By CARLOS DE NICOLA*
As the Brazilian left has a structural difficulty in vocalizing possible solutions, “morbid symptoms” are embodied in characters, and compete for the popular imagination in a regressive way.
This article aims to make a comparison between the book Fascism by Evguiéni B. Pachukanis (Boitempo), and the electoral phenomenon in the 2024 municipal elections in São Paulo called Pablo Marçal.
The comparison is asymmetrical, since, on the one hand, there is the Marxist canon for the analysis of fascism, which are the texts of Evguiéni Pachukanis — the newest of which is almost a century old, published in 1933. On the other hand, there is a mass phenomenon of the extreme right that, if not canon, has recently managed to be canonized by thousands of people on the networks and at the polls.
In the 1920s and 1930s, while Yevgeny Pachukanis was writing his material, he made an analysis that Germany was different from post-World War I Italy because the German bourgeoisie had made a move to save its state institutions, while the Italians concentrated political power in the fascist party. In the case of contemporary Brazil, despite no recent war, the institutions are in tatters, to paraphrase the newspaper's editorial. The State of S. Paul on the eve of the military coup in March 1964.
One of the keys to reading the Pablo Marçal phenomenon is: Brazilian democracy is in crisis, and some of its morbid symptoms are far-right characters, who dress up as “anti-system”, despite their program which consists of deepening the radical neoliberal capitalism that has governed the nation in recent decades.
The author emphasizes that there was the “motto of community” as the driving force of the fascists, which, in his view, erected in a struggle for a collective inspired by some idyllic communal past, removes the possibility of class struggle, thus seeking to amalgamate the social whole based on a pattern that prevents cracks, divisions and conflicts within capitalist sociability.
In turn, “Marçal’s mottos,” if we can call them that, consist of encouraging unbridled entrepreneurship, insofar as “the State hinders development,” in addition to being “against everything and everyone” with regard to the minimum civilizing pact that involves, for example, the struggle of women in the 1929st century. In a way, like the fascists, it is an attempt to return to a past fantasized as a possible future, since the “society without rules” and the right to “freely discriminate against anyone” reflect a stage in history that is still immature in terms of the discussion of Human Rights, or even in terms of the lessons learned by the global elite in light of the New York Stock Exchange Crash of XNUMX.
In the scope of fascism, according to the Soviet theorist, capitalism replaces the old system of political parties with terrorist organizations of capital, paramilitaries and military forces. In Brazil, there are militias spread throughout the territory, which are not political institutions in principle, but are entangled with shady interests. Most of them are right-wing and far-right, imposing a “new order” in the territories, but not from the perspective of community organization of those below. Rather, through the force of money, weapons, and interests in perpetuating the dynamics of violence solely for the benefit of imposed leaderships.
According to Evguiéni Pachukanis, in their criticism of parliamentarism and the Weimar Constitution in Germany in the first half of the 20th century, Hitler’s supporters used the comparison of two periods: the old German regime of the monarchy of William II, when people had jobs and salaries, and that period, of the “Republic of unemployment”, of poverty, of national humiliation, and of the domination of foreign capital. Therefore, the conclusion of these supporters of the future dictator was: “Down with the foreign loan sharks, down with the Marxists, down with the red bandits, down with the Weimar Republic”.
In this regard, it is interesting to note the difficulty of Brazilian democracy in consolidating itself despite the amnesty, the 1988 Constitution, and the relative longevity of its formal democratic electoral regime. Part of the Brazilian people support the rupture because they do not see their desires expressed in democracy. With the advancement of the culture of “self-entrepreneurship”, the rupture of minimal social (and community) ties, collective support networks, and the imposition of capital’s time, the Brazilian people find themselves at the mercy of structures that do not seem to them to be the most appropriate.
Since the Brazilian left has a structural difficulty in vocalizing possible solutions and creating a social dispute around future perspectives, “morbid symptoms” are embodied in characters and compete for the popular imagination in a regressive way. “It can’t get any worse than it is,” according to the clown-parliamentarian, or clown-parliamentarian Tiririca in past elections. But it can indeed get better. Pablo Marçal is proof of that.
Returning to the Soviet jurist, “fascism is a political superstructure of decadent capitalism and, therefore, has no perspective and must, involuntarily, when it seeks to offer some theoretical cohesion, turn to the past, idealizing it and distorting it.” In this case, it is possible to establish a direct analogy to the cult of the military dictatorship of Jair Bolsonaro and his henchmen.
In his speeches there is an abstract praise for law and order, which stems from the feeling of dissatisfaction of the popular classes with Brazilian capitalism, but which points to its worst phase, which was the 1964-1985 regime. In this regard, it is worth remembering Antonio Gramsci, an Italian revolutionary, who spoke of the importance of the organic intellectual within the class struggle. Pointing out to the community another possible path for the radical transformation of reality, beyond the menu of the Brazilian extreme right, is our fundamental task.
Evguiéni Pachukanis states the following: “all the noise that many fascists make against the parliamentary system is clearly calculated to demagogically capture the layers that are already beginning to recognize the lying and repugnant essence of bourgeois democracy, but have not yet come to believe in the general necessity of overthrowing the power of capital.”
Pablo Marçal voices the confused discourse of a significant part of Brazilian society against the current state of affairs. But the solutions he proposes, if implemented, will only deepen this state of affairs. “Freedom to discriminate” and “CNPJ for all” are actually banners of total capitalist anarchy, of a general war of the strongest against the weakest, and not an anti-capitalist discourse. Our problem as the left is: how can we explain this to people?
Regarding the contrast between older people and young people in politics, Evgeny Pachukanis, at that time, pointed out the following: the activities of the old bourgeois parliamentary parties were carried out by the older generation. Meanwhile, military and paramilitary organizations, united by military discipline, mobilized the bourgeois and petty-bourgeois youth. They organized themselves and used the bourgeoisie as an elite troop against the proletariat. Their spirits were formed in comradeship and discipline, combat training, and preparation for the use of violence.
Today, in Brazil, in addition to territorial militias, there are digital militias, and Pablo Marçal even commands an empire of content reproduction, part of which can be attributed to his exceptional electoral result in the first round of the municipal elections in São Paulo. Is there an “ideology” in these “virtual activists” or is it “they will do anything for money”? What leads young people to join this project, even if it is paid? Where are we lacking as educational activists, in favor of critical people, aware of the dilemmas of Brazilian capitalism, and willing to do anything to confront it?
Finally, Evguiéni Pachukanis, in one of his texts in the collection, describes the bureaucratic maneuvers at the First German Congress of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies of 1918 — a kind of collective forum that brought together the working classes of Germany at the time. Among these maneuvers, which even came from what could be called the “center-left,” were false accusations of “corruption in the soviets.” Soviets were these popular deliberative spaces, the political form that the collective in Germany (and in Russia) found to give organized outlet to its desires.
In Brazil in 2024, there is immense distrust among the population towards social movements, forged day after day in the media, and promoted by the far right as one of its greatest assets. This distrust, in fact, makes electing left-wing candidates to major positions in large cities a difficulty that is literally “historic.”
What the Soviet thinker reveals to us is that, despite the immense difficulties of living and fighting for socialism under the sign of fascism, it is always possible to react and win.
*Carlos De Nicola is a member of the socio-environmental movement.
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