Brazilian CP, For Popular Power, towards Socialism!

1/17/22 11:18 AM
  • Brazil, Brazilian Communist Party En South America Communist and workers' parties

For Popular Power, towards Socialism!

Political Statement of the XVI Congress of the Brazilian Communist Party – PCB

 

The Brazilian Communist Party held its XVI CongressIn November 2021,within the context of a deep crisis of the capitalist system, which affects all countries and social sectors, na d of a political and economic crisis in Brazil, with growing opposition and dissatisfaction on the part of the majority of the Brazilian population to the Bolsonaro Government, due to the worsening of famine, hunger, unemployment and recession in the economy. This picture was further aggravated by the global health crisis caused by the Covid-19 pandemic.

In this context, the big capital, to maintain its gains, acts among national states to continue withdrawing rights from the working class, privatizing public companies, dismissing and reducing wages, weakening labor relations, restricting democratic freedoms, profiting from environmental degradation. As a result, there’s a brutal increase in the concentration of wealth, wars against peoples who do not accept the impositions of imperialism, the unemployment of millions of workers, the expansion of barbarism and poverty.

Millions of people died from the pandemic, mainly in peripheral countries and in the most exploited layers of the working class in central countries, mainly because of their material conditions of life. There are huge contingents displaced from their countries as a result of wars of prey, increased exploitation of workers and increasingly precarious living conditions of the population. This crisis objectively unveils the contradiction between capitalism and the interests of the immense majority of humanity, as well as the very limits and contradictions of this system.

Capitalism today

The capitalist mode of production, as a way of organizing the production and distribution of wealth, is in an accelerated process of exhaustion. The continuity of this system represents a serious threat to the very existence of humanity and to life across the planet.

The 21st century definitely marks the period in which the systemic crisis of capitalism has become more intense and profound, affecting all sectors of social life, a process that has intensified with the global health crisis. As in other moments in history, big business and its representatives in institutionality seek a way out of this serious crisis by attacking peoples, destroying the rights and guarantees of workers, lowering wages, carrying out mass layoffs, devastating the environment, attacking democratic liberties and advancing against public funds, with the aim of recovering profit rates by placing the entire burden of the crisis they‘ve created on the workers, the youth and the poor population in general.

It is increasingly evident that the social transformations necessary to overcome this situation cannot be carried out within the limits of the capitalist system, and the only way to open the way for a new stage in human history is to overcome capitalism and build a socialist society.

Even shaken by the crisis, imperialism, which is the organic and political expression of big capital, tries in every way to get out of the crisis and maintain this old rotten and inhuman order. Capitalist governments intensify and radicalize neoliberal policies and allocate trillions of dollars to privilege rentier sectors, save banks and private companies, expand the looting of public resources, intensify sabotage, international sanctions and the promotion of wars as a way to strengthen the military industrial complex and reduce the crisis of imperialist hegemony.

In Latin America, the United States and its allies are intensifying the criminal blockade against Cuba and sanctions against Venezuela and creating military bases in several countries. The US have reactivated the IV Fleet to blackmail the nations and have the power of rapid intervention in the region, promote coups against governments to guarantee the defense of their interests and control natural resources, such as the biodiversity of the Amazon and the Brazilian pre-salt oil reserves.

For the communists it becomes more and more explicit that this system will not fall from rottenness, nor will it be structurally modified through gradual reforms to make it more humane. On the contrary, the more the crisis deepens, the more the system resists as aggressively as possible, without any scruples, to defend its interests. The big bourgeoisie already supported the Nazi-fascism of Hitler and Mussolini, military genocidals in the Latin American dictatorships and today it allies itself with fascist gangs in several countries.

It is the task of the communists to defeat, through the organized struggle of the proletariat and its allies, this system that exploits human beings, predators of nature and encourages barbarism and misery on the planet.

The conditions under which the struggle for Socialism takes place in Brazil

The development of the capitalist system as a whole and, in particular, in the Brazilian case, eliminates the historical possibility of any alliance between a supposed “national bourgeoisie” and the working class, for the realization of a “national-liberating” revolution, that is,the confrontation, at first, of the foreign capital present in the country in order, at a later stage, to carry out the socialist revolution. The Brazilian bourgeoisie, subordinate partner of large international capital, has no interest in changing the current pattern of development in Brazil, which is exclusive and income concentrating. The proletariat is the main enemy of the Brazilian bourgeoisie and against the proletariat the bourgeoisie carries out a permanent struggle.

Structural changes will only take place if directed by socialist, anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist forces. There is no possibility of alliances with the Brazilian bourgeoisie, which is integrated with the great international capital and, therefore, umbilically linked to the interests of imperialism. The Brazilian revolution is, therefore, of a socialist character, and this is the central objective of the PCB's action. The socialist revolution, once victorious in Brazil, will be of fundamental importance for the revolutionary process in many other countries.

The structure of the Brazilian economy includes a robust infrastructure, with roads, ports, airports, telecommunications and other large segments. Even though Brazil is currently in the process of de-industrialization, Brazil has a large developed industrial park, which covers practically all sectors of production, mechanized agriculture, with a large volume of production and salaried work, geared towards exports and integrated into the world market, in a model which is extremely harmful to the environment, which invades indian and quilombola lands (communities originally criated by escapedenslaved people) and traditional peoples, which generates deforestation, forced displacement of populations, destruction of entire biomes and depletion of water resources. Other forms of organization of production in the countryside, such as the thousands of small landowners, who play a fundamental role in the food security and sovereignty of Brazilians, are also subordinated to the logic of capital and the capitalist market, living in conditions of strangulation and lack of supporting policies. Brazil also has a broad and strong sector of services, including financial and banking services, and a nationally integrated communications system.

This set of elements allows the understanding that, even with immense difficulties to be overcome, such as external boycotts and internal class clashes, under a socialist power structure, it will be possible, with the reorientation of the production system to meet the needs of the vast majority of the population, to supply, for all Brazilians, the goods and services necessary for their well-being, with general infrastructure, housing, health, education and other essential demands. Many productive plants that are currently inactive can be reactivated, generating many jobs. In this context, scientific development will be emphasized, and the technological effort should be directed primarily to meeting the needs of male and female workers, with the expansion of universities and research institutes.

The current pattern of Brazilian capitalist development - as in the general case of the capitalist pattern - has been generating conditions of more inequality, structural unemployment, hunger and despair, which, together with the lack of perspectives for the majority, also make up the set of objective conditions that make the socialist revolutionary process viable. However, the subjective conditions for the revolution are not yet present in the necessary dimension for the unleashing of the revolutionary process in Brazil.

The Brazilian economy is dominated by oligopolies and large economic groups, and the 100 largest economic groups have an annual sales volume corresponding to 56% of GDP, which demonstrates the high degree of concentration and centralization of capital in the country. Foreign capital dominates the most dynamic branches of the economy, such as cars, electronics, chemicals and pharmaceuticals. In most economic sectors, it is the big international capital that provides the technologies and is responsible for the main financial and commercial flows.

The country's fundamental classes, both the bourgeoisie and the proletariat, are perfectly defined. The industrial bourgeoisie concentrates its activities in the Southeast region, but has important portions in the South of the country and some states in the Northeast. The financial bourgeoisie is the sector in which national capital groups are the majority, and the 10 largest banks are responsible for the country's financial dynamics.  The commercial and service bourgeoisie is hegemonized by large supermarket chains, department stores and logistics centers, even though there are tens of thousands of small businesses spread across Brazil. The agrarian bourgeoisie is hegemonized by agribusiness and there are still bourgeois fractions in the areas of health and education.

The Brazilian proletariat is gigantic, the second largest on the continent. The male and female workers directly linked to production correspond to 36.89 million employed workers, and a large part of this contingent is young, between 16 and 35 years of age. Workers in the commercial and service areas total 53.8 million, most of them are concentrated in the Southeast region and especially in the metropolitan regions, which means that it is exactly in the big cities where class struggle pulses more intensely in our country. Among the employed workers, around 38 million work in informal activities, without labor rights and guarantees.

The Brazilian State has always been characterized by a political construction from above, through the action of dominant groups within power. We have a ruling class which is integrated with imperialism, which has always sought to distance the working class and the population in general from economic and political decisions and which assumes, in essence, a truculent and reactionary profile. The institutions of the Brazilian bourgeois state – Executive, Legislative and Judiciary – have continued to function, without ruptures, since the fall of the entrepreneurial-military dictatorship, with many limitations and weaknesses, in accordance with the logic and central interests of the bourgeoisie legitimated in the body of society. However, the existing democratic freedoms, that have been got with a lot of struggle, have been more restricted and suffer frequent and intense attacks.

The Brazilian Revolution

Brazilian capitalism, due to its economic and political weight, is an integral part of the imperialist domination system. Brazil, a country with a high rate of industrialization, concentration and centralization of capital, has a well defined structure of bourgeoisie and proletariat, where salary work relations are hegemonic, both in cities and in the countryside, with the concentration of the two fundamental classes in antagonistic poles in the metropolitan regions and large cities, in addition to a high rate of urbanization – 80% of the population live in cities.

The definition of the socialist character of the Brazilian revolution means that we subordinate the tactics we use to our strategy, in order to avoid reformist illusions or the illusory acceptance of the possibility of humanizing capitalism. All the achievements of workers in their daily struggle must be part of a strategy to defeat the bourgeois bloc and conquer socialism, which imposes the need for the working class to become fully aware that only with the socialization of the means of production will make it possible to build a new society, free from exploitation and oppression. This option shows that there is no chance of building spurious alliances with our class enemies.

The socialist character of the revolution also means reaffirming the right of mass rebellion against exploitation and oppression and being present in all spaces of struggle, inside and outside the order, inside and outside the institutional framework, maintaining the organic, political and democratic Independence of class of our revolutionary organization. The socialist character of the Brazilian revolution does not mean the absence of mediations in the struggles of the proletariat, the youth and the poor in the workplaces, in the places of residence and study and in the different spaces of action and struggle that open up in the midst of the struggle of classes. The daily struggles of our people are also daily clashing with the interests of capital and serve as a pedagogical element for popular mobilization. They are an integral part of the long process of building the Brazilian revolution.

The Communists' Allies in the Revolutionary Process

The process of revolutionary opposition to bourgeois domination in Brazil has, at its central core, the proletariat linked to value production chains. This is the most interested and most consequential sector of the Brazilian revolution, due to the very position it occupies within the economic system – urban and rural workers. In addition to this contingent, in the revolutionary process, sectors of the petty bourgeoisie, small farmers and self-employed workers. Youth movements, social and popular movements, progressive intellectuals can be allied to the process, in addition to all those who objectively incorporate themselves into the anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist struggle. The enemies of the Brazilian revolution are the national and international monopolistic bourgeoisie, the imperialism, the financial bourgeoisie, the rural bourgeoisie.

The Brazilian revolution, for the communists, must be a mass phenomenon, to be carried out by millions of exploited and oppressed people. As the Brazilian ruling classes have always used violence and repression to stop the struggle of the working class and communists, we do not discard any form of resistance to the violence of the bourgeoisie in the revolutionary struggle.

The Brazilian revolutionary process has, as its central task, the construction of a socialist society through the popular power, a banner increasingly incorporated into the real struggle of the masses and in street demonstrations across the country. Popular power is not an alliance between left-wing parties, but a construction that involves the daily battles of workers, youth and popular sectors inside and outside the order. It is necessary to overcome the social and political fragmentation of the working class and strengthen the struggles of the masses to build a unitary program and an organizational instrument that unifies popular demands, with a view to building an alternative power bloc of the working class in opposition to the bourgeois bloc.

The Brazilian crisis

The Brazilian crisis is part of the global systemic crisis, with the singularities and specificities of a peripheral country with the economy subordinated to the great centers of international capitalism. This crisis comes at a time when a long cycle that started with the ABC (an industrial region in the São Paulo State) strikes (in the70’s, under military rule) and ended with the impeachment of President Dilma ends. The coalition government, which was hegemonically represented by the Workers' Party (PT), is responsible for this crisis because it has developed a policy to strengthen Brazilian capitalism - generated and maintained in function, essentially, of the interests of the bourgeoisie, which supported the neoliberal macroeconomic tripod with fiscal austerity, inflation targets and floating exchange rate-, and did not take the necessary measures to promote structural changes in the country in favor of the working class, limiting itself to implementing social compensation policies for the poorest sectors of the population, as in the case of the food aidprogram (Bolsa Família) and others.

The favorable global situation prevailing in that period, mainly due to the international increase in the prices of agricultural and mineral commodities exported by Brazil, provided the coalition government, in its first decade, with the conditions for an average annual growth greater than that of the previous period, with the increase in job offers and the increase in the minimum wage. However, due to the systemic global crisis that followed and the fall in international prices for these raw materials, the government began to show strong symptoms of crisis. One of the milestones of this process were the street demonstrations in June 2013, all held outside the government and entities controlled or co-opted by the PT, being hostile to them and other combative organizations. The global crisis, the drop in export earnings and the tensions in domestic politics, the orientation and mistakes in the conduct of economic policy, in addition to popular discontent due to the lack of measures to solve the real problems of the population, were phenomena that generated a disruptive dynamic, leading to the crisis we are currently experiencing.

Extreme right-wing groups were present at the 2013 demonstrations, which were already working to encourage disaffected segments of the population to take to the streets, with conservative and reactionary slogans, adding to the attacks on the PT government. These groups increased, little by little, from then onwards, the offensive against the PT and the whole left, in general, and would support Bolsonaro's political movement in Brazil, which would then begin, on the way to building his candidacy for the presidency of the Republic in 2018.

The leaders of the class conciliation government did not understand the meaning of popular dissatisfaction, did not understand the implications of the world crisis and its consequences in Brazil, and were victims of their own class illusions. Meanwhile, the ruling classes, aware of the rapid change in the situation and the weaknesses of the government, decided to discard the PT and build a “pure blood” government, as the PT members no longer controlled the popular movement and could not carry out, quickly and intense, the neoliberal adjustment that the bourgeoisie demanded. President Dilma, re-elected with a narrow margin of votes, even tried an orthodox turn by appointing an ultraliberal banker, a landowner and a representative of industrialists to the ministries, in addition to other representatives of the classic right. The result of this new conciliation was increased attrition on the administration, a brutal recession, an accelerated increase in unemployment and the demoralization of the government.

From then on, the ruling classes openly decided to conspire to bring the governmentdown. To this end, Operation Lava a Jato(car wash) was activated, with daily denunciations of government corruption. A political atmosphere  was created in which the PT was seen as the solely responsible for corruption in Brazil. Soon the accusations of corruption and popular dissatisfaction were captured by right-wing movements and transformed into a mass movement in the streets by the impeachment of the president, a process expanded by the media, which wouls play the role of a communications committee for the ruling classes. These articulations made possible the institutional coup of 2016 and the impeachment of President Dilma, who was then replaced by vice-president Michel Temer.

The Temer government undertook to apply the neoliberal adjustment as the ruling classes wanted, approving several counter-reforms in Congress. The document Bridge to the Future, presented by the coup government, faithfully represented the reconfiguration of bourgeois and imperialist domination in the country, pointing to the recovery of profit and profitability rates and driving a violent process of centralization of capital in sectors such as the retail, agribusiness and finance. These elements would be present in the Bolsonaro government, in a clear line of continuity.

But the task of the ruling classes was not yet complete, as there would be elections in 2018, and former President Lula was leading all the opinion polls. Despite being very uncharacterized in relation to its popular and union movement origins and the combative posture of the past, the PT still remained a reference in many social bases, and Lula gathered around him an even greater set of supporters in society.

Operation Lava a Jato became the legal arm of the coup, with award-winning denunciations and arrests of several PT leaders, all of which was reported daily with emphasis by the media. The outcome of this process was the conviction of the former president and, later, his imprisonment. In addition, Lula would be prevented from participating in the elections. Operation Lava a Jato was a plot operated by the ruling classes, allied with the United States, to remove the leader of the polls from the election. Judge Sérgio Moro and the Curitiba prosecutors (Judge Moro worked in the city of Curitiba at that time) acted openly to defraud the electoral process in Brazil, as it was later proved by the disclosure of the conversations that took place between them. The result of this entire process was the election of Bolsonaro.

The lessons are that class conciliation governments in a globalized world, where the bourgeoisies of each country are umbilically linked to international capital, tend to fail because they cannot meet popular demands and, when they cease to be functional for capital, they are discarded. Historical experience has shown that the left-wing parties that made alliances with the bourgeoisie ended up being co-opted by the bourgeois project and transformed into an instrument of the capitalist order. It is practically impossible to carry out an economic and social policy aimed at popular interests without the mobilization and organized support of the great masses of the people and without breaking with subordination to international capital. This is the nature of the failure of so-called reformist-progressive governments in Latin America.

The meaning of the Bolsonaro government

Bolsonaro's election meant a profound defeat for the working class, the youth and the poor because his government radicalized neoliberal anti-grassroots policies, the reactionary agenda of customs, counter-reforms, the surrender of public assets through privatizations, the offensive against the rights and wages of male and female workers, the destruction of the environment, the persecution of indigenous peoples and quilombolas, racist, sexist and lgbtphobic aggressions, attacks on public education, science and the permanent threat to democratic freedoms and human rights. The emergence of the pandemic has exposed another face of this government: scientific denial, the campaign against the vaccine and the use of masks, and the propaganda of ineffective medicines to fight Covid. The government's actions caused more than 615,000 deaths among Brazilians (numbers of November 2021). Brazil is the second country in number of deaths by Covid in the world.

Bolsonaro's election also clearly revealed once again that the Brazilian ruling classes have no qualms. Just remember that in the past they supported the dictatorship and have no problems in supporting the fascist bands of the Bolsonaro government, as long as these forces serve their economic and political interests.

Bolsonaro's election also clearly revealed once again that the Brazilian ruling classes have no qualms. Just remember that in the past they supported the dictatorship and have no problem supporting the fascist bands of the Bolsonaro government, as long as these forces serve their economic and political interests. It is an extreme right-wing government, which flirts with fascism and the coup, represents big business, the rich and the powerful and is totally subservient to imperialism. Even if bourgeois sectors present specific contradictions with the government, because Bolsonaro with his braggadocio is interfering with business, everyone agrees with the neoliberal policies, the counter-reforms, the attack on the rights and the wages of workers, the policy of assaulting publicproperty and the public fund.

The concrete result of this policy in three years of government was an increase in income concentration, unemployment, informal work, poverty and hunger. More than 50% of the population lives in a condition of food insecurity, more than 20 million Brazilians are in the hunger lines and more and more families are standing in front of butcher shops and garbage disposal terminals to obtain ox bones, meat scraps and chicken carcasses to eat. The ruling class demonstrates, once again, extreme perversity in dealing with the issue of poverty in Brazil, as in the episode in which the ministers of Economy and Agriculture recommended restaurants and supermarkets to offer leftover food and expired food to the population as a way of solve the problem of hunger.

The resumption of street demonstrations

The situation in which the population is living, on theother hand, has intensified and opened up the class struggle in Brazil. Workers, youth and the poor population did not stop demonstrating against the candidacy and the Bolsonaro government, having, as one of the most emblematic points, the demonstration of women in the Ele Não(not him) campaign, which brought together hundreds of thousands of demonstrators all over Brazil before the 2018 elections.

The health crisis, however, brought the mass demonstrations to an abrupt halt. For more than a year, Bolsonaro blackmailed the country with threats of coup, fascist demonstrations in several states, praising torturers and calling for military intervention. Bolsonaro “surfed” during this period in the pandemic because he knew his opponents were practicing social distancing and advocating vaccines.

However, the rapid deterioration of conditions – already dramatic – of the population's life, the more widespread recognition of the gravity of the pandemic and the advance of vaccination allowed the population to return to the streets again from the end of May, an initiative in which our Party played an important role, both in the call to demonstrations and in its organized and disciplined presence at the events called for. These demonstrations have been of fundamental importance in the context not only because they represented the resumption of struggling in the streets, but mainly because they incorporated hundreds of thousands of fighters in around 400 of the largest cities in the country into the protests.

Unlike 2013, the acts were organized and directed by social and popular movements and by left-wing political parties. The revolutionary sectors managed to bring such intensity to the struggle in the streets that even the reformists were compelled to join the demonstrations. However, guided by an opportunistic tactic of reconciliation with the bourgeoisie, limited to the electoral bleeding of Bolsonaro, the predominant forces in the mass movement were unable to wage the struggle for impeachment in a consistent and class-independent manner. Even so, the demonstrations contributed to increasing the national and international isolation of Bolsonaro, whose consequences are expressed in the government's loss of popularity. Bolsonaro's attrition   extends to his family and several members of his government, and Covid's CPI report has added to that attrition.

However, one cannot underestimate Bolsonaro and his allies. His government still counts on the support of several sectors of the ruling classes, expressive contingents of the middle classes and even popular sectors encouraged by a group of unscrupulous pastors from neo-Pentecostal churches. Bolsonaro also has the support of segments of the Armed Forces and, in particular, from sectors of the military police and criminal groups. Bolsonaro will not fall from decay. His government will only be defeated if we manage to unite a powerful mass movement, involving large street demonstrations, allied to the stoppage of production and circulation.

Even with the wear and tear and a possible withdrawal of Bolsonaro from power due to a process of impeachment, criminal indictment or the defeat in the 2022 elections, the so-called “bolsonarism” tends to remain as an agglutination of conservatives, denialists, obscurantists, fascists and other groups, with organized and disorganized segments of the population. With regard to its central interests, the bourgeoisie continues to gain from this government, which, even in the pandemic, has already managed to approve the independence of the Central Bank, areform in the pensions system, the privatization of Eletrobras(a public electric power group) and is currently trying to privatize the postalservice and aprove an administrative reform.

The ruling classes, in principle, have no interest in overthrowing Bolsonaro and prefer to wear him out until 2022 and, in the meantime, find a candidate with electoral viability to represent them, composing the so-called “third way”. Certain political forces, including some that are in the field of the leftist opposition to the government, however, also seem to bet on Bolsonaro’s weariness to face him in the 2022 elections, putting the mobilization for his immediate overthrow in the background.

The PCB and tactical mediations

The PCB seeks to root itself among the proletariat by building itself as a revolutionary organization in line with the real life of the population, present in all living organisms in society. The struggles for the Brazilian revolution must be brought together in the Revolutionary Bloc of the Proletariat, a counter-hegemonic construction to the pole of capital, capable of organizing the set of transformative actions for the emancipation of the proletariat and for the construction of socialism. Politically, this process is expressed in the Anti-capitalist and Anti-imperialist Front, as the struggles against exploitation, against economic and financial monopolies and against large estates are essentially anti-capitalist struggles, given that big capital exercises its dominion in all spheres of life and that the resistance struggles of workers in defense of rights and wages, for education and public health, housing, social security rights, urban mobility, struggles in the countryside, claims for access to information and cultural goods and leisure clash with private and market logic. Anti-capitalist struggles join the struggle against imperialism, as the Brazilian capitalist system is associated with world imperialist centers, and the Brazilian bourgeoisie is an integral part and an ally of imperialism and its interests in Brazil.

The performance of the PCB unfolds in two tactical movements that are articulated: we fight the defensive struggles of the masses of workers and the youth in a unity of action with other forces that oppose neoliberal policies, in defense of democratic freedoms and against fascism, as well as we seek to build a social and political front of a revolutionary class character, having as a backbone the working class, the youth and social and popular movements that, together, represent the absolute majority of the Brazilian people. The PCB maintains its political, organic and class independence, rejects the articulations of broad fronts with the bourgeoisie and will not participate in governments committed to capital.

Today's hegemonic union organizations, currently led by class conciliation parties, became institutionalized. They’ve lost their combativeness and, with the election of President Lula, they became instruments of order, lost their combativeness and become bureaucratized. Today, they represent a brake on the class struggle and on the reorganization of workers. This process of adaptation to the order began with the arrival of PT to the federal government, in 2002. The new power bloc put aside the mobilization of workers, replacing social struggles in the streets with institutional and cabinet agreements, simultaneously co-opting leaders of social movements to control the actions of the masses. The result was the passivity and depoliticization of workers and youth, disarming these segments for the struggles against capital. This passivity was reflected in the low mobilization for the fight against the impeachment of President Dilma.

The PCB operates in the mass movement with collectives open to the participation of people,who, although aligned with our conceptions, are not yet party militants. Our main objective is to strengthen the Unidade Classista (Class Unity)as an instrument of organization and struggle in the trade union and popular movement, especially in the strategic categories of production and circulation of goods and services. We prioritize participation in trade unions and popular movements and action in places of work, housing and study. We defend the use of alternative forms of organization, such as the occupation and recovery of factories and companies, land owned by large estates, houses and land for housing, always seeking to politicize and organize workers to fight for popular power.

We support and fight for the realization of a National Meeting of the Working Class, to be built from the class union field, to develop the necessary action unit, a program of struggles and a classist union front or national trade union central of national scope. PCB activists and their collectives participate in all unitary forums of mobilization and struggles in the Brazilian states, seeking to organize the class social and political front, especially within the Trade Union, Popular and Youth Forum for Democratic Rights and Freedoms, one of the main instruments for the reorganization of our class.

There has been intense growth and strengthening of the Union of the Communist Youth, now organized throughout the country, with a strong presence in national demonstrations. The PCB seeks to strengthen and expand this front of struggle in public and private universities and especially in high school youth, with emphasis on technical schools, Faetecs and federal institutes (public institutions), from their base entities. The UJC must reinforce and develop its activities with young workers and act intensively in cultural movements.

The Coletivo Feminista Classista Ana Montenegro(a class feminist collective), the Coletivo Minervino de Oliveira– a Collective focused on the anti-racist struggle – have been growing and intensifying their activities. The LGBT Communist Collective is being organizing at the national level. We have advanced our participation in the struggles of indigenous peoples and popular communities. The PCB pays special attention to cultural work, especially among young people, and seeks to bring together progressive intellectuals to strengthen the cultural and ideological struggle against bourgeois, conservative and reactionary values.

As an internationalist party, the PCB undertakes actions of solidarity with all the peoples of the world attacked by imperialism and fascism, especially with the Cuban and Palestinian peoples, whose resistance to imperialist blockades and sabotage has been a reference for all revolutionaries in the world. In the fight against reformism and revisionism, the PCB respects the diversity of opinions that exist in the international communist movement and seeks to strengthen a revolutionary bloc within it, as well as to contribute to the construction of this revolutionary pole in Latin America and the Caribbean.

The PCB participates in electoral processes because we understand that this is an important front of struggle, even under conditions of extreme difficulty for revolutionary parties due to economic power and the increasingly restrictive electoral legislation on the participation in the media and access to public electoral funds. In elections it is possible to dialogue with the masses, denouncing capitalism, defending socialist and communist ideas and presenting proposals and axes of struggle in defense of the interests of the working class and popular sectors against the bourgeoisie. These are times when the population is more open to political debate.

The electoral results of the communists express, to a large extent, the Party's insertion in social and popular movements. The PCB's policy of alliances in the electoral field is carried out with anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist parties and with social and popular movements, safeguarding the possibility of having our own slates and candidacies. The PCB considers it important to elect representatives in the institutional framework, expanding the Party's sphere of action, understanding that those elected must be at the service of the working class, and their actions are guided by the Party's line and its political resolutions.

The PCB will complete 100 years of existence in 2022. The XVI Congress of the PCB reaffirms its commitment to the Brazilian revolution and to the construction of socialism in our country, in the perspective of a communist society. We will fight with all possible means for the defeat of the bourgeois hegemony in Brazil, for the socialization of the means of production under the control of popular power, as a way of creating a society of equality, fraternity, solidarity, abundance for all and human happiness: the communist society!

Long live the Brazilian revolution and socialism!

Long live proletarian internationalism!

Long live the Brazilian Communist Party!

XVI National Congress of the PCB.