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BRAZIL - Analysis of the Strike of the Truck Drivers

In the following we want to publish an unofficial translation of an article from the newspaper A Nova Democracia. It is a very good analysis of the strike, the situation in Brazil and the development of the revolutionary forces. It is a good example to learn from.

Editorial – Ruling classes in dispair

For a long time we are indicating that a revolutionary situation stated to develop in Brazil and we warned that, with the deepening of its semicolonial and semifeudal condition, bureaucratic capitalism entered in general crisis of decomposition. The upper class – more than ever – cannot govern as before and the lower class – by exploitation and oppression, for so much injustice, abuse, brutality, repression and abandonment of the “constituted authorities”, frustration with official politics and its electoral sham, in short, so much rottenness and corruption – do not accept and do not want to keep living like this.

Each day the masses raise as they can and are each time more impatient, struggling for the the defense of their trampled and shamelessly stolen rights. Revolts explode everywhere in the city and in the countryside and the repression of the old and genocide state and its shift governments only pushes them to more bellicose forms of action. Each day the masses understand better that only through the way of violence it will be heard and solve its most elementary demands. This points to the crescent and inevitable popular rebellion against all this old order.

This situation of the country happens in the midst of the general crisis of imperialism, whose search for recovering implies in raising the super exploitation of the workers, reduce to the maximum their painfully conquered rights and, at the same time, raise the looting on the oppressed countries, including through the intensification of the war of plunder.

The world, today drown in the general crisis of imperialism, is marked not only by the sharpening of the principal contradiction between oppressed nations and imperialism, but also by the worsening of the contradiction between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie and the inter-imperialist contradictions. As one can already see in our country, the increase of the exploitation will push the masses to increasingly fierce struggles and the repression to it will result in violent revolts in the whole world.

In our country, on its turn, the complete demoralization of the official politics and the popular distrust on the authorities and institutions of its old state already determine the failure of the next electoral sham.

No one, not even the big bourgeoisie (in its two fractions), the landlords and even less the so-called foreign “investors” see any perspective of political stability in the country at short term. This is a fact, despite all the cut of rights of the workers, the sell-motherland laws and of all the ease for the looting actions of our natural richness by the foreign and local monopolist companies. The so called “self-sustainable” recovering, that was broadcast by the government and press monopoly not long ago, already revealed to be only a myth.

While facing all this situation the high command of the Armed Forces put in motion the plan of the counterrevolutionary military state coup to prevent the popular rebellion, which already threatens the old order and only the idea of its hatching makes all the exploiting bunch and their armed hand tremble. The military intervention in Rio de Janeiro, as the “laboratory”, already gave samples of what will be its expansion: a complete failure, even though at mid and long terms.

Part of these happenings – which we can attribute an equivalent weight to the demonstrations of 2013 and 2014 – could be seen in the recent trucker’s strike, which “last drop” was the prices policy the imperialist rule imposed to Petrobras.

Now, as before, the weight of the revolted masses trampled the attempts of the reactionaries to manipulate them, at the same time that let the opportunist electioneering “left” to curse it as “deed of the right”. Taking advantage of the discontentment and fury of the people with all this rottenness, the extreme right released their cry for “military intervention now”. A cry that, although serves the ongoing coupist plan’s propaganda, it ended up in its empty demagogic and patrioticing discourse, with the Armed Forces being called to exhibit their weapon power and “convince” the most resistant to end the movement, under the old label of the “infiltrated minority”.

Jair Bolsonaro, high candidate and avid for power, facing the radicalization of the movement quickly drawn his electioneering support. But the fact is that nothing could detain the movement in its strength, forcefulness, its spreading across the country and the popular commotion to support it. Not even the threats of repression, the “Guarantee of Law and Order” with the military-men grinding their teeth, the disapproval of the demoralized politicians and neither the lies of the communication monopoly. The popular urge during the strike was a clear war declaration to this old order in a cry for a general change in the country.

As certainly happened, the companies lockout (the ones that most brutally exploit the transportation workers) only threw firewood in the bonfire, because the active body of the strike and the target of the popular support were for the autonomous truckers, whose true leaderships were ignored in the negotiations that were held in palaces by the gang of Temer. And the deal of a government, demoralized and desperate to impede a general collapse in the country, fundamentally orientated to the interests of the monopolist companies, was only one more goof of a political corpse, exposing even more the contradictions that worsens in the core of the big bourgeoisie and landlords.

The first one to scream was the latifundium (Agribusiness) together with Globo, unleashing a campaign of blackmails and threats of a high inflation due to the raise of prices of the transportation. The oil sector, starting from the bloodsuckers of the market, raised alarm with the possibility of bankruptcy of Petrobras and, if it was not enough, manipulated a fall of the value of the stocks of the company in the stock-markets of New York and of São Paulo. Also the distribution companies and importers of diesel entered in the fight to guarantee their monopolist interests, as well as the union of the owners of gas stations. The National Confederation of Industry (CNI) – which soon will not have whom to represent due to the aggressive policy of de-industrialization of the country – joined the alarmism of the agribusiness.

The not fulfillment of the demands of the autonomous truckers (legitimately revolted) only threw more inflammable material in the national situation. This without speaking of the wrath of the employees of the transportation companies whose exploiting conditions are even more brutal and in this strike did not completely raise their demands. They are working masses that by practice are aware of their power to stop the country, mobilization capacity and the popular support they gathered.

The trucker’s strike pointed to a General Strike as the weapon of the workers to defend the rights of the people and combat the anti-worker criminal reforms. More than that: it shown that the road of the popular rebellion against the old order of exploitation and oppression is full of potentials and possibilities, mainly if these unite increasingly more with the combative struggle of the peasants for the conquest of land, through Agrarian Revolution. In the division that deepens, the ruling classes of big bourgeois and landlords, lackeys to imperialism – I the midst of its general crisis, on its increasingly desperate strife to decide who loses less, with the demoralization of its political system and in fear of the popular stir – are putting in motion the plan of the military coup, through the backbone of its old state (the Armed Forces), to preventively save the old order before the general conflagration. The masses, on their turn, just like its rehearsal are showing, prepare its Revolution: Revolution of New Democracy, Agrarian and Anti-imperialist, uninterrupted to Socialism.

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