By ARMANDO BOITO*
The dispute between leaders of the far right should not be seen merely as a dispute between egos or between political cliques lacking social roots.
The neo-fascist camp in Brazil is fraying among numerous political and electoral leaders, and the 2024 municipal elections have made this clear. There are superficial and momentary disagreements, but there may also be more serious conflicts. What could explain this political phenomenon?
In April of this year, I wrote an article, published on the website the earth is round, where I discussed the heterogeneity and possible fissures in the far-right camp. This heterogeneity is, for me, fundamentally a heterogeneity of class and class fraction, where each segment, in addition to common interests that unite them, also has particular, divergent and even conflicting interests.
In other words, I did not refer to the heterogeneity of political parties and leaders that, on the far right, have been competing for prominence, as occurred in the election for mayor of São Paulo when Pablo Marçal simultaneously challenged Jair Bolsonaro and Tarcísio de Freitas. However, my hypothesis is that some of these conflicts between leaders express, and at the same time conceal, the heterogeneity of class and class fraction to which I referred above. The dispute between leaders on the far right should not be seen merely as a dispute between egos or between political cliques lacking social roots.
In the aforementioned article, I presented financial capital, landowners, middle class capital, the middle class, the petite bourgeoisie and popular sectors of the marginal mass as the main social segments that are currently aligned with the neo-fascist camp or that provide it with significant contingents of supporters. I will briefly and very briefly refer to what I wrote in the previous article and attempt in this article to establish the probable links between some political leaders of the extreme right and the classes and class fractions that make up this political camp. I will present these ideas as a hypothesis and in a very brief manner.
Financial capital demands above all else spending cuts – as is well known, protecting the spending spree on public debt. It also demands the continuation of the privatization program. Governor Tarcísio de Freitas is the representative of this fraction of the bourgeoisie. Since he does not control the monetary and fiscal policy of the Union, he has made privatizations a trademark of his government. “We are going to privatize everything in São Paulo,” shouted a congressman, a follower of Tarcísio de Freitas, in response to the popular protest at an auction for the privatization of public schools. The figure of Tarcísio Freitas banging the hammer at the privatization auctions is his trademark.
To be more precise, he represents the associated, internationalized segment of the financial bourgeoisie, because the internal segment of this fraction, integrated by the large national commercial banks, moved away from Bolsonarism and closer to Lula since the 2022 electoral campaign. The bourgeois fraction that Tarcísio de Freitas represents is the fraction that hegemonizes the neoliberal and neofascist camp, that is, that defines the main lines of the economic and social policy supported by this camp.
In a different register from that of the financial segment of the associated bourgeoisie, landowners prioritize obtaining subsidized public credit for the production, storage and marketing of agricultural products – a generous plan for financing the harvest by public banks, financing for the construction of silos, construction of roads, modernization of ports, etc. They pressure for an increase in public spending on productive capital, and also give great importance to the repressive action of the State against the peasant, indigenous and quilombola movements, in addition to aspiring to the freedom to deforest.
The farmers have reasons to ally themselves with financial capital, but there is no harmony between them and Faria Lima. It seems to me that Ronaldo Caiado is the expression of the specific interests of landowners in the neo-fascist camp. He is the governor of an agribusiness state, and has played a prominent role in the Senate in defense of farmers, while always acting against indigenous people and environmentalists.
Ronaldo Caiado is a historic and radical leader of landowners – he was the founder and leader of the Rural Democratic Union (UDR), which violently and criminally fought the indigenous and peasant movement. During his term as governor of Goiás, which began in 2022, he has emphasized his tough and repressive policy of order. This is what farmers want most from the state government – financing and investments are in the hands of the Federal Executive – and Ronaldo Caiado has made this policy his trademark.
I could not map all the leaders and their probable political ties with different social segments. In fact, it is possible that some of them do not have specific ties and, also, that some social segments of the neo-fascist camp are orphaned of specific representation. However, I want to refer lastly to the leadership of Pablo Marçal.
Pablo Marçal represented plebeian neofascism in the election for mayor of São Paulo. He received the most votes in the neighborhoods of the former East Zone and the South Zone. He even beat Guilherme Boulos in traditional left-wing electoral strongholds. He verbalizes the ideology of individual social advancement through hard work, which is what is left for the popular sectors, who live off self-employment and without professional qualifications, to endure and even sweeten their terrible living conditions.
He also verbalizes his faith in chance and luck as a path to social advancement, and uses swear words and aggressive attitudes that break protocol to symbolize his “rejection of the system,” thus connecting with the protest vote that empirical research has indicated as an important reason for workers to vote for neo-fascist candidates. The South Zone of the city of São Paulo, a former stronghold of the industrial working class, is now the region of nano-entrepreneurs, and Pablo Marçal addressed them.
Tarcísio de Freitas, Ronaldo Caiado and Pablo Marçal do not speak solely and exclusively for the class or fraction of the class to which they are, according to our hypotheses, preferentially linked. They seek, like all politicians of bourgeois or petty-bourgeois standing, to speak to a wider audience. Furthermore, the party and electoral system constrains some initiatives of political leaders and encourages others. All of this makes the relationship of political representation that each of them establishes with the neo-fascist camp and its different segments more complex, but it does not deny the fact that a relationship of preferential representation may exist.
It would be good for the left to go beyond personalizing political conflicts and reflect on the social and political representation of these leaders. This reflection could help us uncover paths for democratic and popular struggle.
*Armando Boito and pSenior Professor of Political Science at Unicamp and editor of the journal Crítica Marxista. He is the author of, among other books, Reform and political crisis in Brazil – class conflicts in PT governments (Unesp-Unicamp)
To read the first article in the series click on https://aterraeredonda.com.br/fissuras-do-campo-politico-bolsonarista/
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