download - International Viewpoint

One of the great limits of ten years of the Lula government has been the absence of a real agrarian
reform, a central question for the future of Brazilian society. According to the MST, the Lula government
which had committed itself to distributing land to 450,000 peasant families has only done so for 150,000.
Millions of landless rural workers await a real reform which attacks the insolent privileges of the rural
capitalist oligarchy, in increasingly precarious social conditions.
Forbidden by the Constitution from seeking a third term, Lula chose as his dauphin Dilma Roussef, who
became in 2011 the PT presidential candidate. Active in the armed resistance to the dictatorship — she
organised some bank expropriations – she was arrested, tortured and imprisoned for three years. After
her release, she became an effective and pragmatic “left technocrat”, first joining the Democratic Labour
Party of Leonel Brizola, and then joining the PT in 2000. Elected in the second round against Alckmin,
she then succeeded Lula. The PSOL presented as candidate Plinio de Arruda Sampaio, who waged a good
campaign but only gained 1% of the vote.
The policy of the Dilma government— shaken by several corruption scandals concerning various ministers,
notably from the centre right PMDB, who have had to resign — has hardly been different from that of its
predecessor. The social programmes are maintained and even strengthened, but the general orientation
remains that of the Washington Consensus”. Some control over capital flows has been established and
the situation of the economy has stabilised. The demands of the landless for debt forgiveness have been
totally rejected. The most disappointing aspect is probably the ecological balance sheet: a law on forests
which favours impunity for the destroyers of Amazonia; and the decision to build the hydro-electric
dam at Belo Monte, leading to the expulsion of the inhabitants and the destruction of a vast wooded
area. The movements in defence of human rights have obtained a concession, in the form of the Truth
Commission, which has presented a report on the crimes of the dictatorship, but without punishment of
those responsible, covered by the military auto-amnesty of 1979.
As in previous years, only the mobilisation “from below” of the workers, landless and homeless, youth
and women, environmentalists and indigenous peoples, can change the relationship of social and political
forces.
Michael Löwy, a philosopher and sociologist of Brazilian origin, is a member of the New Anti-capitalist
Party in France and of the Fourth International. A Fellow of the IIRE in Amsterdam and former research
director of the French National Council for Scientific Research (CNRS), he has written many books,
including The Marxism of Che Guevara, Marxism and Liberation Theology, Fatherland or Mother Earth?
and The War of Gods: Religion and Politics in Latin America. He is joint author (with Joel Kovel) of
the International Ecosocialist Manifesto. He was also one of the organizers of the first International
Ecosocialist Meeting, in Paris, in 2007.
Russia - The Russia of the indignant
The elections in Russia took place as usual, with massive fraud and the pressure of the regime to ensure
the victory of the ruling party, United Russia. What has changed is the scale of the protests against this
fraud. This time, a large part of the population is rising up to testify: “We did not vote for you!” [This
article was written on 9 December 2011, in Moscow.]
Carine Clément
The figures do not mean much (but let us recall them all the same: 49.54 per cent for United Russia,
19.16 per cent for the Communist Party, 13.22 per cent for Fair Russia and 11.66 per cent for the party
of the nationalist demagogue Zhirinovsky). So the ruling party has lost the constitutional majority in the
Duma and fallen below 50 per cent. But for most commentators, this figure overestimates the real score
of United Russia by 10 to 15 per cent. And, in any case, it is a purely “designed” result, as the Russians
say. It is the outcome of a concession made to the growing dissatisfaction of a large part of the population
towards the “party of swindlers and thieves” (that is how the party in power is commonly designated,
following a formulation invented and popularized by the blogger Alexeï Nabalny).
Indeed, at the beginning of the campaign, regional governors received from the federal centre objectives
of the order of between 60 and 70 per cent of the vote. Unfortunately, this princely gesture was not
enough to calm the anger, on the contrary. On the day after the elections, nearly ten thousand people
demonstrated in the streets of Moscow, a few less in St. Petersburg. More than 300 people were arrested
in Moscow, around 200 in St. Petersburg. That did not prevent the mobilizations from continuing in the
following days, as well as the arrests. How to explain this reversal of the situation, whereas the majority
of voters had for quite some time become accustomed to the fact that their votes were not worth much?
Who are these people who took to the streets in spite of the threat of being arrested?
The mobilization results mainly from the increasing unpopularity of the party in power, not only because
of its antisocial policies, but also and especially because of the arrogance of its representatives, of their
contempt for ordinary citizens, of their corruption and greed. The most popular slogan during the electoral
campaign, in any case among those who take even a little interest in politics, was: “Vote for any party,
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