By LUIZ MARQUES*
Approaching power with the construct of loyalty, in addition to not incorporating the class dimension of affections, reinforces the personalist conception of politics
The military dictatorship proclaims the virtue of “honor”; the bureaucratic dictatorship champions “efficiency”; formal democracy proposes “equality”; socialist democracy celebrates “solidarity”. But the corporate media analyzes the sphere of power with the value of “loyalty”, a remnant of the time when the sovereign’s scepter concentrated the State and subjects were expected to be loyal and courageous to the majesty.
The monarchist habit is maintained for cataloging the manifestations of political bias in the face of necroeconomics. Governments that promote privatizations at crony prices for the private sector are seen as representatives of “modernization”. The Basic Sanitation Company of the State of São Paulo (Sabesp) is just one of the not at all edifying examples of this. Brazil land.
State positions serve to attack public interests and the needs of the people, the victims of the “elites” throughout history. The fake royalty needs “men without qualities”, to re-actualize the title of Robert Musil’s work. What is important is loyalty to the ten commandments of the Washington Consensus – above Brazil and God. The leaders who pray by the neoliberal handbook are given a free pass by the media to pose as “good guys”.
In regimes of democratic pluralism, the required virtue is “tolerance,” which renounces preventing some evils in order to avoid creating greater obstacles. See the end-of-year releases of inmates from semi-open prisons without committing a heinous crime. This is a necessary evil to facilitate social reintegration and prevent tensions in prisons from spilling over into acts of terrorism on the streets. Before, leniency was a grace granted by the authorities, who could withdraw it whenever they pleased. Now it is a reason to blackmail fear and, indirectly, endorse militias. As we read in the novel: the leopard, by Tomasi di Lampedusa: “Something must change so that everything stays the same”, in the words of an aristocrat faced with the inevitability of the bourgeois revolution in Italy. Better to lose a few rings than your fingers.
Stones of dissatisfaction
At the dawn of the Modern Age, John Locke wrote the famous letter on tolerance (1685) to emphasize the right to oppose the government, opening space for claims in other areas. Voltaire, in Treaty on Tolerance (1763), argues that religious intolerance finds no shelter in the Jewish and classical tradition or in evangelical doctrine. He appeals to reason to support peace between Catholics and Protestants. Rationalism fosters optimism in the midst of a battlefield.
From a theological perspective, this means indulgence towards otherness. From a political perspective, it is a possibility for disagreement free from reprisals. Tolerance contains aggression and favors frank discussion in inter-individual relationships. In situations such as Brazil, which combines religious fundamentalism and neo-fascist authoritarianism with commodity totalitarianism, the vector of tolerance even signals the door to utopia – a society without prejudice and without stigma.
In the 19th century, liberalism embodied value. Criticism of censorship was based on the principle of tolerance identified with the exercise of individual freedom. The exhaustion of the predicates of sociability led to a loss of civility, which transformed Germany into the stage of Nazi-fascist horrors in the following century, which attempted a comeback. Thus, the right to open dialogue and political pluralism were ostracized. The door opened, but to barbarism.
At the turn of the 20th century, Friedrich Nietzsche exposes the resentment in Western Christian culture, in The genealogy of morals (1887). Exposes morality at the root of the matter. Max Scheler, in On Resentment and Moral Judgment (1912), discovers obstacles of dissatisfaction in the path of social classes and political movements with the unfulfilled promises of the ideals of the Enlightenment. Republican egalitarianism among unequals comes up against rigid and impenetrable hierarchies – the harsh reality. Exclusion from decisions, precarious survival and humiliation renew discontent in the conscience of each person, and exact a high price through bitterness in the resentful.
Repressive tolerance
The far right nurtures hatred for dubious purposes and places intolerance on the podium. Brutes love it too. Instead of emancipation, extremists numb the liberation impulses of oppressed groups, absorbing the protests within the market. The capitalist machinery reacts with “repressive tolerance.”
Framing electoral debates in the question-and-answer style criminalizes investments, in order to pay homage to the liberal dogma of “fiscal balance”. There are candidates who accept the bell, but simulate anti-systemic bizarreness to divert attention. The innocent clown of yesterday is the rat-man who monetizes idiocy today, gnawing at the revenge and the liver itself in the unpatriotic underground of shady deals, rentierism and millionaire amendments.
The conflict persists. If, for progressives, tolerance is essential to the development of the arts, sciences and thought; for traditionalists, tolerance of “error” helps in its propagation. Civilizing values and diversity are challenged by fake news who make up bandits in coaching, with total detachment from the “truth”. The despair of others becomes a source of income on the internet. Capitalist cannibalism swallows the social body to metabolize dystopian accumulation, while algorithms of big techs select the next victims for the slaughterhouse.
Domination and subordination, hegemony and counter-hegemony, the system of power and the forces that oppose order are theoretical references for understanding the climatic, socioeconomic and political-cultural chaos of the 21st century: a period marked by Palestinian suffering in the Gaza Strip. It is urgent to give new meaning to human rights and to exorcise the factors of obscurantism that are expanding across the world map, in order to organize the new grammar of fraternity between nations. Tolerance continues to be an unfinished revolution, awaiting the subjects of transformation and the time of cherries.
There is no tolerance in the dialectic of capital and labor or in outsourcing for the hyper-exploitation of the masses. There is no tolerance for indigenous peoples and quilombos, blacks and women, LGBTQIA+ or MTST. Nor is there media tolerance for contradictions, to investigate the surrender of basic services (water, gas, electricity). Those who base themselves on social regulation are satisfied. Those who want to break the grid of disinformation are dissatisfied. Illiberal democracy welcomes the march of illiberal capitalism into the superstructure. Negativist intolerance founds the State of exception.
The dreams you take from me
Approaching power through the construct of loyalty, in addition to not incorporating the class dimension of affections, reinforces the personalist conception of politics. The ruler is evaluated based on the value of: (i) Equality to democratize gender and race relations, guarantee security, education, culture, health, housing, prevention of cataclysms and the air we all breathe. Vade Retro neocolonialists. (ii) Solidarity of institutions to implement sustainable reindustrialization policies and tax justice, with increased levels of happiness and participation. yuppies are unwelcome.
Inspired by the Washington Consensus, the right and its extremes are incapable of providing dignity to all citizens – a task for the left, guardian of community engagement. As in the poem Horseback Riding, by Cecília Meireles: “Listen, in the dark tumult, / the fantastic torrent passing! And, in the fight between light and darkness, / all the dreams that you take me, / tell me, at least, where they go”.
* 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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