Jair Bolsonaro in Russia

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By TARSUS GENUS*

The normalizing acceptance of Bolsonarist barbarism will have long-term effects on all material and subjective instances of Brazilian society

In your little classic Education beyond the capital (Boitempo), István Mézàros recalls a text by Taylor – the same one from “Taylorism” – which reveals an important secret of the scientific management of production, in the imposition of the “educational\intellectual” requirements of the capitalist company, “so that they conduct an operation successful, competitively”, when “he writes with undisguised cynicism” (p. 70): “One of the first requirements for a man to be able to deal with cast iron, as a regular occupation, is that he be so stupid and phlegmatic, that more resembles an ox in his mental picture” (…) “the worker who is best suited for loading ingots is incapable of understanding the real science that regulates the execution of this work. He is so stupid that the word 'percentage' has no meaning for him”.

It is good to remember that the authoritarian methods of Taylorism were passed on into the socialist experiences of Eastern Europe, mainly, as the moral stimuli of the revolutionary impulse ran out, when revolutions began to face the hard routine of survival, in day-to-day life. - day of hunger and want.

Capitalism, therefore, “educates” proletarian servitude, which, in turn, is reflected in the political conduct and state and private management of its “educators”, who become more (or less) flexible, according to the relations of strength in the possible negotiations between capital and labor. The great conquests of the French proletariat in terms of participation in management and in profits, in May 1968 – in a revolutionary emergency that did not start with the workers – took place within this process, with results that would certainly make Taylor reflect – if he were alive – that the workers became less “stupid” (in his view) the moment they made the bosses and General de Gaulle’s State give in, transferring part of their stupidity” to the bosses, who ceded (in their authoritarianism) the rings to don't lose fingers.

But this process is neither linear nor averse to crises, first because the proletarians were not and are not stupid, they are dominated and manipulated in their survival needs; and – second – because the talent and experience of entrepreneurs to dominate, are not the same in every time and place.

Fascism and Nazism are moments of crisis, in which the political leadership of the State and its private capitalists cannot or do not want to give in. And so they are encouraged to do, from the factory authoritarianism that informs the management methods over the “stupid” of the production line, universal forms of social domination with “total” authoritarianism, not only over the factories, but also over the whole of political life. The Administrative State and Production in industry and services in a situation of fascism, are taken by the force of limitless stupidity coming from the new “educators” of society who transform convincing, when necessary, into physical or psychological death of divergent groups.

The new type of fascism in late capitalism, in countries like ours, which are fully entering the “infodigital” society (of material production and the formation of networked subjectivities) encouraged the rich classes to travel towards irrationalism. On this journey – which is also a possible path of modernity – they sought a leader who would allow them to quickly “shortcut”: the flight forward to adjust domination, leaps and bounds, to a new period of income concentration without the “hassle” of politics. democratic. And so did Jair M. Bolsonaro, who has now gone to Russia to avoid a Third World War. He is the portrait of our ruling classes, not their caricature.

In fact, part of the ruling classes got tired of Bolsonaro, not because he is a fascist, foolish and delusional genocidal, which was already absolutely clear the moment he emerged in the conventional political system. They got tired of it because the universalization of capitalism – with its new means of production and innovative communication forms – won and they no longer need it. Contrary to the possible universality of the ideas of a just and egalitarian society – blocked by the liberal adjustments that came from Thatcherism in the 1970s – the ideas of classist meritocracy won, the liberation from routine factory work replaced by self-entrepreneurship: the illusion won that the suppression of the needs of others or their death can generate a just society and that the virtues of selfishness are superior to the virtues of equality.

Left-wing reformism, within democracy, did not win because it failed to reach – weak as it was – the hearts and minds of new workers and youth in a comprehensive way; the revolution did not appear on the horizon because the traditional subjects of the revolution, which were solid – parodying Marx – for solid, also melted into thin air.

The normalizing acceptance of Bolsonarist barbarism will have long-term effects on all material and subjective instances of Brazilian society, as he must have approximately a quarter of the votes and a flow of armed militia structures, without any serious reaction from the Armed Forces and other state security structures. This shows that the country has become contaminated and that the extreme right is here to stay. And more, that this phenomenon is not national and in a way – it is analogous to the political, economic and military environment that was formed on the threshold of the Second World War: the divided democratic and left-wing forces, the replacement of political pacts of coexistence – within of the capital system itself – by fragile adjustments of geopolitical positions and military experimentalism, added today by new informational technologies aimed at information warfare. The environmental and health crises leverage yet another economic crisis, even more serious in the medium term.

Only a hard and frontal electoral defeat of Bolsonarist fascism can give us the opportunity to open a cycle of republican and democratic restoration in the country. Outside of that is “Horror”. And the ultimate chaos.

*Tarsus in law he was governor of the state of Rio Grande do Sul, mayor of Porto Alegre, Minister of Justice, Minister of Education and Minister of Institutional Relations in Brazil. Author, among other books, of possible utopia (Arts & Crafts).

 

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