Masses, 32th year, n. 620 – Separating the chaff from the wheat

Separating the chaff from the wheat

Masses, 32^th year, n. 620 – September 27, 2020.

The situation is dire for the working class and the majority exploited. Poverty and hunger are advancing, the unemployment level is high. The pandemic continues to kill, especially, the poorest. There is little to go to reach 150 thousand dead. The bourgeois policy of social isolation failed with regard to the pandemic, but it helped capitalists to lay off, cut wages and eliminate rights.
Even so, the Brazilian Institute of Public Opinion and Statistics (Ibope) survey, hired by the National Confederation of Industry (CNI), concluded that Bolsonaro’s popularity grew compared to December 2019. The part of the population that considers his government to be excellent and good is 40%. It fell from 38% to 29%, the evaluation of the portion that was considered bad or terrible. We must consider that the majority, 60%, has some reason to disapprove Bolsonaro’s administration. The 40%, in conditions of health and economic crisis, discharged on the oppressed majority, however, are still surprising. They are perplexing puzzles of bourgeois politics.
Analysts explained the phenomenon with the emergency aid of R$ 600.00, aimed at informal workers, underemployed and unemployed. What else could it be? The influence of this assistance value – far above the “Bolsa Família” (a government assistance that existed before the pandemic) – on 65.3 million poor and miserable, has a considerable weight in the evaluation of any government.
In view of the question about combating unemployment, 37% considered it positive. Even though 41% thought Bolsonaro was on the right track in the past survey, the positive response of 37% in the current situation is surprising. The general character of the question does not allow us to know precisely who is who, in this universe of 37%, who would commit such a blatant logical madness. Certainly, it must mix millions of small and medium-sized employers, who used MP (Provisional Measure) 936, and millions of workers who have not lost their jobs, and who are ideologically tied to Bolsonarism (the influence of evangelical churches is still great). But the drop from 41% to 37% is still significant – 63% do not consider the government’s fight against unemployment positive.
This feeling that prevails among the population is the most significant data of the research. The big problem in the situation is unemployment, underemployment and informality. Most of the workforce has been hit by the absence of jobs, which are decreasing rather than increasing.
It is recognized, even by representatives of the bourgeoisie, that the difficulties did not begin with the pandemic. Since the sharp drop in economic growth in 2014, the unemployment rate has soared, boosting underemployment and informality. Capitalists took advantage of the chaos, caused by the pandemic and the bourgeois policy of social isolation, to dismiss, lower wages and liquidate rights. The implementation of the Temer government’s labor counter-reform was accelerated.
This process flowed freely, thanks to the adaptation of the union bureaucracy to the pressures of the bourgeoisie, mainly of big capital. Adaptation that ultimately reflects the reformist policy of the PT and its allies. The collaboration of the unions and central unions, without exception, with the application of MP 936 confused the exploited, and allowed Bolsonaro and the National Congress to appear as saviors, and not as executioners of the wage earners. In advertising that the R$ 600.00 emergency aid was an achievement of the workers, reformists, bureaucrats and the petty-bourgeois leftists concealed its real origin, motive and function to stifle the impact of the layoffs and the large-scale growth of unemployment.
Right now, the central unions are signing the campaign, under the banner “600 for Brazil! Put it to vote now, Maia.” The politickers go out into the field, galloping in this crude petty-bourgeois demagogy. At the same time as they were complicit, direct or indirect, in the agreement to fire five thousand Volkswagen workers. Everyone dodged and turned their backs on the rising tide of mass layoffs. They did nothing to support the postal workers strike, which ended in isolation, and suffocated. The same is true of Embraer’s limited strike.
There is no more social isolation. And the central unions and most unions still continue to rely on the bourgeois policy of social isolation, to mask the brutal result of class collaboration, which ended and ends up serving the Bolsonaro government.
As a political task of the moment, it is up to the conscious vanguard, which fights for the political independence of the proletariat and others exploited, to separate the chaff from the wheat. The defense of the most felt demands, wielded through class struggle, and under the strategy of the workers’ and peasants’ government, is the condition for achieving class independence.