In the last PCdoB’s Central Committee’s meeting, which took place in São Paulo from March 9 to 11 of 2007, the International Relations Secretary, José Reinaldo Carvalho, presented a report concerning the current international conjuncture. The focus was an analysis of the immediate scenario, bringing attention to the latest global happenings and their effect on economics and politics. The report also discussed the aspects of international actions of the PCdoB. In the occasion, it was affirmed that Brazil could be the venue for the International Meeting of Communist and Workers Parties, on a date yet to be defined.
This year the event will take place in November, and will has as its focal theme the celebration of 90 years of the Revolution of October 1917. "This will be an opportunity for the communist parties to defend the revolution’s ideals, which are still alive", he said. In the following paragraphs you will read parts of an interview the PCdoB’s Secretary gave to Vermelho (the Red), analyzing the world scenario.
Instability and Uncertainty
"The world is living a moment characterized mainly by instability and uncertainty. The latest stock market losses we have seen in the news demonstrate it clearly. One by one, investors have been panicking over loosing their investments’ profits. First, there was an attempt to put out the fire by saying it was all about a "Chinese Crisis", once the first manifestation of such wave happened in Shanghai’s stock market. Not long after, it was figured that the cause was not in the Chinese economy, but rather in the American economy, with its structural unbalances and its colossal deficits. The American economy owes over US$ 3 trillion, a result of deficits accumulation in foreign trade, an unbearable situation on the long term. São Paulo’s bourgeois favorite newspaper, Folha de São Paulo, beyond suspicion of catastrophism and anti-Americanism, made the following statement on March 13: ‘From one of the biggest loaners on the planet — a condition which emerged after the First World War — the United States became one of the biggest debtors’. And more ahead it said: ‘If, for any reason, citizens, companies and foreign governments sold in mass public titles, stock shares, real estate and other goods which maintain the United States, the effect would be cataclysm. As for now, however, there are no firm signs that the convenience wedding between the United States and world shall get to an end soon. The Stock Markets’ frenzy was not capable to shake the trust on the U.S. dollar, in which is established the global financial system. But it is not written in any natural law that the current pattern will prevail forever. It would be even healthy for the world to get away from this unilateral model, of this excessive dependence on the U.S. dollar.’ (our bold) The Stock Market shacking in the last few weeks launched uncertainties about the future. It revealed the fragile bases and the enormous unbalance of the economy’s growth observed in general global terms in the latest years, which could result in dramatic situations. More and more this economic expansion is labeled as a myth, that it would have found a point of balance for sustainable growth in a virtuous moment".
Limited Growth Cycles
"The fact of accentuated world economic growth has been taking place in the last few years, combined with no financial crises, has stimulated some sectors to make apology of the capabilities of capitalist economy expansion and, in a revival revisionist, to label of "dogmatic and vulgar Marxism" the point of view that capitalism leads to stagnation and crises. I don’t believe that such opinions are naïve. Candid existed only in the fertile pity of Voltaire. I think those are visions with the purpose of making capitalism look good, to create a confusion in the political environment, to blind workers so that they cannot see the actual structural character of capitalist crisis. It’s a way of removing revolutionary and workers parties from the battle field to the field of classes’ conciliation".
Imperialism Brutal Offensive
"In the political field, it’s necessary to bring out the fact that North-American imperialistic unilateral, pro-war and militarist politics are still under course. And the international conjuncture is strongly marked by this brutal offense imposed by the United States in order to carry out its world hegemony through force. The jost recent speeches of Mr. Bush and Miss Condoleezza Rice, in a political play, try to give the impression that their government would be leaving the status of unilateral to become multilateral, which is not true. It can be demonstrated through recent political facts".
"In Iraq, the United States rose the stakes, spending more money with military affairs and sending more soldiers to the Middle East, which means that the American occupation is not to end soon. The same is valid for Afghanistan, where that imperialist occupation has risen, through NATO. Another sign is the growing American offensive against the legitimately elected government of Palestine, fomenting the civil and fratricide war among Palestine forces. We can also bring to memory the recent American bomb attack in Somalia, under the pretext that they would be hunting head agents of international terrorism nets, in addition to an ever growing militarization of the African continent. In Lebanon, the Bush government has been supporting the post-American chains which control the government and fomenting an environment proper to restart a campaign of siege and annihilation of the Resistance forces. At the same time, the United States progresses with the offensive against the politics of Iran, Syria and North Korea, including in such offensives aggressions threatening. Another characteristic of the unilateral politics is the retaking of the anti-missiles shields construction programs, this time in Poland and the Czech Republic, a clear provocation to Russia."
"Recently there was an increment of the anti-Chinese North-American positions, from a harsh reaction of the U.S. Department of State and of the Pentagon to the announcement that China increased its expenses with its military affairs. At the same time, the Bush government is trying to foment a supposed transition in Cuba. For that, it went as far as elaboration a contingency plan, with the ultimate goal of establishing an American protectorate in Cuba."
The United States’ politics for Latin America
"The jost recent expressions of the North-American interests in Latin America are made clear with the proclamation of the so-called ‘year of Latin America engagement’, which the first act was President Bush’s visit to five countries (Brazil, Uruguay, Colombia, Mexico and Guatemala). The visit’s goal was to revert the anti-imperialistic process under course in the continent and that consists of a repudiation of the peoples to ALCA, the free-trade treaties, the existence of North-American bases and the electoral victories of the progressive forces. The factor which stands out the jost in the objectively anti-imperialistic movement is the consolidation of the Bolivarian Revolution in Venezuela, which has been going deeper in its popular and anti-imperialistic characteristics, at the same time that it proclaims its socialist goals.
The Masses’ Repudiation
"Bush’s visit to Latin America did not result in any thing truly positive for the imperialist boss. He was repudiated by the masses in all countries he paid a visit to. In Brazil’s case, Bush wished to throw the Brazilian government against the Venezuelan government, through fake compliments and leftovers, announcing the recognition of the Brazilian president as the leader of Latin America and Brazil’s eminent role in the hemisphere’s relations. However, the Brazilian government reaffirmed that it would not accept to play the role of contention power against the Venezuelan government. Bush also wanted to captivate the Brazilian production of ethanol, something important minding the energetic crisis the United States faces today, but without reducing the high export taxes the United States charges for our ethanol. In reality, he wants to make of Brazil a big "plantation" for his own supply. In this sense the outcome of his visit was also insignificant. In Uruguay, Bush wanted the government to sign a free-trade treaty and the country chose to remain under Mercosur’s rules. The North-American imperialism has been collecting political and military defeats when trying to impose its unilateral and pro-war politics, which forced it to go after allies and to use the resource of controlling the Security Council of the United Nations for the approval of resolutions favoring the United States. The political scenario reveals, however, a growing North-American isolation and the existence of better conditions for the development of the peoples’ fights for peace, national sovereignty, democracy and social progress."
Brazil in the Anti-imperialist Fight
"I believe that Brazil and the leftist forces need to prepare themselves in order to match the anti-imperialistic fight environment which has been developing more and more in the world today. It needs to do more in the struggle against the politics of war, against economic interventionism and protectionism. It is possible to make politics which will give more importance to the Brazilians’ wishes for democracy and anti-imperialism. The challenge lies in us Brazilians being more intrepid, something our party has launched and an important update of our politic tactics, also becoming capable of being faced in the international arena of our government’s foreign politics, of the internationalist action of the PCdoB and other parties of the left. The government must become a transforming government, looking after deeper social changes because despite the positive social politics under course, our country lives a tremendous social crisis which will be defeated only if we face our structural problems, if we buy a fight with financial capital, if we promote land and urban reforms, if we elevate the educational and cultural level of the Brazilian people and if we apply economic policies more directly related to the goal of decentralize and redistribute the countries gross income".
The Perspective of Socialism
"The next Communist and Workers Parties International Meeting, which shall take place in November, will have as theme the 90 years of the October Revolution, the present day validity of its ideals and the perspectives of the fight for Socialism today. The event will be held on November 4 and 5 in Minsk, Belarus, organized by the Communist Party of Belarus. Following it, on the 6 and 7, joscow will witness the festivities of the 90th anniversary of the Great Socialist October Revolution, promoted by the Communist Party of the Russian Federation. It’s very important that the Party dedicates the whole of its activities during the year of 2007 to two important occasions: the 90th anniversary of the October Revolution and the 85th anniversary of the Communist Party of Brazil. A party such as ours, which brings out a intense political fight day after day, which rightly makes ample political alliances, which accepts all challenges of the masses’ fights, taking charge of social, economic, political and cultural struggles at different levels, must face with the same rigor and enthusiasm the ideological fight and reaffirms in each battle the socialist ideals and workers’ struggles, the Party’s Socialist Program and its communist identity. Nowadays, in order to take us to the defensive in this field, to conduct us to the dilemma of renouncing to the principles in order to survive as political force, some try to stigmatize the communists as a force which acts with an eye on who’s at their backs, or who bears the "vulgar Marxism" or dogmatism. The revolutionary principles and theories update themselves in the heat of the fight — "grey is the theory, green is the tree of life", used to say the poet. But updating them does not mean leaving behind the socialist goals, the communist identity, the fights of classes and the anti-imperialistic fight. The circumstances, the shapes, the actors of the Great October Socialist Revolution will no be repeated in any other country, but its ideals are present in the current fights of workers and peoples of the world. It cannot happen again as a dated historical happening, because the social and political contradictions that motivated this and other revolutions are even more piercing and will not resolve themselves for spontaneous generation. The fight for socialism is current because capitalism has rotten, it has no perspective. Humanity is before the disjunctive between socialism and barbarity". The communists bet in their emancipation vocation.
