By LUIZ MARQUES*
There is a lack of communication between the conceptual apparatus of the left and the daily lives of people who are sensitive to social issues. The political circuit that was interrupted for forty years ago needs to be restored, urgently and methodically.
In September of this year, the publisher Boitempo launched a book by João Quartim de Moraes — Lenin: An Introduction. The publication, on the eve of an election dominated by municipal issues, proposes a reflection on Vladimir Ilyich Ulianov (1870-1924), the leader of the first socialist revolution in the world. In the introduction, Juliane Furno highlights that the initiative aims to provide “contact with the life and work of the great Bolshevik revolutionary”, hoping “that his ideas and practices give life and new energy to those who dare to subvert the order”. Something crucial in a time of consolidated neoliberalism and the threat of fascism to democracy.
Exogenous variables are raised by progressive parties to explain and mitigate negative results in the electoral contest. It is customary to disregard endogenous conditions — to highlight: (a) the million-dollar parliamentary amendments that, in themselves, encourage the political continuity of backwardness; (b) the exorbitant cost of the campaign, in the same proportion that it reduces the time of exposure in political radio and television broadcasts, with the evident intention of harming popular forces.
(c) The difficulty of candidates identified with the protest movements (MTST, Human Rights) in expanding the range of dialogue with voters, given the rejection rates; (d) the contradictions of parties with a center-left tradition, such as the PDT/CE, which, with the intensification of the class struggle, tear up the program and quickly move to the extreme right.
These elements help to create the political mosaic in each region. However, we cannot forget the factors that involve the relationship between the contemporary left and peripheral communities, which are expanding due to the still hegemonic economic policy. Consider the crisis in the relations between capital and labor, deindustrialization, premeditated unemployment, outsourcing, and precariousness. Today, it is impossible to think of a transformation project without prioritizing policies that directly engage with the demands of undervalued social segments, whose food insecurity (hunger) is a permanent obstacle to their own social reproduction. The system grinds down bodies, souls, and hopes.
The Vatican’s turnaround in the 1980s, under Pope John Paul II and the Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Cardinal Joseph Aloisius Ratzinger, triggered an attack on the pastoral activities of the Basic Ecclesial Communities (CEBs), of Liberation Theology, which has been persecuted ever since. The heretical emulators of the Church of Christ’s approach to the poor, in the slums and neighborhoods abandoned by progress, were thrown into the inquisitional bonfire. The “obedient silence” imposed on Friar Leonardo Boff is the symbol of the battle, which was lost. As a result, institutional spaces were closed and support for the innovative and courageous branch of Catholicism was suspended.
The presence of transformative agents in the unofficial environments of the metropolises is blocked, and the entry of evangelical charismatics and their temples is facilitated by legislation. This is the legacy of the anti-communist Polish Pope. bunker The idea of protecting against the advance of the outskirts strengthens the purpose of individual emancipation; it is indifferent to the fight against oppression and exploitation of the community. This is treated as a hiding place for the “dangerous classes”, made up of vagabonds, bandits and accomplices, in the view of the Special Operations Battalion (BOPE), of the Military Police. With a few exceptions, the pastors share the same vision regarding everyone “who does not accept God”.
Without open channels to sublimate the efforts to raise awareness and engage the people in a collective project, the PT is pushed towards institutionality. The vice of bureaucratization — the historical evil of political organization, pointed out in a classic study — sabotages internal bodies and violates the statutes. It is no surprise that parliamentarians create autonomous activist groups in the face of party life. In the political representation as a whole, the critique of neoliberal capitalism tends to conciliate with political thinking disconnected from the economy. The process of de-unionization reduces the positive influence of labor leaders on events in the party and in civil society.
The left and the peripheries
João Quartim de Moraes revisits the controversies of the Second Congress of the Russian Social Democratic Workers' Party (RSDLP), founded in 1898 under Tsarist repression. The author evokes the What to do (1902) and quotes One step forward, two steps back (1904), the Leninist duo of theoretical elaborations on the revolutionary organization of workers — still relevant for going forward.
As Lenin wrote with conviction: “The proletariat, in its struggle for power, has no other weapon than organization. Divided by the anarchic competition that reigns in the bourgeois world, thrown into the abyss of misery, brutalization and degeneration, the proletariat can and will become an invincible force only when its ideological unity based on Marxist principles is cemented by the unity of the organization, which unites millions of workers.”
The language used to describe the concept of the working class and the notion of the revolutionary subject of anti-systemic transformations have undergone adjustments over the last century. They now encompass new social sectors — feminists, anti-racists, and environmentalists. The essentials remain the same. The issue of organization remains relevant. Parties seeking to promote sociability free from injustice in a democratic regime must take on the organizational task and empathize with those who are offended and humiliated in order to build freedom (private and public) and equality (of opportunities and results). To a large extent, votes are merely an extension of the sweat expended in preparing for the clashes.
Sociologist Tiaraju D'Andreas, coordinator of the Center for Peripheral Studies, linked to the east side campus of Unifesp, disputes the finalism that is occasionally thrown at utopia. “What we call the left is a part of the population that believes in social justice. Many people in the outskirts are left-wing, fighting for the world to be this way. This includes the popular housing movement, the cultural collective, the health movement, the struggles for education and unionized workers. The overcoming of the moment we are living in will come from the population living in the outskirts, who think progressively, who do not want to see the wheel of history turn back.” The river flows to the sea.
However, there is a lack of communication between the conceptual apparatus of the left and the daily lives of people who are sensitive to social issues. The political circuit that was interrupted for forty years ago needs to be restored, urgently and methodically. We cannot expect a gift from Pope Francis, who acts more by example than through ecclesiastical structures, which are heavy as anchors and have an age-old conservative bias. Progressive parties and their federations need to activate their imagination.
To consider that the crossroads boils down to the choice between the path of pragmatism towards the political center (liberal); or the virtuous return to the roots with class independence without alliances is to simplify the decision and the challenge. First, it is not clear what is “pragmatic” in the organic association with currents limited to the paradigm of the democratic rule of law, which do not question the civilizational regression of the Washington Consensus. Second, it is not clear what is “virtue” in ignoring the institutional dimension of the daily struggles for structural reforms; as if history had retired the parties in the name of movementism. Slow down with the stretcher.
As in Praise of doubt, by Bertolt Brecht: “The most beautiful of all doubts / Is when the weakened, discouraged, raise their heads and / Stop believing / In the strength of their oppressors!” The balance of the elections, in addition to the positivist photograph of reality, needs to be guided by the dialectic of normative values. At the polls and in the streets, among the factors that inhibit change are two major weaknesses: party organization and interaction with resilient peripheral communities.
* Luiz Marques is a professor of political science at UFRGS. He was Rio Grande do Sul's state secretary of culture in the Olívio Dutra government.
Reference
João Quartim de Moraes. Lenin: An Introduction. Boitempo Publishing House, 2024, 143 pages. [https://amzn.to/40lkMQr]
the earth is round there is thanks to our readers and supporters.
Help us keep this idea going.
CONTRIBUTE
