By MONICA LOYOLA STIVAL*
What is Guilherme Boulos' place in the Brazilian political imagination and to what extent does he bring with him a horizon of transformation?
I believe it is necessary to reflect on what makes Guilherme Boulos – and the leftist project he symbolizes – unique in the recent history of national politics. Without a doubt, he is today the only possible continuity with Lulaism, in its best sense, without being reduced to a simple “imitation,” as several hasty or self-interested analyses suggest.
Two aspects seem decisive to me: the way in which he distinguishes himself as a leader (or how he can increasingly distinguish himself) and the place of a renewed left-wing policy amid the fallacy of polarization.
Public policies and representation
Guilherme Boulos' career has been marked by public policies such as Minha Casa Minha Vida Entidades and Cozinhas Solidárias. These two policies have in common a very specific way of formulation and implementation. They are public policies of an associative nature, which means that their final elaboration and implementation occur through the organization of social movements.
The subjects of the process at the frontline are the people actually covered by the budgetary guidance provided by the federal government, unlike public policies in which the method of execution passes only through different bodies of the federated entities and depends on implementation, “at the frontline”, by the municipality. In this case, the people benefited, as in the case of Bolsa Família, are passive with regard to the way in which the budget is executed.
An associative public policy is not defined in the political model of representation. It therefore bypasses the structure of social participation in which the interaction between government and civil society is informative and, at best, the space for adjustment of formulation. In associative policies there is more activity than representation – the representation in play concerns the internal organization of the social movement and not the relationship of the beneficiaries with the public authority that raises and/or executes resources. The interest of this type of policy, therefore, lies in popular autonomy that goes beyond the limits of representation, and not in a way of circumventing some “crisis of representation”.
The idea of representation collapsed not because it is “in crisis,” as has been said since its inception. Rousseau already questioned the Hobbesian model of the State, since it postulates a distance between the so-called general will and the representative of that will. The ideal of representation has always been the (impossible) coincidence between representatives and those represented. In other words, its constitutive limit was for a long time hidden behind this unattainable coincidence, which, in turn, was essential for the mistaken understanding of democracy as a moderate equalization of interests. Perfect representation would lead to full democracy.
If representation has become the way in which society has come to pretend to achieve social equalization in the form of formal (unrealized) legal equality, it is at the center of this imaginary in which democracy would be the final – and fair – result of a balance of forces reaffirmed and rebalanced with each vote.
Consequently, the key element for reestablishing the essential meaning of democracy as conflict lies in the possibility of, in a certain sense, dispensing with representative mediation as much as possible without thereby destroying the formal foundations of the State, based on the ideal horizon of equality. Democratic dispute does not reject the legal value of equality, but rather restores its political meaning – that is, the dispute over the social project that guides and gives concreteness to the legal rules that support the State.
It turns out that most people do not recognize themselves in an egalitarian structure; precisely because it is far from being concrete. In real life, it is difference that is always at stake, it is the dispute that even guides the law (hence the atrocities of classist and racist justice, for example), it is the political meaning of government and State actions that define the contours of social life. Representation is the means by which a specific type of social life – extremely unequal – is realized day after day, proving that the ideal egalitarian world is difficult to achieve.
In 2013, in Brazil, an individually marked distancing from representation exploded in public life. “So-and-so does not represent me”, “this represents me”, etc. became phrases on the streets and on the networks, for general questions or banal everyday matters. In a few years, this diffusion was grouped into a representation that did not intend to be the dispute of hegemony by an ideologically organized political unity, but into a representation that was above all non-representation, anti-system, pure and simple refusal (as long as conservative customs that provide some imaginary ballast, a certain security, were preserved, since a general rupture would open up an abyss that was too unknown).
Identification, on the one hand, and total disbelief, on the other, are two ways in which people have been able to place themselves in the democratic political game.
I do not want to address here the identification with the more or less anti-system character, already surpassed by new candidates for the position. Nor the disbelief that has long been popularized in the idea that “all politicians are the same”. I will talk about them later, in a tangential way, when I address polarization. The subject here, after all, is primarily the place of the left today.
Based on these general aspects of the Brazilian context, what alternative is available to the already inefficient bet on representation and, with it, on an equalizing democracy?
Guilherme Boulos is not Lula
Lula is identified with thousands of underprivileged people who dream of their interests rising to the center of politics. Guilherme Boulos intends to represent them, but he does not immediately identify with them. After all, each person came from where they came from, and that does not change. Address, dedication, understanding, and daily struggle are not enough. Poor people do not identify with Guilherme Boulos, although many may admire his choices and consider him almost “one of us,” after all, “it is us for us.” Many, but not by a long shot, not even the majority. Without identification (with Lula), many were left with mere disbelief, “leave him as he is,” it really does not change, no one is really there for us.
The challenge, given the impossibility of forging an artificial identification or a recognition that consents, is to overcome the worn-out idea of representation and also the relatively betrayed identification. Representation, as we have seen, has been in crisis since its inception and, for this very reason, no longer moves mills. Identification is not a matter of choice. The acceptance of the foreigner as “one of us” took time and depended on a closeness that would take even longer to extend to so many others. Without the three, apparently all that remains is indifference.
Hence the enormous difference that appears when people oppressed by the history of this restricted democracy – as Florestan Fernandes would say – can be subjects of concrete political processes. Guilherme Boulos, as an unquestionable leader, is not an “equal” and will not represent them, but he has shown over the years that he is the indispensable link in achieving public policies that enable the active presence of people in the formulation and execution of projects at the forefront – vital policies such as housing and food. It is about presence, not participation with opinions via restricted councils.
Guilherme Boulos is a leader in the strongest sense. He is the link between power and the people, without taking the place of their interests or speaking on their behalf – he is the means by which their voice is heard. He is not a representative of the people, displaced between the will of the people and self-interested action, nor is he a projection of possibilities through identification with someone who came out of the same boat and carried this experience to the highest level of national politics, as is still the case with Lula. Over time, it is true that this identification fades, since identification with possible ascension lasts for a long time and the more recent past increasingly shapes the trajectory.
There is undoubtedly a shift in Lula's trajectory, although many theories and explanations can justify the image that has gradually taken shape over time, updating and extending his trajectory. Let's say, thinking about a life graph, that after the impressive rise there is a long plateau that begins to confuse and distance the character from the zero point. We have been in the framework of the broad front, of agreements and pacifications for longer than in the time of the conquest of an oppressed victor. It is still the best we have.
But the future is coming and it demands new positions – will the same trajectory leave the current plateau? We don’t know. But we do know that the left cannot sit back and wait and that the future requires transformations – advances in form, without denying the extraordinary gains of so many years dedicated to politics by Lula, and advances in the way in which the dream of a better world becomes a reality.
Form and content of a national project updated by the 21st century left
We already know what a new way of acting politically could be, one that does not deny the enormous achievement of “one of us”, but is capable of continuing this achievement, since we cannot wait for another exception – and even identification is already cooling due to the wear and tear of time, confusing Lula’s image into a “not as much as us”, since we ourselves have not gotten there.
You can't create a new Lula. The way a leader can reestablish the idea of the future lies in the possibility of responding to expectations (already hesitant and disbelieving) through an action that is known to be distinct from Lulaism and that goes beyond the limits of representation. This is the power of Guilherme Boulos.
Activating and multiplying a model of real political activity by poor people, organized in movements and associations or collectives, is one of the lines of a new policy, to be formulated so that the inevitable representation of the current model of democracy becomes an auxiliary mode. Public policies of an associative nature are examples of a renewed mechanism of interaction between government and civil society, in which people can take upon themselves the task of formulating and implementing policies of social interest.
It is no coincidence that these two examples, Minha Casa Minha Vida Entidades and Cozinhas Solidárias, are present in Guilherme Boulos's consistent trajectory. They are specific examples; a renewed project for the country requires much more than that; but they are examples that can give us an idea of how a left-wing leader acts when faced with existential issues such as homelessness and hunger: as a link that does not separate itself from people in an abstract representation and does not take away their autonomy as subjects of rights and interests in conflict with the country's political and economic elite.
We can thus find in Guilherme Boulos' own trajectory – a trajectory of his own, which is not that of Lula or another classic passage to representation – signs of a reformulated left-wing policy, which inspires in non-believers not only the political will to act, but the real possibility of acting to change their lives and those of so many others in this “us” that exposes our inequality.
Polarization must be reaffirmed
Finally, an observation about this conflict that is gradually draining part of the people's strength – because fighting, when you lose a lot, becomes tiring. Tiredness is the twin of disbelief in politics and, at times, of anger against everything and everyone (the abstract “system”).
Since Greek democracy – more precisely, Aristotelian democracy – the question of the “middle way” has obscured the dispute and silenced the necessarily distinct perspectives. The sophists can attest to that.
How can we fight for a national project when it is reaffirmed daily that moderation is a political and social ideal, as if the non-existent “middle ground” (or third way…) were the common sense that everyone should aim for? This obviously means not allowing any national project, or future project, to be at stake. There is no game. There are no arguments, no convincing. Nothing.
In this fictional world, political disbelief and despair gain strength, since there is nothing in it that can be called politics or democracy: these terms necessarily imply different visions. It is not a question of alternating one and the other, as if the alternation would result in zero sum – that bland place in the center, moderate, inert – since social history is movement and cannot be stopped at the neutral and perfect center of the Platonic ideal.
In other words, the speech repeated by analysts and various media outlets has the effect of absolute depoliticization. Curiously, they are perplexed by the growing abstention in the elections, or by the bet on anything that goes against everything that is given – life is too difficult. How can one position oneself, take a side, when everything seems or is effectively mixed up in fronts so broad that they no longer seem to have borders? The election of Eduardo Paes, for example, can be explained by the need to avoid the Bolsonarist of the moment, since Bolsonarism is the same as coup d'état. However, the same Eduardo Paes sent secretaries to seal the coup against Dilma Rousseff. After all, a coup d'état soft we accept, but without exaggeration? What is really at stake, in terms of positions and projects?
Of course, there is always something worse to be avoided, and it should be. The broad front of 2022 was fundamental. However, it was punctual. Replicating the model indiscriminately freezes the dispute, including the dispute for a political model that clearly situates the divergences, thus opening space for persuasion.
The incredible thing is that this classic accommodation was necessary – an updated version of the conciliations and coups that have marked our Republic since its birth – to ensure some democracy, historically achieving the much-vaunted middle ground in the form of a broad front, but analysts insist on seeing this precisely as yet another example of the so-called polarization.
Along the same lines, in 2024, when the PT is with Eduardo Paes, when the PSD is comfortably divided between the federal government and the state of São Paulo, the discourse remains the same, being one of the main reasons for the impossibility of a real polarization being established.
The media read 2024, particularly in relation to the São Paulo mayoralty, as “Brazil is fed up with polarization”. No, there is a lack of polarization! That is why Ricardo Nunes managed to have him dressed in the mantle (invisible, since the emperor is naked, only those who do not want to see him cannot see it) of moderation. Because there is a lack of polarization, there is a lack of identification of positions, differences, because disbelief is reflected in this lukewarm time of politics, in the “it will be like this”, in the “it is all the same”. For some, if we are not going to leave things as they are, we should destroy the system once and for all – since the system is seen exactly as these analysts want it to be seen, as an inert being confused with common sense.
The result of this confusion is that only what is supposedly outside this amorphous field of common politics appears as a pole – as a difference, as an option. Thus, the so-called Bolsonarism is dragged beyond the borders of the system, although it is not outside it, and Ricardo Nunes or Tarcísio de Freitas are comforted in the center of this same volumeless one, exempted, therefore, from a precise positioning in the field of positions in dispute – evidently, quite to the right of the central axis (I emphasize, an axis in which no one fits, it is just a line, not a possible position, as Emmanuel Macron proved). This is why, by the way, the term “Bolsonarism” is bad; it personalizes to such an extent that it protects the other characters of the extreme right.
Once this platypus has been built, in which polarization has become the specter of the moment, how can we place Guilherme Boulos? Fortunately, he is far from being an Eduardo Paes. A coalition, but on the left. But since the cover of the center was lent to Nunes-Tarcísio-Kassab and since no one is allowed to be distributed in a real area, forging a moderation as a single bloc of what they invent to be democracy, then all that remains is a strange broad front or the place of the outside, so that the speeches push Guilherme Boulos out, accusing him of being radical (in this case, antidemocratic).
However, just as Jair Bolsonaro is not outside the system, although he wants to seem like it, Guilherme Boulos is also not outside, and he knows it very well. He does not want to be outside, he knows that outside does not exist (at least in this period of history). He is consciously located to the left of the central axis, a thin line that many insistently try to erase.
It needs to be highlighted, rather than erased. Democracy depends on being able to recognize and dispute projects. It depends on polarization so that people can clearly see the differences, the possibilities, and situate their interests and dreams.
Erasing the line on which the space in which the elements are organized depends is the true “outside” of the democratic system: totalitarianism. It is indistinction, that which totalizes by not containing difference.
Polarization politicizes and changes the place of the “center.” The attraction of “center” voters tomorrow will increase when the middle of the political agenda begins to naturalize issues that are to the left of the “center” today. This cannot be done without a polarized dispute of ideas and dreams. As the history of neoliberalism shows, minorities are not doomed to remain minorities, since their agenda went from impossible to inevitable throughout the second half of the 20th century. In other words, polarization forced the broadening of the political agenda. This does not mean that this new majority needs to remain as such.
If what can shed light on this place against which we fight and in which the majority of the population does not fit is to name them extremists, as they are, then “radicalism” may finally present itself as a democratic option to what is given and, who knows, put an end to the disbelief that affects political life.
Guilherme Boulos gives face to the new left
While it is true that the new left is not a break with the left that has been built with great difficulty since the 1980s, it is also true that a renewal is taking shape. This renewal also means a kind of recovery, since the left, historically hegemonized by the PT, has undergone its own transformations.
Even though there are tensions, there is no denying that conciliations, sometimes necessary, have become traps that are difficult to untangle. One title claimed by those who assume this new aspect inside and outside the Workers' Party is that of progressive. The progressive camp, or the broad front, as you wish, is the left-wing version of a depoliticization that seeks to occupy all space in the democratic arena. The title that the right mobilizes for this same attempt at totalization is centrist. Thus, in one way or another, a range of possibilities of a complex spectrum is leveled, subverting their differences.
The broad front cannot become a political model to be replicated indiscriminately. Forming coalitions and reaching an agreement will always be important, but without creating new webs that immobilize the left. This is certainly a complex challenge that requires a confident leadership position in its historical position, and Guilherme Boulos has demonstrated his credentials. He has never rejected the position or the polarization, and that is why the letter to the people of São Paulo, read in the last week of the campaign, differs in nature from the letter to the Brazilian people of 2002 (without detracting from the value of the latter).
The interlocutors are different, the historical moment is different, and the mistake of insisting on deepening the demand for legitimacy in a direction opposite to the people was not made. Guilherme Boulos did not address the market or the general population that the term “Brazilians” suggests, although he knows their importance and does not reject a policy that includes them. After all, in this general population there is a population that is a priority and that needs to be raised to the subject of concrete policies.
The personal trajectory of Guilherme Boulos, which is linked to more concrete policies in which the people play an active role, and his political trajectory, which differentiates itself and positions itself, promise a new level not only for the left, but for democracy itself, which can finally return to being the open field of power in which future projects are formulated and endorsed or not by the majority of the population.[1]
*Monica Loyola Stival is a philosophy professor at UFSCar. Author of, among other books, Politics and morality in Foucault (Loyola Editions).
Note
[1] I appreciate Pedro Paulo Zahluth Bastos’ reading and suggestions.
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