The PT, PCdoB, PSOL and PSTU in the Face of the Crisis of Brazilian Capitalism: A Left Incapable of Turning Resistance into a Revolutionary Alternative
A Run-off Election That Forces Us to Look Beyond the Ballot Box
This Sunday, 25 October, Brazil will return to the polls to choose between Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and Flávio Bolsonaro. Once again, the contest places at the centre of Brazilian politics the confrontation between the PT (Workers Party) and its project and a right wing that has succeeded in consolidating a significant social base. But to understand how this situation emerged, it is necessary to look beyond the immediate electoral context.
How did Brazil come to elect a far-right president in 2018, after thirteen years of PT governments, the impeachment of Dilma Rousseff, and two years of neoliberal offensive under Michel Temer? The answer requires examining not only the strength of the right, but also the limits of the PT project and the left’s inability to transform resistance to counter-reforms into a mass political alternative.
PT governments, between 2003 and 2016, implemented genuine social improvements, but they did not transform the fundamental relations of economic power. Following the crisis of Dilma’s second government, Temer’s offensive, and the opposition’s inability to defeat it, a new political period opened. Bolsonaro was not the inevitable outcome of this process, but his rise occurred in a society marked by frustration, polarisation and a crisis of political representation.
This trajectory helps explain a broader phenomenon: reformism can contribute to the growth of the far right when it raises expectations of change but leaves intact the economic and social structures that reproduce inequality. When those expectations are frustrated and left organisations fail to offer a solution capable of changing the lives of the majority, the right can appropriate popular discontent and direct it against workers themselves.
The far right’s responsibility for its reactionary policies does not disappear because we recognise the mistakes of the left. But neither can its advance be understood if everything is reduced to media manipulation, religious conservatism or the skill of particular leaders.
The decisive question is not simply who wins an election. It is whether the working class can build its own political force, capable of challenging bourgeois economic and political power.
1. Lula and the Pact with the Bourgeoisie
Lula’s arrival in the presidency in 2003 was the result of decades of trade union organisation, social struggle and popular expectations. Millions of workers identified the PT with the possibility of achieving a decent life after generations of poverty and inequality.
PT governments introduced social policies that improved living conditions for impoverished sectors, expanded access to consumption and increased incomes for part of the population. Ignoring these achievements would be as mistaken as using them to justify the PT’s entire strategy.
The problem lay in the political and economic framework within which these policies developed. Lulism sought to reconcile the interests of workers with those of big business, the banks and agribusiness. Social improvements were expected to coexist with capitalist profitability and the key institutions of the bourgeois state.
While the economy was growing and resources were available for distribution, this formula could maintain a degree of stability. However, these gains depended upon a balance of forces that did not durably transform who controlled investment, credit, land and the main levers of the economy.
The PT did not build a strategy aimed at enabling workers to take democratic control of these structures. Its priority was to demonstrate that capitalism could be governed in a more socially inclusive manner while preserving agreements with sections of the ruling class.
That decision had consequences. In order to preserve governing alliances, popular mobilisation had to remain within limits compatible with political stability. The social force that had brought the PT to power was not transformed into an organised instrument capable of imposing structural change.
The contradiction was clear: workers were the social base of the project, but their demands were not supposed to reach the point of challenging the interests of those who economically sustained the existing order.
Reformism does not fail simply because its leaders are unable to fulfil promises. Its deepest limitation emerges when social gains depend upon the continuation of a system whose principal beneficiaries possess the power to withdraw, block or subordinate those gains to their own interests.
2. Dilma Rousseff and the Crisis of the PT Project
The economic and political crisis that deepened during Dilma Rousseff’s second term exposed these contradictions. Economic slowdown, recession, growing tensions between the government and business sectors, and the deterioration of parliamentary alliances weakened the PT.
The June 2013 mobilisations had already revealed a social discontent that exceeded traditional channels of political representation. A significant section of the population demanded better public services, affordable transport and less precarious living conditions. The right succeeded in intervening in this process, but the discontent did not originate solely from its actions. It also reflected accumulated frustrations arising from the limitations of PT governments.
Following Dilma’s re-election in 2014, the turn towards austerity further eroded the confidence of popular sectors. The government attempted to restore market confidence and stabilise its alliances, but paid the price of alienating part of its own social base.
In 2016, Dilma’s removal through impeachment paved the way for Michel Temer’s government and an offensive against labour rights and social policies. The process was deeply controversial and represented a political defeat for the PT, though not a revolutionary rupture with the state order. Capitalist institutions continued to function, while the dominant sectors rearranged their alliances.
The lesson is fundamental. The PT had demonstrated it could administer the state and negotiate with sections of the bourgeoisie, but it had not built an autonomous social force capable of preventing those very sectors from abandoning the pact when they deemed it convenient.
The problem was not simply that Dilma lost office. It was that the working class lacked a political and social organisation strong enough to impose its own solution to the crisis.
3. Temer: The Opportunity the Left Failed to Turn into an Offensive
Temer’s government pushed ahead with measures that sharply affected workers’ living conditions. The 2017 labour reform weakened protections and increased flexibility in labour relations. The constitutional amendment known as the spending cap limited growth in primary federal expenditure for many years and constrained the funding of public services.
Resistance was not absent. The general strike of 28 April 2017 showed that considerable mobilisation capacity existed. Yet that demonstration of strength was not transformed into a sustained offensive capable of blocking the full package of counter-reforms and permanently altering the balance of forces.
Trade union fragmentation, the lack of continuity in mobilisation, and the subordination of part of the opposition strategy to the electoral calendar all contributed to this defeat.
The PT concentrated much of its energy on rebuilding its electoral viability. Yet a future election could not substitute for the immediate necessity of preventing the consolidation of the counter-reforms. Resistance required permanent coordination in workplaces, assemblies, a plan of struggle, and a mobilisation capable of overcoming organisational divisions.
Would Temer have fallen if the general strike had been prolonged? Could Bolsonaro’s victory in 2018 have been avoided? These questions cannot be answered with certainty. It can, however, be argued that a decisive defeat of the counter-reforms would have altered the balance of forces, strengthened workers and reduced the room for manoeuvre available to those promoting that agenda.
The defeat of 2017 was not merely a trade union defeat. It revealed the gap between existing mobilisation capacity and a political strategy willing to carry it through to its ultimate conclusions.
The left cannot merely call for resistance when attacks become severe. It must build an alternative that allows a transition from defensive protests to a struggle over who governs society and in whose interests the economy is organised.
4. The PT and the PCdoB: Rebuilding the Alliance Rather Than Workers’ Power
The PT and the Communist Party of Brazil (PCdoB) responded to the crisis by prioritising the reconstruction of a broad electoral alliance. Their objective was to return to government, halt the advance of the right and defend democratic institutions against reactionary setbacks.
The authoritarian threat posed by the right is real and should not be minimised. However, the strategic question is which social forces lead this unity and what programme defines its limits.
When an alliance is built around regaining government office and agreements with sections of the business class, workers’ demands become subordinated to the need to maintain the coalition. Demands that make economic allies uncomfortable may be postponed in the name of governability.
For many years the PCdoB supported the PT’s alliance strategy and defended unity among democratic and progressive forces. This orientation may be effective in gathering votes, but it does not by itself answer the question of how workers can be organised to confront the material interests that sustain inequality.
The dilemma is not one of choosing between unity and division in the abstract. It is a matter of deciding which social class determines the content of that unity. A coalition that brings together workers, popular sectors and fractions of the bourgeoisie may achieve electoral objectives, but it is unlikely to advance to the point of consistently challenging the economic power of its own allies.
The Brazilian experience demonstrates that winning back the presidency is not the same as acquiring the social power necessary to transform relations of production. Without an independent political and social organisation capable of acting autonomously, a government remains subject to pressure from business interests, Congress, the state apparatus and financial markets.
5. PSOL and the Turn Towards Lulism: From Break with the PT to Subordination
The trajectory of the Party of Socialism and Liberty (PSOL) deserves particular criticism because its very creation represented a break with the PT’s adaptation to the capitalist order.
PSOL emerged in 2004, driven by activists and leaders expelled from the PT after opposing, among other measures, the pension reform promoted by Lula’s first government. Its formation expressed an important political conclusion: it was not enough to maintain a left-wing identity while supporting policies that ran counter to workers’ interests.
Over time, however, a decisive section of the PSOL leadership shifted the centre of its strategy. The goal of building an independent alternative became increasingly subordinated to the construction of an electoral front centred on the PT.
The argument used to justify this shift is familiar: in the face of the growth of the far right, the urgent task is to unite all democratic forces around Lula. The danger represented by Bolsonarism is real, but turning that threat into the permanent organising principle of all left-wing politics carries a cost. Criticism of Lulism comes to be regarded as an inconvenience, an unnecessary division, or even indirect assistance to the right.
PSOL’s support for Lula in the 2022 election can be understood in the context of the confrontation with Bolsonaro. What requires deeper discussion, however, is the transformation of that tactical decision into a strategic orientation. When electoral priorities become long-term political subordination, an organisation ceases to build an alternative and instead begins to orbit around the strategy of the very party it originally challenged.
The turn towards Lulism is reflected in the growing acceptance that the political horizon of the left is to sustain a government based on class conciliation, exert pressure from within, and prevent contradictions from weakening electoral unity. Yet an organisation founded on exposing the limits of the PT risks becoming a critical appendage of that same project. It may retain socialist rhetoric, uphold programmatic differences and defend important demands, but ultimately places its political strength at the service of a strategy over which it exercises no control.
This contradiction is especially serious because PSOL possesses activists, cadres and representatives capable of intervening in social struggles. Their presence could help build a mass alternative. However, when the main priority becomes guaranteeing the electoral continuity of Lulism, the construction of that alternative is postponed indefinitely.
PSOL’s official support for Lula in 2026 once again raises this contradiction. The issue is not whether a run-off against the Bolsonaro family represents a danger to democratic and social rights. Rather, it is why a party created to overcome the limitations of the PT repeatedly places its political weight behind a PT candidacy without resolving the underlying problem of constructing an alternative independent of conciliation with capital.
The criticism is not that PSOL should reject all common fronts with other forces. Unity against specific attacks on workers may be necessary and legitimate. The problem arises when limited unity becomes a general political subordination in which the requirements of a presidential campaign dictate the possibilities for criticism, mobilisation and independent organisation.
Nor is it sufficient merely to note that PSOL failed to replace the PT as the principal force of the left. The more important question is why, after years of denouncing PT adaptation, it moved closer to the same logic of conciliation that originally motivated its creation.
If PSOL helps sustain a government that negotiates with business interests but does not build a social force capable of imposing structural transformations, what alternative will be available when that government faces a new crisis? If the answer is once again to call for patience, moderate demands and wait for the next election, then the party will reproduce the very cycle it sought to break.
This adaptation does not make PSOL identical to the PT. Internal differences remain, along with critical currents and activists committed to a more consistent socialist orientation. Yet those differences will only acquire historical significance if they are translated into a strategy capable of organising struggles, winning influence among workers and contesting leadership within the left.
PSOL cannot limit itself to being the critical conscience of a PT-led government. If it abandons the task of building an independent alternative whenever electoral polarisation demands unity, it will ultimately help perpetuate the political dependence it originally sought to overcome.
6. The PSTU: Revolutionary Criticism That Failed to Become a Mass Leadership
The Unified Socialist Workers’ Party (PSTU) maintained a more direct criticism of reformism and defended a revolutionary socialist orientation. Its opposition both to Dilma’s government and to Temer’s sought to express the idea that opposition to the right should not become political support for the PT.
However, a correct programme does not automatically become a force capable of leading millions of workers. The gap between revolutionary criticism and real influence in the labour movement remains a central problem.
It is not enough to denounce class conciliation, defend the autonomy of workers’ organisations or repeat the necessity of socialist revolution. It is necessary to intervene in concrete struggles, build stable organisation, win the confidence of workers who do not already accept revolutionary conclusions, and demonstrate in practice how a different political approach can address their immediate needs.
The weakness of the PSTU reveals a problem that extends beyond that organisation itself. A left-wing force may preserve a revolutionary identity and yet remain too distant from the social layers it seeks to represent. The radicalism of a programme must also be measured by its ability to become a collective force, not merely by the sharpness of its declarations.
A revolutionary alternative requires combining criticism of reformism with a concrete policy of organisation, intervention and struggle for leadership within social movements.
7. Bolsonaro: A Reaction That Was Not Inevitable
Jair Bolsonaro’s rise cannot be explained solely by the mistakes of the PT. Other factors were involved: the reorganisation of the right, the growth of conservative sectors, the economic crisis, the role of judicial institutions, social polarisation and Bolsonaro’s ability to present himself as a figure opposed to the political establishment.
Lula’s exclusion from the 2018 election was another decisive factor. Together, these developments created a political space that the radical right successfully occupied.
Yet recognising this complexity does not remove the political responsibility of reformism. A left that fails to transform popular expectations into a social force capable of imposing change leaves millions vulnerable to disappointment. The right can exploit that vacuum, channel discontent against organised workers and offer an authoritarian solution to what is fundamentally a social crisis produced by capitalism.
The far right does not need to resolve the contradictions of the system. It can grow by exploiting their consequences, blaming the most vulnerable sectors, attacking trade unions and offering a nationalist and authoritarian outlet to those who have lost faith in existing institutions.
The Brazilian experience demonstrates that social improvements are important, but they are not sufficient to guarantee lasting transformation. When gains are not accompanied by an organisation capable of defending and extending them, they remain vulnerable to political reaction.
This does not mean that the PT alone created Bolsonaro, nor that reformist policies inevitably lead to fascism. It does mean that conciliation with capital can demobilise the working class and weaken the left’s capacity to respond when the right goes onto the offensive.
8. From Resistance to a Revolutionary Alternative
The lesson cannot simply be that the left must win elections again, improve its messaging or find a more attractive candidate. These factors may matter, but they do not replace the necessity of transforming the balance of social forces.
A revolutionary alternative would have to begin by strengthening the democratic organisation of workers in workplaces, neighbourhoods and educational institutions. Strikes, mobilisations and struggles against counter-reforms require permanent mechanisms of coordination, assemblies capable of deciding the next steps, and representatives elected and recallable by those they represent.
It also requires trade-union organisations to stop acting merely as negotiating instruments subordinated to governmental timetables. They must be capable of organising resistance even when a left-wing government calls for moderation in order to preserve its alliances.
Politically, this strategy requires a programme that links immediate needs to the transformation of economic structures: decent employment, reduced working hours with no loss of pay, high-quality public services, defence of pensions, agrarian reform and democratic control of the strategic sectors of the economy.
The aim is not simply to present a list of demands and hope a government grants them. It is to build the social force necessary to impose them and move towards a society in which major economic decisions are determined not by private profitability but by collective needs.
This perspective also requires an honest discussion among the various currents of the Brazilian left. The PT and the PCdoB must account for the limits of their strategy of conciliation. PSOL must address the contradiction between its critical origins and its increasing subordination to Lulism. The PSTU, meanwhile, must confront the challenge of overcoming the gap between its revolutionary programme and its limited capacity to become a recognised leadership among broad layers of the working class.
None of these tasks can be solved through declarations of principle. They can only be resolved in practice, by building organisation, winning confidence and demonstrating that an alternative exists both to the reformist administration of capitalism and to far-right reaction.
Conclusion: It Is Not Enough to Administer Capitalism to Stop the Far Right
Brazil’s recent history offers a warning to the entire Latin American left. The PT achieved genuine social gains, but its strategy of conciliation with the bourgeoisie did not transform the fundamental relations of power. When the crisis destroyed the conditions sustaining that equilibrium, the dominant sectors were able to abandon the pact and move against previously won rights.
The PCdoB followed the same orientation. PSOL, born from a break with the PT, gradually moved closer to the Lulist strategy until support for Lula’s project became a central political priority. The PSTU maintained a revolutionary critique but failed to transform it into a force capable of leading the great majority of working people.
Their responsibilities are not identical, but all these experiences raise the same strategic question: how can a left be built that neither confines itself to administering capitalism’s contradictions nor remains detached from real struggles?
The far right grows when it is able to capitalise on popular discontent and when workers lack an independent alternative strong enough to challenge the direction of society. For that reason, halting its advance requires defending democratic and social rights, but also building a force capable of confronting the economic structures that perpetuate inequality and exploitation.
This Sunday’s run-off election makes that debate especially urgent. Yet Brazil’s future will not be decided solely at the ballot box, whatever the result may be. The strategic task is to transform dispersed resistance into collective organisation, and that organisation into an independent political alternative for the working class.
The historic choice is not between accepting the right or believing that reformism is the only possible horizon. It is to build a force capable of defending every gain while also transforming the relations of power that allow those gains to be taken away.