[Marxism] Re: Brazilians urged to take to streets (response to Richard)

["Fred Feldman" <ffeldman@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

"Regime change" is code for imperialist invasion and reconstruction.
Obviously there is no "neocon" agitation  for invasion, occupation, and
reconstruction of Btrazil in imperialist interests a la Iraq.  The
problem that may be developing is a different one -- involving Brazil's
strategic position and importance, and relations with Venezuela and
Bolivia.  In Bolivia, of course, imperialism is afraid of "regime
change," although there are those who think they have little to fear
since, among other things, presidential candidate Morales has retained
friendly ties with Lula despite frothing --substantially well-earned --
denunciations of Lula from the left.

Of course, in Venezuela, "regime change" is very much the issue, but in
addition to the internal challeges, there are external ones, incluiding
Venezuela's ties with Brazil and Argentina in efforts to unite the Latin
American countries against US economic expansion.

Government change, not "regime change," is the issue in Brazil, and the
US is well known to participate in many efforts of this kind in Latin
America, without attempting military transformation on the Iraqi model
-- hardly a model crying out for imitation.

If I were using Louis' exaggerated method of argument -- he drags in
Mbeki and South Africa (where there is no viable bourgeois opposition
capable of taking power from the party which led the defeat and
transition from the apartheid regime) from nowhere -- I would ask
whether he thinks revolutionaries should oppose only imperialist
intervention on the Iraq scale.  Mbeki's regime is procapitalist and
collaborates with imperialism.  Imperialism is not seeking to remove it.
Lula is procapitalist and collaborates with imperialism.  Therefore
imperialism is not encouraging moves to remove him.  This line of
argument is less airtight logically than it may seem to Louis,.

I note that Green Left weekly's current issue includes a related
argument to the effect that Washington and Wall Street are too
preoccupied with Venezuela and Bolvia too bother with their trivial
differences with Lula's government in Brazil.  But it ain't necessarily
so.  The rise of bourgeois nationalism in Latin America represents a
challenge related and intertwine to the transformation underway in
Venezuela and threatening with the mass movements and upcoming election
in Bolivia.  To isolate the latter, imperialism really does need to
weaken the latter trend, which is more vulnerable  because the
governments pursuel capitalist policies and fear, even while utilizing
to put pressure on the imperialists and their political opponents, the
popular revolutionary developments and possibilities represented by
Venezuela and Bolivia.

I didn't answer Louis' article because I didn't think it was very
perceptive, but others disagree so I am making these comments.  I think
the article in question, which specifically backed a claim by Sao Paulo
big business that Lula was selling out the country to China, marked a
shift in tone toward the vulnerable bourgeois nationalist president by
the imperialists,  powered by softening of his popularity and (the
possibly related) shift toward a sharper Brazilian challenge to US
interests in Mar del Plata. US imperialism does not oppose only
revolution, but utilizes many channels to counter attempts by Latin
American nations to gain more sovereignty and freedom of action,
including when these take place under capitalist auspices.  The
practitioners of such imperialist intevention are hardly limited to
frothing neocon ideologues, and it is not only them we have to watch out
for.

I think the centrality of Brazil and the friendly relations maintained
there with Chavez in Venezuela and Morales in Bolivia is one of the
problems faced by imerialism in mounting a counter-offensive.  It is my
impression -- and I admit that is all I have at present (and I note,
because I respect their opinion, that the Cuban media read the tea
leaves the same way)-- that there is a shift taking place among the US
rulers toward supporting efforts from the right to remove Lula.

I think that leftists who go into neutral on such efforts because of
their justified outrage at Lula's policies will be doing harm to the
cause of sovereignty, national liberation, and socialism in South
America. (By the way, I was opposed to the impeachment of Clinton as an
attack on bourgeois-democratic rights.)



-----Original Message-----
From: SV-Circle@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:SV-Circle@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] On
Behalf Of Richard Fidler
Sent: Sunday, December 04, 2005 11:18 AM
To: SV-Circle@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [SV-Circle] Re: Brazilians urged to take to streets


Fred  Feldman wrote:
>The rightist opposition to Lula is now getting more support from
>Wall Street -- if I read my New York Times correctly (a recent
>article,
>pretending to sympathize with indigenous demandsthat a planned
>China
>sponsored dam project should benefit their community or not be
>built at
>all, ended by supporting rightist charges that Lula is selling
>out
>Brazilian national interests to China).

And should we assume that Wall Street is conspiring to topple
Thabo Mbeki
when articles such as these appear?

>>A new book by the United Nations' special envoy to Africa on
AIDS brings
to light an extraordinary breach between the organization and
South Africa
over the crisis, under which the government has effectively banned
the
envoy from carrying out his duties here for the past year.

The book, written by Stephen Lewis, singles out South Africa's
government
and its president, Thabo Mbeki, for what it calls bewildering
policies and
a lackadaisical approach to treatment of the nation's millions of
H.I.V.-positive citizens.

Virtually every other nation in eastern and southern Africa ''is
working
harder at treatment than is South Africa with relatively fewer
resources,
and in most cases nowhere near the infrastructure or human
capacity of
South Africa,'' Mr. Lewis says in the book, ''Race Against Time''
(House of
Anansi Press).

Mr. Lewis, a Canadian who has served since 2001 as the special
envoy to
Africa on AIDS for the United Nations secretary general, Kofi
Annan, wrote
that ''every senior U.N. official, engaged directly or indirectly
in the
struggle against AIDS, to whom I have spoken about South Africa,
is
completely bewildered by the policies of President Mbeki.''

He contended that his colleagues are ''incredulous'' at how Health
Minister
Manto Tshabalala-Msimang has exaggerated the possible side effects
of
antiretroviral drugs and wrongly suggested that a diet of sweet
potatoes
and garlic can be as important as antiretrovirals in treating
AIDS.<<

(NY Times, October 25, 2005)

I actually am grateful that the NY Times prints articles such as
these,
whatever the motivation.

>Dirceu's identification of Lula with the bourgeois nationalist
>(and
>therefore somewhat resistant to complete US imperialist
>domination)
>tradition in Brazil is significant, in my opinion.

Dirceu is an interesting character. He was a former student leader
who
trained guerrillas in Cuba when Brazil was ruled by a dictatorship
and was
able to return to Brazil only after undergoing plastic surgery to
conceal
his identity. He was charged with handing out $30,000 a month in
kickbacks
to buy the votes of PT opponents in parliament. That's a tidy sum.
Now, if
the votes were for land reform or something, I myself would
organize a
rally for Lula (smallish, I'm afraid).

>It is not unusual today to find among leftists dismissals of
>bourgeois
>nationalism as completely discredited and no longer able to
>attract any
>real mass support in conflicts with imperialism.  Iraq has shown
>that
>this is simply not true.

I wasn't aware that the neocons have been agitating for regime
change in
Brazil.

>On the part of the left, failure to defend bourgeois-nationalist
>forces
>when they come under imperialist attack can only weaken the
>effort to
>bring together genuine popular-revolutionary movements.In fact, a
>sectarian posture on this issue can facilitate devastating blows
>that
>can throw back the prospects for a considerable time.

If Lula were in hot water like Allende was in the early 1970s, I
can
understand such an appeal. Lula is being attacked from the right
for the
same reason that Clinton was attacked by the Republicans for 8
years. The
Brazilian right wants to be in the driver's seat because there are
perquisites associated with power. Bourgeois politics is an
immense trough
at which both rightist and fake "socialist" parties can get fat
at. That's
what the Lula corruption scandal is about, not a titanic struggle
between
the workers and Wall Street.




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