It has been a cardinal principle in the Marxist movement that revolutionaries never join governments committed to defending the capitalist state. As revolutionaries stand for the smashing of that state, and the defense of workers interests against it, it is absolutely impermissible to become part of such a government.

Lenin castigated the Bolsheviks who wanted to join the provisional government after the downfall of the Tsar—a government made up of Social Democrats (Mensheviks) and Social Revolutionaries as well as “progressive” bourgeois figures. The Communist International laid down clear guidelines forbidding communists from having any truck with “bourgeois workers’ governments”—governments of the Socialist and Labor Parties of the Second International.

Trotsky’s Fourth International from its inception fought against Stalin’s policy of encouraging the communist parties to form and join bourgeois governments of the Popular Front in the 1930s. From rejecting the united front with Social Democracy—for example, in the struggle against fascism, because they were “counter revolutionary”—the Stalinists swung to entering popular fronts with them. In Trotsky’s words, “every opportunity presenting itself anywhere was used to make an alliance not only with the Social Democracy, but also with its masters, the liberal bourgeoisie, and this treacherous capitulation to bourgeois democracy received the pompous name of ‘peoples front.’”

Today the United Secretariat of the Fourth International (Usec), whose British supporters produce the paper Socialist Resistance, tramples on these principles of working class independence. Explaining the decision of the Usec supporters in Brazil, the Democratic Socialists (DS), to enter Lula’s popular front government they declared “to refuse to accept would have been seen within the party and in particular among millions of voters, as avoiding their responsibilities.” (International Viewpoint, May, 2003) In fact quite the opposite. DS’s refusal to join the government would have been a signal to millions of workers that the PT government was selling out their interests to the bourgeoisie. By taking up a government ministry the DS was not just betraying Marxism but sowing illusions that Lula governs in the workers’ and peasants’ interests.

The Usec has been awarded a single post in the government. Miguel Rossetto, long time DS member, was appointed Minister of Agricultural Reform. International Viewpoint declares that Rossetto will implement agricultural reform as a minister and that “this could help the self-organization of rural workers.” This is self-serving delusion. Rossetto sits in a government that has no intention of implementing radical reform of the land, let alone the agrarian revolution that is necessary to break the back of the landed oligarchy. The pitiful land reforms promised have already been watered down (see following article). Rossetto sits in a government that, far from “helping the self-organization of rural workers,” denounces peasant seizures of the land, directs its police and repressive forces against the rural landless movement (MST), and jails its leaders.

Leading figures in DS have even gone so far as to justify the bringing in of bourgeois sectors into the government. Raul Pont, former mayor of Porto Allegre and leading DS member, was quoted in a Brazilian daily saying, “Many corporate businessmen and landowners understand that the financially based model is exhausted and they know they should also make an effort.” The “effort” of taking forward “national capitalist development” in Brazil, the stated aim of Lula’s popular front!

None of this capitulation has saved the DS from being subject to a witch-hunt. Currently the PT leadership is threatening to expel a DS senator and three of its members of Congress. Their crime? To publicly oppose the government proposals on the pension cuts. This is a straw in the wind. Lula needs to remove and intimidate all opposition, as he knows his honeymoon with the masses will not last once he is forced to renege on his promises; they might pose a threat in the future. Meanwhile, Rossetto sits in the government telling the landless that they have to be patient because there aren’t enough resources for land reform. When Lula is ready, and when Rossetto and the DS have exhausted their role in deluding the masses, they will be summarily ejected from the government and the party.

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—Workers Power Global (UK), August 2003