Brazilian Communist Party

Brazilian Communist Party (in Portuguese, Partido Comunista Brasileirois the oldest Brazilian political party, founded in 1922. It playied an important whole in the country's 20th century history. It has suffered a crisis in the middle 1990s and is now struggling to regain its past influence.

The youth wing of PCB is known as Young Communist Union.

History

Foundation

The Brazilian Communist Party (in Portuguese, Partido Comunista Brasileiro), abbreviated as the PCB, was founded on March 25, 1922 in the city of Niterói, Rio de Janeiro. On that day, nine representatives of communist groups from the cities of São Paulo, Santos, Cruzeiro, Porto Alegre, Recife, Niterói, Juiz de Fora and Rio de Janeiro met and approved the party's statutes and the twenty-one conditions for entering the Communist International, though the PCB was not recognized by the Comintern in its first years due to its eclectic ideological roots. The meeting ended with all seventy-three members of the party singing L'Internationale (quietly, to avoid being overheard).

Early years

The PCB's first years were marked by an effort to encourage socialist thinking in Brazil. There had been moderate socialist parties, newspapers and congresses, but much unlike the strong social-democratic parties that existed in many European countries. The radical anti-capitalist thinking had been dominated by anarchists and anarcho-syndicalists, who also dominated the labour movement, such as in the case of the 1917 anarchist actions in São Paulo. Inspired by the Russian Revolution, a group of former anarchist militants who were disappointed in the lack of unity and force of the movement, turned communist and started the PCB. At the same time, some other figures from Brazil's early labour- and socialist movements became inspired by forms of military and authoritarian populism, like the tenentes, that eventually led to the Vargas-revolution of 1930.

During the first years, the party was declared illegal by the government. On May 1, 1925, during the party's Second Congress, its weekly newspaper A Classe Operária (The Working Class) was announced, with five thousand copies being sold on the factories. This number grew to nine hundred copies by the ninth edition, but the police shut the newspaper down shortly after the twelfth edition was published. The paper reappeared in 1928, after the Third Congress was held.

By 1930, after being recognized by the Communist International and with its Socialist Youth division formed, the PCB had nearly eleven hundred members. This marks the beginning of a long period of submission to, initially the Third International, and, after its dissolution, to the political leadership of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. This decade also marked two cycles on the party's history: one of increasing influence, until 1935, and one of decline, until 1942. Both cycles are comprehensible when seen in the context of the Vargas era.

Reorganization and growth

On 1943, during the so-called Mantiqueira Conference, the party secretly met in the small city of Engenheiro Passos, Rio de Janeiro, and in an open letter to Vargas decided to support a declaration of war on the Axis. At the same time, Luís Carlos Prestes was elected to the party's presidency. On 1945, after Vargas's dictatorship ended, the PCB became legal once again. By 1947, it had nearly two hundred thousand members. In the 1947 legislative election, it received 480 thousand votes or about 9% of total votes cast. However, this period of official tolerance did not last long, as President Dutra denounced the PCB as "internationalist, and therefore not committed to Brazil's own interests" in 1948, an action supported by the American government.

In the 1950s, as the party was driven underground, it began supporting major workers' strikes around Brazil. However, this did not prevent the beginning of internal clashes between different factions within the PCB. This became more evident after the Soviet Communist Party's 20th Congress, when Nikita Khrushchev denounced Stalin's policies. The factionalization of the party accelerated after a new Manifesto was passed in 1958, proposing new ways of achieving communist goals. This Manifesto linked the establishment of socialism to the broadening of democracy. Some of its top leaders, dissatisfied with the new Soviet line, quit the PCB and formed a new party, Communist Party of Brazil (Partido Comunista do Brasil - PCdoB) in 1962.

In the mid 1960s the U.S. State Department estimated the number of organized communists in Brazil to around 31 000.

Military rule years

With this new orientation, the PCB grew in size and exercised a much greater role in the Brazilian left. However, the alliance forged with the other parties did not survive the 1964 coup d'état. PCB did play an important role against the dictatorship, by organizing the workers movement and participating in efforts to unite the opposition in its demands for democratic reforms. At that point in time the communists were a fraction of the democratic opposition front, the MDB. It refused, for example, to engage in armed struggle, differently from other left wing organizations that decided to follow that path. The clandestine operations and the political disputes regarding the strategies to resist the military regime led to many important leaders leaving the party, while many others died in the hands of the military regime. While the Communist Party in Brazil was involved in several internal clashes, the Worker's Party (Partido dos Trabalhadores) was founded. Its creation was the project of a series of left wing groups independent from the PCB (Trotskyists, Stalinists, communist dissidents, ex-guerrillas), together with some left wing Christian groups. It was structured as an alternative to Communist-led unionism in Brazil. It used to take radical instances against the military regime and gained a strong presence in between high skilled workers and middle-class intellectuals. The growth of the PT accelerated the fragmentation process inside the PCB leading ultimately to a big splitt.

Crisis and splitt of the PPS

After the 1979 amnesty, the PCB's leaders began to restructure the party. The 1982 Congress confirmed the democratic agenda, declaring the PCB "a party of the masses, linking socialist goals to true democracy, which will be constructed based on the values of freedom". Once again, internal clashes developed in the party, as it was passing through a process of renewal while its influency in the society declined. The fall of the Soviet bloc was also a strong blow to the party, turning the renewal process into a process of dissolution and abandonment, by some of its main leaders, of marxism. This crisis reached its high point in January 1992.

A group led by the then Secretary General Roberto Freira called an illegitimal Congress, as it came against a Congressional resolution of two years ago, that would not call a congress for this year and that determined that the party would be kept. Nevertheless Freire managed to organize this congress, in which people that were not members of the party were allowed to vote, thus aproving the end of the party and the formation of the  Socialist People's Party (Partido Popular Socialista - PPS), in a very similar way to what happened in Italy.

However a small group, led by Ivan Pinheiro (the current secretary general), decided to keep the party and the ideology of Marxist-Leninist. After judicial battles in the mid 1990's the group won the right of continuing to use the name Brazilian Communist Party and the acronyim PCB.

Reorganization and current situation

After the forged Congress that created PPS, Pinheiro and other militants onganized an "Extraordinary Reorganization Conference", where it decided to rebuild the party with the maintaining of its identity and by reviewing the path that it had followed in the precedent years. The party then started a battle in order to gain the rights to use the name PCB (which was contested by the members of the PPS) and the legalize the party. In 1996, the PCB would be officially registered.

From 1992 the party had four congresses: the 10th (1993), 11th (1996), 12th (2000) and the 13th (2006). It supported the first election of Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, but broke with the government in 2003, after it adopted less radical policies.

It remains small, in spite of some recent growth during the government of Luís Inácio Lula da Silva and the crisis of PT (it should be noticed that the main result of this process was the Socialism and Freedom Party), many people are returning to the party now, as they belived that it had ended after the 1992 crisis, many militants from the Communist Party of Brazil are also joining the PCB, disapointed by the party's recent politics. The party is experiencing a fast growth in the 2000s, although it is still small, compared to its formed size.

Although competing in elections and participating in wider electoral fronts, its electoral results were insignificant. This is mainly because the party adopted a line that does not emphasizes elections, but the insercion into trade unions and social movements. The party currently is seeking to rebuild its strong position between the working class.

In 2006, the PCB agreed on a nationwide alliance with two other left-wing parties, P-SOL and PSTU. Putting aside some significant ideological differences, the three parties built a common agenda to try to break the polarity between presidential candidates Luís Inácio Lula da Silva (PT) and Geraldo Alckmin (PSDB). The coalition also extended to gubernatorial and parliament elections to take place at the same time all over the country.

Electoral results

Presidential elections

Year	Candidate	Votes	%
1945	Iedo Fiúza	600,348	10.19%
1989	Roberto Freire	769.123	1.06%

Parliamentary elections

Year	Elections	Votes	%	Seats
1945	Chamber of Deputies	511.302	8.45%	14
	Federal Senate	1.095.843	9.73%	1
1947	Chamber of Deputies	479.024	9.2%	2 *
	Federal Senate	151.182	2.5%	0
1986	Chamber of Deputies	380,592	0.8%	3
	Federal Senate **	-	-	-
1990	Chamber of Deputies			3
	Federal Senate

* The 1947 elections had just a complementary character at the federal level (since the deputies elected in 1945 had mandates until 1950) and elected the State Chambers according to the new Constitution. The PCB elected 46 state deputies and become a major party in the Federal District (at this time, the city of Rio de Janeiro).

** The party didn't launched any candidates to the Senate, choosing to support other parties' candidates, following the party tactics of a "democratic front".

Congresses

This is a list of the thirteen congresses of the party since its foundation. Note that the 1992 X Congress is not listed as it was a forgery and is not considered by the party's current dirigents as legitimal.

I Congress - Niterói-RJ, March 1922

II Congress - May 1925

III Congress - December 1928/January 1929

IV Congress - November 1954

V Congress - August/September 1960

VI Congress - December 1967

VII Congress - São Paulo-SP, December 1982 - the Congress was invaded by the police and only concluded, without a new meeting of the delegates, in 1984

VIII Congress (Extraordinary) - Brasília-DF, June 1987

IX Congress - Rio de Janeiro-RJ, May/June 1991

X Congress - São Paulo-SP, June/July 1993

XI Congress: São Paulo, march/april de 1996

XII Congresso: São Paulo, march de 1998

XIII Congresso: Minas Gerais, march de 2005

Leaders

General Secretaries

Abílio Nequete - 1922

Astrojildo Pereira - 1924-1930

Heitor Ferreira Lima - 1931

Fernando de Lacerda - 1931-1932

José Vilar - 1932

Duvitiliano Ramos - 1932

Domingos Brás - 1932

Luís Carlos Prestes - 1943-1980

Giocondo Dias - 1980-1985

Ivan Pinheiro - current

Presidents

Giocondo Dias - 1985-1987

Salomão Malina - 1987-1991

Roberto Freire - 1991-1992

((Oscar Niemayer)) - 1992-1996

Zueleide Faria de Mello - 1996-

Newspapers and magazines

Voz da Unidade - the main organ of the party in the 80's, weekly

Novos Rumos - theoretical magazine, open to the contribution of personalities and currents outside of the party

See also

List of political parties in Brazil

List of Communist Parties

Politics of Brazil

External links

• Brazilian Communist Party (PCB) (in Portuguese)
• Instituto Astrojildo Pereira (in Portuguese)

Sources (in Portuguese)

• História do PCB
• PCdoB timeline
• Contribuição à história do marxismo no Brasil (1987-1994)
• Arquivo da Memória Operária do Rio de Janeiro