Photo by gaby_bra |
Car manufacturing and trade union power
Sao Bernardo do
Campo in the neighbourhood just south of Sao Paulo is the location of Brazil’s
important car manufacturing industry. About 70.000 skilled workers on good
salaries work in the factories of Volkswagen, Scania and Mercedes amongst
others. Clustered around these factories is a host of smaller companies
supplying the large car factories with parts.
This area is also
the powerbase of Brazil’s former President Lula da Silva. It was here that he
made his name leading the strike of metalworkers during the military
dictatorship in the late 1970s. It was here that he came in April 2018, before
being imprisoned as part of the political coup against the Workers’ Party (PT),
and it was here that he came first after having been released from prison in
November 2019. The central courtyard of the union’s office building is draped
in large banners with Lula’s image. He is omnipresent.
Fernando (not his
real name) makes clear that if we want to understand the current situation of
Bolsonaro, we need to go back to 2013, when capital started to attack Lula and
Rousseff’s compromise project around higher profits for capital combined with
more wealth re-distribution. The coup against Rousseff followed in 2016 paving
the way for Bolsonaro’s election victory two years later. Unsurprisingly the
problem is bigger than Bolsonaro, the rise of fascist sentiment much broader.
Especially the strong military presence in the current government is a cause of
concern for Brazil’s fragile democracy, Fernando explains.
In response, the
union organized street demonstrations and devised a campaign through its own
newspapers. Broader alliances, Fernando asserts, which had characterized the
union’s activities already during the 1980s and 1990s, would now be more
important than ever. In order to remain relevant, the union also has to deal
with concerns outside the workplace such as human rights issues. Fernando’s
office is full of flags of other social movements. ‘They remind me of who are
our allies in the struggle’, he tells me. Support for cooperatives and workers’
run factories strengthen the links between union and wider civil society. Unfortunately,
while the years of Lula’s and Roussef’s Presidencies had resulted in material
improvements for an increasing middle class, this went hand in hand with a
rather individualist understanding of the situation. People forgot that the improvements
in their personal situation are the result of collective struggles and not due
to their own individual merits.
And yet, changes
in the global political economy are also underlying the union’s difficult
position in the current environment. Due to a crisis of overproduction in the
global and regional car manufacturing industry intensified competition puts
downward pressure on wages and working conditions. Unions from different
production sites meet in global works councils, but they are often in
competition with each other, when it comes to decisions on where the company
should invest. Additional uncertainty is caused by technological change with a
switch to electric cars and the wider discussions of climate change and whether
economies based on cars are really a path to the future. While there is still
new investment into the sector by Asian companies and Fiat, this happens in
other regions of the country, where trade unions are weaker and workers less
organized. Considering the chock-a-block streets of Sao Paulo, it is also clear
that local domestic consumption cannot be a way out of the crisis of
overproduction.
With its
industrial sector under pressure, the metalworkers’ union’s focus on alliances
with social movements may become even more important than it already is today.
Studying to organize and raise class consciousness
In Guararema
outside Sao Paulo, I meet with Carlos (not his real name) in the national
school ENFF of the MST, Brazil’s movement of landless workers. The MST
organises families of landless workers and occupies unused agricultural land to
establish camps. Over time, the organization attempts to work with local,
regional and national authorities to turn these camps into legal settlements.
Formally established in 1984, the MST currently comprises 90.000 families in
camps and 400.000 families in settlements. It is Brazil’s biggest social
movement.
Library of the ENFF - photo by Friends of the MST |
‘We are a real
problem for the country’s agribusiness’, explains Carlos. ‘Lula allowed the
industry to expand to some extent, but also protected natural reserves in the
Amazon and secured our settlements.’ Agribusiness, having reached the permitted
expansion by Lula, has been unsurprisingly one of the strongest backers of the
coup against Rousseff, driving towards a policy of further destruction of the
Amazon rainforest. Moreover, in order to expand further agribusiness also needs
to take over the land of MST settlements. ‘We are one of the biggest enemies of
Bolsonaro’, declares Carlos.
Having just
established a new party, heavily based on the military, Bolsonaro is currently presiding
over a move from consensus to coercion including also attacks on MST camps as
well as increasing attacks on black youth in favelas. Unfortunately, the left
in Brazil is weak and fragmented. While it is united in resistance to
Bolsonaro, there is no common, alternative project. Part of the problem is that
the PT has forgotten how to organize during its long time in power. It had
given people the right to consumption, but provided little space for
participation in policy-making, Carlos explains. Re-distribution of wealth did
not go hand in hand with a transformation of people.
ENFF Ars and Crafts building |
The MST is a national organization, which is based on many diverse, local experiences. During the 1990s it was realized that the movement needed a national education centre to organize unity in diversity and provide a location for the analysis of concrete struggles. ‘We cannot rely on analyses by academics, or others’, says Carlos. ‘We need to develop our own capacity to interpret reality and develop strategies for the struggle. Of course, we listen to others, but we need to form our own understanding based on our own experiences. Political praxis is key.’
Between 1997 and
2000 an international campaign raised the necessary money to buy the land for
the School. Between 2000 and 2005, MST brigades build it. In many respects,
constructing the School by the working class for the working class,
understanding the School as a permanent movement, was the first political education
course. 5000 students are educated at ENFF per year in courses, which last from
a couple of weeks to several months.
ENFF - large lecture theatre |
Training its
members and working class people from around the world, the emphasis is always
on exploring ways of how we can act to transform reality. Popular education,
inspired by the teaching of Paolo Freire and liberation theology, focuses on
supporting emancipation. There are always different ways of learning and a
pedagogy is required, which can ‘provoke’ these different dimensions. In the
ENFF’s method, it is asked what ‘is’ in a materialist sense, how has it become
historically, and how can we transform it through struggle, emphasizing the
dialectical nature of enquiry.
Education is based
on six elements: study, work, organizing, mystica, arts and culture, as well as
socialist and humanist values. Four hours per day are reserved for traditional study,
reading, presentations and group work in seminars. Then everybody has to work
for 1.5 hours per day to maintain the school with tasks including cooking,
cleaning as well as constructing new buildings. Organising skills are key for
struggle and students are, therefore, put in charge of planning various aspects
of the daily programme. In mystica, past struggles and comrades are remembered
to engender a collective spirit. Art and culture provide a different way of
learning, while socialist and humanist values refer to the society the MST as a
movement collectively wants to create. Ultimately people would only defend a
project, they feel to be a part of.
ENFF - remembering the first MST national congress |
Autonomist
projects, which focus on establishing a different reality for its participants
without challenging existing power structures, are often contrasted with
revolutionary strategies to overthrow the existing order. What impressed me when
visiting the School was that they do both. On the one hand, they want to bring
about change now. For example, to overcome gendered roles, men are often
allocated traditional female tasks as their daily work duties, while women
pursue traditional male roles. Some complain, but there is an understanding
that transformation also includes changing ourselves and this has to start with
overcoming the sexual division of labour. On the other, there is a clear focus
on how to change society and existing power structures towards a better collective
future. Importantly, Carlos asserts, these struggles always have to be
international, as there cannot be socialism in one country.
Often under
pressure from the authorities and police violence, the ENFF has a crucial role
to play in the years ahead to keep this hope of change alive and organize for a
better future in Brazil and beyond!
When leaving the
School, I was reflecting on how much education at the ENFF differs from my own
experience as an academic in the UK. Based on high levels of tuition fees in a
‘free student market’, higher education has become commodified in the UK.
Education has been reduced to a good available to those, who can afford to pay
for it. Studying is not about how to transform collectively our society and
ourselves towards a fairer future. Rather, its purpose is to equip the
individual with marketable skills, allowing her/him to secure a better paid
job. The ENFF experience clearly demonstrates the ‘poverty’ of education in
so-called advanced, developed countries.
Andreas Bieler
Professor of Political Economy
University of Nottingham/UK
University of Nottingham/UK
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