What workers have ahead

What workers have ahead

Masses 625, Editorial, December 6^th, 2020

As soon as the elections were concluded, the news resumed the dire numbers of the pandemic. Contamination remains out of control. Daily deaths remain at high levels. The beds and ICUs were refilled. The government of São Paulo announced the return of actions aimed at social isolation. The re-elected mayor, Bruno Covas, made an inaugural speech against “denialism”. The Health Minister, General Pazuello, assessed that there is nothing to worry about. Bolsonaro’s position is that he will not allow a return from normality. Covas regretted what he said, and sought to reconcile with Bolsonaro. Those were the first days of the post-election.

The exploited, poor and miserable, were dragged by bourgeois politics, without the slightest notion that their conditions of existence will worsen, instead of improving. The reformists and centrists, who were electorally devastated, find themselves stuck in the straitjacket of the disagreements of the governors, servants of the great capital. Following and reflecting the brutal economic and social consequences, the union leaderships remain passive, and aimed at keeping the working class disorganized, fearful and hived off. They resented the collapse of the PT, which commands most of the unions, and the most important central union, which is the CUT.

In the midst of the pandemic, the union bureaucracy, of all political lines, was willing to collaborate with the governmental guideline, which determined a clearly anti-worker and anti-popular emergency plan. They acted as employers’ agents, in applying MP 936. Thus, the oppressed majority entered and left the elections, carrying the heavy burden of layoffs, wage losses and breach of labor rights. They left the elections disorganized and demobilized, in the face of the march of the economic crisis, which will continue next year to destroy jobs, to sustain unemployment, underemployment, misery and hunger at high levels. And for some time yet, they will be the main victim of the pandemic.

The vaccine war between Bolsonaro and governors, between the laboratories and between the powers capable of producing it, evidences the economic law that the interests of the capitalists will always be above the needs of the exploited majority. Vulture bands have waged a commercial war over the vaccine, in dispute for greater profitability. They take advantage of the inertia of the masses and the collaboration of their leaderships, to impose conditions on the overwhelming majority of countries with backward and semi-colonial economies. And its puppet governments, like those of Brazil, are subject to the barbaric trade war and strategic disputes over the world market.

We have seen and we see that there is no way to separate the health effects of the pandemic from the effects of an economic and social order. In other words, between disease, unemployment, wages and misery. The creditors of the public debt, internal and external, pursue a single objective: to maintain the looting of the National Treasury. The argument now is that spending on the pandemic requires reactivating the privatization plan, and putting counter-reforms on the agenda, starting with administrative reform.

The bourgeoisie does not accept to increase the tax burden above what is possible to transfer to the consuming masses. The orientation is to concentrate the shares in the auction of Correios, Eletrobrás, Petrobrás, etc. The attack on civil servants is part of that plan. It is also necessary to be clear that outsourcing in online work modalities will advance.

The process of precarious working conditions will suffer a leap if the working class and others exploited do not react promptly. The increase in the prices of the staple food and the electricity tariff will affect workers’ lives even harder. The end of emergency aid, of a measly R$ 300.00, will strike millions, who live below absolute poverty. These are the perverse effects of decaying capitalism, based on the extreme concentration of wealth, on the one hand, and the expansion of poverty, on the other.

The class-conscious vanguard faces the task of resuming combat on two fronts: against attacks by the government and the bourgeoisie; and against the class conciliation policy of reformist parties and union bureaucracies.

The Revolutionary Workers Party calls on workers to demand that unions, union centrals and movements break with the policy of collaboration with exploiters, and immediately start organizing the national struggle for jobs, wages, rights and public health; the end of privatizations and the resumption of state control of those already privatized; the overthrow of counter-reforms; for non-payment of the external debt.

In the face of massive unemployment, the workers’ response is reduced working hours without reduced wages, job stability and a sliding scale of working hours; set up committees of employees and unemployed.

In view of the high cost of living, replacement of all wage losses, vital minimum wage and sliding scale of adjustment.

In the face of financial parasitism and imperialist plunder, state control and nationalization, under workers’ control.

This platform of demands allows us to organize a unitary movement across the country, against the advance of hunger and misery, and to reject new attacks by the government and the bourgeoisie. It suffice that unions, centrals and movements to convene assemblies and impel the independent organization, to restart the resistance movement of the exploited. POR poses to the exploited, not only the need to defend themselves, but also to march towards the end of capitalism, fighting under the banner of the workers ‘and peasants’ government, proletarian dictatorship and proletarian revolution.