By VALERIO ARCARY*
At both extremes are assessments that either the left has “died” or that it remains “intact”, but both, paradoxically, underestimate, for different reasons, the Bolsonaro threat.
“The biggest mistake is to rush before time and be slow before opportunity”
(Popular Arabic proverb).
There are many different positions in the debates about the future of the left. At both extremes are assessments that either the left has “died” or that it remains “intact,” but both, paradoxically, underestimate, for different reasons, the danger posed by Bolsonaro. In between, there are intermediate opinions, with greater or lesser nuances and nuances.
But there are, broadly speaking, three positions on the fate of the Brazilian left: (a) there are those parties, such as the PT and PCdoB, that bet on the Broad Front strategy, which is anchored in the tactic of uninterrupted economic growth until 2026, to guarantee the defeat of Bolsonarism, and on the validity of Lulism for an indefinite future, supported by the expectation of victory in 2026.
(b) At the opposite extreme, there are parties, such as the PSTU and the PCBR, among others, that are in the left-wing opposition to the Lula government and consider that, at the very least, a weakening of Lulaism is inexorable, and are betting on the opening of a space on the left for a dispute of mass influence around a revolutionary program.
(c) There is a third camp, which includes the PSol, but also several combative social movements and dissident leaders who assess that there is a very serious risk that the government's limits will favor an even greater strengthening of the extreme right, and they do not exclude the possibility of a historic defeat, but they believe that a reorganization depends on shifts to the left of currents that were built during the PT's cycle of hegemony.
A little historical perspective may be useful in understanding the challenges of the present. When we consider the long term, we recognize five cycles in the direction of the left in Brazil: (i) the anarcho-syndicalist cycle began in the first decades of the 1917th century, reached a peak of influence in the general strike of 1964 in São Paulo, and ended with the founding of the PCB and the tenentismo, condemning libertarian currents to marginality; (ii) the Getulist cycle began with the revolution of the XNUMXs, its influence took a leap in the XNUMXs due to the labor hegemony in the union movement, the role of Brizola and expectations in the Jango government, and ended with the historic defeat of XNUMX.
(iii) The PCB cycle began in 1945, largely due to the prestige of the USSR for its victory over Nazi-fascism, went through the difficult 1968s, when it repositioned itself in the face of Vargasism, and also ended with the coup that established the military dictatorship; (iv) the guerrilla cycle, in which the political subjects were essentially the various organizations that emerged from splits in the PCB, began with the impact of the victory of the Cuban revolution, reached its peak between 70/XNUMX, and ended with the relentless repression of the military dictatorship.
(v) The last cycle can be divided into two stages because there is a first one that begins with the workers' union rise of 1978/79 and passes through the conquest of hegemony among the workers organized by the PT and the CUT and extends until 2002, when Lula wins the presidential elections for the first time, and a second stage in which Lulism conquers hegemony among the popular masses through public policies or reforms.
There are many factors that determine such complex processes. However, they are essentially divided into objective and subjective factors. Objective factors are those imposed by the force of events that, fundamentally, are independent of the initiative of different currents of the left. Among the objective factors, two types of phenomena stand out: the oscillations of capitalism with its recurring crises and refractions in Brazil, and the victories and defeats in the class struggle at the national and international levels. However, there is a pattern. All the cycles in which a new leadership prevailed opened with a wave of mass mobilization and ended with a defeat. Waves of different dimensions, different defeats.
But always the same pattern: (a) the conditions of super-exploitation of the industrial working class, in a dependent agro-exporting country, aggravated by the pressures of the First World War, are at the root of the audience of anarchist militancy in the general strike of 1917; (b) the impact of the victory of the Russian revolution was crucial for the young PCB to conquer hegemony in the union and intellectual vanguard from the mid-twenties.
(c) The decline of the Old Republic explains the shift towards opposition of the majority of the urban middle class and its military refraction, the tenentismo, and the developments of the 1930 revolution, when the ruling class was divided to the point of a civil war against the São Paulo oligarchy for the only time in history, the lasting phenomenon of Vargas' national-developmentalist movement; (d) the democratic rise, after the defeat of Nazi-fascism in 1945, projected the PCB as a party with some mass influence around Prestes' leadership.
(e) The wave of mobilization of the middle classes and more concentrated sectors of the proletariat in 1968, in the context of an international revolutionary wave, explains the respect and even political authority gained by the organizations that decided to go into armed struggle; (f) the wave of mobilization of 1978/79 was decisive in paving the way for the construction of the PT/CUT/MST, and its place in the final phase of the struggle against the dictatorship, disputing hegemony with the MDB and Brizola in the “Diretas Já” and later in the “Fora Collor” movement of 1992; (g) the wave that began in 1999, when a hundred thousand people demonstrated against FHC, paved the way for Lula’s electoral victory in 2002.
(h) The last major wave that the country experienced was in 2013, one of the most massive, profound, and disturbing, because from then on new social movements gained a mass audience, such as the MTST's popular housing movement, which projected Boulos' leadership, the feminist, black, LGBT, environmental, and indigenous movements, but movements also emerged that led the counterrevolutionary mobilizations of millions during the institutional coup in 2016, and later Bolsonarism.
Subjective factors, that is, the qualities and limitations of organizations and leaders, also count when historical opportunities arise and we consider the challenge of conflicting cycle changes. Replacing a leader with a new one is a process of intense political struggle. But it is never all or nothing. Changes occur in a movement of denial of the previous organization, but also conservation of the best that has accumulated: (i) the class-based combativeness and audacity of the generation of anarcho-syndicalist leaders was decisive for the entry of the working class onto the scene in 1917, and was inherited by the founders of the PCB.
(ii) The tenentista courage, which had an epic moment in the Prestes Column, was a key factor in a fraction of the regional oligarchies, led by Vargas, deciding to overthrow the Old Republic, and also explains the presence of a nationalist current in the Armed Forces in the 1950s.
(iii) Getúlio's role, to the tragic point of suicide, and Brizola's boldness in 1961, using his position as governor and taking up arms to build a network to defend legality that guaranteed Jango's inauguration, were key to the national developmentalist project winning over a mass audience in a form of "populism", bourgeois leadership of popular movements, crystallized in a bureaucratic union faction, which supported itself on the social achievements of formalizing working conditions, but also explains the strength of the union movement in the XNUMXs.
(iv) The prestige of the USSR and Prestes, but also the militancy of thousands of PCB fighters explains, despite unavoidable political disasters, an authority that was maintained for two decades; (v) the selfless heroism of the armed struggle organizations defined the destiny of a generation, in which the best of the best paid with their lives for their mistakes, but left an immortal example of human greatness.
(vi) The lucidity of the PT's construction project in 1980, led by Lula's gigantic personality, explains a hegemony that has lasted four decades, but despite the limits of conciliatory governments, it also explains why only Lula could have defeated Jair Bolsonaro in 2022.
When we think about the experience of Lulaism, we can identify three stages in the long interval 2003/2024: (a) the height of influence, despite oscillations, such as the “mensalão” crisis, between 2003/2013; (b) the reversal opened by the institutional coup in 2016, and the opening of the reactionary situation, in which the entire left was isolated, and the PT and even Lula himself lost support; (c) the recovery of influence during the four years of Bolsonaro's government, and the stage opened by the Lula 3 government after the narrow electoral victory of 2002.
Three hypotheses are posed for the future. They are exploratory because the process is underway and has not yet settled. There are many undefined variables. The two most important are inseparable and take us to the heart of the enigma: whether the left will be able to defeat the extreme right and, in this process, whether or not we will witness a wave of struggle by workers and the oppressed. These are the two central questions.
What history teaches us is that there is no way to open a cycle superior to Lulaism without the defeat of Bolsonarism and without an increase in the mass struggle. If what prevails is a defeat, we will continue to see divisions, splits and dispersion on the left. And we will have a historical gap like the one after 1964, hopefully not as long. But socialists must remain confident that, sooner rather than later, the workers will rise up.
In this context, three hypotheses are possible, without any answer for now: (i) the first is to consider whether or not post-Lulism will be within the PT, probably with an even more moderate programmatic shift, and who would be the leaders of this transition; (ii) the second is to calculate whether post-Lulism will be a process of struggle, essentially, against the PT; (iii) the third is to evaluate whether the future of the left will be a process of mediation between the “old” and the “new”, to a large extent, in spite of the PT, but not necessarily denying the legacy of Lulism.
* Valerio Arcary is a retired professor of history at the IFSP. Author, among other books, of No one said it would be Easy (boitempo). [https://amzn.to/3OWSRAc]
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