On its 20th anniversary, Brazil’s PSOL faces a critical juncture between two opposing approaches to combating the far right.
One faction advocates unconditional support for Lula’s government and broad alliances with bourgeois sectors; another maintains class independence and demands structural anti-neoliberal reforms through popular mobilisation. Historian Vinicius Machado argues the party must choose whether to remain committed to its founding anti-capitalist principles or become merely another social-liberal electoral vehicle subordinated to institutional power.
On 6th June 2025, PSOL completed 20 years of legalisation. Born in 2004, after the expulsion of parliamentarians who refused to vote for the pension reform of the Lula government, the party was officially recognised in 2005. Its foundation marked a political and ideological rupture with the PT [1], which, at that moment, consolidated its adaptation to the bourgeois order and to the politics of alliances with the bourgeoisie.
Since its origin, PSOL raised the banner of class independence and the strategic socialist horizon, even though in its trajectory the party brought together currents with different reformist and revolutionary traditions. This position, far from being a merely tactical choice, resulted from a long trajectory of experiences and defeats of the workers’ movement throughout the 20th century.
On 6th June 2025, PSOL completed 20 years of legalisation. Born in 2004, after the expulsion of parliamentarians who refused to vote for the pension reform of the Lula government, the party was officially recognised in 2005. Its foundation marked a political and ideological rupture with the PT [1], which, at that moment, consolidated its adaptation to the bourgeois order and to the politics of alliances with the bourgeoisie.
Since its origin, PSOL raised the banner of class independence and the strategic socialist horizon, even though in its trajectory the party brought together currents with different reformist and revolutionary traditions. This position, far from being a merely tactical choice, resulted from a long trajectory of experiences and defeats of the workers’ movement throughout the 20th century.
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