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.
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.
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.
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.
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.