We republish below an unofficial translation of the following article from the Workers’ League, a Brazilian New Democratic workers’ organization, originally published on January 1, 2025.
Photo: General Strike Demonstration between Petrolina (PE) and Juazeiro (BA) June/July 2019.
In a country of bureaucratic capitalism, where the ruling classes (big bourgeoisie and large landowners) are at the service of imperialism, mainly Yankee imperialism (United States), which is going through an unprecedented crisis, as it is in a phase of decomposition and, in order to guarantee its survival, imposes on the management of its colonies and semi-colonies the most barbaric austerity plans, such as in Brazil, the “labor and social security reforms”, the Spending Containment Packages, such as the PEC of the “Spending Cap” – today known as the “Fiscal Framework”, which only limits what should be invested for the good of the poor people.
When we talk about the mathematics of wage squeeze, we are talking about numbers that make up the entire Gross Domestic Product (GDP), that is, everything that the working class, the peasantry and other sectors of the economy have produced in the country, from which projections are made and the General Budget of the Union is derived, which for 2025 will be R$5.7 trillion reais. However, this rapid-fire mathematics will favor bankers and financial groups with 44% of the total amount, that is, half a dozen parasites will gobble up R$2.53 trillion reais, which should be invested in the country. But how can we say this about a “popular government” that is running a government of “Unity and Reconstruction”?
It’s simple: this government, which claims to be left-wing, acts in the same “modus operandi” as a reactionary government from the center, the right, or the extreme right, since both are born from the same womb, generated by the big bourgeoisie and the latifundium, fertilized by imperialism, mainly Yankee, through sham elections, which from time to time choose someone to wield the whip on the backs of the people.
The politics of the loudmouth, the chief puppet, Luiz Inácio, are those of the countryside, lighting one candle for God and another for the Devil, all in the name of “governability.” Let us see how his mathematical formula suffered a setback: when he was a union leader (although it was fabricated by military strategist General Golbery do Couto e Silva), he said that the minimum wage should be the one advocated by the Inter-Union Department of Statistics and Socioeconomic Studies – DIEESE, which today would be an average of R$6,959.31 and not the measly R$1,518.00 sanctioned by him to come into effect on January 1, 2025.
This discrepancy of setting a wage that does not meet the basic needs of a family of 4 people (as calculated by the Vargas government, which published Decree-Law No. 2,162/01/05/1940) was not enough. The chief puppet master did not even follow the rule for adjusting the minimum wage, created during his government; he simply ignored it and reached into the pockets of the poorest to comply with the dictates of the richest. Let’s look at a small example that occurred this year: “the salary was to be updated by the sum of the result of the annual inflation index up to November (INPC) of the previous year with the result of the GDP growth of two years before. The INPC of this year was 4.84% in the accumulated 12 months, while the GDP of 2022 was 3.2%. The sum results in 7.68%”, data taken from the newspaper A Nova Democracia of 12/28/2024.
Now, even with such a forecast, a new formula was used, to serve the magnates, as always, taking from the backs of the people, especially the most humble. Not only did it lower the index to 7.5%, it also established a new formula for adjusting the minimum wage, which instead of being adjusted by adding the result of the annual inflation index up to November – INPC of the previous year with the result of the GDP growth of two years before: it will grow between 0.6% and 2.5% above inflation, until 2030, depending on the GDP of the previous year. Just to give you an idea of how austere this method is, in order to meet the wishes of the tycoons, the government changed the rules. This year, it would have to adjust the minimum wage by 3.2%, added to the 4.84% of the INPC. In other words, instead of applying 8.04%, which would raise the salary to R$1,525.52, it established only 7.5%, decreeing the minimum wage at R$1,518.00 (-R$7.52 less for each employee) and also established that, next year, the adjustment will be variable. between 06% and 2.5%, added to the INPC index until 2030.
Delfin Neto – former minister of the military, defended the “cake theory”, claiming that: “First we have to make the cake grow and then distribute it”, so criticized by this former union leader and his peers, now they don’t even do that, they simply change the rules, to shamelessly serve their speculator masters. The Brazilian people have suffered for centuries due to colonial and semi-colonial policies, typical of a country of bureaucratic capitalism, whose purpose is to serve foreign investors, not surprisingly, the price of oil on the domestic market is based on the Import Parity Price – PPI1 – according to the Dollar, which is floating, directly monitored by the large financial group, a caste formed by leeches, who place themselves above good and evil.
Apparently, the chief sycophant and his sycophants have not learned from the mistakes made in their almost 14 years of management of the Brazilian bureaucratic state. What we have noticed is that, for them, what matters is “governability”, even if, to achieve this, they have to sell out the people and the working masses, and to achieve this, they offer prominent positions in the bowels of the old State to those who agreed with them in this endeavor, and with this, they manage to get a troupe of sycophants who will defend their lucrative “little places in the sun”, as they did with the Trade Unions in 2008, legalizing them, to control them and leaving them passive. For this reason, the unions paid a high price with the “labor reform” of 2017, losing more than 90% of their financial income and having their firepower reduced, to the point that the far-right Bolsonaro supporters propagated the “end of unions” and, with their “Fake News”, enforced the maxim that “all unions are PT members” and, with this, they managed to turn a certain portion of the working masses, radicalized against the unions, and the bosses rejoice and take away historic rights, won with much struggle, blood and sweat of the class throughout its history.
The way Luiz Inácio deals with the issue of labor rights, which were usurped with the “labor reform”, is the same way he deals with the agrarian issue, where he had promised: “I will solve it with a stroke of the pen” and did not solve it in his two governments or in that of his protégé Dilma Rousseff. Today, peasants and those who fight for land are persecuted and murdered for defending the land for those who live and work there. But they do not wait for promises, they write history with their own hands, unfurling the flag of the Agrarian Revolution, taking and cutting down the lands usurped by the latifundium – a centuries-old enemy of our peasant, indigenous and quilombola people, and that is why the working class must support them.
In this sense, it is the task of the entire working class to unite to destroy the common enemies, without blinking and not falling into the clutches of an extreme right that rose to power, precisely by using the vacuum left by this electoral, conciliatory “left”, which proclaims what it cannot fulfill within a rotten policy, created by imperialism and carried out by the big bourgeoisie and the latifundium, because power must emanate from the hands of the people, but this will not come from promises, but from a lot of struggle and to achieve it, the class must seek ways to organize itself, creating People’s Defense Committees and start exercising it in the preparation of a General Strike of National Resistance, because what we saw at the end of 2024 was the government filling the pockets of the bankers and financial speculators with 44% of the General Budget of the Union for 2025 and to ensure that there were no surprises, in December alone, it injected R$8.1 billion reais into Congress, so that these ensure “political support” for their priority projects, such as the “fiscal framework”, however, the Federal Supreme Court itself – STF, through Minister Flávio Dino, questioned the irregularities of this maneuver.
Let us prepare ourselves, because the year 2025 will come with great storms and for those who have always rowed against the current, it will not be a surprise, however, those who are not prepared may be caught by surprise and we cannot let rats surf the wave of our class. We must defend our just cause tooth and nail, even if for now, this has been a heavy burden, carried by few, because the masses are certainly about to wake up.
Prepare the General Strike of National Resistance!
Demand the repeal of the “labor and social security reforms!
Demand land for those who live and work on it!
Fight the anti-people and traitorous laws of these governments in power!
Workers’ League, São Paulo, January 1, 2025.
- The Import Parity Price (PPI) policy was adopted by the Michel Temer government in October 2016 and was in effect until May 16, 2023 by Petrobras. However, a new oil price policy is still being implemented, using two variables, which still keeps the price high. (As President Jean Paul Prates made clear, “Petrobras will not “break away” from international market prices.”) ↩︎
