For those of us interested in building space left by social democracy's lurch to the right, the Brazilian Workers Party (PT) is a case worth pondering. Founded in 1980, this is one example of a working class party emerging in the second half of the 20th century with a mass membership (several hundred thousand members), a programme and a practice well to the left of social democracy and Stalinism, as well as broad electoral support (around 30 million votes in its first presidential contest in 1989).
Now, of course, it is in government in the world's fifth most populous country, trying to run the world's eighth or ninth biggest economy, confronting the second or third most unequal society on the planet.
Throughout these twenty-three years, the PT has had, within its core membership and represented on its leadership, one or more organised currents of revolutionary Marxists. Most notably, it has counted on the permanent energy, commitment and loyalty of militants supporting the Fourth International, organised around the paper Em Tempo and the Socialist Democracy tendency.
The fact that the PT's performance in its first four months of government is proving a huge disappointment to activists everywhere, only makes it more important to understand what the PT is, and how it got there. Three components of PT
The PT emerged out of the mass democratic struggles against the military dictatorship that ruled Brazil from 1964-1984 In particular, it emerged out of the huge wave of strikes by industrial workers, which in 1978-80 gave that democratic struggle its cutting edge.
Three key components came together to found the new Workers' Party. The first -the one which stamped its identity on the party and provided its core leaders in the early days - was made up of the militant trade unionists who had been organising those strikes, especially in the big car plants of Sao Paulo's sprawling industrial suburbs. Lula was the key figure here, and his role then is what has made him the natural figurehead of the PT ever since.
The second component - the one that probably contributed even more than the trade unions to the party's mass following - was the movement of radical catholics influenced by liberation theology. Their grassroots church communities reached far into the poorest sections of society right across Brazil. They played a central role in the movement of urban poor, and a few years later in the founding of the Landless Movement (MST)
The third component - numerically weaker but politically decisive - was the organised left. Almost all Brazil's left currents joined the PT.
They included several coming out of Castroist-type breaks with Stalinism, others of Maoist and radical catholic origin, and all known varieties of the Trotskyist tradition.
Many had taken part in failed attempts at armed struggle against the military. All were looking for a fresh start. Key debates
Several key discussions in those early years shaped the PT's development to this day. In these, the contribution of the comrades of Socialist Democracy (DS) had a weight way beyond their numbers (which didn't go beyond a few hundred at that time).
Surprisingly, the programmatic ones were the least contentious. It was relatively easy to reach agreement on key elements of the party's political character and platform - that it should be a party without bosses, that it should fight for democracy and a society without oppression or exploitation.
This soon became an explicit reference to the struggle for socialism, against the oppression of women, gays and lesbians, black and indige nous people. The emerging issue of cancelling the foreign debt quickly made the party's anti-imperialism explicit too.
The character of the PT's intervenwas resolved less successfully. Everyone agreed the party was an expression of the social movements, giving a political voice to the new workers' movement, because that's what it was - an obvious product of the mass struggles already mentioned.
But there was no organic link. The militant trade union confederation, the CUT, was set up by PT members and sympathisers several years after the party. It had no direct representation within the party. The MST also came later, and had an even more indirect link.
But DS and others on the left argued that the party, while respecting the autonomy of the mass movement, should have an organEven while Lula comes to terms with the right wing Bush administration, PT supporters join the anti-capitalist protestors in Porto Alegre
ised, democratically decided, intervention; that it should seek to lead. The core leadership preferred to maintain a more arms-length relationship. The result, which continues to this day, is that the different currents within the PT have their own, often contradictory, interventions in the CUT and other social movements Organisation and Democracy Three key organisational debates were resolved in favour of the revolutionary Marxists of DS, and have had a decisive influence on the character of the PT and the role of the left within it. Firstly, and against every other organised left current, the comrades of DS argued that the PT was NOT any sort of front or tactical alliance. It was a mass workers' party that revolutionaries should build loyally as THEIR party, seeking to develop it into a mass revolutionary party
The second issue had to be won against the central leadership around Lula (which had been joined by a group of former Castroite urban guerrillas headed by the current Chief of Staff in Lula's government, Jose Dirceu). They tried to squeeze the organised left by arguing that you couldn't play for two teams at the same time.
DS argued and eventually won an agree ment that different currents would be able to organise as permanent or temporary tendencies within the party, and that all minorities would be represented on the party's leadership bodies in line with the proportion of votes they won for their positions
Ironically, this agreement to practice something akin to democratic centralism is now being used by the PT leadership, espe cially Dirceu, to threaten disciplinary action against representatives of the PT left, like Senator Helosia Helena, when they refuse to vote in Congress for positions of the party leadership - like the nomination of a former director of Bank Boston to head the Brazilian Central Bank.
The third key issue, won after a long battle by the women of DS against central lead. ership resistance, was a quota of 30 percent for women on the PT's leadership bodies. Theory versus Practice
One of the biggest contradictions facing the left in the PT today is that most of these organisational and programmatic achievements remain more less intact. However the gap between these achievements and the party's everyday life and practice, has grown wider and wider. Several factors have fed into this negative evolution. Some are structural- like the reshaping of the Brazilian working class, which accompanied a sharp downturn in industrial struggle.
Others are political - like the way the PT's remarkable successes in local and national elections have been accompanied by growing atrophy of the party's internal life and structures
The ultimate expression of this - clearly exhibited in Lula's presidential campaign last year, and in the behaviour of his government over the last four months - is a party leadership that operates with complete autonomy, and almost no reference to the party's historic gains
This evolution, and the contradictions now facing the PT, will be the subject of a future article.
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