International Left Tendency (formerly the International Trotskyist
Opposition led by Ferrando and Grisolia) Presented to the 2003 World
Congress of the
Fourth International (USec)
January 2003
Miguel Rosetto, a member of the Brazilian section of the USFI,
Socialist Democracy (DS), has accepted a position as Minister of
Agrarian Development in the newly elected government of the Workers
Party (PT) of Brazil. The PT leader, Lula, was elected as president
of the Brazilian republic as part of a popular front electoral
alliance with the bourgeois Liberal Party—which gained the vice-
presidency. Lula has also appointed a career banker, a member
of the Brazilian Social Democratic Party (PSDB)—the party of the
outgoing government of Cardoso—as head of the Brazilian Central
Bank. It is reported that DS Senator, Heloisa Helena, walked out of
his appointment hearing to avoid either voting for him or being
expelled from the PT. What kind of "opposition" was this? This
abstention in the appointment of a deadly enemy of the working class
to a position of power can only be regarded as a betrayal. It sent a
message to the Brazilian working class that revolutionary Marxists
are agnostic about the appointment of an acknowledged agent of big
business to a key post in the economy.
There is no doubt that the PT administration is a
counterrevolutionary, reformist bourgeois government presiding over
bourgeois state institutions. It has long been a basic, elementary
principle of Trotskyism that revolutionary Marxist parties do not
join bourgeois governments. In allowing Rosetto to become a minister
in the Lula government, Socialist Democracy, has breached these
principles. The very act of joining the government was itself
a betrayal. This action provides left cover to the reformist Lula
regime, creating confusion in the minds of workers about the
reactionary nature of this regime and thus lowers class consciousness
instead of raising it. Rosetto is now in a position where he is
obliged to accept full responsibility for the actions of the Lula
administration in the coming months and years. DS has committed an
error similar to that made by the POUM during the Spanish Civil War,
which provoked strong criticism from Trotsky at the time.
In view of this, the International Left Tendency calls upon USFI
national sections to adopt, and send, resolutions to the 2003 USFI
World Congress calling for the convening of an inquiry into this
affair at the Congress. DS must be given every opportunity to explain
its actions and defend itself at the inquiry and in the Congress
plenary sessions. However, there is no doubting the fact that Rosetto
is a member of Lula's government and that this is one of the worst
errors that a Trotskyist can commit. The facts speak for
themselves. Rosetto and DS have repeated the errors of Andres Nin.
In view of this accomplished fact, Congress must present DS with an
ultimatum: to withdraw immediately from the Lula government. A
failure to do so must be met by immediate expulsion of DS and Rosetto
from the USFI. A failure to take these drastic steps would mean that
USFI would become responsible itself for the actions of its Brazilian
section. The expulsion of the Sri Lankan section in 1964 demonstrated
that the USFI was willing to dissociate itself from opportunist
errors of this sort. It is necessary for the USFI to do so again.
-- Michael Pugliese
"Without knowing that we knew nothing, we went on talking without listening to
each other. Sometimes we flattered and praised each other, understanding that
we would be flattered and praised in return. Other times we abused and shouted
at each other, as if we were in a madhouse." -Tolstoy