Liquidate the PT and tolerate Lula?
By Leonardo Boff - lboff@uol.com.br

Text sent to the group list Rede do 3° Setor on 08/09/2005
http://br.groups.yahoo.com/group/3setor

There's a German proverb that applies to the current Brazilian situation, when read in its profundity: "Hit the sack but think of the animal that carries the sack". In other words, hit the President, and especially the leaders of the PT (sack), but the intended victim is really the PT as a whole, especially José Dirceu, the main target (animal). Why? To understand this, we have to know something of the logic of the elites, carefully analyzed by José Honório Rodrigues in Conciliação e Reforma no Brasil ("Conciliation and Reform in Brazil"), and by Raymundo Faoro in Os Donos do Poder ("The Owners of Power"). This factor cannot be ignored, as some analysts are now doing.

Who are these elites? They're the "owners of power", professional politicians and conservative intellectuals, business magnates and large landholders. These are the people that really control the levers of power and guide the economy in their benefit. The State, for most of its history, was commanded by this segment, which by merging public with private interests created what has been called patrimonialism. The purpose is to increase their personal or business patrimony, something that, according to Faoro, lasted until the time of Fernando Henrique Cardoso's presidency (1994-2002).

What is the strategy of these elites? According to Consoante José Honório Rodrigues, it can be summarized in two points. First, put off the real solution to problems indefinitely, gain time by inventing subtle formulas to trick public opinion, and abort the natural solution to problems. If they are obliged to undertake reforms, make sure these do not jeopardize their interests. Second, be conciliatory, but don't make any real commitment for mutual concessions for collective advance, but instead conduct a crafty policy that seeks to reduce the differences among groups, conceal the corruption so that the benefits remain only with them, to the exclusion of the people.

Why can we never underestimate these "owners of power" in the current crisis? For two main reasons: First, they don't like being out of central power, are not accustomed to this and have lost privileges they consider as their birthright; second, because Lula never was their candidate. It would even be a class contradiction: Lula does not represent them, does not want them, and they only tolerate him because he won the election, and now feel benefited by the neoliberal macroeconomic policy that the government has assumed. But they don't feel secure with this option because Lula can change it. Under pressure from social movements or by the party itself in coherence with its social base, he could decide for another economic model subject to the imperatives of social policy. Then they would lose their advantages. The current policy does not calm them.

But their greater objective is not to get rid of Lula, an obstacle to their return to power. As much as they'd like, they know it will be difficult due to the popular acceptance he still enjoys and the broad mobilization of social movements he can call on. The greater objective is to liquidate the Workers Party (PT) as a party of changes, to demoralize it, wound it, place it against the people. The goal is more than make it lose the upcoming elections. It is to liquidate it as a party with an alternative project for Brazil. Then they will feel secure for many years to continue their domination of the State, perhaps making some changes in order not to have to make real transformations that would truly benefit the people, such as agrarian reform.

[back to manifest yourself]