By LUIZ MARQUES*
The voters' choice was to re-elect the current "managers"; the neoliberal word depoliticizes their decisions, by removing the political dimension inherent in government choices.
This was an election of continuity. The famous Bird of Minerva only takes flight when dusk falls. The voters chose to reelect the current “managers”; the neoliberal word depoliticizes their decisions by removing the political dimension inherent in government choices. Twenty mayors in the capitals of the federative units were competing for reelection. Four were left by the wayside, still in the battle of the first round – Belém/PSol, Fortaleza/PDT, Goiânia/Republicanos, Teresina/PRD.
Eleven are still governed by the same political party: Boa Vista/MDB, Florianópolis/PSD, Macapá/MDB, Maceió/PL, Rio Branco/PL, Rio de Janeiro/PSD, Salvador/Union Brazil, São Luís/PSD, Teresina/Union Brazil, Vitória/Republicans. From the center left, there is Recife/PSB.
In fifteen there will be a second round – Aracaju (PL vs. PDT), Belem (MDB) vs. PL), Belo Horizonte (PL vs. PSD), Campo Grande ((PP vs. Union), Cuiaba (PL vs. PT), Curitiba (PSD vs. MDB), Fortaleza ((PT vs. PL), Goiania (PL vs. Union), João Pessoa (PP vs. PL), Manaus (Forward vs. PL), Christmas (Union vs. PT), Palmas (PL vs. Podemos), Porto Alegre (MDB vs. PT), Porto Velho (Union vs. We Can), Sao Paulo (MDB vs. PSOL). The left of the political spectrum appears in five.
Founded in 2011, the PSD became the strongest center-right party in the country, overtaking the MDB after two decades. The list of the best placed parties includes: PSD (878), MDB (847), PP (743), União Brasil (578), PL (510), Republicanos (430), PSB (309), PSDB (269), PT (248). The voluminous parliamentary amendments, in the distribution of resources to city halls, weigh on the balance. The gift of the Treasury has an impact on the numbers of the Centrão. For the Minister-Chief of the Secretariat of International Relations, Alexandre Padilha, “Lula's Broad Front defeated the extreme right in the elections”. The alliance with a view to 2026 explains the presidential retraction in the PT campaigns.
Power strategy
The immoral nature of the institutionalized practice of using public revenues entails the hijacking of the classic powers of the Executive Branch in a presidential regime. What did not seem obvious is the power strategy adopted to lay siege to the legal prerogatives of the Presidency. Together with the autonomy of the Central Bank, which guarantees the reins of monetary policy in the hands of the finance sector, the “secret amendments” – via Pix – form a pincer movement to expand the values of deindustrialization, entrepreneurship, fiscal balance, the uberization of work, and the financialization of public spaces. Politics and economics are intertwined in this spurious articulation.
In everyday life, the irradiation of the above values is exemplified in areas of popular appeal, such as football clubs in large cities, through SAFs, BET sponsorships and financial agencies printed on uniforms. The Money-Money (DD) variable, without the mediation of the Merchandise (DMD), helps to convince people about the superiority of financial initiatives to manage all socioeconomic activities. This includes entertainment traditionally reserved for passions learned in childhood. The dollar sign is the light at the end of the tunnel.
Naturalize the status quo is essential to ensure social order and inhibit the manifestations of mass dissatisfaction. The scheme brings indirect benefits by strengthening the social bases of an exclusionary economic model. State policies for formalizing labor and building a robust internal market disappear. Ideological domination makes the billions spent a bargain for the interests of rentiers. In the words of Georg Simmel, the “philosophy of money"By penetrating the subjectivity of the peripheries, it greatly reduces the chances of success of political movements for change. It puts an invisible leash on revolutionary rebellion.
“Neoliberalism has profoundly transformed capitalism, profoundly transforming societies. In this sense, neoliberalism is not just an ideology, an economic policy. It is a normative system that has expanded its influence throughout the world, extending the logic of capital to all social relations and all spheres of life,” state Pierre Dardot and Christian Laval, in the Preface to the Brazilian edition of The new reason of the world. If they knew the role of “Prosperity Theology” and “Dominion Theology” in peripheral consciousness, the scholars at the University of Nanterre would offer readers another chapter in their beautiful work. Without knowing, they guessed right on target.
Spirit of the times
The polarization between democracy and neofascism is the form of polarity in politics that divides those who give up and those who succeed in society. Energy, solidarity and citizenship are lost in the “meritocratic” gap that separates the losers of winnies, the losers of the winners. The electoral abstention, which gives the capital of Rio Grande do Sul a title of champion in the Sunday contest, expresses the apathy and de-unionization due to the end of industrial work and, with the dropout in the Human Sciences, of university education as a vehicle for social mobility. Disenchantment does not vote.
Neoliberal subjectivation internalizes the competition of the war of all against all, causing enormous suffering – private and public – for people who distance themselves from the standards extolled by the so-called normality. The anti-neoliberal social revolt gives rise to psychological suffering, worthlessness, resentment and hatred. It is understood that it can lead to adherence to execrable aberrations, which undermine the pillars of civility and the democratic rule of law itself. The sewage system only serves to achieve freedom in Hollywood films about the flaws of the justice system.
The civilizational setback is condensed in Donald Trump, Javier Milei, Jair Bolsonaro, Pablo Marçal and the like. In the fraying of the limits of democracy, regulations lose their prestige to curb the barbarity of laissez-faire. Dystopian anarcho-capitalism becomes an alternative in the eyes of the crowd, without a class identity. Alienation then generalizes stupidity. Free will is confused with dark narcissism. Cognitive dissonance creates a parallel reality.
The conditions for a wide-ranging confrontation between opposing logics and opposing currents are growing on a global scale. In the short term, irrationalities do justice to the spirit of our time, post truth / Post-Truth, as per the Oxford Dictionary. Moral judgments are suspended regarding the delinquent conduct of leaders: theft of jewelry, fraud. Artificial intelligence, at the service of Big Tech, is not the key to emancipation, but rather the shortcut to voluntary servitude.
Principle of the common
For Pierre Dardot and Christian Laval, “The left will only be able to take advantage of this if it knows how to remedy the lack of imagination it has been suffering. We must develop a collective capacity that puts political imagination to work based on the experiments of the struggles of the present”. It is necessary to conceive a perspective of administrative governance linked to social movements, with universalist agendas and also agendas against racist, sexist and transphobic discrimination.
There must be a clear desire to reorient program priorities, contrary to what is usually implemented by the right wing. Is the city we want one of mega-construction companies with buildings on the waterfront and disregard for social housing, public schools and health clinics? One that relegates public transportation and basic sanitation to privatize them? One that turns a blind eye to demands for bike lanes, to meet the pressure for private cars to park on the curbs of avenues? Is it a city that fears the Participatory Budget? No. It is an inclusive, conscious city.
The city we want reinvents democracy. It proposes cultural and sports activities. It looks at the hillsides. It prevents floods. It has ecology on the agenda of sustainable progress. It cares for trees. It waters diversity and pluralism. It beautifies the walls with artistic murals like Diego Rivera who, although of Jewish origin, would not support the bombings in the Gaza Strip.
The “principle of the common” that emanates from the movements must prevail in a Republic. The city belongs to its residents, not to speculators or to profit. Community actions erase the gap between the destinies that inhabit the divided urban territories, despite the BR prefix indicated on the highways. It is up to the left to overcome the neoliberal concrete jungle, in the fight for a new governability, a new sociability and a new network of political affections. “The luxury of knowing / beyond these tiles / a sky of stars”, dreams the Trotskyist poet in a valiant wake haiku.
* Luiz Marques is a professor of political science at UFRGS. He was Rio Grande do Sul's state secretary of culture in the Olívio Dutra government.
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