the management of the State.

balloon deflating

Bolsonaro was another exotic phenomenon of national political rightism, which occasionally reaches mass electoral drag, as in the classic cases of Jânio Quadros and Color de Mello, without controlling circumstantial voters, to whom it has nothing to offer. In the singularity of the current Brazilian conjuncture, he provided and continues to cover the advance of the coup structural program, always under the eminent suzerainty of the high command of the armed forces, national manager of the coup, at the orders of imperialism and big capital. In the midst of the terrible crisis that is sweeping the country, Bolsonaro has been losing support like a deflating balloon, remaining in government mainly due to the refusal of collaborationism to mobilize the population in the streets, factories, schools, in the countryside and in the city, for the end of his government and the coup. Coup-mongers and collaborationists converge on the fear of workers and the marching population. (MAESTRI: 2019, 393 et ​​seq.)

Collaborationism bets on all horses, certain of victory. He knows that, in the worst case scenario, there is room for him, more or less, in the new order, as long as he accepts to remain indifferent and contribute to the reduction of the Brazilian population and nation to the new globalized colonial order. But there is not, in this action, any kind of betrayal to workers and the population. In addition to individual options, in a broad sociological sense, this socio-political action is not due to a lack of courage, social awareness, commitment to national autonomy by collaborationist leaders of all flavors. In its general behavior, the central core of collaborationism is determined by the nature of the social block in which it is based and represents — above all, peripheral factions and dependent on the world of capital. Unlike workers, this is a social bloc that has —or thinks it has— much or something to lose.

The march on Brasilia

On October 28, 1922, the march of the Black Shirts on Rome was a movement to obtain the handover of the government —and not yet of power— to Benito Mussolini, under the approval and with the financing of Italian monopoly capital and the large landowners. The future Duce was ready to escape from Beautiful country if King Victor Emmanuel III put his army in the streets. (MAESTRI: 2020, p. 223 et seq. II) A little less than a hundred years later, Jair Bolsonaro announced his March on Brasília, for the 7th of September, Independence Day. Unlike the former left-wing Italian socialist, Bolsonaro, he did not even have the strength to found a party, he did not have the support of imperialism and any business faction, nor the license of the high command of the armed forces. He desperately tried a political bluff, not to get hold of the chips in play, but just to continue in the game, with bad checks as a back-up. Bolsonaro’s farcical coup, on September 7, also had its propaganda war cry, just like Pedro de Alcântara’s “Independence or death” in 1822. Produced by his clumsy marketers, his “Prison, death or victory” , broken foot rhyme, died in the egg shell.

The grotesque farce did not give rise to a great national laugh, nor a massive popular mobilization that began the end of a staggering government, in a serious abstinence crisis. On the contrary, it gave rise to some of the most impudent moments of collaborationist oppositionism, which behaved like a silly cockroach after snorting Detefon. In lists, publications and lives, the coup was debated endlessly, for many, not only possible and likely, but almost certain, to be given supported by military and civil police, militiamen, evangelicals, firefighters, corporals and sergeants of the armed forces, varied Bolsonarians. And, above all, those who expected the imminent assault of power on Independence Day, never put on the agenda how to face it: occupy the streets, schools, universities, factories; block roads and streets; prepare general strike; add available slingshots and so on.

The general slogan of the fake oppositionists, who believed a lot, little or nothing in the coup's bluff, was not to prepare for a general and hard popular and democratic response across the country. It was, above all, not “provoking” the “fascists”; “give up the streets”; “postpone” or “suspend” demonstrations; promoting “panelaço” … where there were no Bolsonarist neighbors, of course; write manifestos and similar acts. As always, Freixo, the Frouxo, like so many other leaders of equal skin, proposed leaving the 7th of September to the coup leaders. Above all, one should trust the STF, Alexandre de Moraes, Luis Roberto Barroso, Mourão, the healthy band of the armed forces, the president of Congress and the Senate, the OAB, the CNBB. Light a candle for some popular saint. It was necessary to extend and consolidate the alliance with the scum of national politics in the past and now — Ciro, FHC, Color, Sarney, Dória, Rodrigo Maia, the MBL, Vem Pra Rua, and all the monstrous coup-mongers, including Temer, if he accepted!

national embarrassment

And the dawn of the 7th of September dawned across the Beloved and Idolized Fatherland. Despite the hefty expenses spent on preparation, the act in Brasília was a shameful mess and the one on Avenida Paulista was good for an election campaign. The one in Rio de Janeiro, not even for that. The rest of the country just mixed it up. The overwhelming tide, the green-yellow-gray wave sweeping Brazil, from East to West, from Oiapoque to Chuí, revealed itself to be a small wave. The naked king, who thought he was riding a terrible dragon spouting fire, got off his old and battered mule and, not having anything to say, aphonically threatened to convene the non-deliberative Council of the Republic, which he withdrew very soon, noting that he would not have quorum. And, frightened by his coup bravado, he lowered his crest and went to ask Temer to write him a shameful apology note to Alexandre de Morais and the STF, two days after the proposal for the inexorable March on the nebulous right-wing Pasargadae.

General Heleno came out in defense of Myth, recognizing that the “facts” had left “many (Bolsonaristas) discouraged”. But, he clarified, it was a victory for Bolsonaro not to have carried out the “coup”, as promised by the “left”. General Luiz Eduardo Ramos, another olive green star encrusted government, proposed simply that Bolsonaro's move was misunderstood, that he is a democrat. It is still difficult to assess the damage among the already reduced ranks of root Bolsonarists that occurred in Brasília and São Paulo, not infrequently putting their hand deep in their pockets. Instead of the apotheosis of the extreme right, they witnessed the Führer of the crack popping childish clicks, only to apologize afterwards in embarrassment for the festive noise.

But the collaborationist leadership had disciplined its role. The opposition mobilizations on the 7th of September, called and promoted by few, with the courage that many lacked, were even more disparate, as they could not be otherwise. There was a greater effort for demobilization than for mobilization. The summons by PT, PSOL, PCdoB, CUT, UNE, etc., was, more commonly, mumbled, for no one to hear. Lula da Silva did not attend the event. The damage has not come back. If the popular mobilizations had doubled or tripled the calls for the “carochinha” coup, the Bolsonarian defeat would have been even more resounding. However, above all, there was no need to show that the path to victory for the population and the world of work, against Bolsonaro and the 2016 coup, is found in the streets, through relentless struggle. The road to Nirvana for the collaborationist opposition has always been traced in the stars—the 2022 elections, with Lula da Silva victorious or not.

When manna rained from heaven

Lula da Silva's speech for September 7 endorsed the collaborationist commitment to the legitimation of the coup d'état. He promised a return to the wonderful times of his government, when, according to him and the PT narrative, manna fell from the heavens to the disinherited and offended. A return to the Brazilian paradise to be achieved through huge public investments, with money that no longer exists, and which, if there were, would once again water the garden of large private capital — “If there is one thing that no Brazilian businessman can complain about ( …) is that so much money has never been made as in my government”. (May, 2009.) Not a word calling the population to mobilize in the streets on September 7th. Not even a reference to the ongoing coup d'état and the necessary reversal of its work of social and national destruction. According to Lula da Silva, the current situation in the country is essentially due to errors of the current government and lack of public investment!

On the 7th of September, the impossible coup was never attempted and the limited objective of the movement failed. Despite making use of what was left of his savings, Bolsonarism failed to show the mobilization force (which it does not have) capable of reversing its political and electoral erosion and interrupting the processes that threaten its children and the second president of the coup. The Bolsonarist “dream of consumption” was that the right-wing demonstration was so strong that it put Mito back in the presidential race. Bolsonaro no longer fears “death” and no longer believes in “victory”. Above all, he fears ending up in “prison”, with his offspring. And, as always, in the days following the 7th of September, everything continued as before, in the sad barracks of Abrantes that became our country. And those successes are hardly talked about anymore.

Now, the scam makes its assessment. Certainly, the chances of Bolsonaro not participating in the 2022 elections have certainly increased even more, since he could hinder an eventual coup candidate, less clumsy, who faces the possibility of winning Lula da Silva. Absence that frightens PTism and collaborationism. The former metallurgist appears today, especially with Bolsonaro in the running, as the favorite candidate for the third government of the coup d'état, of the now minority nation. Lula da Silva is not the coup candidate, who has him as a joker up his sleeve, in case the carousel goes awry. If in 2022 Lula da Silva loses, he will lose in clean elections. If he wins, he will only do what is “possible”, it will be another “disputed government”, with a necessarily spurious support base. It will promote, as it has already done, the total pardon of the generals, hoping that it will be pardoned by them... The institutions born of the coup d'état and the looting of the workers, the population and the nation will be legitimized, as was done in relation to the privatizations of the FHC government. And the PT will rise from the ashes with past vigour, and that is what collaborationism is all about. The victory of the collaborationist opposition in Argentina is already showing that it may be the best shortcut for the right's quick return with broad popular support.

Long and difficult path

Barring an accident along the way, the cards are set for yet another general roll-up of the working and popular classes in 2022. Like 1822, 1831, 1889, 1930, 1945, 1954, 1961, 1985 and so on. In diversity, there is a profound unity of essence in the political and social history of Brazil, from the so-called Discovery until today. Throughout the transition, the lords of wealth and power rebalance themselves, reorganize themselves and always seize power, without interrupting the ruthless exploitation of subordinated classes. With the eternal support of those who claim to fight them. Currently, again, only the rapid disorganization of Brazil as a Nation-State, now engulfing itself in dark seas never before navigated, a trajectory that promises a future of horror for the country. With inevitable consequences for Latin America and the world, due to the importance of the continent-country.

Never before have workers and popular classes been so fragile in Brazil. Its resumption, if it takes place, will be long and difficult, since it is, in large part, a structural, political, ideological and organizational recovery. To this end, it is necessary to refound objection established and directed by the world of work, in addition to propagandist and avant-garde rhetorical proposals. It is about founding a new referential bloc that rejects any alliance that does not guarantee real progress for the oppressed in search of the construction of the conquest of the political and social centrality of the world of work. Movement that recognizes that the collaborationist opposition, from the right, from the center and from the left, is part and support of the world of capital. Therefore, part of the problem, and not of its solution, beyond the possible good intentions of some of its directors and countless of its members, all distrusting and increasingly denying the workers.

Above all, there is a need for a close discussion on how to face the coming months, with the growing exacerbation of demagoguery and electoral illusions, built mainly around the candidacy of the former union leader. From Lula da Silva and the PT as battering rams of the Pluriclassist Front that will guarantee, once again, the smooth continuation of the merciless exploitation of the subordinated. Discussion that establishes as a particular and general objective the advancement of the class movement, in the here and now, and in the post-2022 period. And that, to this end, include the discussion on the unavoidable refusal to vote, in the first and second rounds, of a candidate who does not have as the organizing center of his program the intransigent fight against the coup, his work, his national and international managers.

* Mario Maestri is a historian. Author, among other books, of Revolution and counter-revolution in Brazil: 1500-2019 (FCM Publisher).

References

CONRAD, Robert. The last years of slavery in Brazill. (1885-1888). Rio de Janeiro: Brasilia, INL, 1975.

DIRCEU, Joseph. Zé Dirceu: memoirs. Sao Paulo: Generation, 2018.

GENRO, Luciana. Time to defend Lava Jato. ZH, 24/01/2017; Leftist who fights Lava Jato joined the system in exchange for crumbs, Viramundo, 22/04/2017. https://www.viomundo.com.br/politica/luciana-genro-esquerda-que-combate-a-lava-jato-aderiu-ao-sistema-em-troca-de-migalhas.html

GONÇALVES, Reinaldo. National-developmentalism in reverse. IPEA CODE 2011, https://www.ipea.gov.br/code2011/chamada2011/pdf/area4/area4-artigo19.pdf

GORENDER. Slavery rehabilitated. Sao Paulo: Attica, 1990.

GORENDER, Colonial Slavery. 5 ed. São Paulo: Perseu Abramo, 2011.

MAESTRI, Mario. Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Brazil: 1530-2019. 2 ed. Enlarged. Porto Alegre: FCM Editora, 2019. https://clubedeautores.com.br/livro/revolucao-e-contra-revolucao-no-brasil

MAESTRI, Mario. Antonio Gramsci: life and work of a revolutionary communist. 3 ed. Porto Alegre: FCM, 2020. II

MAESTRI, Mario. The Strike Follows. The left completely yellowed and went to take care of the elections! July 20, 2020. Counterpower. https://maestri1789.wixsite.com/mariomaestri/post/o-golpe-segue-a-esquerda-amarelou-total-e-foi-cuidar-das-eleições

MAESTRI, Mario. Why doesn't Jones Manoel love Losurdo anymore? June 4, 2021. Counterpower. https://contrapoder.net/colunas/por-que-jones-manoel-nao-ama-mais-losurdo/