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 In the last two weeks, José Genoíno, the president of the PT; Silvio Pereira, secretary-general and Delúbio Soares, treasurer, all resigned their positions within the Workers' Party amidst charges of corruption. The following is an excerpt from an interview conducted with Chico de Oliveira, one of the founders of the PT and a sociology professor at the University of São Paulo.
He is also executive coordinator of the Center for the Study of Citizens' Rights at USP (University of São Paulo):
Why in Brazil did the Workers' Party grow so quickly?
In the history of leftist parties in the world, it usually takes 100 years for them to be transformed into popular political parties. The PT took only three years, from the time that we published the first "Letter to the Brazilian People".
The PT grew rapidly because the military dictatorship mobilized social movements. It became the largest political party machine of the country.
The PSDB (Social-Democratic Party of Brazil) is a machine of the plutocracy that does not have a popular base. The PT today is not the same as the original PT; political choices within the party were made.
Were these political choices made before the PT assumed power or after?
Assuming power is something of a disaster because it exposes ruptures within the party. The rupture began in 2002 and problems created by the bureaucratic organization were exposed. The PT is a formidable bureaucratic organization.
Beginning with city councilors to the top politicians, each one has a body of advisers. This already creates a mass of material interests that is not ideology, but rather interests and jobs. The PT employs a large mass of people and this influences the party.
Didn't the PT ever have a plan for the nation?
No! Those in the PT who had a plan for the nation were those who came from a history of armed struggle during the dictatorship such as José Dirceu and Dilma Roussef. It was a socialist plan of transformation.
In the formation of the PT, the national plan of the Catholics was an ethical plan. A third force, the principal one in the beginning of the party, were the labor union leaders, who did not have a plan for the country.
The new unions today are very apolitical, even anti-political. Lula was very anti-political. In 1974, he said that what interested the worker was a salary, not politics.
What is the importance of a national plan? What is the difference between a national plan and a plan of power?
What is important in a national plan is not the political party but rather the formation of the nation. A plan of power places power before the national interest. Thus, in the measure in which the PT grew and bureaucratized, power passed in front of the national plan and became an end in itself.
What does the right want?
Two things: power and money. They have money but do not have much power. The political right today is the PSDB.
But they have the Central Bank and the Treasury Department, what else do they want?
This is very serious because a very grave phenomenon has happened in that the economy of Brazil has colonized its policies. Policies do not exist anymore. There are economic goals and growth-maintenance.
Henrique Meirelles is the head of the Central Bank, not because he belongs to the PSDB, but because he is an important link in the chain connecting creditors with financial capital in general. In the capitalist world, politics does not have importance.
Then, what is there to do?
Politics. Exactly because it is not important for capitalists, it has to be for us. We have to invent new forms. Political parties are eroding quickly. Within this colonization of politics by the economy, the parties are the principle victims.
The debates that we are seeing today about corruption have as their objective the discussion of government jobs. According to this logic, it is important to have a strong person in a strong position, in order to administer funds of the "surplus economy".
If you are not a property owner or living in the world of big money, how do you have a voice within society? Acting politically. I doubt that the old forms are effective. We have to find news ways of doing politics.
One of the arguments of the PT to justify the retreat of the government from a leftist project was the correlation of forces unfavorable to the left. Is this true? Wasn't another economic policy possible?
This is nonsense, because if you only make policies that the correlation of forces allow, one only makes conservative policies. Policies are exactly the only means available to correct the asymmetries of power that the economy creates. In a capitalist system, power is asymmetrically built and policies are the only way to correct this.
Why did the government opt for this type of governance instead of looking toward the social movements?
My thesis is in an article that will be published in a book called, The Age of Indecision. There occurred a great transformation in society, capital and property, and also in relation to the state. The PT never understood this.
The theoretical weakness of the PT is this. The PT evaluated the Government of Fernando Henrique Cardoso as one that was anti-nationalist and for privatization. For many in the PT, all that was needed was good will.
The PT never understood that Fernando Henrique turned the country upside-down and that privatization of 15% of the GNP changed everything in a way that is very difficult to control. This type of privatization was done on a scale without comparison in the world.
So Argentina did a similar process and the results were disastrous. Brazil changed greatly and PT did not take this seriously enough. Privatizations changed the structure of the economic property of the bourgeoisie, changed their relationship with their workers and with the state. The state lost a powerful arm to construct economic policy.
Did the public-private relation change with privatization?
The private sector advanced and removed from the state the elements necessary to make economic policy, industrial policy and investments. The function of the private sector today is absolute. Its a very complicated dictatorship because it functions within the legal system.
The function of the state is on the periphery and it is to manage the country permanent crises by social policies. Within this system, there is no way to redistribute resources or income in Brazil, so the government invented policies like "Family Grants" or "Zero Hunger" that don't function to redistribute income but focalize and maintain poverty.
You do not take anyone out of poverty with a grant of 20 reais (US$ 8.50) per month. This is a joke. Those who are beneficiaries of the "Family Grants" do not change their social class. These programs don't diminish inequality or eliminate poverty.
How do the people who believed in and elected Lula feel about this torrent of denouncements of corruption?
The identification of many people with Lula is not easy to destroy. Lula is an enormous fraud and I don't think that he will be reelected. One part of the population will remain faithful to Lula but not to the PT.
Social and working classes are dissolving. In Brazil, how can you have a unified social class with an unemployment rate of 20% and 50% of workers in the informal market. How is it possible to unite in a social class?
What is the institutional policy that could take people out of the informal market? It is tragic. The best metaphor for this situation is lava flowing from a volcano. It is a mass without form that is called the informal market. How do politicians represent something without form?
What can we do?
We have to find new forms of action. Not even the word "revolution" makes sense. What does this word mean to someone who lives in a favela? It is practically another language, one that few speak. Revolution does not seem plausible for someone living in a slum.
For a politician to act politically, it must be plausible for your promise to be fulfilled. It has to be plausible for me and for you that equality can exist. It is not necessary that it exists but plausible that it can exist.
So, is it plausible for a person who lives in the favela of Rocinha? Can he or she act with the hope as though there is equality? No. Thus, when equality is not plausible, the survival instinct transforms into a private war.
The worst damage of the Lula government is exactly this. It is in the area in which it is plausible that society can reform and achieve certain objectives. If not, the area of politics disappears and it is colonized by the economy in a perverse way.
It becomes the area of the immediate: you have to survive for that day, and that'd it. There is no project for the future. Thus, you rob, kill, and assault. There is nothing to lose and today you won't be hungry.
The state did not disappear. What disappeared is the political community. Before Lula unified everything into a "Family Grant", there was even a "Kitchen Gas Credit". The state is present in all of this which creates a vast assistance system that meets immediate needs.
As politicians lost contact with reality and were colonized by the economy, they no longer decide important questions but rather decide about how to distribute for misery. Political life becomes a band of gangs disputing fiercely as to whom assumes control.
Lula is a product of the crisis provoked by Fernando Henrique. He could have acted differently. He is a charismatic leader of the PT but there is nothing radical in him. We made a mistake.
This interview appeared originally in Portuguese in Brasil de Fato - www.brasildefato.com.br.
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