Socialism and Liberty Party


The Socialism and Liberty Party is a Brazilian political party with 147,096 active members. PSOL is a left-wing to far-left party which is self-described as socialist and democratic.
The party leader is Luiz Araújo and the federal deputies Ivan Valente, Chico Alencar, Jean Wyllys, Edmilson Rodrigues, Glauber Braga and Luiza Erundina, with a number of well-known Brazilian left-wing leaders and intellectuals, such as Guilherme Boulos,, Michael Löwy, Luciana Genro,, Marcelo Freixo,,,,, João Machado, and others.
PSOL was formed after Heloísa Helena, Luciana Genro, Babá and João Fontes were expelled from the Workers' Party after voting against the pension reform proposed by Lula. They opposed the liberal decisions of Lula's government and the Workers' Party alliances with polemic right-wing politicians, such as the former presidents José Sarney and Fernando Collor.
After collecting more than 438,000 signatures, PSOL became Brazil's 29th officially recognized political party, the first to do so by this method.

Ideology and support

The ideology of the party varies between the left and the extreme left. The programmatic elements found in the party are related to socialism, anti-capitalism, and anti-imperialism. There are Marxist, Trotskyist, eco-socialist, and syndicalist tendencies within the party. Among other things, the party program includes the reduction of working hours, agrarian and urban reform, increased spending on health, education and infrastructure, and a break with the International Monetary Fund. It also seeks to decriminalize abortion. Because it is a party formed by trends that possess the political spectrum of the left in common, they represent distinct divisions in question of origin, geographical location and composition of its leaderships. The formation of tendencies provided for in the party statute can be freely organized without direct interference from the party leadership, allowing autonomy of intra-party groups, provided they follow the political prerogatives of the party's statute and program.
Despite being a left-wing party, PSOL is not commonly associated with a labor or low-income electorate. Instead, PSOL is more associated with the upper middle class electorate with strong secular or socially progressive beliefs in the Brazilian metropolitan zones, especially the cultural and intellectual elite of Rio de Janeiro. PSOL is a party often associated with academics of social sciences in public universities, teachers, artistic class, social movements, people who support controversial policies in the Brazilian society like legalization of abortion, legalization of marijuana, human rights activism and public sector labor unions. PSOL shows strong difficulties to penetrate in sectors of electorate which are poorer or less affluent; in the last election to Mayor of Rio de Janeiro, PSOL had lost to conservative pentecostal bishop Marcelo Crivella in a runoff with more than 40-point margin in some poor suburbs which are far away from Rio's downtown. Between evangelicals, the margin of defeat was about 80%; Although PSOL tried to make some moves to attract evangelical votes, a strong antagonism between the party and evangelical electorate, many of them poor with strong social conservative and/or economic liberal beliefs exists. Although PSOL does not officially reject any religion, many evangelicals see PSOL as a hostile party which does not represent their values and massively rejects the party.

Internal tendencies

PSOL also allows certain unregistered political parties to launch candidates through its TSE registry number. These organizations, however, cannot participate in the party's congresses.
AbbreviationName in PortugueseName in EnglishIdeology
BPBrigadas PopularesPeople's BrigadesMarxism–Leninism, Left-wing nationalism, Socialism of the 21st Century, Bolivarianism
MRTMovimento Revolucionário de TrabalhadoresWorkers' Revolutionary MovementTrotskyism
PCRPartido Comunista RevolucionárioRevolutionary Communist PartyMarxism–Leninism, Hoxhaism
PCLCPPolo Comunista Luiz Carlos PrestesLuiz Carlos Prestes Communist PoleMarxism–Leninism, Left-wing nationalism
RAiZRaiz - Movimento CidadanistaRoots - Citizens' MovementEco-socialism, Teko Porã, Ubuntu
RCRefundação ComunistaCommunist RefoundationRevolutionary socialism

Members of the National Congress

Following the 2018 general election, PSOL currently has ten federal deputies in the National Congress of Brazil. Although having a small presence in parliament, PSOL is the 5th most popular party in Brazil, and it is recognized as different from the bigger PSDB and PT parties and the cronyist and catch-all parties without an ideology.
It is the only party present in the Congress which did not receive money from large corporations and the only party that called for the removal of the former President of the Chamber of Deputies Eduardo Cunha, currently in jail.

Federal Deputies

Notes: The military union leader, Corporal Daciolo, was expelled from the party in 2015.

State Deputies

Mayors

Clécio Luís, Mayor of Macapá, left the party to join Sustainability Network.

Elections

2006

PSOL launched Heloísa Helena to run for president in 2006 elections. The vice-presidential candidate was intellectual. The party ran in a left-wing ticket along with two other parties: Trotskyist Unified Workers' Socialist Party and Marxist–Leninist Brazilian Communist Party.
The alliance was extended to gubernatorial elections. In Minas Gerais, for instance, Vanessa Portugal, from the PSTU, ran for governor with PSOL's support, although not with PCB's. Prominent PSOL gubernatorial candidates were Plínio de Arruda Sampaio in São Paulo, in Rio de Janeiro and Roberto Robaina in Rio Grande do Sul. However, they were all defeated.
Heloísa Helena finished the presidential race in the third place, receiving 6.5 million votes throughout the country. Three federal deputies, Luciana Genro, Chico Alencar and Ivan Valente, managed to get re-elected.

2010

In the 2010 candidate for presidential election Plínio de Arruda Sampaio received 888.000 votes. Plinio presented an agrarian reform project in 1964 when he was federal deputy, but the 1964 Military Coup ended the project and Plinio lost his mandate. Although he received very few votes Plinio became famous after the elections because he was qualified as an anti-candidate.
PSOL elected three deputies again, Chico Alencar, Ivan Valente and Jean Wyllys.
Toninho do PSOL from Federal District got the best gubernatorial result. He finished in third place with 14.25%.

2012

In 2012 PSOL got its best results so far. Clecio Luis and Gelsimar Gonzaga were elected mayors in Macapá, Amapá's state capital, and Itaocara.
In the northern second largest city Belém and in Rio de Janeiro, PSOL finished second and elected four city councillors – the second largest group in those councils. In Belem Edmilson Rodrigues got 43.39% and in Rio de Janeiro Marcelo Freixo got 28.15%, almost 1 million votes.
In São Paulo, Fortaleza, Campinas, Belo Horizonte, Curitiba, Salvador, Natal, Florianópolis, Niterói, São Gonçalo and Pelotas PSOL also got respectable results. In the 2012 49 city councilors from PSOL were elected.

2014

The former federal deputy Luciana Genro, from Left Socialist Movement, was the candidate in the 2014 Presidential Elections. She got 1,612,186 votes finishing in 4th place. She received the support of important Brazilian intellectuals and popstars like Chico de Oliveira, Rogério Arantes, Vladimir Safatle, Michel Löwy, Gregorio Duvivier, Valesca Popozuda, Zélia Duncan, Karina Buhr, Clara Averbuck, Marina Lima, Juca Kfouri, Preta Gil, Laerte Coutinho, Marcelo Yuka and the international popstar Jessica Sutta. Her candidature was well regarded in the LGBT community.
PSOL elected 5 federal deputies and 12 state deputies. Marcelo Freixo received the highest vote for a state deputy in Brazil with 350,408 votes. Carlos Giannazi was the leftist most voted in São Paulo with 164,929 votes.
Governors Tarcísio Motta with 8.92% and Robério Paulino with 8.74% got excellent results. Senate candidate Heloísa Helena got 31.86%, but she lost the election to former Brazilian president Fernando Collor de Mello, who was impeached.

Electoral results

Presidential

Congress

Chamber of Deputies
Election year# of overall votes% of overall vote# of overall seats won+/-GovernmentNotes
20061,149,6191.2
20101,142,7371.20
20141,745,4701.82
20182,783,6692.85

Senate
Election year# of overall votes% of overall vote# of overall seats won+/-Notes
2006351,5270.41PSOL did not originally gain a seat at the 2006 election. However, after Senator Ana Júlia de Vasconcelos Carepa resigned, following her election as Governor of Pará State, took her seat in the Senate as a member of the class of 2006.
20103,041,8541.81
20141,045,2751.21
20185,273,8533.11