GM

There are only a few public policies, and they don’t solve most of the time the structural matters in our country. In terms of agrarian reform, we didn’t advance. Income distribution in our country, we didn’t advance at all — it’s the same as in the 1970s. Of course the economy is growing — commodities, employment, small advancements. But if you look at the urban issues, social calamity, the favelas . . . the criminalization of poverty, the ideological propaganda against the poor, against social movements, which justifies coercive action by the state in this logic, things have not improved.

Nonetheless, Lula has a stunning level of popularity; Lulismo is a phenomenon. I think that it’s really prejudicial to the process of social organization and political consciousness. But this is the reality, there’s no point in me trying to run away from it.

If the Left wants to recreate itself, in a positive way, it will have to make this critical evaluation. It will have to promote a deep interpretation of this reality. The economic logic applied in Brazil can get stronger if there’s no international crisis. The country will benefit from the room for growth found in the construction sector, in mass consumption of goods, and in services in general.

There’s room in agriculture, though it is growth with heavy environmental impact. It will lead to consequences for humanity, as in the entire world. This story of sustainable development is a myth from inside capitalism, there’s no such thing! It’s part of the nature of the system to permanently transform everyone and everything into commodities.

The logic of capital is one of brutalizing everything, an extreme reification of human beings. Clocking in each morning and out each evening. Subjectively, what’s the concept of happiness in the masses? It’s having a lot of money to buy a lot of things. Subjectively, that’s all there is today. We need to think of new ways of engaging in dialogue with society.

In terms of agrarian reform, we need to discuss it with society because reform is not dependent on us, the MST. We can occupy the land, but we have to have a discussion over what kind of use we’ll make of the soil, of the natural resources, especially the water and how it’s being contaminated.

These are all part of the new contradictions that we’ll have to face. The Left has to rethink the situation from the inside of each country and on an international scale. The logic of the parties has always been around the fight for hegemony: “My group versus yours,” “mine is always better than yours.” The Left is too sectarian. It’s all about “my group,” and my group doesn’t sit with anyone. If I hold the absolute truth, why would I listen to you? Once you depart from that idea, we can engage in dialogue. I think that from the philosophical standpoint, the debate will develop. I always say that if there are no contradictions, there’s no life.

Social movements are considered transmission belts, mass-based fronts for party structures. The logic has been to separate the political struggle from the social struggle. When you do that, you stop the social aspect of struggling for concrete matters — be it land, housing, and so on — from creating a degree of political consciousness that makes people into subjects of their own history.

It’s sort of like this: “the social movement is very good for occupations, strikes, rallies, but not political construction.” That part gets relegated to the political group. New organizing forms will have to merge social struggle with political struggle. You can’t separate them — that’s anti-dialectical at the least. It’s pro status quo to separate them. Thinking this process through will move things forward.

We are weakened. Even if we gathered all of the leftist groups, it’s a very small, centralized group. No one has time for anything. Just like the class that gets up in the morning and works till the evening to buy more things so that even caring for their children and their parents becomes commodified because they don’t have the time . . . On the Left, it’s sort of the same way. The Left is dehumanized; they don’t see their friends, partners.

We say that we hold the values of the new society, but when people see us always so angry, nervous, won’t they think, “These are the ones with new social values? If so, I’m out.” So to rethink organizing norms is also to rethink all of these dynamics for the next period. Will everything work out? No. But we have to think of new experiences.