[Article extracted from Politica Obrera Through the medium…]

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Article extracted from Politica Obrera Through the medium of a violent letter, the Brazilian Stalinist leader Luis Carlos Prestes has declared his break with the Central Committee of his party.

According to Prestes:

«The moment had arrived in which it is indispensable that the communists break with passivity and take the destiny of the BCP in their hands, rebelling against the arbitrary and authoritarian methods of the leadership and trying to elect at all party levels, leaderships that really will be the democratic expression of the majority of communists"

At various committee levels there are already two communist parties functioning.

Formally Prestes seeks to place himself to the left of the leadership, who he accuses of leading the party to: "Abdicate its revolutionary role, and assuming the position of a brake upon the popular movements, of (acting as) a guarantor of a pact with the bourgeoisie"

Nevertheless the strategy proposed by the secretary-general of the BCP doesn't differ from the classic Stalinist formulation of revolution by stages, envisaging a revolution that wouldn't be socialist, but "anti-monopolist and antilatifundist"

Prestes agrees with the proposal by the present leadership to form a (bourgeois) "democratic front" and to summon workers to join the bourgeois opposition partyPMDB.

The only concrete political difference that Prestes indicates in relation to the present CC is his favourable position towards a "union of the left" as a "motive force" of the "democratic front"

The majority of the lett organisations are already to be found inside the Labour Party -a workers' party led by a section of the Brazilian union leadership.

In this sense the "union of the left" is a proposed alternative directed against the Labour Party: the CP opposed it from the outset and Prestes doesn't show any sign of a change in that respect.

• The call for "left unity" indicates an alliance with the MR-8, an old guerrillaist splinter group which recently renounced armed struggle while keeping its never-abandoned position of revolution by stages-that is, tailing the bourgeoisie..

It has some positions in the student movement and the PMDB.

Prestes seeks to incorporate this sector in the CP to augment his base for manoeuvre in relation to the next congress of the CP.

The split in the CP revolves around differences over the best way to contain the revolution and adapt to the bourgeoisie.

and this is the key trick played upon the Brazilian left, which has rushed to greet the "left" turn of Prestes.

Apparently such differences were initiated around a balance sheet of 1964: one believed that the "correct" line ought to have been an even broader alliance the right included, in a sectors, "historic compromise"

Thus some CP members-a minority-would have adhered to the Euro-communist theses of the Italian CP.

Nevertheless the whole of the Brazilian CP has supported, without limits, the Russian invasion of Afghanistan.

The anti-Prestes sectors increasingly understand however that an automatic alignment with all the positions of the Kremlin bureaucracy would compromise the solidity of their longed-for long-term agreement with the bourgeoisie as a whole.

They also seek a distancing from Castroism-which is now clashing with the "progressive" bourgeoisies of the Andes Pact (the Peruvian Embassy affair).

Prestes on the other hand is a faithful Moscow man, and poses the unconditional support for the Soviet bureaucracy as a priority.

The perspective of the present rupture of the BCP therefore, is not of the Prestes faction moving closer to revolution but of an increasing likelihood of the break up of Brazilian Stalinism.

This splitting opens up a good opportunity for the development and growth of the Labour Party, because it puts in relief the rotten anti-working class strategy of supporting the bourgeois PMDB.

The militants of the Labour Party must take advantage of the crisis for the building of an authentic class party, which isn't possible without a clear demarcation from Stalinism and its policy of propping up the bourgeois state.

One mustn't forget that the Brazilian CP has a history going back more than 50 years.

It is the main reason for the non-existence of a mass workers party in the country: and its policies have been a key factoi in the repeated defeats and frustrations of the Braziliar working class in recent decades.

Student protest in Sao Paulo, Brazil