Luizianne Lins is a Workers Party (PT) deputy in the Brazilian state of Ceara. She recently came to Britain as a guest of Socialist Resistance. Below is a transcript of her speech to the Socialist Resistance forum "New Struggles, New Alternatives", held in late October.
was very pleased to be invited to
take part in this seminar
organised by Socialist Resistance. It is really powerful for me to be with you and to see that even in this part of the Europe, socialists are struggling for a better world. Last week | was up in Scotland with the Scottish Socialist Party. To see you and them is a great privilege for me and for us.
To speak about forging alternatives to capitalism means to speak about socialism as the possible utopia at the beginning of this new century - an idea which is not just a big programmatic idea, but one which is able, in terms of peace and in terms of justice, to attract huge layers of people.
This globalisation, that we have all spent months and years debating, is nothing more than the internationalisation of capital, the internationalisation of finance in a way that excludes huge chunks of the world's population.
Why should we be forced as human beings to accept this process of globalisation? Why should we pay the price for the crisis of the capitalist system and in particular for the crisis of the US economy?
Since the beginning of September 2000 more than 500,000 jobs were lost in the US economy. Since the beginning of the 1990s, unemployment all over the world has grown dramatically as has inequality across the world.
Inequality has doubled in the last 30 NIDADES PARCEIRAS CONGVALDADE DE GÊNER
years, that now the richest 20 percent of the world population own 150 times what the poorest section own. 3.5 billion human beings consume just 5.6 percent of the world's wealth. Women make up 70 per cent of the more than 2 billion people in the world living below the line of destitution.
This is what makes our struggle so urgent. Socialism has to be the result of our struggle now against this cold future.
Since the early 1970s Latin America has become the battleground for a huge wave of neo-liberal policies and huge reaction against those policies - which has taken different forms in different countries.
It was the resistance and reaction to these attacks that led to Lula winning the elections in Brazil last year with 61 per cent of the vote and to the PT becoming the largest party in the Congress.
However, the alliances made before the
"We have to see our struggle for socialism not just as a sacrifice but as a struggle which is also capable of changing ourselves as human beings." elections and the promises to carry out large parts of the economic programme of the previous government have meant that the policies of the Lula government have had no impact in improving people's lives in Brazil or across Latin America.
n the first ten months of this year the
government's social programmes
have not moved forward and even its standard bearer "fear of hunger" programme has done nothing more than provide a meagre level of help to some of the very poorest.
The policy of structural adjustment has led them to attack social rights - most notably the pension system which led them into confrontation with organised sections of the working class.
We do think that the election of Lula opened up the possibility of mass resistance to neo-liberalism both across Brazil and across Latin America -but only if the government is capable of recognising its historic task. It is our job as revolutionary marxists to put all our energies into developing the opposition to hostile policies and forcing the government to live up to its task.
It is our responsibility to draw people together, to work with the widest possible forces and to help people to understand that the only possible solution to this crisis, to the system, is socialism.
It is our responsibility to bring all groups • together, to involve all of us: young people, old people, women, lesbians and gays, black people, indigenous people, disabled people -all groups have to be part of this struggle for a new world
We have to make clear that the struggle of every single excluded sector is a part of the general struggle for a new world, for socialism. We can hope as revolutionaries to develop the movement that emerged from Seattle in 1999 and hope that it will grow from being an anti-globalisation movement into being a clearly anti-capitalist movement.
Be have to recognise that war is a fundamental part of this imperialist system, that imperialism needs war to impose its order on the rest of the world and therefore that the movement against the war is a part of this great movement against empire.
It is also important to be clear that this struggle against capitalism is not only a struggle against the economic policies of capitalism, it is a struggle for values, for feelings, for all the dimensions of humanity that capitalism suffocates. Human beings in their real essence are capable of dreaming and of realising their dreams. This society that we are fighting for has to be a society of the greatest diversity, the greatest equality, and where the slogan is freedom in every single aspect.
Capitalism does not only want to oppress us with its economic policies - it tries to transform our subjectivity into what
I call the "capitalist subjectivi ty". This means that cultural struggles struggles against the mass means of communication are also fundamental parts of our struggle for a new world.
A socialist that you know much better than I do (Rosa Luxemburg) once said that the choice is between socialism or barbarism. We have made our choice - we know what our decision is and that is why many of us sacrifice important aspects of our own lives
Be don't have decent family lives, we don't go out and enjoy ourselves like we should because we spend our time in meetings That's a price we have to pay. This is not an experience peculiar to Britain
We have to really value every moment of our lives. We have to see our struggle not just as a sacrifice but as a struggle which is also capable of changing ourselves as human beings.
The struggle for socialism is a struggle that will change us as human beings, it is a struggle for a utopia that is possible.
So | just want to finish by saying that I am extremely pleased to have been here and I will go away inspired by what I have seer here and in Scotland
I will be anxious to hear news about how the revolutionary left is growing in Europe how it is growing here, how Socialist Resistance is growing. I am beginning to understand how difficult it is to build socialist trenches in this very conservative part of the world."
Globalisation has contradictions that can actually help us, that can make it easier to globalise solidarity, make it easier to exchange experiences.
Those of us who are struggling for socialism are nothing more and nothing less than men and women who love the future of humanity
We are human beings capable of loving and of turning that love into concrete political activity. As the Latin American revolutionary Che Guevera, said "hasta la victoria siempre" - forward to victory!