Letter to the ICM: How the PCB's Central Committee violates the resolutions of the 16th Congress (Provisional Coordination of the National Movement in Defense of the Revolutionary Reconstruction of the PCB)

Comrades,

Letter to the ICM: How the PCB's Central Committee violates the resolutions of the 16th Congress
Author	Provisional Coordination of the National Movement in Defense of the Revolutionary Reconstruction of the PCB
Written in	August 22, 2023
First published	August 28, 2023
Source	Em Defesa do Comunismo

We have tried to continue our positive intervention in the class struggle, even in the midst of a complex party restructuring process, without being held hostage to petty quarrels and confusionist attacks by the Central Committee of the Brazilian Communist Party (the PCB's CC). That’s why, until now, we hadn’t issued any communiqué to revolutionary parties outside Brazil about the PCB’s current crisis. But now, in the face of the latest attacks and provocations, we feel obliged to drill down into all violations of the resolutions of our 16th Congress by the PCB's CC which, added to the persecutory purges without any respect even for our statutory procedures, resulted in the split of the Party.

Published in five languages, the document called The PCB and the class struggle in Brazil, signed by the PCB’s CC on August 17, is a second attempt to poison the Communist and Workers’ Parties around the world with lies. The first attempt was through a note issued by the PCPE (Partido Comunista de los Pueblos de España or Communist Party of the Peoples of Spain) and signed by only another organization, the PCUSA (Party of Communists USA), which had no significant repercussions in Brazil or in the international communist movement. It’s no coincidence the fact that both organizations took part in the structuring of the World Anti-Imperialist Platform, an international body that has worked to divide the international communist movement, bringing together organizations that defend a tailist stance towards Russia in the inter-imperialist war that is currently taking place on Ukrainian territory, as well as defending stagist conceptions, which postpone the tasks of the socialist revolution of the proletariat to a distant horizon, while nurturing illusions regarding a “multipolar capitalism” that would supposedly result from the defeat of NATO in Ukraine.

As regards the proletarian internationalism, the PCB’s 16th Congress defined, back in 2021, an unequivocal policy: a policy of revolutionary demarcation against reformism and stagism. In a thesis called Program of struggles to implement the socialist strategy in Brazil, the PCB’s 16th Congress consolidated the following understandings (bold ours):

“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 ever closer. In this sense, it is up to communists to step up the fight against a new imperialist war 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 towards transforming wars between nations into wars against their ruling classes, winning political power for the working people and building communism, the only hope for true peace between peoples.

129) We need to strengthen the revolutionary bloc within the international communist movement, which meets annually at the International Meeting of Communist and Workers’ Parties. […].

130) [...] the PCB should prioritize the development of political actions with and getting closer to the parties of the revolutionary bloc, which are organized in spaces such as the European Communist Initiative and the International Communist Review, while preserving our political autonomy.”

Two years after the 16th Congress, using this “political autonomy” as an argument, the current Central Committee directly violates the 16th Congress resolutions on proletarian internationalism, not only failing to promote actions and closer relations with the parties of the aforementioned bloc, but also moving nearer towards the World Anti-Imperialist Platform, a bloc that attacks, on a daily basis, the parties comprising the revolutionary bloc of the international communist movement. The very 16th Congress, even prior to the eruption of the war, defined with precision the inter-imperialist nature of the tensions that lead to growing military conflicts between the major capitalist powers, directly or indirectly. However, no sooner had the inter-imperialist war actually begun than these resolutions became dead letter. Just as the Second International and German social democracy tore up their resolutions on the question of imperialist war in the face of World War I, the PCB’s Central Committee today tears up the resolutions of the 16th Party Congress in the name of siding with social-chauvinist and stagist parties in defense of Russian expansionism and militarism.

It is no surprise, therefore, that this violation of our Congress resolutions has created a wave of outrage and revolt among communist militants. But it is not only within the framework of our proletarian internationalism that the PCB’s CC is failing to comply with the resolutions of the 16th Congress: the CC has also deviated from these resolutions in an increasingly scandalous way when it comes to the Party’s national tactics. To verify the veracity of these assertions, all one has to do is compare the Party’s congressional resolutions to the note issued on August 17!

The resolutions of the PCB’s 16th Congress state the following:

“35) [...] However, the socialist strategy shapes the character of the immediate struggle, that is, the strategy subordinates the tactics and not the other way round. [...] In the current stage of the class struggle, bourgeois offensive, and proletarian defensiveness, this means not giving ground to stagist conceptions, which postpone the struggle for socialism until after a stage of struggle against reaction. On the contrary: we participate in the resistance struggles, pointing to the socialist restructuring of society through the establishment of People’s Power as the only way out of the current crisis.

97) In order to form this [Anti-Capitalist and Anti-Imperialist] Front, we must prioritize dialogue with the political and social forces that have positioned themselves, on the countless fronts of struggle, in open opposition to the bourgeois state and its class oppression, even those that today are still reluctant to embrace the idea of a movement with an anti-capitalist character.

122) [...] In the case of elections where the second round presents a polarization between reactionary and reformist candidates, it will be up to us to assess in each specific case the possibility of critical support, highlighting from the outset that we will be in opposition to the future class conciliation government.”

Well then: eight months into the Lula-Alckmin government, in which several attacks on the working class have already been approved, the Central Committee still refuses to offer a precise characterization of its stance towards the government, avoiding a forceful statement of opposition like it’s avoiding the plague. This can be clearly seen in the declaration of August 17 itself, full of democratic demagogy which, in view of the emergence of the far-right, relegates the socialist tasks of the proletariat to the distant future, and summarizes the tasks of the working class as “tackling the extreme right and the neo-fascist hordes”. But even in this area, truth be told, the PCB made no progress, and this “tackling” was purely rhetorical, as was the supposed “plebiscite” in defense of certain reforms. Perhaps this explains why the Party’s CC regrets – thus revealing all its illusions regarding the class character of the conciliation government – that the government has made “no call to the popular masses to face the forces of the right”. But the PCB’s CC can’t overcome its tailist inclination and come on its own to the obvious conclusion: that the government doesn’t and won’t do this precisely because it is a government committed to a bourgeois program (not just a “neoliberal” one, as the document states, revealing its ideological debasement) and based precisely on a right-wing parliamentary majority!

The contradiction is striking: for the PCB’s CC, “the Brazilian political scene has been marked by a relentless struggle for democratic freedoms, the fight against neo-fascism, and the affirmation of the banners of struggle of the proletarian and popular forces”. However, they claim that the moment is characterized by the “difficulty of promoting more robust advances in the intensification of the class struggle”. At the same time, they admit that the predominant political forces in the working class refuse to ask the masses to join in the struggle. What the PCB tries to paint in gold as a period of “struggle without truce” would be much better defined, after all, as a period of “truce without struggle”, a period of the most complete ideological and practical surrender. By omitting this fact, the PCB seeks to hide its own ideological and practical surrender to social democracy. And, to top it off, they give us the following vague and undefined statement that “there is also a set of norms in Brazil that have been put in place by the Bolsonaro government to regulate social life, which have not yet been dismantled”, almost insinuating that Brazil is currently experiencing a situation of institutional abnormality or legal curtailment of the freedoms of organization, demonstration, and struggle of the working class – a completely exaggerated picture of the national situation, painted in order to justify the rejection of socialist revolutionary agitation in the name of democratic legalist agitation. The CC ends its note by stating that “our political tactics is subordinated to the socialist strategy” without even realizing that this supposed socialist strategy is not expressed in any other passage of the note. Like the old social-democratic parties, the PCB’s CC believes that socialism is just a nice word to recite on holidays and to use at the end of political notes, but with no impact on the party’s tactics at all.

It is clear, therefore, that the PCB’s Central Committee speaks the truth when it says that the whole crisis experienced by the Party is the result of “the emergence of a fractionalist group made up of the losers of the 16th Congress”. What the CC is hiding is that this “fractionalist group made up of the losers of the 16th Congress” is precisely comprised of the opportunist majority of the Central Committee, which kept quiet and was defeated at the 16th Congress on all fundamental political issues, and which subsequently made an even deeper turn to the right. And that, since this turn of events met with resistance among the communist militants, this anti-Leninist faction that took over the Party was forced to implode the PCB by purging hundreds of leaders and grassroots activists from the Party and its affiliated organizations (some in summary proceedings and others without even being notified of the reasons for their expulsion).

Because it is going against the truth, the resolutions of the 16th Congress, and the fundamental principles of Marxism-Leninism, the PCB’s CC has no choice but to use the weapons of confusion, defamation, and cynicism. They resort to personal slander and indecent insinuations because it is the only line of argument left to those who cannot base their own opportunistic politics on our Congressional resolutions. While all over the country hundreds of militants and dozens of party organizations announce their split with this Central Committee and join the effort for the Revolutionary Reconstruction of the PCB, the CC claims that everything is just an internet thing!

Since the beginning of this serious crisis within the PCB, triggered by purges in direct conflict with the Party’s statute, we have defended the convening of the 17th (Extraordinary) Congress as the only means for a unitary solution to our crisis. Said Congress, in the spirit of Leninist democratic centralism, would involve the entire communist militancy, all the people who proudly raise the banner of the PCB in the midst of the popular struggles. Meanwhile, the CC acted to deepen the split by purging and dissolving bodies, refusing various requests for a unitary Congress and stating that “this fractionalist group wants to allow non-militants and people from outside the party to take part in a forthcoming congress”. In other words, it is labelling as “non-militants” all the militancy of the Union of Communist Youth (UJC), the trade union collective and the other party collectives (the Minervino de Oliveira Black Collective, the Ana Montenegro Classist Feminist Collective and the LGBT Communist Collective).

With its divisive stance and its recurrent lies, the CC is becoming increasingly more discredited among the communist militancy. With its refusal to convene a unitary congress, the fraction that has taken over the Party leadership reveals all its fear of some of the main tenets of Leninist democratic centralism: debate, criticism, and self-criticism, thus acknowledging the fear that its opinions will remain minority positions among the communist militancy, as they were at the 16th Congress. The initiative, called “Brazilian Communist Party – Revolutionary Reconstruction” (PCB-RR), is just a necessary expression of resistance to the Party split planned by an anti-Leninist group and endorsed by the majority of the PCB’s CC, which would rather liquidate the Party and reduce it to ashes than lose its bureaucratic command.

With its note of August 17, the CC threw a spanner in the works of any hope of reconciliation through a Unitary Congress and the reversal of the expulsions. The note makes it clear why this split is inevitable. If this CC is incapable of resolving the party crisis through a Unitary Congress, the communist militancy will organize the 17th (Extraordinary) Congress of the PCB with their own hands!

We therefore invite all comrades from Communist and Workers’ Parties around the world to read our Manifesto in Defense of the Revolutionary Reconstruction of the PCB, in which the causes and perspectives of the crisis of the Brazilian communist movement are detailed and discussed with the thoroughness demanded by scientific socialism, without resorting to the phraseology and demagoguery that characterizes the political note of the PCB’s CC of August 17. On this occasion, we also would like to express our desire to establish an open dialogue and fraternal relations with the Communist and Workers’ Parties that make up the International Meeting of Communist and Workers’ Parties (thereby formalizing our interest in participating in this initiative, as well as in Solidnet), and we are at your disposal for any further clarifications.

Brazil, August 22, 2023

Provisional Coordination of the National Movement in Defense of the Revolutionary Reconstruction of the PCB