By ADEMAR BOGO*
The “Democratic State of Law” that interests workers does not have a “State”, therefore, the strategic historical invitation is to leave and not want to go back inside it
It is individual and collective nature, in times of trouble or despair, to remember the past in order to, in self-defense, do what one has known how to do. When this return occurs in politics, urgencies and disturbances prevent ideas from answering the question: why, at certain times, do threats from opposing forces swell and put other opposing forces on the defensive? Certainly because, the movement of the struggle of the opposites does not cease and, the new belonging to the revolutionary or progressive movement, by the inversion of the order, is transferred to the opposite side that takes the initiative of making the order a total disorder, annihilating its own powers.
The tendency towards the longed-for return, after advancing and exhausting one's energies, whether in economics, administration, politics or other areas, is similar in every way. Sigmund Freud, when talking about “Development and regression”, in his XXII lecture (1924), showed us, in the psychic aspect, that in the individual biological process not all the previous phases are surpassed without leaving some trace residues of “fixations”; but, as life goes on, later on, when the subject encounters certain obstacles, he tends to “regress”. Freud's own example best illustrates this idea. “Consider that, if a migrating people left behind them strong detachments at the stopping places of their movement, it is likely that these more advanced echelons will tend to withdraw to these stopping places when they are defeated or when they encounter an enemy. higher".
If psychically the neurotic returns to the fixation points where the wounds causing his disorders are located, it is because there he finds some reference to the debt contracted with himself and, apparently, it is more comfortable to stay in the past than to face the future. In politics, the reaction of going back to the past and using the old answers to the new questions, imitates this avoidance of not facing obstacles, as if the electoral victory would make the armed militias disappear.
The surprise in all of this is that, if the political party as a collective subject has not been able to prepare its own energies to overcome obstacles, it will also not serve as a vehicle to transport back the forces that accompanied it. The return of the same occurs in the dispersion, resembling the subject who revisits his psychic disorders. As individually, collectively we also create “political neuroses”. We understand that, if political theory, when encountering obstacles, is unable to overcome them, the reflexes of regression will immediately fall on practice and, the party form itself comes to equate itself to the upset individual and, not having clarity of what to do, clings to the infamous “Democratic State of Law” created by the
In recent decades, after experiencing some advances, progressive forces in the face of the current macabre obstacles tend to return to the use of conformist, respectful and appropriate tactics and to the infamous "Democratic State of Law" created by the rising bourgeois class at the end of the XNUMXth century .
This class supplanted the absolutist “State of Law” and organized the three powers: Executive, Legislative and Judiciary, charged by the capitalist State with ensuring the observance of order. It is to this safe haven of "fixation", of the state superstructure, ideologized by liberal democracy, that the progressive forces, after having suffered so much, lost so much, died so much, want to return, precisely because the obstacles imposed by "political banditry", of difficult confrontation with the partisan form that learned to make concession politics. We fear the threat of weapons, not only because they are on the verge of causing disorder in the “Democratic State of Law”, but because, for decades, many left-wing discourses have condemned armed struggle and, for the new generations, it has gone beyond tactical alternatives. And, to face, as now, institutionalized militia banditry, we learn to use the vote, while they, on the verge of acting against the people, use the jargon that “The armed people will never be dominated”
Therefore, the same materialism that recounts History also shows the open wounds in the collective political conscience. On the razor's edge of that same History, we find the propagated hair of the "Democratic State of Law" that, since 1964, has already been cut twice by the descendants of the ruling class that created it and, we are about to see the remaining stump be shaved for the third time.
We understand that the institutional blow dealt by the junction of the legislative and judiciary powers in 2016, against the “Democratic State of Law” and the Executive power, which was so good for the progressive forces, as it fulfilled the role, if not in its entirety, but, to a large extent, of the propagation of liberal ideals, seems to have been insufficient for the capitalists and, a new offensive, with the same absolutist guidelines of imperialism is necessary. And here we go, in the XNUMXst century, fulfilling the role that feudal lords and kings fulfilled when they fought to maintain the pre-capitalist “Rule of Law”.
Surely we should be confused, like the neurotic who returns to the childhood fixation point, because in adulthood he no longer knows how to move forward. We forgot to ask, after all, is the “Democratic State of Law”, good or bad for the ruling class? This is because, there are times when they defend order, in others, they are themselves responsible for breaking it and, with the disorder of the coups, they annul the institutionalized powers so desired by progressivism.
If we go a little deeper, we will realize that the same thing happens with the “Democratic Rule of Law” as with “democracy”. There is a model for each situation, but, in essence, democracy for the bourgeois is the way of sustaining liberal principles. We already know that. There are periods when they want the State investing in the economy; in other periods they push it out and reduce its influence through privatizations, agreements and concessions, taking over the national public wealth. The maintenance of order with respect to freedoms, human, social, political and legal rights, if it suits them, they maintain, otherwise the previously imposed order is annihilated by the disorder of that order they themselves established.
Evidently, with the imposed institutional disorder, the situation worsens, especially for the progressive middle class, devoted to representative liberal democracy, seeing in it the comfortable and opportunistic possibility of doing politics. So much so that the divergent discussions of the past about the Party's conception of “cadres” or “masses” have long since left the agenda and no longer make sense for it. In its place, any semblance of an official party gained space as a mediation between theory and practice, a vehicle for accessing the party fund, but which only serves the reduced domes known as the “political class”. Therefore, the political guidelines tend to be relegated to the low level of political ideas that barely manage to formulate tasks outside the agenda proposed by political banditry.
As you work, we need to act to face the obstacle at the time it was placed without giving in to the instincts of returning to the fixation point that, through agreement and submission, in the name of defending the “Democratic State of Law” we maintained order for the capitalists accumulate even more wealth. They, from 2016, changed the order and advance more and more to impose disorder as the new police and militia order. Will we be responsible for maintaining the liberal order, for tomorrow, liberal disorder itself will assault it and always adapt it to the interests of imperialism?
Our challenge remains one of party organization. Theory and practice currently do not meet because the fragility is in the mediating form. The “Democratic State of Law” that interests the workers does not have a “State”, therefore, the strategic historical invitation is to leave and not want to go back inside it.
*Ademar Bogo He holds a PhD in philosophy from UFBA and is a university professor.