The earth moves!

Image: Lara Mantoanelli
Whatsapp
Facebook
Twitter
Instagram
Telegram

By DAVID MACIEL*

In Brazil, unlike what happens in the world, the left of order is betting all its chips on the institutional struggle and the electoral dispute, rather than on the mass struggle.

From the North to the South of the world, the social and political crisis deepens, motivated by the growing inability of capital, revealed daily, to guarantee its valorization without attacking rights, deepening social inequality and environmental destruction and hardening the forms of social and political control. From one corner to another, the crisis manifests itself in the intensification of the class struggle and in the emptying of political centrism, in favor of the fascist right-wing or the anti-neoliberal and even anti-capitalist popular rebellion.

In two countries considered paradigms of the so-called “Western democracy”, France and the USA, military personnel break with their traditional “professionalism” and openly demonstrate against established governments, threatening the constitutional order and voicing the mantras of the extreme right. In France, active duty military reverberate the Islamophobia of Le Pen and the front nation, threatening Macron with the risk of a “civil war”, while in the US generals and admirals “in pajamas” repeat the Trumpist discourse that Biden not only lacks the physical and mental conditions to govern, but also came to power through a electoral fraud and wants to institute “socialism” with its neo-Keynesian economic program.

On the periphery, where the bourgeois autocracy reigns and takes shape around the world, Israel and Colombia are the most recent cases of extreme state violence against civil populations, popular movements and organizations. In Israel, the Zionist government of Netanyahu radicalizes its terrorist content by accelerating ethnic cleansing in East Jerusalem through the forced eviction of Arab homes and commercial establishments – with the legal legitimacy of the Supreme Court and with attacks and lynchings promoted by mobs. of Zionist Jews – to then launch a new military offensive against the Palestinians with purely electoral purposes. At stake is the future of the prime minister, because, in case of defeat in the next election, he will have to face serious accusations of corruption against him in the courts. In Colombia, on behalf of the interests of the Uribist coalition (agrarian oligarchies, bankers, drug trafficking from there and elsewhere, US imperialism), the government of Ivan Duque mobilizes the Armed Forces, police, paramilitary groups and the narco-militias to face yet another uprising of the Colombian masses with arrests, torture, rapes, murders and the disappearance of demonstrators and activists.

However, the earth moves! A Third Intifada is the reaction of the Palestinian people to the policy of apartheid and ethnic cleansing imposed by the Zionist government of Israel, combining large mass demonstrations, civil disobedience and street fighting with occupation troops and Zionist bandits. On another front, the bombing of Israeli territory from the Gaza Strip by Hamas and Islamic Jihad shows the vulnerability of the Israeli anti-air defense system and causes considerable material and human damage. A generalized war in the region is not ruled out, directly involving Lebanon's Hezbollah, as well as Syria and Iran and indirectly the US and Russia. Despite the enormous disparity of forces, with many more victims and material losses on the Palestinian side, the heroic resistance of the Palestinian people shows once again the historical unfeasibility of the Zionist project, despite its extremism and all the support of US imperialism.

In Latin America, the popular masses react to neoliberalism, authoritarianism and the tragic combination of socio-economic crisis and pandemic. After the popular uprisings in Argentina, Chile, Paraguay, Ecuador, Bolivia and Peru, once again the Colombian masses rise up against the neoliberal measures of a government that represents the most organized and “successful” extreme right political force in the country. Latin America, Uribismo, with connections in several countries, including Brazil, and which tries once again to throw the costs of the crisis on the backs of workers through a highly regressive tax reform. The mass uprising mobilizes young people, women, indigenous peoples, unions and parties, unifying movements and organizations of diverse origins and characteristics in a political and social front on the rise, which puts the government in check and Uribismo in crisis. At the moment, the Duque government is closer to the fall than to the closure of the regime, defended by the most radical Uribismo. This shows the strength of popular mobilization, the ineffectiveness of political repression and the possibility that the political order of the Colombian narco-state will collapse and be overcome.

The parallel with the Chilean uprising of 2019 and the Brazilian situation is inevitable. With characteristics similar to the current Colombian uprising, the Chilean masses rebelled against an extreme neoliberal government, heir and beneficiary of Pinochetism, which resorted to political violence as the main resource for resolving the crisis. After weeks of permanent mobilization of a great plurality of social actors, old and new movements and organizations, also unified against neoliberalism and bourgeois autocracy, the government was forced to accept the call for a Constituent Assembly, whose elections took place this weekend. Despite all the government's maneuvers and casuistry to prevent the electoral victory of the left against order and the new popular forces coming from the streets, and to empty the transformative content of the new charter, for which it had the support of the left of order, the elections represented a defeat for Pinochetism and for the forces that directed a “democratic transition” that preserved much of the authoritarian legality and deepened the neoliberal legacy of the Dictatorship in recent decades. Together, the parties of the socialist left, the left independents linked to new movements and organizations and the indigenous also left hold the majority of the Constituent Assembly. In turn, the right has less than a third of the seats, which prevents it from vetoing any constitutional article approved by the majority. In addition, the anti-order left won the race in elections for city halls and regions, expanding its political-institutional space. With this important political defeat of the Piñera government and Pinochetism, a new period of class struggle opens in Chile, with real possibilities for overcoming bourgeois autocracy and reversing neoliberal measures.

Now, in Brazil, the opposite path is taken, with the left of order betting all the chips on the institutional struggle and the electoral dispute, rather than on the mass struggle, thinking that this way it is possible to overthrow Bolsonaro and restore the political and economic situation. before the 2016 coup. In addition to ignoring the fact that, from the workers' point of view, the organic crisis in force in the country and the international scenario of the order of capital demand that we go far beyond the pre-2016 situation, it is not taken into account that without Popular Struggle and Mass Mobilization The threat of a Bolsonarist coup remains a possibility, while the restricted democracy and extreme neoliberalism in force today can be maintained without Bolsonaro or even with a left-wing government. If you keep this path, defeat is already given, even before the fight!

*David Maciel He is a professor at the Faculty of History at UFG. author of History, politics and revolution in Marx and Engels (Gargoyle editions).

 

See all articles by

10 MOST READ IN THE LAST 7 DAYS

See all articles by

SEARCH

Search

TOPICS

NEW PUBLICATIONS