Brazil's workers make a political

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THE new Workers' Party (PT) is likely to score major successes in Brazil's general election on November 15. 'Lula' (Luis Inacio de Silva), president of the PT and a militant metalworkers' leader, is given by opinion polls 15 to 20% of the votes for governor of Sao Paulo state.

The PT is standing candidates at all levels, local and national, practically throughout Brazil - being one of only three parties to do so.. The other two are the so-called Social Democratic Party PDS - in fact the party of the present military dominated regime - and the PMDB (Party of the Brazilian Democratic Movement).

The elections are part of the military's strategy of 'opening' gradual transition to civilian parliamentary regime. Political parties • were legalised last year, PMDB was set up 1 rom the MDB, tire 'official opposiby Martin Thomas tion' established and sponsored by the military regime itself.

But the PT is using the election to preach radical struggle against the regime and against the whole capitalist system.

It calls for the overthrow of the dictatorship: 'In the struggle for a society where power will be exercised by the workers, we defend right now full political and trade union freedom for the people'. The PT proposes preparation for a general strike as tht weapon to achieve these aims.

Its economic programme includes a minimum wage with an inflation-protection clause; the shorter work week without loss of pay; land reform and cheap credit for the peasants; a free state health service; nationalisation under workers' control of the financial institutions; abolition of business secrecy; workers' control; and free public The Workers' Party came out education.

The PT election platform also calls for gay rights, for equal rights for the Black and Indian populations, and equality for women. 'Women' , it declares, 'are treated as second-class beings. They get the worst jobs and the lowest wages, and they face a double work day and have to do all the household tasks. Constantly they are humiliated, not only as workers, but also as women' The PT pledges solidarity with workers and oppressed peoples world-wide, especially in Central America, southern Africa, Palestine and Poland. And it promises that if the PT wins power in any municipality or state, it will set up popular assemblies, neighbourhood councils, or workers' councils, to take decisions. 'Lula' rejects any idea of coalition administrations with bourgeois parties.

New Both in its programme and in its history, the PT is something new not only in Brazil but in Latin America. It was founded in 1979, coming out of tremendous strike movements in the Sao Paulo industrial area.

In a continent where nationalism and populism (the idea of the 'people' without class definition, being the agent of proESTABILIDADE!

if militant trade union struggles gress) dominate the working class, and where those sizeable workers' parties that do exist are mostly Stalinist, the PT is a party which bases its politics clearly on the industrial working • class and is anti-Stalinist.

It is not homogeneous. It includes a strong radical Catholic element. (Not very Catholic, as can be seen from the PT's commitments on gay and women's rights: but the PT platform, though declaring for a woman's right to choose whether to have a child, is evasive on abortion). There are members influenced by Eurocommunist-type ideas as well as Marxists.

But the contrast is sharp with the Brazilian Communist Party and most of the numerous Maoist groups -which have joined the PMDB!

The PT has no chance of winning a national majority. But the regime is none too happy about the prospect of the PT scoring succêsses, or even the PMDB (which has adopted some leftist rhetoric) winning the election.

All sorts of restrictions have been imposed on campaigning, and the election procedure - in a country where 24% are illiterate — is deliberately complicated. When it was tried out on staff at the government election supervision agency, 50% of them got. it wrong and cast invalid ballots!

The generals' plans for gradual political change have been undermined, perhaps fatally, by Brazil's economic crisis since last year.

Since the 1960s Brazilian capitalism has grown rapidly, so that Brazil now ranks as the 7th industrial power in the capitalist world (ahead of Canada), and produces more steel than Britain. It has become a major exporter of manufactured goods not only to the rest of Latin America but even to the US.

The number of industrial workers has grown from 3.6 million in 1964 to 12 million today.

But since last year the world crisis has hit Brazil. Car sales slumped 50% in the early months of 1981, and have remained low. 140,000 car workers lost their jobs in 1981.

Afflicted by foreign debt problems, the government has set about drastically cutting imports -which improves the balance of payments, but at the cost of an industrial slump.

The president of Brazil's CBI summed it up like this: 'With the inflation rate we've got, if this goes WHAT qualities do you think a Labour party leader should have?

A long record of militant trade union struggle? Consistent internationalism? An incorruptible batred for the international CrOoKs and mass murderers who head the governments oi the world's most powerfu states?

Last week Denis Healey - someone who wouldn't have given St Francis a character reference for a job with animals unless he so supported NATO -xtolled the virtues of Wes Germany's recently unseated Chancellor Helmut Schmidt.

"He represents", eulogised Heaey, "the generation which learned its politics the hard way - from boyhood in Nazi Germany, through distinguished army service in Russia and the Ardennes, to responsibility for helping to organise the postwar recovery of his native Hamburg, moving from the left to the right of the Social Democratic Party in the process...

"He maintained his friendships abroad whether the individuals were in power or not - a trait not universal among politicians. These long-standing links with men like Kissinger, Haig and Schulz have been of real value...

So here we have the catalogue: patriotism even' in the service of Hitlerism, right-wing ideas, warm relations with the chief warmongers of the most powerful imperialist nation. What an irresistible combination for a working class leader!

WHILE we're on the subject of Germany, I notice that Franz Josef Strauss has suggested that the 'Freone' the Weat German Andrew Hornung oppose legislation proposed by either of the two main parties, they can be said to be making Parliament unworkable. That, according to the constitution of the Federal Republic, is an offence, and parties that commit this offence may be banned.

FOLLOWING the recent CBI conference call on the Tories to do something about unemployment, the organisation's director-general, Terence Beckett, was asked what financia contribution the employers of the country would make towards any new initiative.

"Oh, industry can't do it" , he responded. mean, look at profitability". He then listed such hardships as tax, national insurance and so on, and concluded, "Industry isn't making any profit at all".

Sad. Sad. I can just imagine the scene of poverty outside the Grand Hotel, Eastbourne, after the conference.

Hordes of penniless industrialists lined up at the bus stops looking watery• eyed and envious at passing taxis, and some of the more enterprising ones begging for alms under the sign, 'Profitless industrialist - family and work. force to support - give generously"

THERE IS a widespread myth that Thatcher may be a nasty piece of work, but she has fulfilled her election promises. Treasury figures on taxation allow us to test out one pledge - to reduce taxes.

According to the figures, given in a parliamentary answer, a married couple

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