POLEMICS
What direction the PT will take?
The text says that the PT intends to remain socialist, but the fact is that the party is much more like a social democratic and reformist party
The article “José Dirceu leads update of the PT’s program and reaffirms the party’s socialist identity”, published in Brasil247 on Tuesday (25) shows that the Workers’ Party is undergoing changes. The text states that “the internal debate addresses the ideological directions that the PT intends to take in the coming years”.
The positions taken in the last period indicate, above all, a class change in the composition of the PT’s social base, and these are dragging it towards positions of social democracy, not socialism.
According to the article, “former minister José Dirceu now heads the group responsible for updating the PT’s political program, a document that guides the party’s strategy and identity. The discussion involves issues such as technological transformations, geopolitical changes and the ideological directions the PT intends to take in the coming years.”
From the point of view of international politics, the positive point is that José Dirceu is against the Brazilian government’s attitude towards Venezuela. The veto on our neighboring country’s entry into BRICS makes no sense to him. The allegation that the country lacks transparency in its elections should then be used against countries like Egypt.
The “news”
According to the text, “Dirceu says that the central challenge is to reposition the party in the face of a world scenario marked by profound economic, political and technological changes. ‘We have to position the party for the coming decades and decide how to deal with the new power of China, the BRICs, the new way the US acts in the context of the Trump administration, the new forms of work, among other points,’ says the former minister.”
This story of “profound changes” has spread to practically the entire Brazilian left. It’s strange, because the world is constantly changing. This stupefied look is bad, because you can get the impression that these parties have been taken by surprise, but that’s not the case.
Since at least the fall of the Berlin Wall at the end of 1989, there has been talk of “change”. Everyone has taken advantage of this. From the right, which decreed the “end of history”, to the majority of the left, which took the opportunity to break free from a socialism to which it had never really adhered.
Nowadays, when people talk about “change”, it’s almost a certainty that this or that party is taking a turn, or leaning to the right.
If in 1989 it was the fall of the Wall, what we have now is the urgency of the “fight against fascism”. This is the banner under which left-wing groups and parties are joining forces with the right-wing “progressive camp”.
Socialist PT?
Towards the end, we read that “among the central themes of the debate will be the definition of the PT’s ideological identity, whether it will continue as a socialist party or seek closer ties with social democracy”.
It’s strange to imagine that the PT is in a dilemma as to whether or not it should remain socialist. The party’s policy is reformist at best. We mustn’t forget that the Party went on a witch-hunt and expelled the internal current Causa Operária from its ranks in a process called Regulamentação de Tendências (Regulation of Tendencies).
What we see most in the PT today are policies to please the middle class. There is talk of “fighting crime” and this has never been a socialist program.
The truth is that this change in the social base of the Workers’ Party has brought it closer and closer to social democracy. In the independent press, in the mostly PT press, the fight against crime, the defense of the Federal Police and the Supreme Court, all this is on the agenda.
To make matters worse, these people who defend the state’s repressive institutions forget that José Dirceu himself was a victim of the Federal Police; he was also arrested with Supreme Court Justice Rosa Weber confessing that she had no evidence against him. So how can this court be credited?
According to José Dirceu, “This is a subject [the socialist bias] that always comes up again in the PT debate”. And he particularly sees “no reason to change it”. It’s better to change, that is, to become socialist, because the party is a long way from that. Important members of the PT, such as the party’s leader in the Senate, Jaques Wagner, even paid homage to the genocidal state of “Israel”.
The text states that “the construction of the new text will be done through face-to-face meetings, online activities and thematic seminars. The aim (…) is to promote a broadly participatory process. ‘It will be a document debated from the bottom up’, [says Dirceu], indicating that the revision will seek to incorporate contributions from the various internal currents of the party”.
The fact that the discussion will take place from the bottom up is something to be borne in mind, because in the PT all decisions are made from above.
The above is easy to see in the last election. The choice of Geraldo Alckmin as vice-president on Lula’s ticket would never have happened if it had depended on the approval of the base. Agreements with certain parties and politicians have made the working class turn away from the PT.
Nothing has indicated that there will be a turn to the left. The Workers’ Party needs to pay attention, it needs to discuss its social composition. If it wants socialism, it has to turn its eyes to the working class. Recover those who have been attracted by the demagogic talk of the extreme right.
Either the PT turns towards the workers, or it will be definitively drawn towards increasingly right-wing positions.
