La Marx Brasil - From the La Marx Brasil website, to read the original in Portuguese click here

On October 4, 2026, elections will be held to elect the president, vice president, members of the National Congress, governors, vice governors, and legislative assemblies, while the second round is scheduled for October 25 if no presidential or gubernatorial candidate obtains a majority in the first round. The two capitalist options with a chance of winning are, on the one hand, the Broad Front " Brazil, Ready for More," which leads the Lula-Alckmin candidacy, representing the forces that present themselves as "progressive," supported by the "Progressive International," an imperialist organization supported by the Democratic Party of the USA.

On the other hand, the other capitalist option is the candidacy of Flávio Bolsonaro and Alfredo Gaspar leading the Liberal Party, the "neoliberal" option supported by the US Republican Party and Donald Trump. Neither option is good for the workers and the people of Brazil, neither the government nor the Bolsonaro opposition. Furthermore, there is no class-independent candidacy because the lists of left-wing parties running include candidates from groups that have a policy of class conciliation with the Lula government. For this reason, we call on the people to abstain or cast a blank ballot.

Don't vote for Lula's capitalist government

Lula's candidacy leads the Broad Front coalition , headed by the Federation, comprised of the Workers' Party (PT), the Green Party (PV), and the Communist Party of Brazil (PC do B). These are joined by traditional bourgeois parties such as Leonel Brizola's Democratic Labor Party (PDT), Gerardo Alckim's Socialist Party of Brazil (PSB), Marina Silva's Rede party (whose group voted in favor of the state pension reform in São Paulo), and the Socialism and Liberty Party (PSOL), which has placed ministers in Lula's government, such as Guilherme Boulos and Sônia Guajajara. The Broad Front currently occupies the capitalist bourgeois government of Brazil, and its "progressive" discourse is merely a facade to defend capitalist Brazil.

Lula presents himself as a defender of the people's rights, but under his government, poverty and misery have worsened, while inequality grows daily. Lula's government policies have favored a small, wealthy social class, as seen in privatizations that benefit large corporations. Under Lula's administration, the Belo Horizonte metro, the pre-salt oil fields, the postal service in Pernambuco, and Compesa (the state-owned water and sanitation company) have been privatized, and he has even attempted to privatize the Amazonian rivers. The Public-Private Partnerships (PPP) law, passed by Lula during his first term, facilitates these measures while simultaneously implementing fiscal policies and budget cuts to health and education to continue servicing the debt to bankers and the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

Lula's government maintains anti-worker laws such as the Temer-era Labor Reform, the Pension Reform, and the Subcontracting Law. For this reason, we assert that Lula's claims of defending Brazil's sovereignty against imperialism or the rights of minorities are false. And although he has established a secretariat for indigenous peoples, the genocide of the Yanomami and dozens of other indigenous groups continues daily, along with illegal mining and the destruction of the rainforest. Under his administration, femicides against women have reached record levels, and he refuses to grant abortion rights. Lula claims to fight racial discrimination, but police operations and massacres of young Black people, such as those in the Penha Complex and the Baixada Santista, continue. Brazil's prison population, 70% of whom are Black, has reached one million inmates.

For the most vulnerable, the poorest and most oppressed, Lula's government offers only subsidies as a palliative measure against poverty. More than 90 million people receive subsidies for gas cylinders, unemployment benefits, food baskets, and all kinds of charity provided by churches. But this policy, which supposedly demonstrates "social sensitivity ," is actually a trap because it doesn't seek to eradicate poverty; on the contrary, it consolidates it because it defends capitalism and the profits of the wealthiest, which condemns millions to poverty and misery. Then, giving subsidies to these same poor people, who are the product of the very policies the government implements, is a hypocritical act, a way to whitewash its image and try to evade responsibility for social inequality. Furthermore, it seeks to prevent a social explosion, popular uprisings fueled by hunger, and to bring "peace" to Brazil so that the ruling classes can undisturbedly enjoy the benefits.

The PT organized supposed university student protests, which were pure electoral propaganda. They staged protests against the governor of São Paulo, Tarcísio de Freitas, and all they managed to do was get beaten by the military police. These caricatures of organized struggles by the PT for their electoral campaign seek to conceal the fact that in the state of São Paulo, the most powerful and richest in Brazil, Lula's PT co-governs with all the religious, agro-exporting republican filth that controls all the economic cuts. There are four presidential candidates running outside the Broad Front: Samara Martins (UP), Edmilson Costa (PCB), Rui Costa Pimenta (PCO), and Hertz Dias (PSTU). However, all of these candidacies are junior partners of the Broad Front; they focus on attacking Bolsonaroism and do not denounce Lula's government. In the case of the PSTU... The general secretary of the metalworkers' union, Weller Gonçalves, recently starred in an event at the Avibras military factory where he embraced Lula.

The PSTU uses " Defeat the far right" as the central slogan of its campaign , which is the same theme as Lula's campaign. Some members of parliament and pre-candidates launched the Manifesto for a Radical Left Caucus, a 10-point programmatic manifesto promoted by pre-candidates for federal deputies such as Jones Manoel (for the Democratic Party), Sâmia Bomfim, Fernanda Melchionna, Glauber Braga, Vivi Reis, Fábio Félix, and Renato Freitas. The Manifesto for a Radical Left Caucus proposes some changes, but maintains the program within the framework of capitalist Brazil.

Don't vote for Bolsonaro's capitalist candidacy

The Bolsonaro family and their candidate, Flávio, have well-known positions: they clearly defend capitalism and the interests of the ruling classes. They are direct representatives of imperialism, which is why they supported Trump's tariffs and all the policies of imperialist institutions. Their candidacy has a clear and frankly neoliberal discourse with reactionary proposals, supported by evangelical churches and a very retrograde religious sector. During the pandemic, Bolsonaro left Brazil without vaccines, was largely responsible for 700,000 Covid-19 deaths in the country, and mocked the suffering of families. His economic policy was marked by austerity measures, privatizations, and attacks against public employees and workers, such as the pension reform.

Throughout his political career and during his presidency, he promoted policies that clearly affect the rights of minorities and the most vulnerable, such as women, Black people, youth, Indigenous people, and LGBTQ+ people. Jair Bolsonaro ended up in prison for the crimes he committed, and his son, Flávio Bolsonaro, represents a candidacy dedicated to continuing those policies that have done nothing for the workers and the people of Brazil. As with the Broad Front, there are other candidates, such as those of Caiado, Romeu Zema, and Renan Santos, who are junior partners in Flávio Bolsonaro's candidacy and who also defend the interests of the ruling classes, capitalists, and bankers.

At this point, we want to make a clarification that we believe is necessary. The Broad Front and many left-wing parties label Bolsonaro's project as "far-right ," which is "fascist." It is true that it is a reactionary project, which we denounce because it attacks freedoms and rights, but it is false to call it a fascist project. Lula and left-wing groups use this propaganda to justify their support for Lula's capitalist government, which represents a capitulation and betrayal of Marxist principles. Bolsonarism has anti-worker and anti-popular proposals, like any capitalist candidacy, and openly defends capitalism, but it relies on the institutions of bourgeois democracy and has governed in agreement with the Centrão parliamentary group.

Fascism proposes to govern with a dictatorship, a political regime based on the Armed Forces that represses the population with methods of civil war, assassinates, imprisons and tortures thousands of social political leaders. There are regimes that call themselves "socialist" or "left" such as the dictatorships of Venezuela, Cuba or Nicaragua, which openly demand the banning and imprisonment of opponents, and the persecution of labor and popular activists, or eliminate the rights of assembly, expression and demonstration like Putin faces Russia, about which the PT and the left groups remain silent. The next government of Brazil will be a weak capitalist government without the possibility of granting concessions to the masses as a result of the global crisis of capitalism. At most, it will continue to grant millions of subsidies to combat poverty, as Bolsonaro sees practically all capitalist governments in the world doing with initiatives like the "Bolsa Família" plan. or "Auxililo Brasil", which is the same plan made by Lula.

Let us regroup, those of us who defend class independence.

In a capitalist system, bourgeois democratic elections are a sham orchestrated by the ruling classes to ensure the victory of parties and coalitions that defend capitalism. We call for abstention and blank ballots, first and foremost as a rejection of the deception of bourgeois democracy, but we also add to this the call for abstention and blank ballots as a rejection of the candidacies of Lula and Bolsonaro, whose capitalist political formations will not resolve the plight of the working class. The only way to improve the immediate situation of the working class and achieve its ultimate emancipation is to organize the class struggle of the workers against the capitalist class.

We call on the people of Brazil to abstain and cast blank ballots. We call on honest activists to regroup around this objective. We need to turn our backs on the leftist groups that are supporting Lula and defending a policy of class collaboration, in order to build a revolutionary alternative and tool, and to defend a policy of class independence with a program that offers a way out of the imminent struggles of our people, regardless of who wins the elections. We invite you to join Marx Brazil to work together toward this goal, to provide a response to the 2026 elections, and within this framework, to establish a clear revolutionary strategy for the struggle for socialism in Brazil and the world.