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16th Congress of the Brazilian Communist Party | |
|---|---|
| Author | PCB |
| First published | 2022 |
| Type | Program |
| Source | Resolutions of the 16th Congress of PCB |
Current conditions
1. We live in a situation in which the structural crisis of capitalism is causing a crisis of bourgeois sociability, with the rise, in several countries, of the extreme right and neo-fascism. Autocratic elements are growing within the bourgeois states, associated with increased police repression, criminalization of social movements, policies of withdrawal and destruction of rights, intense precariousness of labor relations, privatization, and international rapineering of the capitalist monopolies. At the same time, the use of new methods and technologies in the production process deepen the fragmentation and dispersion of the working class and political alienation, opening the way for capitalists to obtain more profits.
2. One of the elements that explain the rise of neo-fascism in the world is the frustration of the working masses with the bourgeois liberal system. with the bourgeois liberal system. The overwhelming offensive of neoliberalism, associated with the political and ideological political and ideological bankruptcy of social democracy, which applied the measures of disenfranchisement and favoritism to capital, as well as the capital, as well as the still limited action of communist parties, contributed significantly to disarming to disarm the working class politically and ideologically.
3. The 21st century is indelibly marked as the century in which one of the most serious crises in history deepened, which since 2008 has emerged in a more intense way, provoking a retraction of the economy in various nations and disastrous consequences that centrally affect workers and the poorest populations. This is a crisis of over-accumulation derived from the narrowing of the base of productive labor in relation to the totality of capital, which now finds barriers to force the retreat of the tendency of the falling rate of profits. As in other historical moments, the bourgeois states, based on the capitalist mode of production in an advanced stage of its imperialist stage, adopt measures in unison seeking to counteract this law of tendency: the lowering of wages, mass layoffs and the destruction of the labor force (through wars, as well as, in Brazil, through the extermination of the black and poor population), seeking to increase the extraction of surplus value through greater exploitation of labor and falling wages with an increase in the reserve army, as well as the cheapening of the means of production, to reduce the organic composition of capital.
4. The measures adopted by the governments aimed to save the interests of big capital, with extraordinary injection of resources in the financial area. Structured at the international level, especially in the central countries, big capital sought to put the entire burden of the crisis on the backs of the working class, with even more violent attacks on social rights and increased repression of popular movements, initiatives adopted to recover profit rates, control the working class and organize the economy at a new level, according to its interests. However, these measures, in general, ended up contributing to deepen the crisis even more, by promoting a reduction in economic activity, unemployment, and a drop in income and consumption. Where there is economic recovery, it occurs in a timid way, without the capacity to sustain it for a longer period, precisely because it is based on the increase in the precariousness of the labor force, the source of all value in the capitalist economy. In this way, the general tendency for the profit rate to fall remains irreversible.
5. The bourgeoisie presents itself in an increasingly aggressive way and shows without masks the projects of capital: from the economic point of view there is an articulated action in the sense of advancing on the finances of the State, as well as on the rights and guarantees of workers. From the political point of view, governments directly managed by representatives of capital have come to power, whose actions have been carried out in the sense of suppressing the democratic liberties typical of bourgeois republicanism and of the historical experiences of social democracy, resulting from the many struggles waged by workers and from the threat that the existence of a socialist bloc, then led by the Soviet Union, represented to the world bourgeoisie. Today a strong reactionary wave is sweeping the world, with the expansion of openly fascist groups, preaching class discrimination and all kinds of prejudice against the differences between human beings, such as sexism, racism, xenophobia, LGBTphobia, among others.
6. From the military point of view, there is an imperialist offensive to foment military interventions and wars in various regions of the planet. The United States and its main European allies, like the United Kingdom, are doing everything they can to instigate conflicts in the Middle East and, with the intention of overthrowing governments and fragmenting the territorial unity of sovereign countries that have begun to present obstacles to imperialist plans for the region, they have given economic and military support to terrorist groups and mercenaries, fomenting serious humanitarian tragedies. The drama involving the growing flow of immigrants and refugees in Europe, attracted by the illusory prosperity of central capitalist countries and fleeing from regions devastated by misery, leaves no doubt as to the gravity of the problem and its deep-seated reasons: wars and hunger, phenomena resulting from the social devastation caused by the imperialist offensive.
7. Such an offensive, however, is not only applied using traditional methods. The consolidation of a new imperialist modus operandi has been underway since the end of the twentieth century. It is, fundamentally, a set of actions that are conventionally called hybrid warfare, associating color revolutions and unconventional warfare. In general terms, sectors linked to large companies and capitalist powers have been financing the formation of conservative political organizations and cadres in strategic points around the world, with the aim of fomenting right-wing opposition movements to governments that represent some kind of obstacle to imperialist interests. Counting on robust communication structures, these groups have an intense capacity to spread their ideologies, using diffuse flags, such as the fight against corruption, to hide their real agenda of neoliberal radicalization. At the same time, they make strong use of the traditional media and different institutional spaces of the State itself to sabotage governments that they want to oust, with emphasis on the Judiciary and Parliament. We have seen similar itineraries both in the so-called Arab Spring and in the recent political crises in Ukraine and Latin America.
8. The disputes between economic and geopolitical blocks are intensifying, which partly explains the major difficulties encountered by the U.S. and its direct allies in the full implementation of their projects in the world. Russia and China, especially, present themselves today as powers that promote the counterpoint to the expansionist policies of the United States and the European Union, due to their own strategic interests that include the conquest of new markets in countries on the periphery of capitalism, and the solidification of economic relations around the globe. Such disputes are responsible, in the last analysis, for provoking an increase in the exploitation of the working class, the systematic loss of rights, and the growth of misery among the poorest populations, since it essentially involves the expansion process of capital, in its permanent search for spaces where it can extract the maximum value from the labor force.
9. In Latin America, the 1990s and 2000s brought winds of change on the continent, with the rise of democratic and popular governments. Imperialism constantly threatens countries that refuse to faithfully follow its doctrine, imposes new military bases and troops maintained by the U.S. in various parts of the continent, and instigates localized conflicts such as on the border of Venezuela and Colombia. In Colombia, the frequent assassinations of former guerrillas and popular leaders portray the drama of a country commanded by a terrorist state financed by the United States, which solemnly ignores and tramples on the attempt to negotiate peace with social justice. The popular struggles in Honduras, Ecuador, Chile, Puerto Rico and Haiti and the return of the Peronist government in Argentina show the degree of popular dissatisfaction with the level of exploitation achieved in these countries by the transnational monopolies.
10. The current crisis experienced by Latin American countries that have tried alternatives within the so-called "progressive camp" shows that there is a limit to the real possibilities of affirming regimes that seek to meet the basic needs of the working class and popular sectors without breaking with capitalism. The destructive action of imperialism indicates the urgent need for countries like Venezuela to advance radically toward the construction of socialism, or risk seeing the social, political, and economic achievements of the Bolivarian Revolution undermined. The imperialist attacks, using methods of unconventional warfare, through the ideological demonization of the Maduro government, terrorist attacks, attempts to impose a parallel government, blockades and economic sanctions, kidnappings of goods and threats of territorial invasion under the banner of "humanitarian aid" have not been successful because of the disputes between the international economic powers, the strong internal popular support and the support given by the armed forces, but if the revolutionary process does not advance, the risk of collapse of the Bolivarian experience is real.
11. In Brazil, the effects of the capitalist crisis, whose most obvious symptoms were the slowdown in GDP from 2014 and the recession of 2015 and 2016, are still manifesting themselves with intensity, and seem to be far from its end. The decrease in the rate of profit mobilized the main bourgeois sectors to accelerate a process of advancement on the rights won by workers, using the State and its ideological apparatuses to impose their agenda, with the institutional coup of 2016 playing a key role in this process. This onslaught, previously applied in the Dilma government with the policy of fiscal adjustment led by Joaquim Levy and Nelson Barbosa, was radicalized with EC 95/2016 (freezing public spending for twenty years), as well as the labor counter-reform of the Temer government, in addition to a brutal budget cut in the areas of assistance, education, health, leisure conducted by the Temer and Bolsonaro governments, culminating in the Social Security counter-reform approved by the Bolsonaro government.
12. In the sense of bourgeois domination in Brazil, the popular democratic strategy of PT[a] has played a fundamental role in appeasing the working class and co-opting the political instruments around its project of bourgeois conciliation, whose objective results have been expressed in popular demobilization in the midst of the hardest economic and political crisis that Brazil is experiencing since the corporate-military dictatorship. Thus, the PT made it easier for the bourgeoisie that its dismissal from the government did not meet any effective resistance, opening space for the rise of the ultraliberal and fascist bias that today runs the country with an explicit anti-communist character.
13. The defeat of the working class in the second half of 2017 is essential to understand the contradictory process of fascistization that Brazil is experiencing today. The class forces have not shown themselves capable of hegemonizing the unity of action, which ended up being led by the reformist camp linked to the Workers' Party, the Communist Party of Brazil (PCdoB) and its allies, which maintains its direction through the CUT, CTB and the majority camp of the UNE. Suffering judicial persecution in a series of unions because of the April strike, and believing that the popular will for extraordinary presidential elections would be able to move Congress, the old conciliators decided to deny the path of open confrontation against capital and decided to demobilize the second general strike scheduled for June of the same year. The result was the crushing defeat of the journey of struggles started in 2016, with the approval of the labor counter-reform and the maintenance of Temer's gang in government, saved by the corrupt bourgeois Congress. Brazil lives a scenario that combines an absolutely autocratic ruling class, with an opposition led by a social democracy that suffers from a sick delusion with bourgeois institutionality.
14. Even with the willingness of the leadership of the self-proclaimed "popular-democratic" camp to build a new conciliation pact with the bourgeoisie, the 2018 elections took place in the midst of an acute radicalization of the class struggle. Sectors of Congress were even talking about canceling the presidential elections. The experience with the political front that the PT had to form in order to survive, together with Lula's electoral promises to revoke the counter-reforms approved by the Temer government, caused broad sectors of the bourgeoisie to strongly reject the possibility of the PT returning to government, considering this a step backwards in their offensive. It fell to the Judiciary to play the role of arbiter in favor of the capitalists. The actions of Judge Sergio Moro and Operation Lava-Jato were fundamental in presenting a reactionary alternative to the problem of corruption in Brazil, placing the blame on Lula and his party, sparing the bourgeois parties. After Lula's conviction by Moro, there was the problem that he could not be arrested, since he had not constitutionally exhausted his possibilities for judicial appeal. Finally, it fell to the Commander of the Brazilian Army, General Villas Bôas, to put pressure on the Supreme Court to allow Lula's illegal imprisonment, even implicitly threatening a military coup in case of "disorder" caused by Lula's freedom and his challenge to the judicial group that condemned him.
15. During this whole process, the Brazilian Communist Party (PCB) intervened to point the way it thought was best for the working class, fighting the leftism that did not see the threat posed by the conservative advance, while fighting the electoral and reformist illusions of the camp linked to PT. Within the political front that was constituted, we aimed at the construction of an anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist front, that would hold a National Meeting of the Working Class capable of unifying a program of struggles in Brazil. In the popular movements, we had experiences acting together with the organizations of the so-called "socialist left," through unitary spaces such as the Socialist Left Fronts/Blocs and the People Without Fear Front, both composed by the Socialism and Freedom Party, with the latter counting on the participation of the Homeless Workers' Movement. In 2018, as a result of this alliance, we supported the candidacy of Guilherme Boulos, a current PSOL member, for the presidency.
16. The Bolsonaro government represents a new phase of bourgeois domination in Brazil, with the gradual closing of the system of political representation, which allows the radicalization of the neoliberal policy of attacks on the rights of the working class and actions aimed at facilitating the looting of the public fund by the hegemonic bourgeois sectors. This action associates the posture of total subservience to the interests of imperialism, especially that of the United States, with the advance of conservatism in customs and setbacks in democratic freedoms and civil rights, and the imposition of the liberal hegemony in the conduction of the economy. The government uses fascist methods, with strong support from various social groups, especially the ultraconservative groupings of the neo-Pentecostal churches. The possibility of direct actions of paramilitary fascist groups against left-wing parties and activists and against organizations and activists/unions and other organized social movements is present, which may also come from extreme right-wing groups that make up the Bolsonaro government, using the State apparatus and possible reforms to attack the legality of left-wing parties, notably our Party, and criminalize struggles and social fighters.
17. The Bolsonaro government is an extreme right-wing government, composed of heterogeneous forces, with the hegemony of the bourgeois factions linked to financial capital and agribusiness. The core of the government was initially established in the Ministries of Economy and Justice, with Paulo Guedes determined to apply with more radicality the neoliberal policy, through counter-reforms, which interest all the bourgeois factions, and Moro in charge of trying to control the popular reaction to this project, with the criminalization of social movements, imposition of more difficulties for the functioning of trade unions and expansion of repression, such as the anti-crime package, proposed to increase the mass incarceration of workers, women, LGBTs and the black population, mainly. The conservative agendas are functional to capital, because they serve to disqualify the struggles against oppression, in order to justify the most intense capitalist exploitation of the poor, women, black men and women, gypsy communities, nomads and LGBTs.
18. The victory of the Bolsonaro government showed the inability of the main sectors of the big bourgeoisie to capture or contain the social discontent generated by the capitalist crisis and maintain governability. On the other hand, it brought to the surface the class hatred generated by the victories of Lula and Dilma, by the welfare policies carried out by the PT governments and by the access of part of the working class to goods and services previously exclusive to the middle classes and the petty bourgeoisie, even considering the structural limits of the popular democratic project adopted by this party. The anti-communist propaganda directed at the Workers' Party (even if it is not communist), the parliamentary proposals to criminalize "apology to communism," the fascist propaganda used by the government, the creation of an "autonomous party," the increase of fascist and paramilitary groups, the persecution of feminist agendas and struggles, and of the LGBT population, demonstrate the authoritarian nature (similar to several Latin American experiences) - with the presence of openly fascist elements - of this government.
19. Bolsonaro's electoral campaign also drove the exponential growth of votes obtained by the extreme right in the states, which obtained significant results for state governments and parliaments. This phenomenon is demonstrated, among others, by the election of Wilson Witzel in the state of Rio de Janeiro and João Dória in São Paulo, who defended the policy of extermination of poor and peripheral populations as a form of social control of the working class and popular sectors.
20. Although the historical, political and economic contexts are different from the European context and there is no nationalist policy - on the contrary, there is a policy of surrender of the national heritage and economic opening to foreign capital - we cannot fail to recognize the similarities of these movements and their repercussions on the class struggle. In this context, we need to prepare ourselves for the possibility of an open persecution of our organization, our symbols, and our existence, as is already happening in Ukraine, Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia, Bulgaria, Poland, and Indonesia.
21. There are contradictions within the ruling class, expressed mainly in the positions of sectors unhappy with the economic policy of exclusive alignment with US and Israeli interests, but these contradictions are overcome when it comes to uniting the bourgeoisie to support attacks against working class rights and counter-reforms.
22. Due to the political instability derived from the attempt to consolidate the Bolsonaro camp, General Mourão publicly presented himself, at times, as a politician with a more rational discourse, trying to distance himself from Bolsonaro's belligerent posture, at the same time that he articulated with conservative sectors and factions of the bourgeoisie dissatisfied with the government. This movement by Mourão even attracted the attention of opposition groups and even representatives of the left, deluded by the possibility of replacing Bolsonaro with someone who would be able to conduct national politics within a more "republican" logic. For our part, we must denounce the figure of Mourão as a politician who maintains the same reactionary political and ideological commitments, aimed at implementing the neoliberal, autocratic, and sell-out government project. Our watchword should be: DEFEAT THE BOLSONARO-MOURÃO GOVERNMENT AND THEIR ALLIES, leaving no room for any illusion with this kind of alternative.
23. The fact is that there are sectors of the bourgeoisie dissatisfied with the hard core of the Bolsonaro government that seek to influence the removal of the president, some betting on the alternative Mourão. Such an option, however, for many of these representatives of factions of the bourgeoisie, risks the political stability necessary for the proper implementation of the neoliberal agenda, given that Bolsonaro still has a not inconsiderable social base of support and can at any time mobilize these sectors for street demonstrations and even armed actions, as indicated by the evidence of links with militias and extreme right-wing groups that are organizing and may launch more radicalized movements. Bolsonaro is not ruling out an even more conservative political solution, inspired by what is most retrograde on the international scene, using mechanisms that further restrict political rights, deepen the persecution and criminalization of social movements and left-wing parties, intensifying the destruction of democratic freedoms obtained with much struggle in the 1988 Constitution.
24. In practice, a pragmatic relationship has prevailed between the government and institutions like the courts, the armed forces, and especially the National Congress. Congress has been conducting the essentials of national politics, such as the agenda of reactionary reforms that interest capital, like the approval of the Social Security Reform, which deepens the brutal attacks on the rights of the working class.
25. June 14, 2019 demonstrated the potential for the resumption of the protagonism of the working class in national political struggles through the paralysis of activities in strategic sectors in several cities across the country. However, the attempted general strike as a whole made evident the degree of disorganization of the Brazilian working class. The majority of union leaders, who have accommodated themselves to the politics of class conciliation, betraying the struggles of the workers and frequently boycotting the mobilizations of the popular masses, collaborate to the increase of the political disorganization of the working class. The result was a June 14, 2019 very far from the ideal horizon of a general strike.
26. The existing union centrals in the country are doing a disservice to the working class. The union bureaucracy of the CUT, CTB and the likes, in the opportunistic strategy of returning to government, makes them prioritize institutional and parliamentary relations that do not directly confront the rich and the Brazilian bourgeoisie, because these are the main allies of the PT, PCdoB and other conciliatory parties. To exemplify, the CNTE, led by the PT/CUT and one of the most important union confederations in Latin America, refused to call the National Education Strike on October 2 and 3, 2019, which had been built by all the other national education entities. Similarly, the IV Congress of CSP-Conlutas (2019) demonstrated the bankruptcy of this alternative as a reference for the working class. The deliberations approved express a counterrevolutionary and subservient character to imperialism in the world and in Brazil. It is necessary to defeat these bureaucracies in the mass movement and present an alternative revolutionary field in the union disputes, distancing ourselves from these sectors that hinder the advance of social struggles.
27. Faced with this defensive conjunctural framework of opposition to the attacks of capital, we must act to contribute to the construction of a broad unity of action with parties and social segments that resisted the coup d'état of 2016 and stood for democratic freedoms and the socialist left front, expanding the degree of mobilization and unity of action of all the most combative segments of the working class, to intensify the resistance and the struggle in defense of social and political rights, of essential goods and services to the population, of public property and national sovereignty, from an anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist perspective.
28. Such actions should not be limited to resistance to these attacks, but should also prepare the counter-offensive to the Bolsonaro/Mourão government, characterizing it as illegitimate, anti-popular, anti-national and anti-democratic, fighting its autocratic and ultraliberal project and the capitalist system as a whole. It is necessary to strengthen the struggle from the places of action (work, study and housing) and in the streets to promote the denunciation of the expansion and deepening of the attacks, which were already applied in the past governments.
29. In the spaces where we operate, without making the mistake of trusting the bourgeois republican system, but pointing out its inability to sustain the maintenance of minimum rights and guarantees to working men and women, we must denounce the illegitimate character of the 2018 presidential elections, by virtue of both the electoral fraud that resulted from the promiscuous and criminal relationship between former Justice Minister Sergio Moro and the Federal Public Ministry in the case of the trial of former President Lula, and the scandalous case of corruption involving funding of fake news spreading by Brazilian capitalists, filed by the STJ. Moro and the MPF acted with the intention of removing Lula, who had the majority of voting intentions at the time, from the electoral ballot. We must demand the repeal of the anti-popular reforms approved during the governments of Lula, Dilma, Temer and Bolsonaro and maintain the mobilization against the reactionary measures underway, the most consistent way to promote the struggle for democratic freedoms.
30. The rise of a government with strong fascist characteristics and the threat of the formation of a fascist state in Brazil with support from the Armed Forces and Bolsonaro's militias puts the issue of forms of resistance to fascism at the forefront of the debate. Bolsonaro, in his project of demolished land, will advance mercilessly against the working class, especially in the dismantling of social policies, in the strengthening of the apparatus of repression and in the forced reduction of wages. His government assumes a transitional character as it carries out a set of policies that, from a historical perspective, tends to lose popular support and incite the revolt of the workers.
31. The resistance to the Bolsonaro government will become increasingly polarized between two camps: a bourgeois-democratic camp, aiming at a return to bourgeois-democratic normality, mystifying the whole period of the PT and PSDB governments as uncorruptible symbols of democracy in relation to the dictatorship or Bolsonarism, and a labour-popular camp, which can lead the vanguard of the resistance to Bolsonarism, with the aim of becoming an alternative to Brazilian society towards a revolutionary rupture, denouncing Bolsonaro's line of continuity with all the bourgeois politics that exploits and oppresses working men and women. We, communists, are supporters of the independence of the working class in all the struggles posed by the conjuncture. We cannot give in to democratic illusions and contribute to the proletariat being a shock troop for the bourgeois and petty-bourgeois projects that ultimately aim to guarantee at any cost the exploitation of the working class.
32. It must be taken into account that, given the complexity of the Brazilian social formation, the road to revolution in Brazil is equally complex, involving multiple and differentiated mediations. The Struggles Program must be based on the structuring of deep and permanent base work with the masses, beyond the mobilizations that can bring victories and short and medium term conquests for the workers, that accumulate forces for the construction of the socialist alternative. Our organization and our struggle must serve the final objectives of the proletariat as a class, as well as its immediate interests, understanding that the revolutionary struggle does not start from idealized bases to reach strategic objectives, but from the real life condition and action of the working class in its daily life. Our actions must always take into account objective reality, over which we must structure tactical actions, in accordance with our strategy. We must seek an articulation with organized anti-capitalist forces in Brazil for the creation of a Front with a Class Struggle Program aiming to unify nationally these forces in the confrontation against the bourgeois order, overcoming sectarianism and the fragmentation of corporative and sectoral struggles.
Socialist revolution strategy
33. The PCB reaffirms that the strategy of the Brazilian Revolution is Socialist, because it understands that Brazil is a complete and monopolist capitalist social formation, and the bourgeois hegemony has been fully consolidated in our country. Brazilian capitalism is part of the world accumulation process and a constitutive part of the imperialist power system in the world. The Brazilian dominant classes are associated with international capital. The so-called "classical delayed tasks", like agrarian reform, are no longer delayed tasks, but tasks left behind and that will not be accomplished within the limits of a capitalist society. The objective contradictions that underlie the immediate demands of the working masses are not due to the low development of capitalist productive forces, but precisely because of the very development and nature of a society hegemonized by capital.
34. Therefore, the strategic tasks posed to the workers as a whole, and especially to the working class, the strategic and central nucleus of the revolutionary agent, cannot be accomplished within the limits of a capitalist society. The degree of development of the material productive forces, in Brazil and in the world, already contradicts the current capitalist form of social relations of production, which threaten social production and the very existence of the conditions that allow human life on the planet. The struggle for socialism and for the formation of a Proletarian State that guarantees the expropriation of the private property of the means of production and its socialization with the establishment of economic, social and political relations among the conscious workers freely associated, represents the only means of liberating the working class from the ills that afflict it today, contributing to free the world from the barbarism that the world capitalist order imposes.
35. The definition of the Brazilian Revolution as socialist does not imply the absence of political mediations in the concrete struggle to confront the conjunctures that present themselves in the dynamics of the immediate class struggle. However, socialist strategy determines the character of the immediate struggle, that is, strategy subordinates tactics and not the reverse. Socialist strategy does not deny the immediate struggles, but it does not accept the current form of sociability as capable of providing structural and lasting solutions to these questions, because the problems experienced by the masses are manifestations of the contradiction between the capitalist form of organization of society and the needs of production and reproduction of life on a new level. In the current stage of the class struggle, of bourgeois offensive and proletarian defensive, this means not giving ground to stageist conceptions, which postpone the struggle for socialism until after a stage of struggle against reaction. On the contrary: we participate in the struggles of resistance pointing to the socialist reorganization of society through the establishment of People's Power as the only way out of the current crisis.
36. From the perspective of socialism, it is necessary to think of the construction of proletarian hegemony as the formation of an alternative mode of production under workers' control, which means that it is based on the scope of production and property, not restricted to its political and cultural dimension. The concept of the Historical Bloc leads us to understand society as an organic unity between the economic structure and the superstructure, cemented by a certain ideology, in which intellectuals, artists, and cultural organizers play a fundamental role. Against the capitalist historical bloc, therefore, we must act aiming at the construction of the Revolutionary Bloc of the Proletariat, that is: the set of actions and economic, political, juridical transformations and forms of consciousness that point to the overcoming of capitalism and to the construction of a socialist society towards communism. The construction of the counter-hegemonic bloc, therefore, presupposes the articulation of the economic and political dimensions in the conformation of the emancipatory proposal, enabling the proletariat to exercise political power and cultural direction of the whole society. In this sense, it is necessary to add to the programmatic agenda a broad spectrum project in the field of culture/arts as a means of social transformation for the construction of a new human being.
37. In the current conjuncture of the rise of reactionary thought and ultra-conservative and even fascist practices in the world and in Brazilian society, the great challenge facing the revolutionary forces is to expand the tactical mediations without losing strategic firmness and the presence of communist militants in the mass movements to confront the intense political and social setbacks in progress, in the perspective of building a counteroffensive that prepares the ground for the overcoming of the capitalist mode of production. For this, we point to the need to elaborate a Program of Struggles that, subordinated to the socialist strategy for the Brazilian revolution, gives a basis and consequence to the tactical actions contained in the congressional resolutions of the PCB, assuring the class independence of the proletariat against the vacillations of the petty bourgeoisie. Objectively our tactics will unfold on two articulated fronts: while we wage the mass defensive struggles of the working class, in unity of action with all the forces that oppose neo-liberal policies and fascism, even the reformist and vacillating groups, we will seek to unite, within this broad articulation, a class and revolutionary bloc.
38. This Struggles Program must have, as presuppositions, the characteristics of capitalist development in Brazil, such as its internationalization - that eliminates the possibility of a bourgeois democratic national revolution -, in view of what has already been pointed out above: the complete and monopolistic character of Brazilian capitalism. These characteristics indicate the historical unfeasibility and the exhaustion of the alternative of transition to socialism through successive structural reforms promoted by segments of the bourgeoisie allied with sectors of the working class in governments based on popular mobilization, as it was drawn, in the 60s and 70s of last century, as a possibility, to a certain extent, in European countries, under social-democratic hegemony, in the arrangement called Welfare State and defended by the formulation conventionally called Eurocommunism as a strategic path to overcome capitalism.
Objectives of the Struggles Program
39. The general objectives of the Struggles Program are propose measures, direct and mark actions to confront the effects provoked by the structural crisis of capitalism and by its own functioning, whose most harmful consequences directly affect the working class and popular sectors; advance in the fight for the democratization of political spaces through the expansion of the participation of the working class in political processes, in consonance with the construction of the dual power, the popular power; broaden our action with the organization of fronts in the struggle for democratic liberties and in defense of the rights of the working class; obtain material advances in the field of civil, social, economic, and political rights; contribute to the organizational process of the working class in the sense of raising the level of class consciousness regarding the need for socialism and communism; contribute to raising the level of organization of the working class in order to obtain better conditions for action in the class struggle.
40. It is necessary to present a program that articulates the immediate defensive demands of the working class with its revolutionary demands, without relegating the struggle for socialism to a later, long-term stage. The short term agendas involve the actions of the trade union and popular movements and their immediate political agenda in the resistance to the attacks of capital and the bourgeois state, in defense of democratic liberties and the civil and social, economic and political rights of the working class, including proposals for the creation of emergency jobs, defense and recuperation of the health and education systems, and others. In the long-term struggles, the proposal of socialism to be built is outlined, pointing to the first measures to be carried out after the rupture with capitalism. In all the struggles, besides the achievements and the social and economic advances that are provided, the participation of communists takes place in search of organizational, political, and ideological gains.
41. The Struggles Program includes different types and forms of struggles. Thus, we have: localized struggles, like those of residents mobilized against state intervention; struggles against oppression, like those in defense of the rights of blacks, LGBTs, women, youth, and native peoples; economic struggles, like union campaigns for wage adjustments and increases; general political struggles, like those for Collor's impeachment and Amnesty. Some general economic and political struggles can be transformed into great unifying struggles of the working class, generating a broad front of social segments that associate themselves to reach a greater common objective, as in the case of the campaign for Direct Elections in the 1980s; struggles in the field of democratic freedoms; struggles in the field of ideas, that raise the class consciousness of the proletariat; direct struggles of the masses, of resistance, of protest, of immediate demands (many arising from extreme situations and many without any previous influence of political forces or groups).
42. The struggles develop according to the characteristics of the spaces in which they are inserted, such as those for the right to housing and for better living conditions for workers and marginalized populations living in urban areas. These struggles are based on inequality and class conflicts generated in the conception and development of cities, where the logic of capitalist accumulation and the interests of the dominant class predominate. Thus, the conflicts take place in the dispute over property and the right to the city, that is, in the definition of urban land use, such as the delimitation of prime areas, access to urban services such as drainage, sanitation, lighting, transportation, and security, the availability of urban equipment such as bus stops, sidewalks, paving of streets and leisure spaces, social services such as health and education, culture, and general conditions such as environmental quality. An integral part of the urban struggles is the conquest of democratic freedoms and the right of residents to participate in political decisions that involve their living conditions, such as the definition of land use and the axes of development integrated to policies that seek to put an end to social inequalities.
43. In the current conjuncture, in which the questions related to public security have been provoking debates and the solutions presented by bourgeois governments are the amplification of repression and the criminalization of proletarian communities, with the increasing use of extermination practices, it is fundamental to present proposals for struggles that point to the need for a public security policy that has as its central objective the support to the population and the systematic combat against organized crime in its multiple forms. Elements of this policy are the offer of jobs and decent living conditions for all, the increase of taxes on the manufacture of weapons, the legalization of drugs, and reform in the prison policy, since the current model of confinement and abandonment enhances organized crime, which grows and branches out in and through the prisons. We must also fight for the extinction of the Military Police by proposing a complete demilitarization and restructuring of public security, under a unified civilian framework and the direct control of the working population. This means that, if on the one hand we are completely opposed to the proposals to expand the arms trade, on the other hand we consider positive the aspiration to direct, organized and collective popular participation in public security, as occurs in all revolutionary experiences, from the least to the most advanced.
Great unifying struggles
44. The great unifying struggles have both tactical and strategic potential, empowering the struggle, the accumulation of force, the leap in consciousness and concrete gains for the working class. The communists understand that the unifying struggles play a central role in the construction of the transition program. In the current situational condition some struggles are gaining importance to become unifying struggles, such as the struggle against privatizations, for the reversal of the labor and social security counter-reforms, and for the revocation of the constitutional amendment that instituted the spending freeze for twenty years. Thus, we must build an agenda of unifying struggles that involve broad sectors of society and point to political, organizational, and concrete gains for the working class. Beyond the agenda of struggles, the Party should seek to organically structure a political-social counter-power bloc, involving broad sectors (environmentalists, cultural, union, black, indigenous, unemployed, etc.), that is, a counter-hegemonic bloc that builds a common agenda for action, based on concrete struggles and consensual activities, such as May 1st, International Women's Day, Black Consciousness Day, etc.
45. It is necessary to build the anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist front, produce and widely spread the STRUGGLES PLATFORM OF THE WORKING CLASS AGAINST CAPITALISM, with the objective of presenting banners of struggles and concrete proposals for the resolution of the serious problems experienced by the working class and the popular sectors in the perspective of popular power and socialism, as a way to establish the necessary dialogue with the population through proposals that are able to associate the adverse conditions and the political and social setbacks with the interests and modus operandi of capitalism. We must try to associate the denouncement of capitalist and imperialist exploitation with the struggles in defense of rights and liberties, through banners such as the nationalization of strategic sectors of the economy, like the electricity, gas, and oil sectors, and the financial system; 100% public and free health and education; the restatization of privatized companies; the reduction of the workday, the fight against unemployment and poverty; the confiscation of large properties, taxation of large fortunes, and measures that put an end to the bleeding of public coffers by capitalist monopolies.
Immediate struggles
46. It is worth developing actions in support of all forms of urban resistance to expropriations, evictions and other acts of intimidation that favor real estate capital and other private interests; support for occupations of unused buildings and land as political actions to defend policies to promote the supply of popular housing; support for actions of occupation of public spaces and public demonstrations to exert pressure on governments to obtain solutions to problems of housing, lack of urban infrastructure, schools, and other public services and for better living conditions; support for actions of protest against violence, the cost of living, and other elements that concern the general living conditions of workers and the proletariat. It is necessary that the party cells and collectives turn to permanent grassroots work in the communities and popular strata, participating in entities, organizations, and social movements that bring together workers and popular sectors, be they neighborhood associations, churches, clubs, samba schools, dance and music groups, popular pre-university courses, etc., always combining mobilization around concrete struggles and demands with debate on the level of ideas.
47. Also immediate struggles are struggle for the creation of emergency employment programs, with the creation of urban work fronts associated with sanitation works, housing, school and hospital renovations, and others of interest to the least favored strata; struggle for the effectiveness of public actions in the scope of the Unified Health System (SUS), for the reception and care of unemployed and outsourced workers; construction of housing and expropriation of closed housing units for the care of homeless urban workers; tax reform with a change in the focus of the tax on basic consumption for the tax on profits and dividends, inheritances, great fortunes and luxury consumption; exemption of taxes and fees for unemployed workers; agrarian reform in the outskirts of the cities, with the transfer of land titles in small lots without the right to resell, encouraging the organization of cooperatives with the support of public policies for the agro-ecological production, storage and flow of foodstuffs; implementation of public purchasing policies to supply school and hospital networks, popular restaurants and other similar networks.
Program of struggles for the union and popular movement
48. We must organize the anti-capitalist struggle, fighting against precariousness in general, the extension of the work day, intermittent work, uberization, pejotization, outsourcing, entrepreneurship as a solution to unemployment, as well as profit sharing as an alternative to salary adjustments and increases; fight for the repeal of the labor and social security reform, as well as the legislation that authorizes outsourcing and quarteirization, and for the promotion of jobs with signed work cards. We must strengthen the union struggle by carrying out unionization campaigns, generating financing alternatives, encouraging the merger of unions and union organization by branch of production, as well as stimulating the unionization of unemployed workers, guaranteeing them exemption from dues and fees.
49. For this reason it is fundamental to consolidate the work of the Class Unity, expanding its work with the strategic categories of the proletariat and building leaderships and combative union oppositions in all sectors. Therefore, we need to mobilize, in a planned way, large contingents of party militancy to contribute to the consolidation and rooting of our trade union wing, mainly through the recruitment of young workers. In order to be consistent, in the trade-union sphere, with our strategic thesis of building the Anti-capitalist and Anti-imperialist Front and the Revolutionary Bloc of the Proletariat, we must act with the objective of fomenting the unity of action of the anti-capitalist forces of the working class, building forums and regional fronts of struggle that bring together the anti-capitalist and revolutionary currents, unions and oppositions.
50. In this sense, the construction of the Trade Union, People's and Youth Forum for the Struggle for Democratic Rights and Liberties has a fundamental role, although not exclusive, because this instrument of struggle, which was born from the need to articulate the most combative organized sectors of the working class to resist the capital's offensive, has in potential, mainly because of its presence in the trade union movement, the condition to strengthen the counter offensive of workers and boost the process of reorganization of our class.
51. For this reason, we must strengthen the anti-capitalist perspective inside the Forum and the construction of a National Meeting of the Working Class, based on the most militant sectors of the workers' and popular movement, that can make a radical balance of our situation and that results in the constitution of a trade union front or central of national scope, based on the class independence of the proletariat and on an anti-capitalist and revolutionary perspective. It is the task of the party militancy, whether in the cells or in the collectives, to build the Trade Union, People's and Youth Forum for the Struggle for Democratic Rights and Liberties in their areas of activity, in the municipalities and states, in order to confront the attacks of capital, in the struggle for new conquests and as a strengthening instrument of the reorganization process of the working class.
52. The following struggles involve mobilizing demands from the urban and rural proletariat, capable of articulating movements in which the action of communists can play a decisive role with regard to the organization of popular forces in the perspective of building an anti-capitalist and socialist alternative: struggle for the minimum wage of DIEESE, reduction of the working day without reduction of wages, to a maximum of 30 hours per week; prohibition of dismissals without just cause; guarantee of job stability; end of the bank of hours; struggles in defense of guaranteeing the offer of regular jobs for all; nationalization and gratuity of the welfare systems and expansion of social assistance policies; nationalization of the collective and mass transportation system, with the reduction of tariffs to the level of system costs, free public transportation pass for unemployed people and students, popular control over the operation of the transportation system and its planning to attend social and popular demands and not profit; expansion and implementation of a public health system, 100% state-owned, that guarantees universal access and free health care, including the production, guarantee and state supply of essential medicines, as well as basic sanitation, to meet the environmental and health needs of the working class, with the implementation of a hierarchical and decentralized structure and popular control over its operation.
53. It is necessary to defend the SUS as a public, state and quality system strengthened from the affirmation of social control spaces. Fight for the immediate repeal of EC 95/2016, against the possibility of health exploitation by foreign capital (law 13.097/15), for the end of EBSERH or any other form of direct or indirect privatization of health. It is also essential to guide the increase in funding for public health, rescuing the principles of the Brazilian Sanitary Movement and the fight for at least 10% of gross GDP to fund Brazilian health.
54. We must organize the struggle for the expansion of the public and free education system, secular and socially referenced, aiming at universal access and permanence of students, at all levels, with popular control over its operation; for the institution of regular evening classes; for the provision of essential urban services and equipment, social services and general conditions of quality of life, in an equal way, in all neighborhoods; urbanization, where there are geological safety conditions, of regions classified as slums, with the provision of general conditions for quality of life, and all essential urban and social services and equipment; for populations residing in risk areas, the offering of housing programs in suitable areas with the provision of essential urban and social services and equipment; progressive taxation of urban property, with emphasis on closed properties; provision of housing supply programs for male and female workers.
55. The fight in defense of the right to the city must have an anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist character, in the perspective of guaranteeing the minimum living conditions of the working class, especially in the neighborhoods and slums, from an urban planning of popular character, as well as strengthening its organizational potential for social transformation, denouncing the historical inequality provided by the advance of capitalism and imperialism in Latin America. Racism and environmental inequality and the unequal distribution of access to the city benefit large and multinational companies, such as contractors, mass transportation, mining, with the increase of real estate speculation and environmental degradation, increasing the number of landless and homeless families, the genocide of the black population and of the native peoples. In this sense, it is urgent to strengthen popular organization in these spaces, providing an advance in the process of formation of revolutionary consciousness.
56. The struggles in the countryside are marked by the form of capitalist development in the agrarian sector, with the dominant presence of large companies producing agricultural commodities and livestock products and the drastic reduction of the presence of rural property as a reserve of value. Therefore, our priority action must be to organize the rural proletariat, the large contingents of salaried workers subjected to the exploitation of agribusiness. But there are still small and medium sized structures, like the small properties that produce fruits and vegetables in the outskirts of the cities, the poultry farms, in general medium sized. Therefore, the struggles in the countryside also involve landless workers, peasants or small owners, micro-farmers or subsistence farmers, as well as quilombolas, riverine and indigenous people organized in specific communities that live off the land.
57. The struggle for agrarian reform must be inserted in an anti-capitalist perspective, respecting the original peoples and quilombolas and seeking to configure a new rural-city relationship, with emphasis on collective and state forms of property, supported by policies of infrastructure, credit, technical support, storage and transport of products to meet the needs of the population. In the peasant form, the struggle takes place in the support to small farmers and cattle breeders, with emphasis on the productive units located around the cities, in their claims, in the formation and strengthening of movements, cooperatives and agricultural collectives and in the establishment of political links with urban workers. In this type of property, when resulting from agrarian reform, we fight for the guarantee of the right to use and enjoy the land, without the right to resale. In the state form, the production of large productive units and their destination should be planned by public planning agencies. In the private form, we fight for its subordination to public planning and for the labor and social rights of the workers, also aiming for nationalization by the principle of the fulfillment of the social function.
58. The character of agricultural production in the context of agrarian reform cannot reproduce the capitalist pattern currently being executed. In this sense, it is worth defending agroecological activities that, on the one hand, move the occupation of rural space with the recomposition of native species of the diverse biomes existing in our territory and, on the other hand, can reoccupy urban space with food production closer to the national population as a whole (respectively, with agroforestry and permaculture practices).
59. We must promote the defense of agroecological and agroforestry based production methods, which guarantees the production, respecting biodiversity, without the use of agrochemicals, fighting monoculture and strengthening the struggles of small rural producers and cooperative forms of production; defense of an environmental policy that preserves and uses rationally environmental policy that preserves and uses natural resources rationally, that preserves the biomes of Brazil, that confronts the advance of capitalism in the countryside through agribusiness and combats the capitalist development model, consumerist and predator that accelerates climate change.
60. We should support and seek to participate in the movements for the land struggle, understanding that this is not limited to the conquest of land, being fundamental the organization of the way of life and food production as a whole. We must defend the agro-ecological production of food and help in the formation of cooperatives for the distribution of the products, understanding that, in small and medium-sized cities, where the great majority of settlements are concentrated, for example, the distribution of the products is made difficult by the lack of capacity of the local market to absorb all the production. We must collaborate to structure a broad network of support for agroecology in the cities where there are organized Party cells.
61. It is important to participate in the struggle for rural education, understanding that the struggle in the countryside goes through the material guarantee of remaining on the land, for the sustenance and survival of the families of the settlers and rural workers in general, in the sense of emancipation from capital. It is necessary to develop base work in the rural workers' unions, which are mostly in the hands of the FETAGs, aiming to give a consistent and combative direction to the struggles. It is necessary to articulate the struggles with the organizations, associations, and cooperatives of recyclable materials collectors in the defense of selective recycling and of environmental education.
62. Another front of immediate struggle is linked to environmental issues. The need for incessant production of commodities in capitalist relations has put on the agenda the material limits of sustaining human life on our planet. The environmental catastrophe represented by the poisoning of the environment, water and food is expressed as a great contradiction: the limits of the socio-metabolic relationship between human beings and nature are undermined by the maintenance of the reproduction relations of capital. To fight against capital necessarily means to establish forms of relationship with the environment that are less destructive, favorable to the maintenance of the social being.
63. Art is fundamental to human development, acting, above all, on the constitution of sensibility, that is, on the eminently human characteristics related to emotions and feelings. Therefore, it is also a fundamental instrument for the formation of consciousness. In this sense it can also be a powerful instrument for the formation of class consciousness. Thus, it is pertinent for revolutionary militancy to offer, in its performance spaces, the contact of the working class with works of art, which, in general, are not available in the daily life ruled by the alienation of labor. Besides contact with art, communist militancy must build spaces for creation and artistic expression by the working class itself. Considering that creation needs cultural appropriation to be effective, we highlight the need to bring the working class closer to works of art that, in their structure or synthesis of form and content, do not reproduce the logic of alienation.
64. Cultural formation with the aim of acting against the impositions of bourgeois hegemony is fundamental for our militancy and our collectives. In the society of the spectacle in which the media disseminates information based on the dominant ideology, it is essential the aesthetic use of art to oppose the media's idiotization and the ultraconservative values, using the combative cinema of resistance through the film club.
65. Sports in Brazil (especially soccer) have a strong popular appeal, constituting a cultural heritage of the workers, even with the growing disillusionment and distancing of the proletarian population due to the elitization and the advance of the commercialization of sports. In the specific case of soccer, due to its mass character, there are great possibilities for action in community clubs, in the big professional clubs, in popular and supporters' collectives, in the journalistic media, and mainly among the organized fans. We must fight for the expansion of popular participation in soccer, against the current process of monopolization by big investors, and for the right to leisure for workers, always in the perspective of building popular power. It is the Central Committee's task to organize and stimulate the formation of spaces for debate, accumulation and political intervention in this area (such as party factions, seminars and workshops).
Youth, women, black, LGBT and indigenous peoples' movements
66. The immediate struggle against the budget cuts and the project of dismantling and privatization of public education must be associated with the search to consolidate the UJC as an instrument of revolutionary organization of communist youth, with its own politics in the student and youth movements, strengthening of the MUP (Popular University Movement) and the MEP (Popular School Movement), expansion of the intervention in the general student entities (ANPG, UNE, UBES, UEEs) and at the base (School Boards, CAs, Das, DCEs, and APGs) and structuring of the work with working youth.
67. As struggle banners, we must present proposals such as the expansion and universalization of public and free education in the elementary and high school levels and in rural schools, expansion of public and free education in the evening hours, expansion, universalization of access and permanence policies in public universities and federal institutes, defense of science and technology policies in favor of a popular project of national sovereignty, that is, aimed at solving the great problems of the working class; defense of the quota policy and its strengthening with the guarantee of adequate financing for the provision of maintenance scholarships and housing and study conditions; strengthening of the Federal Institutes of Technological Education, guaranteeing a full, integral, and complete curriculum; nationalization of the S System, to be managed in partnership with working class organizations (unions).
68. Women today occupy the worst jobs: they are the majority in outsourced jobs and in the informal economy. The wage bill for women represents 70% of the wage bill for men, and the unemployment rate is higher among women, especially black women. The poorest families in Brazil, according to IBGE, are the families maintained by women. Considering this, we propose organize the fight in defense of the rights of working women, for the expansion of maternity leave and stability after returning to work, fine and readmission of fired pregnant workers; fight for wage equality between women and men, without lowering wages further; increase and regulate paternity leave, so that there is proper sharing of childcare; defend the expansion of public daycare centers in work, home, and study locations, and the creation of nighttime childcare centers; fight for public policies that enable women's emancipation from domestic work; encourage participation in women's departments and similar entities, especially unions.
69. It is necessary to fight for the amplification and enforcement of constitutionally won rights, as well as to combat all forms of oppression, discrimination and harassment, proposing an educational/cultural program capable of mobilizing workers, laborers and popular sectors with the main goal of contributing to eradicate violence and discrimination against women, LGBTs, indigenous people and the black population. Hence the need to consolidate the structuring of the Ana Montenegro Classist Feminist Collective, the Minervino de Oliveira Black Collective and the Communist LGBT Collective in the states, as well as to organize the Indigenous Fraction, for a more incisive action together with the movements of struggle against oppression and for social rights, always articulating the specific struggles with the general struggle of the working class in the confrontation against capitalist exploitation, in the perspective of the construction of a socialist alternative, having in mind the poly-classist character present in the black, feminist and LGBT movements.
70. Violence against women is a social problem that permeates every society marked by the exploitation of labor power and the oppression of patriarchy, which was incorporated by capitalism, therefore, structuring the society in which we live, and it grows every day with the advance of neoliberalism. This situation has worsened considerably with the strengthening of conservative religions, especially in the peripheries, and with the election of Bolsonaro. We must radically fight all forms of discrimination and sexual and moral harassment; disseminate the relationship between the oppression of women and the class struggle, through courses, debates, lectures and printed material; fight for the decriminalization and legalization of abortion, with guaranteed care in the public health network, promoting courses, debates, lectures, and disseminating materials for proper awareness and confrontation of misunderstandings and conservative campaigns around the theme; combat the sexualization/objectification of women's bodies instrumentalized by capital as a way to obtain profit and reproduction of patriarchy.
71. Violence motivated by oppression and exploitation has historical roots and happens in combination with patriarchy and racism, which are structured in the capital-labor conflict, being permeated by the class perspective. Discrimination by sexual orientation and gender identity, however, is not restricted to physical violence, but also legitimizes the overexploitation of the LGBT population, making explicit the relationship between gender oppression and the logic of the capitalist organization of work. The strengthening of the conservative right in the world and, in particular, the reactionary advance in Brazil, put even more at risk the lives of Brazilian LGBTs, who already face daily violence, the overexploitation of labor and the denial of their basic rights, such as education, health and housing.
72. We advocate for building an LGBT movement that understands class in its Marxist sense, that is, not in an idealistic way. In other words, we claim the heterogeneity of the working class and the articulation of the particular interests of LGBTs who mostly constitute the working class. We defend an LGBT movement that puts on the agenda, therefore, struggles of our class, such as housing, health, safety, working conditions, and the right to life itself; the fierce combat against the labor and social security counter-reforms, against the constitutional amendment that established the freezing of public spending for 20 years, and against the processes of precarization of working conditions, such as the outsourcing law. We also combat today's hegemonic liberalism with its speeches about entrepreneurship and meritocracy. We must act so that the unions and other entities that defend the rights and interests of the working class and popular sectors incorporate in their agendas the LGBT struggles, to confront gender inequality.
73. Based on the premise that the struggle against oppressions should be inserted in the anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist struggle, we should seek to build a revolutionary socialist camp in the LGBT movement; act concretely and actively in the LGBT social movement, in the struggle for the construction of socialism and in the articulation of our political demands, making ourselves present in the many spaces of LGBT organization and representation, such as associations, forums, councils, collectives and others that are pertinent; contribute to the revolutionary organization and political formation of LGBT people of the working class; articulate the specific struggles of the LGBT population associated with the broader struggle of the working class, in order to overcome the distance between LGBT and communist struggles, which still remains as a historical residue of mistakes of both movements. We must fight for the guarantee and respect to the use of the social name; for the inclusion of sexual education in the curriculum of schools and in teacher training courses, taking into account sexual and gender diversities; for the guarantee of specific and specialized health care for the LGBT population, through SUS.
74. In the same way, the fight against racism in our country implies the fight to overcome capitalism. The exploitation of black, enslaved or precarious workers has been the fundamental economic and social basis of the existence of class society and of the process of expanded reproduction of capital in our country since colonial times. From this fundamental relationship stems not only the economic and social subordination of the Brazilian black population, but also all other existing relations of domination and exploitation in our society. The struggle to put an end to the exploitation of the work of black men and women attacks Brazilian racism at its root and contributes to the concrete construction of People's Power.
75. It is necessary to organize the struggle against the policy of extermination of the black and peripheral population, the majority of the Brazilian working class. This is a terrorist and criminal state project that imposes through violence a level of exploitation and oppression that would otherwise seem unbearable. In capitalist society, the color black skin is associated with poverty, inferiority and risk of death. That is why the struggle of the working class in Brazil is also and at every moment the struggle for the lives of black men and women, for the right to exist and to exercise political power over their lives. We fight for the end of violence against black women, who feel on their skin what is worst in capitalism, by occupying the worst jobs, with the lowest salaries, even when performing equal work. We must participate in the organization of the quilombola struggle, which remains current as memory, conscience, and strategy of struggle and popular organization. We stand together with the quilombolas in favor of the titling of their lands, for the recognition of their culture, their struggle and their work.
76. We fight for full freedom for religions of African origin, a historical struggle waged by communists. The defense and recognition of these religions are part of the defense of the secular state and the fight against racism and against persecution of the black and peripheral population in Brazil. Besides the religions of African origin, Brazil is the cradle of cultures of struggle, resistance, and work. We put up a fight against all forms of political persecution materialized in the invasion of terreiros and in the discourse of hate directed against religious expressions of African origin. We fight for the recognition of these cultures in the Brazilian public sphere. The inclusion of African History in the school curriculum must be defended and expanded with the presence of Capoeira, Jongo, and other artistic and cultural expressions developed and inherited by the black Brazilian people. We also fight for an education that respects Brazilian cultures and peoples, a popular, secular, indigenous, peasant, quilombola, scientific, liberating, and quality education.
77. We must participate in the struggles in defense of the sovereignty and rights of indigenous peoples and against the set of setbacks deepened by the neoliberal project and adopted by the Bolsonaro government, which seeks to dismantle historically won indigenous rights and prevent collective and non-capitalist access to demarcated land, a fundamental factor for the maintenance of cultures and traditional ways of life and social organization. We fight against the genocide of the indigenous population and the return to an integrationist and assimilationist policy, which denies the customs, beliefs, habits and rituals of these peoples, in a process of homogenization of the dominant capitalist culture.
78. It is necessary to join ranks with indigenous organizations against the setbacks and in defense of the fullness of their rights: for the demarcation of all Indigenous Lands in our country, for the support of the processes of land retaking by indigenous peoples, against the criminalization of indigenous movements and their leaders, against prejudice and institutional racism, against capitalist works in indigenous territories, against institutional attacks that hurt indigenous rights, in defense of the right to self-determination of indigenous peoples. We fight for the right to differentiated education, with the regularization of indigenous schools, for access to differentiated health, with valorization of traditional medicine, and the adoption of a public policy of valorization of indigenous culture as an integral part of the Brazilian culture in formation.
79. In order to strengthen the PCB's action with the Indigenous people, the Central Committee should organize a national seminar about the indigenous question, with the objective of constructing a political directive from the PCB about the indigenous theme, as well as deliberate a plan of action with the indigenous people. This seminar is of fundamental importance to structure, amplify and consolidate the Indigenous Fraction of the PCB, which is still in an initial stage of organization.
The struggle for democratic freedoms and People's Power
80. The democratic freedoms present in the so-called bourgeois democracy (in essence the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie over the proletariat) are a means to enhance the class struggle and to build the dictatorship of the proletariat as an expression of socialist democracy. The dimension of these freedoms occurs at different levels, depending on the correlation of forces between the fundamental classes in each social formation. The freedoms of organization of parties, unions and of workers in struggle, the freedoms of expression, of coming and going, of religious beliefs, among others, are essential for the ends we seek. Aware of the limitations of bourgeois democracy, generated, in its essence, by the capitalist base of society, that gives form and content to the laws and rules that govern it, communists have no illusions about the possibility of overcoming capitalism through bourgeois institutional democracy.
81. However, given the complexity of Brazilian society and the process of revolutionary construction of socialism, we cannot do without participation in the institutional struggles, with a view to obtaining possible advances in the field of democratic liberties, spreading socialist and communist ideas, and also aiming to support the struggles of the working class against the loss of civil and social rights and for new conquests. Faced with the attacks of the capitalist class, it is urgent that the proletarian forces fight in defense of the living conditions and material interests of the exploited masses, against the increase in the cost of living, unemployment, and all the ills that plague the proletariat. Detached from this struggle, the defense of democratic liberties becomes an abstract agenda, far removed from the daily problems of the masses and incapable of mobilizing them in a revolutionary sense.
82. Faced with the reactionary offensive against democratic liberties, we cannot limit ourselves to a defensive struggle: we must associate the struggle for democratic liberties with the struggle for People's Power, without falling into liberal conceptions of democracy, which also means raising radical banners, based on our conceptions of democracy. In this sense, we defend a unicameral Congress; the eligibility and revocability of all mandates, including in the Judiciary; the restriction of privileges and salaries of the high rulers; the access to the rostrum of the municipal and state parliaments and to the National Congress for unions and working class organizations; the holding of plebiscites and referenda on all relevant issues under discussion in society. By articulating our offensive tactic to our defensive tactic, we allow the struggle for People's Power not to be sidelined in the name of defending democratic liberties. Only in this way can we accumulate forces, from the struggle for the immediate interests of the working class, in order to create conditions for the counter-offensive of the socialist forces.
83. It is necessary to reaffirm the fight for memory, truth and justice and for the ample, general and unrestricted amnesty of those who fought against the dictatorship of 1964-1985, demanding judgment and punishment of those responsible for the crimes and murders committed. The PCB must also demand the construction of public spaces that preserve the memory of the fight against dictatorships in Brazil, as well as against the horror of slavery. We must also fight for the total opening of the archives of the organs of repression, for the preservation of existing documentation and the expansion of access to knowledge about the periods of slavery and dictatorships and about the genocide of the black population and indigenous peoples.
84. A central part of the struggles in the field of democratic liberties is the construction of People's Power, as defined in the Resolutions of the 15th Congress. The projection of the struggles in the field of democratic liberties and people's power should point to and support the configuration of the democratic structure of the new socialist institutionality that we want to build in a revolutionary way. We fight for the construction of People's Power, in the form of independent organizations, as were the soviets, the factory tribunals, the industrial cordons, to create the structures of dual power that are fundamental to the creation of a socialist institutionality.
85. Besides the more immediate proposals for struggle, aimed at confronting the attacks of capital on historically won rights and mobilization to meet the daily needs of the working class and the proletariat, it is necessary to aim for an anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist program that contributes to the construction of People's Power, within the strategy of socialist revolution. We fight for: nationalization of large industrial companies in key sectors of the economy, with restatization of the companies privatized by the neoliberal governments, institution and strengthening of state economic and social planning, in both indicative and directive forms, nationalization of foreign trade, of the financial system, of agribusiness and mining, broad participation of workers in the management of the state companies and of the economy in general, progressive tax policies that increase taxes on profits and property, on large companies and on large rural and urban properties.
86. The construction of proletarian/people's power is not limited to the mere institutional negation or any kind of autonomist parallelism, but actively occupies all the pores of the current institutionality, guided by a historical project of negation of the capitalist order, therefore, starting from the revolutionary affirmation that the means necessary for life cannot be privately appropriated, that no human being can appropriate another to transform it into merchandise, that the goods of first necessity and the services necessary for the production and social reproduction of life are the patrimony of all humanity and cannot be privately appropriated. It is necessary to build from now on, starting from the old order, a dual power, an institutional and political order proper to the workers, founded on and founding a new proletarian and popular culture, capable of giving unity to the proletarian bloc and putting it in motion in the struggle against the bourgeois order.
87. The theme of People's Power pointed out by the resolutions of the 14th Congress of the PCB has gained, in the current conjuncture, a new dimension, since it has become a slogan that has found great repercussion in the mass movement and among several organizations of our field of political action. When stating the need to build a People's Power, the PCB calls attention to a political process that cannot be confused with instances and mass organizations or political articulations between leftist parties, that is, it is not a mere element of tactical action. This process unfolds in at least four fundamental moments, which articulate the tactical and the strategic plan.
88. The struggle for People's Power is expressed in the independent actions of the working class in its clashes against the most evident manifestations of the capitalist order, which take the most explicit form of mobilizations, strikes, and movements that set in motion the different segments of the proletariat and the working class in general. In this aspect, we affirm that People's Power already exists in embryo in the construction of autonomy and class independence of these movements that clash with the conservative bloc and its politics in defense of the bourgeois order, through their own organizations of daily life, of the organization and resistance of the working class (social movements, unions, leftist organizations and parties, forums of struggle for health, education, housing, transportation, etc.), although at this moment they act in a fragmented way and without the necessary political unity.
89. These struggles and confrontations tend to intensify and, in face of the expected reaction of the bourgeois power, move towards the necessary programmatic unity around common axes of struggle that unify the sectorial demands presented in a fragmented way in an increasingly precise agenda of banners and demands, under which the mass movement defines its independence from the governments of the order and the dominant bloc, shaping the popular and leftist camp.
90. The culmination of the mass struggles and the developed resistances point to the deepening of the autonomy of the popular camp expressed in the banners of struggle, in the agenda of demands presented, and in organizational forms capable of being configured as a political force against the dominant bloc and as an alternative power, formulating a political program of necessary transformations of an anti-capitalist nature. At this moment the People's Power will find the necessary organizational forms that cannot be anticipated (Popular Councils, Assemblies, Committees, etc.).
91. In the framework of a revolutionary or pre-revolutionary situation, this political construction can and must take the form of a dual power that prepares the conditions for decisive confrontations against the dominant classes and their State -the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie-, combining direct forms of struggle that make possible the constitution of a real alternative power of the workers. At this moment, People's Power assumes all its potentiality as the embryo of a new State supported by the popular masses and the working class, in the perspective of a radical transformation of society. Fully developed in its potential, the Popular Power becomes the germ of a Proletarian State -the Dictatorship of the Proletariat- that will lead the socialist transition aiming to eradicate private property, classes, and, therefore, the State itself, through the free association of the producers.
92. We distance ourselves from some conceptions of people's power: 1) that of micropolitics or the small politics of councils, forums and all those spaces where one tries to involve the population with the illusory politics of "participatory citizenship", not allowing relevant decisions to be made, nor affecting the correlation of forces between classes by hiding the fundamental contradictions; 2) the institutionalizing and electoral ones, which organize groups and collectives only at the time of campaigns or intend to channel the struggles and the revolt of the working class merely in the institutional field, formulating bills, master plans, etc. 3) the "new utopian socialists," who bet all their chips on local power, on small cooperative experiences, on projects of solidarity economy or self-management, because they think that the proliferation of these experiences and of new spaces of sociability will put the capitalist system and the bourgeois State in check.
93. In the field opposite to these formulations, we understand People's Power as the overcoming of the fragmentation of struggles, imprinting to them a class project around which they articulate, taking care to strengthen the autonomy and class independence of these struggles in face of the State and the capital, in the concrete experience of the permanent confrontation with the class enemy, always seeking to boost the contradictions and contributing, this way, to the maturing of the socialist rupture.
94. The development of People's Power, therefore, presupposes the creation of new forms of association and proletarian sociability through the manifestations of working class resistance, endowing them with a political dimension, by understanding the roots and determinations of each particular problem and relating them to the totality of the capitalist order to be negated. It is necessary to endow the political actions with an organizational and disciplined dimension, culturally solidified, and to add to the construction of a great political movement of the masses that has as its objective the implantation of socialism in Brazil. For all this, the action of communist militancy becomes a priority in those spaces where it is possible to advance the organization of workers and youth in the struggle for their interests and needs, contributing effectively to the formation and deepening of class consciousness against the domination imposed by capital. For this, it is necessary to be close to the masses, actively participating in the daily struggles of the working class, whether in the unions, inside companies and schools, in the neighborhoods, through social and community movements, in general political struggles, etc.
Anti-capitalist and Anti-imperialist Front / Revolutionary Bloc of the Proletariat
95. In the political fronts in which we insert ourselves, we should seek to give a character of unity to the anti-capitalist struggles and of opposition to the manifestations of imperialism in Brazil and in the world, in an articulation of an anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist nature, structured by political parties, mass organizations and popular movements united around the counter-hegemonic program, in which the rupture with capitalism is foreseen. We point to the necessity of constituting a political front of a permanent character, organized around a program capable of giving unity to the anti-capitalist struggles and of opposing the manifestations of imperialism in Brazil and in the world.
96. Such articulation, which we call the Anti-capitalist and Anti-imperialist Front, cannot be confused with an electoral front. The electoral victory and the possibilities of governability of left forces will only occur if it is based on a strong movement of the masses. Therefore, the project of constituting the Anti-capitalist and Anti-imperialist Front depends on the formation of a broad movement of a permanent character, structured by political parties, mass organizations, and popular movements united around the counter-hegemonic program, in which the rupture with capitalism is foreseen.
97. To form this Front, we must prioritize the dialogue with the political and social forces that have positioned themselves, in the countless fronts of struggle, in open opposition to the bourgeois state and its class oppression, even even those that today are still reticent to embrace the idea of a movement with an anti-capitalist character. anti-capitalist movement. Some of these forces oppose the idea because of the understanding that there are still "national tasks" to be accomplished in Brazil, and that we (the PCB) would be anticipating the historical process, proposing the anti-capitalist struggle as central. These groups start from the principle that it is necessary, first develop the anti-latifundium and anti-monopoly struggle and that, therefore, the present stage of the class struggle in Brazil would demand a primarily anti-imperialist movement. This is in fact a "stageist" conception in disguise. conception in disguise.
98. We understand that the popular struggles in Brazil against exploitation, against the power of the latifundia or against the monopolies are, in essence, anti-capitalist struggles, because capital exercises its domination in all spheres of social life. Any "national" or "popular-democratic" task to be accomplished tends to be an anti-capitalist task. Any and every popular movement finds on the other side of the trench the organization of capital, trying to hinder the conquests of the workers. The social struggles and the resistance of the working class in defense of its most immediate rights, such as salary, working conditions, retirement, assistance, social security rights, as well as the struggle for quality of life and for the right to a quality public education, to health care, to decent housing, to urban mobility and/or displacement in rural areas to access to information, to cultural goods, and to leisure clash today with the privatizing logic of the market, which sees all these goods and services as commodities to be acquired primarily in the private market, generating enormous profits for large corporations and, secondarily and suppletively, by the State, in the form of public policies.
99. We do not contrast the anti-capitalist struggle with the struggle against imperialism. In the case of Brazil, the two struggles are united in the same process of confronting the order imposed by big capital and the bourgeoisie. We know that the development of Brazilian capitalism is profoundly and inextricably linked to international capitalism, and it is impossible to separate where "national" capital begins and ends from capital linked to the internationalization of the big transnational companies. The development of monopolies and oligopolies, of mergers, of concentration and centralization of the main means of production in the hands of big monopolistic corporations, in the agricultural, industrial, banking and commercial sectors, makes it impossible to separate capital of Brazilian or foreign origin, as well as the so-called productive capital from the speculative capital, since, in this phase, financial capital merges its investments both in direct production and in the so-called interest-bearing capital, and flows from one field to another according to the needs and interests of private accumulation, being averse to any kind of planning and control. That is why the anti-capitalist struggle today is necessarily an anti-imperialist struggle.
100. The assertion of the anti-imperialist character does not come from any assertion of a national capitalism as opposed to the foreign domination of developed powers, which could lead us to re-present an essential element of the strategy of stages or the more general design of a national-democratic or popular-democratic strategy. The anti-imperialist character, on the contrary, starts from the realization of the international character of monopoly capitalism and hence its imperialist character, so that the anti-capitalist struggles developing in Brazil, Latin America and the world necessarily clash with the world capitalist/imperialist order, which increases the need for active political articulation and internationalist solidarity.
101. Against the capitalist historical bloc we must act aiming at the construction of the Revolutionary Bloc of the Proletariat, that is, the set of actions and economic, political, juridical transformations and forms of consciousness that point to the overcoming of capitalism and to the construction of a socialist society towards communism. This demands the formation of a bloc of classes and social sectors and their political-organizational representations, that, in the concrete struggles - specific or general - against the capitalist order, becomes a powerful instrument of struggle and organization of the workers, with an action that goes beyond the field of economic interests to present itself as a unitary counterpoint of forces to the bourgeois hegemony. The construction of the counter-hegemonic bloc, therefore, presupposes the articulation of the economic and political dimensions in the shaping of the emancipatory proposal, enabling the proletariat to exercise political power and cultural direction of the whole society.
Build the National Meeting of the Working Class
102. The inexistence of a strong and combative central union, capable of unifying the anti-capitalist sectors is still an obstacle on this path. Even though the conditions for the immediate creation of a class and unitary central are not given, we propose the realization of a big National Meeting of the Working Class, in order to build the possible unity of action in the struggles. It is high time to establish this debate and, while it is not possible to form a new union instrument, to constitute the unitary mobilization forums in the states and at national level, such as the Trade Union, People's and Youth Forum for the Struggle for Democratic Rights and Liberties. The PCB understands that the end of labor exploitation will be the work of millions of workers, female workers and youth. It will not be the exclusive work of one or a few organizations, but of a group of political and social forces of revolutionary character.
103. In this process, we must prioritize the active participation of our militancy in the existing union entities, associations, and popular movements, with a view to transforming them into unified organizations focused on the anti-capitalist struggle. Secondarily, where the dispute is unviable, we must encourage the creation of new forms of association and sociability through the manifestations of working class resistance, endowing them with a political dimension, by understanding the roots and determinations of each particular problem, by relating them to the totality of the capitalist order to be negated. The objective should be the construction of a great political movement of the masses that aims at the implantation of socialism in Brazil.
104. We must seek the unification at the national level of all the initiatives and experiences of local struggles, for the creation of People's Power as a double power of resistance and active confrontation with the bourgeois bloc, in order to contrast two distinct alternatives of societal organization: the maintenance of the capitalist order or the need for a new socialist order. The outcome of the socialist strategy of building a People's Power cannot be defined in advance, but it is our duty and responsibility to prepare ourselves for the various scenarios that may present themselves. Thus, we must be prepared to defend the socialist alternative against the violence of bourgeois reaction and its allies.
105. The biggest strategic challenge for the next period is our insertion in the proletariat. In this sense, the newspaper O Poder Popular can and must also fulfill an organizational function, promoting our link with the proletariat, but, above all, the link of the proletarians among themselves. For this, it is necessary to professionalize the journalistic activity, with an editorial commission composed of militants detached for this, theoretically and technically qualified, effectively collecting facts, investigating, interviewing, reporting the specific manifestations of the struggle and encouraging workers to write for the newspaper.
106. The party militants, acting as correspondents for the newspaper, will approach the workers in the workplaces and neighborhoods in an organic way, with a concrete proposal to help in the struggle: to concretely denounce the problems of capitalist society in a vehicle of national reach. In this informative activity, the militant will get to know the workers personally, identifying potential recruits, hearing from the class itself about the problems it faces and creating bonds. In the publication, the proletariat from other regions will identify with the concrete struggle being published and will see themselves in those proletarians being reported, thus advancing class consciousness. The newspaper will be of tangible use in the revolutionary struggle when it is the general platform of the Brazilian workers, the forum for debate among all sectors of the proletariat.
Bourgeois elections — the communists in the electoral arena
107. In recent years, the PCB has advanced in its participation in the bourgeois elections, although still at a pace much lower than necessary to be able to use all the potentiality of agitation and propaganda that the electoral moment allows. The advance of our absolute number of votes, registered in the last elections on a national scale, is the reflection of our politics: centrality in the mass struggle, combat against class conciliation and the bourgeoisie, always showing the independent path that the proletariat must follow in the direction of its liberation. Although it is an arena manipulated and absolutely controlled by the capitalists, the bourgeois elections are an important thermometer to measure how much the Party's message has managed to break through the media blockade and has resonated with the masses.
108. Our main task in this context is to overcome the amateur character that still prevails in our electoral work. If we want to be taken seriously by the working class, it is necessary to make a quality leap in our intervention in the elections. With the blockade imposed on us by the latest electoral counter-reforms, that almost completely pruned our presence in electoral time on TV and radio, the use of social networks has become fundamental to publicize our candidacies. To overcome the artisanal character of our interventions it is necessary to work for the nationalization of our agitation and propaganda, through operating committees via electronic means, that integrate the militancy of each locality with the rest of the country, increasingly qualifying the material produced without pruning the creativity of the militants.
109. It is up to the Municipal, Regional and Central Committees, within their respective jurisdictions: to choose candidates for proportional and majoritarian elections and decide on the formation of majoritarian electoral coalitions, after hearing the lower bodies, within the policy of alliances established by the Central Committee. The decision about the choice of candidates for federal positions (President and Vice-President of the Republic, Senators and Federal Deputies) and for state executive positions (Governors) is the competence of the Central Committee, after hearing the respective Regional Committee. The decision about the choice of candidates for State Deputies and Mayors of Capitals is the competence of the Regional Committee, ad-referendum of the Central Committee. The decision about the choice of candidates for Mayors and City Councilors is the competence of the Municipal Committee or Cell, ad-referendum of the Regional Committee. Exceptionally and according to the Central Committee's criteria, there can be democratic affiliations to the PCB so that leaders of popular movements - who are not part of other party organizations and have a political relationship with the party - can represent the PCB program in the elections, also contributing to the strengthening of the party within the referred movement.
110. The RCs, MCs, and cells with municipal scope should pay maximum attention to the legal-accounting and notarial obligations imposed by the electoral legislation for the maintenance of party registrations in the respective instances, observing the deadlines and rules related to the rendering of accounts, registration of directions and candidacies, in order to avoid the collection of fines or of amounts to the public treasury, as well as the impediment to the participation in elections in places where we are organized and the fulfillment of the electoral task is defined. The participation in electoral campaigns must be preceded by prior planning, with a financial budget estimate and well-defined tactical objectives. The CC should promote the training of militants for the legal-accounting task and that can act as multipliers of the task in the states and municipalities.
111. In bourgeois elections, the Party must present its Struggles Program in all its fullness, without renouncing any ideological principle in search of votes. The Party can and should use its candidacies with the objective of inserting itself in more sectors of the working class and raising their class consciousness; however, the candidacies should mediate between the particular interests of their social categories and sectors and the general interests of the proletariat, towards the Brazilian revolution and socialism-communism, risking falling into corporativist and identitarian deviations if this principle is not followed. The mediations between the national Struggles Program and the particularities of each state or municipality must be worked out jointly by the RCs, MCs and cells, with the help of the party collectives.
112. Much more than obtaining office positions, the main objective of the Communist Party in participating in elections is to use this space to advance in the process of broadening and radicalizing the mass struggle. In this sense, the party cells and collectives should make political assessments of the electoral bases won, with the intention of maintaining organic links and not reproducing the electioneering vices of parties that work only to win more votes. It is very negative if, after the elections, the Party doesn't return or doesn't carry out an action plan where it has achieved the greatest acceptance.
113. Electoral candidacies are specific tasks that should be delegated to organic militants of the Party, considering mainly their insertion in the mass movements, their leadership capacity and easiness of communication. Being a candidate or parliamentarian for the PCB should not be a reason for vanity, since it does not allow any privilege for the comrades chosen for this task. The cadres who dispute the elections must sign a public letter of commitment to the Party, swearing to defend the working class, the revolution and socialism, recognizing that they accept to be removed from the task if the Central Committee decides so.
114. All the public appearances and speeches of our candidates and parliamentarians must be centralized by the Struggles Program of the PCB, having been previously agreed with the committee corresponding to the position (municipal, state and national). During the electoral campaign, a specific committee must be constituted with members from the leadership and from the bases to follow the work of each candidacy. In the case of mandates, a secretariat must be elected from among the parliamentary group, with the approval and participation of the Central Committee. The public decentralization of candidates and parliamentarians is punishable within the Party, and in cases of obvious severity can lead to the withdrawal of the candidacy, the loss of the mandate, and the expulsion of the decentralized militants.
115. The Party must guarantee the full safety of its electoral staff, both physically and mentally. During the campaign period, the comrades chosen to represent the Party must be released from other tasks in order to avoid overloading them, with the necessary care being taken by the instances to ensure that this does not damage the internal organization of the Party, nor its organicity among the already established bases. Every attack on a candidate or parliamentarian of the PCB must be understood as an attack on the Party as a whole, and must be energetically repudiated by the militancy through mass struggle, through demonstrations, videos and public solidarity motions, through entities and popular organizations.
116. The participation in the electoral contest is necessarily subject to the concrete capacities of the Party, the strength of its militancy and its internal organization. In proportional elections, we should aim to present as many candidates as possible under the communist banner. In the majority elections, the Party must know how to use the visibility it brings to stir up the Struggles Program and encourage the organization of the proletariat in the ranks of the PCB. Abstention in the electoral process due to material and financial disorganization should be avoided as much as possible, especially in the capital cities, given their greater visibility.
117. The congressmen, mayors, governors and/or president elected by the PCB donate all their salaries to the Party, which, as much as possible, given the needs of the class struggle, pays them a salary that allows them a comfortable life, which does not exceed disproportionately the income of a specialized worker.
118. When elected, our candidates must put their mandate entirely at the service of the mass struggle, fighting the repression against the working class. The representatives of the Party must use the rostrum to denounce all the attacks of the bourgeoisie, also denouncing conciliators and class traitors. They must present proposals for radical reforms that improve the living conditions of the people, even though they know that the bourgeois institutionality will put all possible obstacles in the way so that they cannot be implemented, because this serves to expose the farce of the bourgeois State and reaffirm the need for its overthrow and replacement by People's Power. If they get a majority in the parliaments or get elected in the Executive, the communists must use their positions to enter in permanent confrontation with the bourgeois State, through revolutionary propaganda and the adoption of measures that strengthen the self-organization of the working class.
119. The recent retrograde changes in the electoral legislation put in check the legality of revolutionary organizations to participate in electoral processes. The PCB has already suffered restrictions in relation to the Party Fund and insertion in TV/radio from the results of the past elections. For the next period, we need to deepen our revolutionary conception in relation to the scenario set for the electoral processes, safeguarding the Struggles Program as the main element of incidence on the conjuncture, whose elections (municipal, state and national) are spaces for agitation and mobilization around this perspective of rupture with capitalism.
120. At the same time that the broad unity of action to confront the attacks on the working class is set for the general struggles, in the electoral processes it is necessary to explicitly define who our allies are for the composition of coalitions in the majoritarian elections (since coalitions are prohibited for proportional elections). In the current political context and crisis of capitalism, the presentation of an electoral program of a break with capitalism and of immediate, medium, and long term proposals is fundamental to move the working class to a level of offensive against capital and not of conformation to the order, as the perspectives of class conciliation from the defeated popular-democratic strategy express themselves.
121. The 13 years of PT governments and their allies, as well as the state governments in which this sector is present, have already shown that they are not on the side of the working class. They operate and have operated major attacks on social, pension, and labor rights, in addition to increasing privatization and the criminalization of social movements. As an example, in this context of crisis of capital and an ultraliberal federal government, the PT government in Bahia has already implemented the same policy of Bolsonaro in the state. We cannot have as allies in electoral processes sectors that attack the working class.
122. To consistently oppose the bourgeois offensive, our electoral alliances must be based on strategic agreement around the socialist revolution, refusing alliances with candidates of class conciliation. In the cases of elections where the second round presents a polarization between reactionary and reformist candidacies, it will be up to the evaluation in each concrete case of the possibility of critical support, that emphasizes right away the fact that we will be in opposition to the future government of class conciliation. We know perfectly well the difference between reactionary governments of the extreme right and right-wing and class conciliation governments. Our firm decision will always be to stand together with the working class, organizing it in defense of its interests and rights, whether on the terrain of formal freedoms or in a reactionary context.
The communist movement and international solidarity
123. The inter-imperialist tensions and the struggle between capitalist nations for hegemony mean that the danger of a new armed conflict on an international scale is getting closer and closer. In this sense, it is up to communists to intensify the struggle against a new imperialist war right now, showing that the peoples of the world have nothing to gain from a bloody battle on behalf of their bourgeoisies. On the contrary, they must focus their efforts on transforming wars between nations into wars against their dominant classes, conquer political power for the working people and build communism, the only hope for true peace among peoples.
124. We must broaden our actions of solidarity with all the peoples of the world that are being attacked by imperialism: Palestine, Syria, Libya, Iraq, Iran, etc., in special solidarity with the people of Venezuela against the threat of intervention by US imperialism, supported by right-wing governments in Latin America, and solidarity with the Plurinational Republic of Bolivia, which has suffered a fascist military coup at the service of local and imperialist bourgeois interests, with the aim of rolling back the conquests achieved by the working people and the original communities. Our internationalist solidarity must include support for the peoples subjected to colonial rule in countries like Guadalupe, Martinique, New Caledonia, among others, as well as the intransigent defense against the illegal occupation of Puerto Rico by the United States and of the Kingdom of Morocco in the Sahara.
125. We reaffirm our unrestricted solidarity with socialist Cuba and its heroic people. We repudiate the attempts by imperialism and its lackeys, such as the servile Bolsonaro, to try to portray Cubans as an enslaved people without democratic rights and subject to tyranny. We openly fight to reproduce in our country the social advances of Cuba, especially in health, education, security and instruments of people's power, understanding that this is only possible with the construction of the Brazilian Revolution. In the same way, we defend the unrestricted solidarity with the Korean people, in defense of the People's Democratic Republic of Korea, for its self-determination and right of self-defense against imperialism. We must increase our efforts to engage in dialogue with the revolutionary organizations that are active in the Korean context, in order to better understand their internal conjuncture.
126. Today the world sees a reactionary wave that, in several countries, manifests itself through the growth of extreme right-wing and even openly fascist movements, conquering more space in society, parliaments, and governments. Their aim is to destroy the independent organizations of the proletariat, to use the oppressions already existing in society to create scapegoats to divide the working class and to harden the bourgeois regimes, and they may even discard liberal democracy in the process and establish open dictatorships against the peoples. It is necessary to work for unified international efforts to unmask and defeat neo-fascism, preventing chauvinist, racist and patriarchal sentiments from contaminating the working class. Humanity has already won the battle against fascism once and must win again in the not too distant future.
127. One of the main efforts of the far right wave is to seek the criminalization of communist parties and their militants. This inglorious task is done with the consent of the liberals, the bourgeoisie and even some social democrats, part of an ideological movement that for decades has tried to equate communism with Nazism, to erase the social conquests of the socialist experiences and the role of the CPs, and more particularly the USSR, in the definitive defeat of Nazi-fascism. It is necessary to continue coordinating efforts to stop this process, fighting revisionism and unmasking fascism for what it is: the most irrational and authoritarian face of capitalism. A fascist attack on a communist party must be seen by the rest of the international communist movement as an attack against all communists in the world.
128. The far right tries to build the image of a super-powerful São Paulo Forum, which is behind all the popular uprisings on the continent and which acts in a coordinated way to implement socialism in Latin America. We say that in this case, unfortunately, the right wing is wrong. The Foro de São Paulo today is a meeting dominated by the reformist parties of our continent, centered on absolute support for the so-called "progressive governments". Its own anti-imperialist character is also limited, as for example the hegemonic support given to the military intervention of Brazilian troops in Haiti. We tactically participate in the São Paulo Forum, as observers, with the objective of increasing cohesion among the Communist Parties that operate within it.
129. It is necessary to strengthen the revolutionary bloc in articulation within the international communist movement, which meets annually at the International Meeting of Communist and Workers' Parties, as well as contribute to the construction of the revolutionary pole of the Communist Parties of Latin America, with sufficient insertion in the workers'-popular movement to bar the imperialist-capitalist offensive in our continent and take the leadership of the class out of the hands of the social democracy. Nevertheless, it is fundamental to advance in the sense of seeking to build a permanent space of articulation among the PCs of Latin America, with the main objective of coordinating common struggles.
130. The PCB respects the diversity of opinions existing in the current International Communist Movement and seeks to establish a dialogue with all communist parties of the world, to exchange evaluations about the ongoing political processes and coordinate common actions against the bourgeois offensive. However, the PCB must privilege approximations and political actions with the parties of the revolutionary block, which are articulated in spaces such as the European Communist Initiative and the International Communist Review, preserving our political autonomy.
131. The PCB considers that it is negative for the working class that the Communist Parties give up defending the proletarian revolutionary program to embrace petty-bourgeois reformist programs, whether in the name of "unity against neoliberalism", or for "anti-fascist unity". The recent experience of our country and the entire history of the international communist movement clearly demonstrate that instead of generating an accumulation of forces, what this generates in practice is the political, ideological and real disarmament of the working class. The disillusionment generated by the non-fulfillment of the promises of social democracy is one of the factors that contributes to the arrival of fascism in power and its acceptance by the popular masses, as already pointed out by the Communist International before the establishment of the Popular Fronts line, of collaboration with social democracy.
132. The PCB is interested in building solid and lasting relations with the Communist Parties of socialist countries. We understand that the only way to really guarantee the security of the currently existing socialist experiences is the construction of new socialist revolutions, with the liberation of more peoples, to strengthen the battle against the imperialist-capitalist system. In this sense, we believe that the exchange with countries that have socialist experiences is fundamental for us to think about the process of revolutionary transition in Brazil.
133. We claim the historical legacy of the Paris Commune, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, Yugoslavia, China, Cuba, Vietnam, Bulgaria, Albania, Mozambique, the German Democratic Republic, Poland Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and Romania among others. We believe that humanity lost much with the end of the socialist experiences and we reject the theories that celebrate this historical fact, as well as combat the attempts to review the role of communists in World War II.
134. China assumes a growing regional importance in Asia, with a global geopolitical and economic protagonism. In the last 40 years, the reduction of poverty in China has impacted more than 70% on the reduction of global poverty. The country is led by a communist party that understands itself as faithful to Marxism-Leninism, directing a long-lasting historical process of socialist transition. It is up to the PCB to seek further study and deepening about these experiences, as well as intensifying cultural and political interchange with the Chinese Communist Party, as a way to better understand it. Despite the absence of a closed position about the socialist character or not of these countries, our Party must defend China against the attacks of imperialism and the orientalist, racist and anti-communist propaganda produced by western media monopolies.
135. Against the servile policies of the dominant classes, we defend an autonomous position of Brazil in international political and economic relations, by strengthening the actions with international movements that fight for the emancipation of the proletariat and for the guarantee of free development and sovereignty and self-determination of the peoples. We must promote a campaign for the taxation of international financial flows to fund development projects in the less developed countries and regions. In the long term, we fight for the establishment of a new international body that articulates the socialist nations, establishing diplomatic, political and economic relations on an equal footing and in mutual aid.
Notes
- ↑ Partido dos Trabalhadores [Workers' Party]. It's a Brazilian social-liberal political party based on the opportunist principle of class collaboration, led by Lula da Silva