Couldn’t find any good sources in English, but thought it might be interesting to let y’all know.
Edit: ITT: Brazilians arguing in English.
Br here. I want to point out that this is very, very strange. This came completely out of the blue, lots of right wingers and imperial forces are supporting it. Even our imperialist TV conglomerate is suppoting this. Im not sure what this is, but certainly its not a conquest made by the working class
I didn’t link to a Portuguese source because this thread was for the gringo friends, but this movement has been growing for too long for one to confuse their ignorance for it “coming out of the blue”. Now let me attempt to correct the record in English for the sake of the internationals.
Here’s a short article from PCBR talking about the historical construction of this movement.
Summing the history up “shortly” in English, one of the strongest demands from both the PCB (pre-split Brazilian Communist Party, Marxist-Leninist) and the PSTU (United Socialist Worker’s Party, Trotskyist) since at least the June Protests in 2013. Due to the first having some serious organisational problems with their leadership (which led to the split) and the second being fairly small (and Trotskyist, I guess), neither managed to fully oppose the government from the left and materialise this demand.
After the pandemic, with work/life balance dynamics being brought into question, given both the absurd rise of informal work (more than half the “employed” population is informal) and the indignation from workers in the “service” economy from bearing the brunt of the pandemic without any perspective of increase in quality of life from the new “leftist” government, wildcat labour movements started forming from the workers themselves. This includes the fight for better legislation regarding delivery and “rideshare” app workers’ pay and benefits, and for the reduction of the maximum legal workweek.
For some context for the foreigners, the maximum legally allowed weekly workload is 44 hours in Brazil, which can be divided in 6 days of work with 1 mandatory rest day (hence, 6x1, usually split into five days of 8 work hours and one day of 4). We are paid monthly, not hourly, so an employer is legally allowed to demand all 44 hours paying only the minimum wage, though not allowed to pay less than the minimum wage for less hours.
This Rick Azevedo guy accidentally went viral on TikTok for criticising this horribly outdated work scheme and decided to create a single-issue movement (“Life Beyond Work”, VAT) for an increase in mandatory rest days, which grew a lot organically with some support after the fact from leftist parties. The party linked above, PCBR (Revolutionary PCB), is what came out of the PCB split, in strong support for this demand among others but it is still in its restructuring phase.
Last election Rick ran with PSOL (Partido Socialismo e Liberdade, “multiple tendencies” leftist party) for a municipal legislature as a single-issue candidate and got elected with significant voteshare despite almost no party support. Considering the horrible defeat by the electoralist left (including Lula’s party, the PT) this last election which abandoned labour issues in defense of an “united front against fascism” again, this was a major win for the movement.
Now, a federal deputy (as in congresswoman) who is also from the PSOL, Erika Hilton, wrote a constitutional amendment that would reduce the work week to 4 days with 3 mandatory rest days, and maximum of 36 weekly hours. (Yes, this doesn’t make sense numerically and is probably so that parliamentary negotions they can back down to 5 work days and 2 rest days.)
After this was announced, both the VAT movement and the radical left parties coalesced around this amendment, calling for national protests, broad agitprop activities and naming and shaming deputies and parties who go against the proposal. Every radical left party with the bare minimum of material analysis is taking this as the pressure point to attack against the right in the government and for building broad support, but obviously each in their own framework for praxis.
And to finally respond to your comment, this is sadly a conquest by the working class despite the leftist organisations, who are mostly hopping in at the last second. There are right wingers being forced to support this because 1) there are lots of working class right wingers who are aware of their exploitation at some level, and 2) in order to mobilise the bases, rightwing politicians often co-op class struggles aesthetically (fascists in general, Bolsonaro as an example), and some leftist orgd are intentionally abusing this to force their hand into supporting the cause or risk being shown as a farce. The same applies for corporate media conglomerates. And of course, 3) it’s an opportunity to weaken the Lula government if they don’t also support the amendment, which is an okay sacrifice from the left as they intend to position themselves as left opposition.
So I wouldn’t say this is strange, in fact it’s been fairly predictable so far.
Edit to add: I forgot to mention the PCR/UP, a different Marxist-Leninist party with a strong base in the urban periphery, was also involved in getting the VAT movement viral and is going into this struggle with full force.
What a beautiful sum up, comrade. 🫡
Thank you for the summary.
No, you got it wrong. This is a movement from the working class that grew spontaneously, because it focuses on an actual concrete issue of the working class.
Some figures that are part of the extreme-right, like Kim Kataguire and Nikolas Ferreira are trying to spread false news about the project and even their electoral base are criticizing them for it. And others more moderate right wing, who are opportunists, are also adhering to the cause since it gained popularity.
Some people linked to the Workers Party are vacilating and even trying to defend the Michel Temer position (MDB - center right) so that collective agreements among unions and employees should be above the law. However since many workers aren’t even organized, this policy would only benefit sectors who are already organised. This is an extremely bad position.
This is a golden opportunity for the Brazilian left to push reforms and a class struggle agenda. All radical left (PCBR, PSOL and PSTU) is pushing this reform. Some people from PSOL are leading this struggle. Even some people from center and center right are adhering to this because this issue has gained immense popularity. So either to Brazilian left leads this fight or some opportunists from the right will take this movement over and the opportunity will be missed.
Psol is the identitarian university teacher’s party, pstu is the party who for some whatever reason of the particular issue sides with imperialism 100% of the time. You are very misguided if you think they are far left. Both of them sided with the coup against Dilma
PSOL has tendencies that range from social-liberal, to “orthodox” Marxist, to Trotskyist to Marxist-Leninist. They even have tendencies that are inspired by the “Arab Spring”. It’s not advisable to be reductionist against them, specially since their broad range of tendencies is usually why they excel electorally but have a hard time getting anything done. (As opposed to parties that follow democratic centralism). They did not side against Dilma in the coup, and in fact voted unanimously in her defense and were even more dedicated in the “Fora Temer” campaigns than the PT itself.
PSTU is Trotskyist so I won’t defend them too much, they tend to fall into left-communism a lot, but they at least have a strong presence in workers unions and are usually the first on the ground for, for example, primary and secondary school teachers’ strikes. They did go against Dilma, in their typical ultra left fashion, demanding that the entire government be toppled. Not that any Marxist should be surprised when bourgeois democracy is undemocratic, though.
I suppose it should go without saying on a primarily Marxist-Leninist instance that Trotskyist or Trotskyist-adjacent parties like these two or the PCO aren’t going to receive much uncritical support, though at least they make themselves present and join forces in critical struggles like this one.
Boulos was the frontface of the pro coup left. He’s from psol afaik. Tendencies inside psol range from mildly pro imperialist to rabidly pro imperislist.
Also, pstu is not trotskist, they are morenists (and annoyingly so)
But my point is that all this thing came out of the blue and lots of enemies of the working class are supporting it. Its suspect to say the least
You don’t need to look very far for evidence of Boulos being against the coup. I suppose you refer to this article referring to the movement against the world cup, due to the harm it caused to the working class that had to be displaced or explored for the creation of the stadiums to entertain a gringo audience. It was also during an ascension of the PSOL as the left opposition right after the Luciana Genro campaign. Boulos has now become an avid defender of the PT, which is an abandonment of whatever leftwing commitment he had back then.
That was not a pro-coup movement, and the fact that what was supposed to be a class conciliation government couldn’t reconcile the tensions there is a failure of the PT. Claiming moral superiority by abstaining from another battleground for class struggle and letting it get taken over by the right is not a good look for the PCO.
Tendencies in the PSOL range from mildly pro imperialist to rabidly pro imperialist.
At least put an effort in your critique to discern how they are pro-imperialist. Most range from social-democratic to Trotskyist which, I agree, often side with imperialism.
A fair number are what patsocs would call “identitarian”, which means that they focus on racial, gender, and ethnic class issues and oppressions. Some are even left-liberal with a focus on minority entrepreneurship. The first has revolutionary potential, the second indeed co-opt important struggles for the sake of maintaining imperialism.
pstu is not trotskyist, they are morenists
The only true Trotskyists are Trotsky himself and Mercader’s ice axe. \s
I’m not going to defend Trotskyists again, with their obsession for splitting and calling themselves the only Marxists for “ideological purity”, rather than doing any actual praxis in a revolutionary direction. That’s just fighting over the title of “reactionary pseudo-revolutionaries with a newspaper”, and if the PSTU and Moreno don’t fit the bill, good for them. It is a confused and moribund dead-end ideology, and the fact that the PSTU often falls into a somewhat more effective anarcho-sindicalist strategy is good enough evidence for that.
As for the last point, both the Revolutions of 1905 and February 1917 had broad support from liberals, reformists, nationalists, Mensheviks, revisionists and even foreign bourgeois observers. It doesn’t mean those weren’t fights worth fighting for.
The only thing the left has to thanks Boulos for is finally destroying Psol. I think PSTU is, at this point, very aware that they allign with imperialism, but they are the ones who call themselves morenists, not me
Moreno was a trot, he was part of the fourth international. They also call themselves Trotskyists. You were the one saying they were not trots.
Boulos was one of the leaders of the movement for freeing Lula. Other than that he’s indeed a constitutional social-democrat who has finally given up the revolutionary aesthetic in this last election, an useful tactical ally at best. You mistake critical support on common goals for uncritical allyship when it comes to the other major Trotskyist parties.
Some of.those parties are not monolithical structure, PSOL have some good folks like Erica Hilton who wrote this proposal as well as Glauber Braga and Samia Bonfim, plus PCBR and UP also supported this project, and for Brazil they are as left as it gets. So I’m all for this movement is a return of the left in the streets, which is where the left thrives, in movement. This is the way for the Brazilian left get in touch with the working class who we’ve been loosing to the right for a long time.
You have a faith in psol thst i do not. I saw a lot of shit from them over the years. I wish things were as you say, but until we get anything concrete i keep my doubts. By the way, none of those parties go leftier than socdem with marxists phrasing. Pco is the only marxist party in Brasil
Oh it’s the PCO person again. Just stop with this, it’s embarrassing. You can’t just claim PCO is the only marxist party in Brasil, specially when PCO is so fucked up.
Here’s some examples:
Here’s PCO being both ableist and lgbtphobic on Twitter by calling you the r-word for using neutral pronouns. (It’s full of right-wingers agreeing with the post in the comments)
PCO defending YouTuber Monark’s “freedom of speech” for saying that Brasil should have a Nazi party.
And here’s another one where they say they are against banning fascist parties.
Left-wing and marxist my ass. What a joke.
I thought it was someone who is on PCO side, leave it to them to be against the people, and they won’t disappoint
Exactly. Also FreudianCafe is an avid PCO defender. I responded to them before on Hexbear and just like here they were hellbent on defending every single PCO stance uncritically while claiming it is the only Marxist and anti-imperialist party.
His talking points in this very thread are the exact same stance PCO is taking on the VAT movement you can find it on their news page. Literally aligning with the right, like PCO always do.
This person is just a reactionary in leftist clothing.
Everyday I come closer to believing the claim that PCO is just a bunch of nazbols.
Ill take you as an ignorant person but with a good heart and advise you to inform yourself better
Its not about having faith on PSOL it’s about trusting this particular motion, which is widely supported my many other parties, but you wanna treat PSOL as a toxic party while PCO has no problems agreeing with UNIAO or PL. Just look at what you are saying, that defending the workers in a subject that is a very historical left fight ia wrong? Who’s side are you on man?
identitarismo é a minha pica
The movement has been brewing for a while, it’s just that it is finally getting traction, to the point there is now a PEC for a reduction to 4 x 3 instead of the 6x1 workweek we have right now.
And since this is a very popular change, the right can’t simply say they are against it, so they are forced to say they agree with in in principle and instead they try to raise doubt about the way it is phrased, saying it’s unconstitutional, etc.
It’s been a long time simmering just under the surface, it seems to be exploding now but I wouldn’t call it “out of the blue”
kkkkkkkk
