You would think that Tony Blair would have disabused the left of such illusions, but no, far from it. Recently, the left have been wetting themselves about various election "breakthroughs." Many self-proclaimed Marxist revolutionaries have waxed lyrical about the victories of the Scottish Socialist Party, wishing they were north of the border so that they, too, could vote for the SSP's old labour style politics wrapped in some libertarian sounding rhetoric.
Internationally, the victory of Lula in Brazil was held up as another sign of the possibilities of left-wing electioneering. Great hopes were placed in him. It is good to have hope. It is stupid to forget the .lessons of history. We are only as strong as our own grassroots, self-managed, class conscious organisation. If you put bureaucrats, politicians or others in the driver's seat, they're sure to take you for a ride to their destination of choice and perhaps even sell you down the river.
Lula confirmed this. His practice quickly failed to live up to the hopes, unsurprising given that, like Blair, he had made it clear where he stood long before he was anywhere near office. Now his Workers Party has gone one stage further and expelled four dissident members from the Brazilian Congress.
This action confirms the recent shift of Lula and his government away from their leftist roots. The four were purged by the directorate of the Workers' Party in a secret ballot in a closed-door session in Brasília. The party leaders accused the so-called radicals of taking part in a campaign to "demoralize" the government and Lula.
Supposedly, the ouster of the legislators was punishment for their failure to vote in favour of Lula's proposal to reduce pension benefits, which was approved by Congress in December. However, it reflects the growing dissatisfaction of the left wing of the party with the abandonment of traditional party positions and his determination to enforce party discipline despite that discontent.
Lula, let us not forget, was a former lathe operator and labour union leader and Brazil's first working-class president. He was elected a little over a year ago, on a platform that promised a sweeping social transformation and increased investment in education and health. Unsurprisingly, he has followed the demands of the markets, piling up record budget surpluses to obtain a stamp of approval from the IMF. This policy has stunted growth and contributed to high unemployment. Surprisingly, he recently denied that he had ever been a leftist.
One of the Workers' Party long term main theoreticians has called this switch "tropical Blairism." A switch which has been well received by foreign investors, alarmed in the past by Lula's fiery radical rhetoric. A founder of the party complained that this was "not the first year of the Workers' Party government" but rather than "the ninth year" of the previous government. Shades of Blair, indeed!
Threats of resignations by several prominent party figures failed to stop the party leadership expelling the radicals. Dissidents object to what they describe as the Stalinist attitude of the leadership and not only to the economic policies. Dissident is not limited to within the party. Another party that had been a part of Lula's multiparty governing coalition formally broke with the president, accusing the Workers' Party leaders of abandoning their principles and selling out to international capitalism.
But in spite of history repeating itself (yet again!) in Brazil, the left will be standing candidates in the forth coming elections and urging us to vote for the "progressive" candidate. We can be sure that this time it will be different, honest. This time, for the first time in history, the personalities elected will be up to the task and overcome the pressures from the state bureaucracy and big business and implement their programme. And they call anarchists utopians!