By LUIZ EDUARDO SIMÕES DE SOUZA*

Considerations on the political trajectories of Luiz Carlos Bresser-Pereira and Fernando Haddad

“Human beings cannot help but make mistakes; it is through mistakes that men of good sense learn wisdom for the future.” (Plutarch).
“Time adds moderate honors and destroys excessive honors.” (Plutarch).
“An imbalance between rich and poor is the oldest and most fatal disease of all republics.” (Plutarch).

1.

In a country where economic crises overlap like nightmares in a series, one question arises: what makes idealists capitulate? There is a mysterious theory about the chairs in Brasília that involves this reasonable question. It seems that they not only strongly adhere to those who sit in them, but also suck out their spirit and convictions.

When events pile up, settling purposes and compacting intentions – especially good ones – to their true size, it is possible to see, in a temporal cut, some trajectories that present some meaning, if we attribute it to them, like constellations, or a fragment of rock that shows some fossils separated by time.

It is possible to accuse the public spirit of almost anything, with relative ease. Originality is not on the menu. Luiz Carlos Bresser-Pereira and Fernando Haddad, two names that echo in discussions about Brazilian economic policy, embody this transition from dreams to often disappointing realities, not as tragic heroes, but as representative elements of the confirmation bias of the hypothesis that we live in a farce.

Bresser-Pereira. When did the hyphen appear? It certainly wasn't during the debate on inflation in the 1980s, with the theory of inertial inflation, when rising prices made us dizzy to the point that we had variations throughout the day. Amid the chaos that took place during the Cruzado II peak, one of those excellent ideas that today inhabits Hades awaiting several of its creators, Luiz Carlos Bresser-Pereira ascended from academia to Brasília for the first time to offer us an economic plan, which had no traction amid the monetary chaos at the end of José Sarney's government.

It is necessary to make a reservation here about the Bresser Plan, in order to do justice. First of all, it was a plan for inflationary adjustment, a topic that was not the core of Luiz Carlos Bresser-Pereira's theoretical concerns, or his ultimate goal. He never stopped presenting himself as a developmentalist. Like Celso Furtado, in the Triennial Plan of the early 1960s, Luiz Carlos Bresser-Pereira capitulated to short-term logic, acquiesced to pressures for short-term inflation control and went on to hammer away at effective demand, the wage bill and workers' income, to the delight of the front-row audience in Brasília, and of the paying customers of the bourgeois democratic circus.

The Bresser Plan, launched in June 1987, was an attempt by the Brazilian government to control the hyperinflation that was ravaging the country in the 1980s. The plan maintained the price freeze of previous plans and added wage and exchange rate freezes. Although it initially reduced inflation, which fell from 19,71% in June to 4,87% in August of that year, the control was short-lived.

Inflation began to rise again in September, aggravated by the caution of the population and business owners, who readjusted prices in anticipation of new interventions, returning to double digits before the end of that year. Inertial inflation had gained momentum, and the audience's complaints focused on "high public spending", which would inspire Luiz Carlos Bresser-Pereira in the near future, take note. This is someone who knows how to listen to his audience.

Once the plan's failure was recognized, to the surprise of the ether, a tactical retreat was made. Luiz Carlos Bresser-Pereira quickly returned to FGV and São Paulo to organize, with other luminaries of the Southeastern intelligentsia, the PMDB premium, or PSDB, at the end of that decade. Yes, we remember…

Especially because he would return, already with more political muscle, as Minister of the FHC I Government, with the portfolio of Administration and State Reform, a panacea that would be presented as an agenda of Brazilian social democracy, in this first round. The aim was to make public administration more agile and “efficient”, in other words, to reduce expenses with public employee salaries from its base, of course.

As a good patron, he would not last long, leaving with his hands clean and leaving the dirty work of making civil servants precarious to the executive secretary Cláudia Costim, a former member of the PECB party who is quite representative of the memory of former communists who rise to the bureaucracy and apostasy. The ministry would not survive the management of these two. It had already accomplished the task of putting the idea on the agenda of public policies (and the grenade in the pockets of civil servants).

Back in academia, Luiz Carlos Bresser-Pereira would once again establish himself in the progressive field of debate, reinventing himself, adding a hyphen to his surnames (it is higher in references in alphabetical order, it is true…), consolidating himself as a critic of economic orthodoxy and neoliberal thought, together with other members of the PMDB intelligentsia. premium from the 1980s that spread throughout the PSDB (from which it is necessary to recognize that Luiz Carlos Bresser-Pereira would progressively distance himself since the beginning of this century) and even throughout the PT and adjacent parties.

Some of them are still around today. Bresser-Pereira walks freely around, apparently without the memory of these two great contributions to our state of affairs. Not that he lacked the opportunity to do so, but the great project of Conversations with economists, by Biderman, Cosac and Rego (Editora 34) gave him a light feather for the scales. They even added a hyphen in later editions. For some inattentive people, he might even be considered a progressive thinker who did nothing but consolidate neo-developmentalism…

2.

Now let's talk about Fernando Haddad, a figure as idealistic as he is pragmatic, who managed to move between the spheres of academia and politics like someone changing clothes, without losing his composure, but perhaps his essence. Haddad began his career with a solid academic background, including a doctorate in philosophy supervised by Paulo Arantes – the same Paulo Arantes who used to criticize capitalism.

And, like Bresser Pereira, Fernando Haddad also had his baptism of fire in Brasília, alongside Lula and Dilma Rousseff. Between his time at the Ministry of Planning and his arrival at the Ministry of Education, Fernando Haddad made a transition typical of the Brasília bureaucracy: he went from one technical role to another, with the serenity of someone who understood that true power lies in the administrative details. As a special advisor in Planning, he helped structure the infamous Public-Private Partnerships (PPPs), that magic formula that promises development with other people's money.

This quick thinking caught the attention of Tarso Genro, who brought him to the MEC as executive secretary. There, Fernando Haddad was already showing signs that he knew the ropes: a perfect combination of technocratic management and rhetoric of social inclusion. His most notable contribution? A ministry full of programs that, on the surface, sounded like definitive solutions to the problems of Brazilian education.

As Minister of Education, Fernando Haddad was the father of ProUni, a brilliant idea to mask the structural problem of higher education in Brazil. After all, why invest directly in public universities when we can offer scholarships to private ones? And, to crown this policy, Fernando Haddad reformulated the Enem, converting the exam into a kind of national “super entrance exam”, a great move to give the illusion of democratic access to higher education while the number of places actually remained below demand.

As mayor of São Paulo, Fernando Haddad seemed determined to transform the city into a laboratory for progressive urban planning. Bike paths everywhere, bus lanes cutting through avenues, and the so-called “Arco do Futuro” (Arch of the Future) promised to redirect the growth of the metropolis. But, as always, reality came knocking. While he was celebrated as a visionary by some foreign newspapers, at home he faced a São Paulo divided between traffic chaos and irritated drivers. In the end, his administration delivered less than promised, and he left office with a bike path full of potholes and a resounding defeat to João Doria.

Fernando Haddad's 2018 presidential candidacy was a predictable spectacle: hastily launched as Lula's replacement, he was never more than the PT's “plan B.” Trying to balance technical discourse with the charisma borrowed from the former president, Fernando Haddad faced a disastrous campaign, marked by the meteoric rise of Jair Bolsonaro. While trying to discuss proposals, he was crushed by memes, fake news and the rejection of PT. In the end, he came out of the second round with the votes of a third of the country and the certainty that, on the political board, he was just a sacrificial piece.

After his defeat in 2018, Fernando Haddad took his place as Lula's eternal shadow, orbiting the PT without ever achieving his own brilliance. He returned to the political scene as a candidate for governor of São Paulo in 2022, only to repeat the script: second round and another defeat, this time to Tarcísio de Freitas, the newest darling of Bolsonarism. Even so, his political resilience was rewarded in 2023, when Lula rescued him for the Ministry of Finance, a position he occupies with the calm of someone who knows that the economy cannot be solved with slogans. Now, Fernando Haddad balances between market pressures and the rancor of the old left, trying to prove that he is more than just a “poster,” but always in the shadow of his mentor.

Interestingly, the PT's intellectual cadre has recently been applauded by Faria Lima, who traditionally turned his nose up at anything coming from the PT. As Finance Minister, he has shown himself to be more pragmatic than many expected, adopting a dialogue-oriented stance with investors and businesspeople, while trying to balance fiscal orthodoxy with the social demands of the Lula government.

The Fernando Haddad who now circulates among spreadsheets and graphs seems to have finally understood that, in order to survive in Brazil, it is necessary to calm the banks' spirits while distributing bread to those in need. And so, the same market that once demonized him as a left-wing technocrat now treats him as an unexpected ally.

If Luiz Carlos Bresser-Pereira can be accused of giving in to economic pressures, Fernando Haddad went deeper: he not only gave in, but also gave in to political pragmatism like a good student of Herbert Marcuse, exchanging the revolutionary dream for political realism. After all, Fernando Haddad, with his professorial air, managed to navigate amid scandals, dubious policies and an administration that did not escape the trap that swallows everyone who enters Brasília: that of promising the impossible and delivering the feasible, always with a didactic smile on his lips.

Luiz Carlos Bresser-Pereira and Fernando Haddad, each in their own time and context, embody the classic dilemma between idealism and pragmatism in Brazilian politics. Bresser, with his academic background and his developmentalist bias, has always carried with him the weight of promises that never came to fruition as expected. Fernando Haddad, on the other hand, with a solid education and marked by his time as a protégé of Lula, has gone through politics as if he were changing his skin, adjusting his discourse and practice to the political tide. If Plutarch teaches us that “time adds moderate honors and destroys excessive honors,” Luiz Carlos Bresser-Pereira and Fernando Haddad are living witnesses to this process of adjustment to circumstances.

At the beginning of their careers, both shared a significant dose of idealism, Luiz Carlos Bresser-Pereira with his plan to reform the State and Fernando Haddad with his leading role in educational policies. However, the former, in trying to save the country from hyperinflation with the Bresser Plan, saw his ideas swallowed up by the political machinery of Brasília, in the same way that Plutarch watched the leaders of the Roman Republic succumb to the pressures of rival factions.

Fernando Haddad, on the other hand, brought ambitious programs to Brazilian education, such as ProUni and the reformulation of the Enem, but, like Luiz Carlos Bresser-Pereira, he encountered resistance from a reality that was much less malleable than he had expected. Both, at crucial moments, gave in to what was imposed as inevitable in Brasília: the transformation of ideals into palliatives.

Both Luiz Carlos Bresser-Pereira and Fernando Haddad were shaped by circumstances, but with different styles. Luiz Carlos Bresser-Pereira, in his first foray into Brasília, attacked inflation at the expense of workers’ wages and well-being, and was rebuffed by the same elite he sought to control. Fernando Haddad, on the other hand, took a softer but equally problematic path: he disguised the lack of investment in public universities with ProUni, and turned Enem into a platform for illusory inclusion. If “an imbalance between rich and poor is the oldest and most fatal disease of all republics,” Fernando Haddad, with his technocratic skill, merely treated the symptoms without ever addressing the underlying disease.

Bresser-Pereira and Fernando Haddad represent the classic path of idealists who, when confronted with the political reality of Brasília, end up giving in to pragmatism. Luiz Carlos Bresser-Pereira, in his attempt to reform the State and control inflation, saw his ideas dissipate in the face of political pressure, returning to academia with the weight of his frustrated promises. Fernando Haddad, on the other hand, knew how to navigate more skillfully between politics and technocracy, creating programs like ProUni that, despite being popular, masked structural problems. Both, at different times, learned that Brazilian politics requires more survival than transformation, and their trajectories reflect this gradual capitulation.

These trajectories, however, are not the first and certainly will not be the last to reflect this parallelism between idealism and capitulation. Brazilian politics, marked by successive generations of intellectuals who enter the scene with great hopes and leave it with bitter concessions, is a stage where this drama repeats itself cyclically. Both Luiz Carlos Bresser-Pereira and Fernando Haddad are just two more actors in this well-known plot, where time and circumstances erode great ideas, transforming them into calculated pragmatism. The show, however, goes on, with new characters always ready to occupy these chairs that drain not only the body, but also the spirit.

In the end, both share the same fate: they were swallowed up by pragmatism and distanced themselves from the transformative projects they once championed. Luiz Carlos Bresser-Pereira, now a figure further removed from power, echoes criticisms of the neoliberalism he himself helped shape during his days in the PSDB. Fernando Haddad, on the other hand, balances himself between the financial market and popular demands in the Finance Ministry, nodding to the economic orthodoxy he so criticized.

Plutarch would be smiling when he noted that, in the end, “human beings cannot help but make mistakes; it is from mistakes that men of good sense learn wisdom for the future.” The problem is that, in Brasília, the mistakes are not just individual — they are structural, and they seem to repeat themselves with tragic precision. Like nightmares in a night that never ends.

*Luiz Eduardo Simões de Souza is a professor of economic history at the Federal University of Maranhão (UFMA).

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