Brazilians join the global revolt

When a million people take to the streets in 100 cities in self-organised, angry demonstrations against the ruling elites and their failure to meet their needs, they are joining a global revolt against the system.

As André, a student at the University of São Paulo, told us: “Many Brazilians on the streets see a clear connection with the inspiring moments of Occupy in the USA and Europe and mainly with the mass movements in the Middle East.”

He said that president Dilma Rousseff, an ex-Marxist, is implementing the most “ambitious neoliberal programme” in the country. “We are privatising airports, ports, highways and every piece of infrastructure that we still have.”

Brazil has been held up as a shining example of an emerging economy that would lead the global economy out of its historic recession, a member of the so-called Bric countries (the others are Russia, India and China).

But growth has slowed to a halt, privatisation has become a mainstay of government policy and inflation has taken off. Public spending has focused on prestige projects like next year’s World Cup and the Olympic Games scheduled for 2016 at the expense of social projects.

So it’s no accident that the Confederation Cup taking place in Brazil this week – a trial-run for next year’s World Cup – coincided with the uprising that has shaken the country from one end to the other.

The rise in bus fares which triggered the revolt have been joined by a range of other issues. The targets of the protests, now in their second week, have broadened to include high taxes, inflation, corruption and poor public services ranging from hospitals and schools to roads and police forces.

"Stop corruption. Change Brazil", "Come to the street. It's the only place we don't pay taxes", "Government failure to understand education will lead to revolution", "We want to change everything wrong in our country", "Stop police violence", were just a sample of the slogans and placards.

In the capital, Brasilia, tens of thousands of protesters marched around the landmark modernist buildings that house Congress and the Supreme Court and briefly set fire to the outside of the Foreign Ministry. Police said about 80 of the protesters, some with homemade explosives, made it into the ministry building before they were repelled.

The swelling tide of protests prompted Rousseff to cancel a trip next week to Japan.  

"What am I protesting for?" asked Savina Santos, a 29-year-old civil servant in Sao Paulo. "You should ask what I'm not protesting for! We need political reform, tax reform, an end to corruption, better schools, better transportation. We are not in a position to be hosting the World Cup."

The widespread revolt has shaken the ruling Workers' Party, a bloc that grew out of tumultuous demonstrations by Brazil's labour movement 30 years ago. Now the Workers’ Party resembles New Labour, committed to the market economy in a bid to attract inward investment which has all but dried up.

 "There are no politicians who speak for us," said Jamaime Schmitt, an engineer. "This is not just about bus fares any more. We pay high taxes and we are a rich country, but we can't see this in our schools, hospitals and roads."

Paulo Henrique Lima, 24, one of the organisers, said: “Brazil woke up. The youth are going to the street, the workers as well, to construct a new fight. We are changing the history of this country. We are going to construct a new politics where people have a voice and go to the street to demand this."

Brazil’s emerging revolution confronts the existing state power and its institutions and marks a new moment in the global uprising that, without warning, sweeps across borders.

The same processes are at work in Britain, as shown by the huge support for tomorrow’s People’s Assembly against Austerity in London. Turning local People’s Assemblies into sites of alternative power that can challenge and replace the discredited, delegitimized economic and political system is the challenge here and everywhere!

Paul Feldman

Communications editor

Show the FA a red card

As the England squad trooped wearily off their flight home this morning, it was too easy to see them as the villains of the piece, the spoiled “golden generation” that failed miserably at the World Cup in South Africa. That’s less than half the story.

Neither the Football Association (FA), the players, the manager, nor the media pundits (who for the most part are looking for individuals to blame), have been able to put forward a coherent long-term strategy of where to go from here. This is hardly surprising as, to one degree or another, they are all themselves imprisoned in a set-up that perpetuates one failure after another at international level.

The fans, largely shut out of the administration of the game internationally and at club level, have no way of voicing their opinions of the way forward. They have been effectively cut adrift from the game, to be manipulated by the patriotic right-wing press.

Football in England is dominated by a lethal combination of a stifling bureaucracy, greed and big business. With the establishment of the Premier League in 1992 as an entity with commercial independence from the FA, corporate interests quickly moved in. Many of the clubs became PLCs with shares quoted on the stock exchange. Others were taken over by oligarchs and billionaires as playthings.

The market for players took off to the point now where a footballer can be “worth” up to £80m and be paid up to £9m a year, much of this financed by TV revenues which can go down as well as up. With these salaries, it is easy for the players to lose all sense of reality – and of community.

As a result of clubs trying to compete in this market, one club, Portsmouth, has gone bankrupt since the economic crash, and most of the rest have huge debts. The combined debts of Manchester United and Liverpool are over £1 billion and the Premier League is the most indebted in Europe. To keep the Premiership on the road, the best players in the world have to be attracted to play in it. Profits have to be made to keep the shareholders happy. Bringing young talent through under this system is well nigh impossible.

It was worth noting that German football is organised and owned quite differently. Last year a meeting of all first and second division clubs rejected by 35-1 a proposal to allow teams to be bought, sold and owned as they are here. Under existing rules, no "outside" investor can own more than 49% of a German club's shares and at least 51% must remain with club members. Germany also has more than 10 times the number of qualified coaches than England and a way of bringing young players through, as England discovered on Sunday.

The FA, apparently convinced that a top manager could overcome all these problems, splashed out £6m a year for the services of Fabio Capello, a practising Catholic (he prays twice a day), a top club manager certainly, but also with one or two blemishes: stubbornness, bordering on arrogance; and a rather unwelcome admiration for the Spanish fascist dictator General Franco.

Maybe there was more than meets the eye in the rebellion mounted by John Terry (who to his credit turned out for a protest against the BNP in Barking before the election) at the World Cup.

What can be done? A new model for the game could be the fans’ clubs created as a result of the disillusion and disgust with corporate behaviour at Manchester United and Wimbledon. The fans are the shareholders of the alternative clubs and they have one vote each to decide on future policy.

Establishing the primacy of the game itself over profit is well beyond the FA and the Premier League, however. They are part of the problem and not the solution (just look at the cost of Wembley compared to the stadia in South Africa). The administration of football nationally needs to be taken out of their hands and placed under the control of the fans and players at every level. A revolution off the pitch is a first step to a revolution on it!

Peter Arkell

In defence of football

The dramas playing out in South Africa over the England team have concentrated the minds of millions of fans around the world. The excitement being generated, the feelings of elation and despair offer an opportunity to think about the true meaning of sport.

Philosopher and literary theorist Terry Eagleton, recently threw down a challenge to football lovers. In a provocative article, he claims that the game is “the opium of the people, not to speak of their crack cocaine”.

Whilst acknowledging the “sublime artistry” sometimes displayed in football and the way it “blends dazzling individual talent with selfless teamwork”, Eagleton says that the World Cup is worse news than the Cameron government “for those seeking radical change”. He concludes that the game should be abolished.

Of course it is true that football, like other sports, and indeed like many aspects of culture, has been integrated into the money-spinning structures of global capitalism. Locals in South Africa cannot afford to buy tickets for the World Cup, not to mention the unemployed or supporters in other parts of Africa. England fans have shelled out £600 each for tickets plus another £3,000 to make the trip to Cape Town.

But is Eagleton right to say that the ruling classes can use football to “hold back change” by reinforcing their control over the minds of the masses? Is today’s game just a case of bread and circuses as in the days of ancient Rome, when emperors held sway over the common people by providing them with food and entertainment? That would mean that all forms of sport, art and entertainment are simply pre-packaged forms of propaganda which have no intrinsic value and no liberating qualities – and that human beings can never, ever break out of the prison of capitalist relations.

In reality the history of sport is one of open, unexpected moments - including some thrilling political events. Athletes Tommie Smith and John Carlos’ “Power to the People” salute at the Mexican Olympics in 1968 before global audiences of millions was just one unforgettable example. And, in the US today, the Major League Baseball Players Association has denounced Arizona’s racist new law which gives police draconian powers to stop any “authorised alien”.

Today, when communications involve millions of people who had hitherto been excluded, sport provides an example of how people can come together in ways that are both peaceful and thrilling. The rise and rise of talented football players from some of the poorest and smallest nations of the world are examples of what talent, training and the desire to succeed can do. In the US, 28% of Major League baseballers were born outside the US, for example. Eleven of Germany’s World Cup squad have foreign backgrounds. The world of athletics also provides inspiring examples, like the legendary Kenyan long-distance runners.

As one fan wrote in response to Eagleton’s rant:
“Nonsense. International cooperation is the only hope of the world; and while I find the various corporate attempts to highjack the world cup extremely boring, there can be no doubt that the world cup and football itself embody that prospect. It helps troubled kids and local communities; it gets kids learning about the value of team work - and few things in life feel as wonderful as scoring a goal. More importantly, it's just a bit of fun. Life is not always particularly easy - an hour and a half of drama is a welcome solace from the usual rubbish you have to put up with in life.”

The crisis of the England squad, symbolised by rows of empty seats at the match against Slovenia today, can ignite a debate about the future not only of football, but how sport can be freed from the prison of capitalist relations. Meanwhile, you can support A World to Win’s team playing in this Saturday’s Ctrl.Alt.Strike alternative World Cup.

Corinna Lotz
A World to Win Secretary

The real cost of the World Cup

With the opening match of the 2010 World Cup just a week away, hopes that the huge cost of staging the tournament would “showcase” South Africa, encourage inward investment and boost living standards seems misplaced.

Instead, hosting the tournament has drawn accusations that the £4 billion would have been better spent on housing and education. These sit alongside claims of inflated ticket prices, draconian security measures, a wave of evictions around the host cities, empty hotel rooms and a clampdown on local businesses by football’s governing body, Fifa.

While South Africa is the richest country on the continent, phenomenal levels of poverty still exist. There is a global record HIV/AIDS population of 5.7 million out of 49 million; some 50% live below the poverty line and one in three people are out of work after 15 years of ANC government rule.

In 2004, when Fifa awarded the tournament to South Africa, consultants Grant Thornton predicted costs of just £200m on stadiums and infrastructure and a boost to gross domestic product of £2 billion. The total bill has risen tenfold, when you take the upgrading of transport and telecommunications infrastructure into account, as well as running costs.

The World Cup organisers had expected 750,000 foreign fans but it is now estimated that only 200,000 visitors are heading to South Africa. Fifa put 160,000 tickets up for sale on Thursday morning after sponsors returned thousands of unwanted seats. Many tickets were allocated to corporate packages which have not been taken up.

The South African government has allocated £122 million to ensure maximum security for the month-long world Cup tournament. Some £60 million has been spent on equipment, which - in addition to armoured vehicles and helicopters - includes sniper rifles, surveillance cameras, advanced bomb-disabling equipment and water cannons. One of the tasks of the 40,000 police and 20,000 soldiers on duty is to enforce Fifa’s ruling that only approved merchandise is on sale on match days within a one-mile radius.

Anti-poverty campaigners in South Africa are blaming the World Cup for a wave of evictions around some of the host cities. They say the poorest are being swept from the streets. Outside Cape Town, some 1,500 corrugated iron shacks laid out in rows have appeared over the last two years. "It's because of the World Cup, they never did this to us before," Marietta Monagee said. "They want to clean the city and they put us here so people don't see how we struggle."

Nicholas Tucker, publicity secretary of the Socialist Party of Azania, believes that hosting the World Cup was a mistake and that the billions of rands “have yet to be paid for in blood on the backs of the black working class over the next generation.” Tucker warns of discontent “in the face of the reality of rising unemployment, reduced wages, growing squatter camps, lowered education outcomes and failing health systems.” He accuses the ANC of being “owned lock stock and barrel by the IMF and World Bank overlords” and of scoring an “own goal” in staging the World Cup and asks:

“How does one reconcile the fact that some 28 million of our people live in the worst kind of squatter conditions imaginable? How does one reconcile the fact that some 28 million of our people do not have access to clean drinking water? How does one reconcile the fact that some 19 million of our people are still unemployed when we are fed the lie that our economy is stable and will weather the storms of the now evident global economic depression?”

One thing is certain, whoever picks up the final bill – including those for subsequently underused stadiums and facilities – it won’t be Fifa. The sport’s governing body is in practice a transnational corporation. It will pocket the vast majority of the money raised by the sale of media rights and global sponsorship deals as well as some of the income from ticket sales.

Paul Feldman
Communications editor