Klaus Hart Brasilientexte

HOW TO RIGHTEN A LEFTIST

Ever since the phrase “to be on the left” was used in reference to the French Revolution it has meant to opt for the poor, to feel indignation regarding social exclusion, to believe that any kind of injustice is unacceptable and according to Bobbio , to consider social inequality as an aberration.

To be on the right is to tolerate injustice, to consider the imperatives of the market above human rights, to see poverty as an incurable blemish, to judge that there are peoples and nations who are intrinsically superior to others.

To be a leftist – a pathology diagnosed by Lenin as a “childish disease of communism” – is to be against all bourgeois power until one enters into it. The leftist is a fundamentalist for his own sake. He incarnates all the religious models proper to religious fundamentalists…  If the leader sneezes, he claps his hands, if he cries he becomes sad, if he changes his opinion he quickly analyses the conjuncture and tries to prove that today’s power relations are…

 The leftist loves academic categories from the left but he is like General Figueiredo on one point: he cannot stand the smell of the people.  For him “people” is an abstract noun which only becomes concrete when it comes to obtaining votes. Then, the leftist gets closer to the poor not because he is concerned about their lot but for one simple reason: to get votes for himself and/or for his gang. After the elections, goodbye suckers, until the next election!

Since the leftist only has interests and not principles, nothing is easier than to straighten him out. Give him a good job. It cannot be the sort of work which obliges common mortals to earn their bread and butter with blood, sweat and tears.  It has to be one of those jobs which pay good wages and where there are more rights than obligations, particularly one in the civil service. It could even be in a private company. The important thing is that the leftist must feel he has received his share with a significant increase to his personal income.

 This occurs when he is elected or named for public office or is given a management position in a private company. He will then undeniably lower his guard. He doesn’t even question himself. The mere smell of money, together with the position of power will produce the unbeatable alchemy capable of turning the head of the most rhetorical revolutionary.

 Good pay, a position of power and plenty of perks, these are the ingredients which will intoxicate the leftist on his journey towards the shameful right – which acts as such but won’t admit it. Right away the leftist will change his friendships and his luxuries. Instead of cachaça he drinks imported wine, Scotch whiskey instead of beer; he exchanges his flat for a condo and his evenings in the pub for elegant parties.

 If a colleague from the past contacts him he beats around the bush, changes the subject, asks his secretary to deal with him and in a low voice grumbles about the “pain in the neck”. Now all his steps move with surgical precision towards his rise to power. He loves to mix with businessmen, the rich and ranchers. He delights in his pleasures and gifts. The worst thing that could happen to him would be to return to what he once was, when he received no strokes or salaams, a common citizen struggling for survival.  

 Goodbye ideals, utopias, dreams! Long live pragmatism, the politics of results, co-optation, the expert practise of fraud (although there will be mistakes. In this case, the leftist depends on rapid help from his equals: accommodating silence, the pretending that nothing happened, today it was you, tomorrow it could be me…)

 I thought of this description because a few days ago at a “do” I met an old friend from the popular movements who had been a partner in the struggle against the dictatorship. He asked me if I was still involved with “those people from the periphery[5] <#_ftn5> ” as he pontificated “How silly of you to give up your job in the government. You could have done much more for those people if you had remained in it”.

 I felt like laughing in his face, he was someone who in the past would have made Che Guevara feel like a small bourgeois, this was how big his revolutionary fervor had been. I contained myself so as not to be rude to that ridiculous figure, with his hair smarmed down with gel, his expensive suit and his shoes fit for angels. I simply responded “I have become a reactionary, faithful to my old principles. I prefer to run the risk of making a mistake next to the poor than to be pretentious enough to think that I can win without them”.

 *Frei Betto is a writer, author of “Calendário do Poder” (A Calendar of Power) (Rocco).

About the Author

He is a Brazilian Dominican with an international reputation as a liberation theologian.
Within Brazil he is equally famous as a writer, with over 52 books to his name.  In 1985 he won Brazil’s most important literary prize, the Jabuti, and was elected Intellectual of the Year by the members of the Brazilian Writers’ Union.

Frei Betto has always been active in Brazilian social movements, and has been an adviser to the Church’s ministry to workers in São Paulo’s industrial belt, to the Church base communities, and to the Landless Rural Workers’ Movement (MST).

In 2003-2004, he was Special Adviser to President Lula and Coordinator of Social Mobilisation for the Brazilian Government’s Zero Hunger programme.