By VALERIO ARCARY*
Author introduction to newly released book
Where is the Lula government going?
The Lula government has been in office for just over a year, but the country remains fragmented. This confirms that, although there is a better political correlation of forces, because Lula is in the Planalto, this social correlation of forces has not yet been reversed: (a) different opinion polls confirm that approximately half of the population approves of the government and the other half disapproves, with small variations. The variations in long series remain around the margins of error.
There are discrepancies between support for Lula, 47,4% versus 45,9%, and the 40% who say they disapprove of the government (in January, this figure was 39%). Those who approve are 38% (a drop of 4 percentage points compared to the previous survey), while more than 18% consider the administration to be average.[I] (b) the government's performance so far has failed to diminish the influence of the extreme right, which maintains an audience of around a third of the population.[ii]
(c) The sociocultural division remains the same. Bolsonarism maintains greater influence among the middle classes who earn more than two minimum wages, in the southeast and south regions and among evangelicals.[iii] Lulism is more influential among the poorest majority, at the extremes of education (between the least educated and those with higher education), among Catholics and in the Northeast.[iv] In short, there are few qualitative changes. But this picture does not allow for reassuring conclusions.
The government is no stronger, even though the abysmal contrast with the Bolsonaro government is evident. After a year of government, the fluctuations in the levels of support or rejection are small, but there is a more pronounced downward trend at the beginning of 2024. Shifts of this type are never single-causal. There are always many factors that affect the consciousness of tens of millions in such an unequal country.
The media coverage of the escapes from a maximum security prison, the massacres in Baixada Santista and in communities in Rio de Janeiro, the increase in feminicides and even the theft of cell phones during Carnival have increased the unease. The largest dengue epidemic, a side effect of a scorching summer that, in turn, is the prelude to a year that is expected to break all historical records for rising temperatures, has also generated discomfort.
It should come as no surprise that, by far, the worst results are concentrated among those who earn more than three minimum wages, with a medium level of education, older men from the Southeast and South, and evangelicals. In other words, Bolsonaro's electorate. After all, the fundamental fact of the situation was the demonstration on November 25th on Paulista Avenue, which increased the cohesion of the far-right movement, including the ocean of Israeli flags present at the event. The Bolsonaro trap returned to the streets like a neo-fascist avalanche. A trap that posed a challenge. Why?
The path of political struggle is winding and even labyrinthine, full of curves, ups and downs; it is never a straight line. Most of the PT leadership hoped that the exasperation and fatigue of the far-right government would be enough for Lula to defeat him in 2022. They bet on slow patience. They won, but only just. The Lula government is now betting that good management, which responds to at least some of the people's urgent needs through "deliveries" will be enough to win in 2026. Jair Bolsonaro did not adopt this quietist tactic of waiting.
Bolsonarism is a militant movement. The far right knows the “pathology” of its social base. Such an unequal society is preserved because those with material and social privileges fight furiously to defend them. It knows the arrogance of the new bourgeois generation at the head of agribusiness, which accumulates sociocultural grudges against the more cosmopolitan world of big cities, which despises them as brutes who are sexists and deniers of global warming.
He knows the arrogance of a portion of the middle classes that has been poisoned by racist and homophobic hatred and the loss of social prestige. He knows the anti-intellectual distrust fueled by neo-Pentecostal churches-businesses. Without very serious changes in life experience – higher wages, decent jobs, quality education, a stronger SUS, access to home ownership – it is not possible to divide this social base.
Defeating Bolsonarism requires a willingness to fight, the ability to maneuver, the audacity to pivot, the courage to use strategies, the willingness to confront, the constancy and restraint to gain time until making a new turn and measuring forces. But, up until now, what the government has done has essentially been compromise. It has bet on “pacification.” It has rarely taken a step forward, and then many steps back. Have we learned nothing from the defeat of Peronism in Argentina and the PS in Portugal?
There are many on the left who describe this development as a tendency toward polarization. This formula is appealing, because it will be the same in the municipal elections of large cities with a second round, and because of the role of Lula and Bolsonaro in the transfer of votes. But this formula is dangerously misleading, because the two poles in the class struggle do not occupy equivalent positions. In the reactionary camp, the most radical ones are in charge. On the left, the most moderate ones are in charge. The extreme right has “devoured” the influence of the traditional center-right parties (MDB, PSDB, União Brasil), but the Lula government is not a left-wing government, since it has accepted a pact with the liberal faction led by Tebet/Alckmin. In situations of stability of the democratic-liberal regime, the majority of the population is politically situated in the center of the political spectrum, supporting the center-right or the center-left, which alternate in the management of the State.
This has been the case since the end of the dictatorship, with three center-right governments and then four PT governments. This was the key to the longest period, thirty years (1986-2016) of stability of the liberal democratic regime. This stage, which was a hypothesis that Marxism considered unlikely in peripheral countries, but which became possible after the end of the USSR, has come to an end. One of the left's greatest difficulties is admitting its end.
But what happened next cannot be explained by polarization. Polarization happens when extremes become stronger. This is not what we have been experiencing in Brazil since 2016. Since the institutional coup, and as a result of the reversal of the social correlation of forces, only the extreme right has “hardened,” exerting a pressure of gravity, like a dragnet of the historical influence of reactionaries. A unilateral dragnet is not polarization. Asymmetric polarization is more elegant, but it is still disproportionate.
On the left, the same positions are maintained and there is no radicalization. On the contrary, the Lula government is moving to the center, renouncing any mobilization, and expanding the coalition with right-wing parties so as not to be threatened in Congress. Therefore, all it takes is a tension with the allies who preserve governability for the threat of neofascism and its project of Bonapartist subversion of the regime to become a real danger.
Many factors explain the perplexity, reduced expectations and moderation among the left's social base. There is great confidence in Lula's leadership. But there is fear, discouragement and insecurity in the workers' and union movements after years of setbacks and defeats. Among the left, the willingness to fight is not high; quite the opposite. It is not much different in popular social movements. The capacity for mobilization, since the 2022 electoral campaign events, is low.
Militant activism has transferred responsibility for the trial of the coup plotters, starting with Bolsonaro, to Alexandre de Moraes. But it would be dishonest and unfair not to highlight the role of the government and Lula himself in the demobilization. The vanguard is looking for a foothold that will favor a more advanced political solution. Of all the concerted actions since the inauguration, and there have been many, none has been more serious than the attitude toward the Armed Forces, even after their complicity with the coup became clear.
The decision not to seize the opportunity of the 60th anniversary of the 1964 military coup to hold an initiative of mass education and political mobilization was demoralizing. The worst mistake the left could make would be to underestimate the impact of this neo-fascist counteroffensive. If they are not stopped, they will advance.
The challenge of thinking about where we are going is only possible if we are clear about where we came from and what history has taught us. Since 2016, when the social correlation of forces changed structurally, five lessons have been fundamental: (a) after the narrow victory against Aécio Neves in 2014, the bet on “governability” with a fraction of the ruling class, through the appointment of Joaquim Levy, failed and the institutional coup of 2016, supported by huge reactionary mobilizations, was devastating; and the bet that the Superior Courts would not legitimize the institutional coup carried out through the National Congress also failed.
(b) The accumulation of uninterrupted defeats until 2022, the demoralization of Operation Lava Jato, Lula's arrest, the labor reform, the election of Jair Bolsonaro, yet another pension reform, the humanitarian catastrophe during the pandemic and a new wave of fires in the Amazon and Cerrado left consequences, which have not yet been reversed, on the morale of the working class and the spirit of left-wing activists.
(c) Minimizing the danger of the far right was an unforgivable mistake, because neofascism is a mass social-political-cultural movement of international dimensions, which has drawn almost half of the country, at the polls but also in activism on the streets, and is therefore not just an electoral movement. Furthermore, this movement has already proven that Bolsonaro is capable of transferring votes; (d) a complex analysis of Jair Bolsonaro's electoral defeat in 2022 must consider many factors, but lucidity requires recognizing that Lula's individual role was qualitative; (e) Lula's victory changed the political correlation of forces, but it was not enough to reverse the social correlation of forces.
But this framework is insufficient for an assessment of the discrepancies in the social and political relations of forces. There are three fundamental issues to be considered: (a) the capacity for political initiative is not limited to the “professional” institutional political struggle in the instances of power, and Bolsonarism maintains a much greater social force of shock in the streets than that of Lulism.
(b) In polls and elections, all people have equal weight, but in the social and political struggle, what prevails is the defense of the interests of the most organized classes and class fractions, and the fact that the left has strength among the majority of the poorest semi-proletariat, among the youth, blacks and women, does not have the same weight as the fact that Bolsonarism has strength in agribusiness, in the middle classes of property owners, among wage earners who earn between 5 and 10 minimum wages and in evangelical churches. Likewise, having a lot of strength in the Northeast is not the same as being a majority in the Southeast and South.
(c) The largest “battalions” of the organized working class, which are concentrated among those who have formal employment in the private and state sectors or in the public service, remain divided, because the extreme right has won over part of this audience.
When we analyze the current situation, it is important to remember that the class struggle cannot be reduced to a struggle between Capital and Labor. Neither capital nor labor are homogeneous classes, and we must consider class fractions: the bourgeoisie has several wings with their own interests (agrarian, industrial, financial), although it is very concentrated. The world of work has different realities: the proletariat, the semi-proletariat, wage earners with or without contracts, from the South or the Northeast.
And the middle classes are very important: the petite bourgeoisie of property and the new urban middle class. The class struggle does not only take place in the “structure” of economic and social life. It also develops in the superstructure of the State, in the form of clashes between the institutions of power: the Government, the Legislature, the Judiciary and the Armed Forces. There is an ongoing conflict between the High Courts and the Army and, to a large extent, against Congress.
It would be a grave mistake to underestimate these clashes. Just as there is a segment of the moderate left that exaggerates the significance of the duels in the “high places” that are magnified by the bourgeois commercial media, there is a segment of the radical left that devalues the significance of the political struggle between representatives of factions of the ruling class that takes place in the institutional theater. This is the role of the liberal-democratic regime: to allow them to publicly express themselves and resolve these differences.
The Lula government’s bet on “cold” governability, without having to mobilize a social base of support, is based on this division and responds to the calculation that “Venezuelization” must be avoided at all costs. The Chamber of Deputies, under Lira’s leadership, has won a larger share of the budget than most ministries. However, those who place excessive confidence in the outcome of these disputes are mistaken.
Jair Bolsonaro’s fate does not depend solely on a “technical” trial. He is headed for a legal defeat, but he can survive politically as long as 40% of the population believes he is being persecuted. After January 8, the central political question has been whether or not Bolsonaro and the generals will be convicted and imprisoned.
A Marxist analysis must start from the study of changes in the economic situation. Since the beginning of Lula's term, the three most important variables have been: (a) confirmation that the inflow of foreign capital has remained high, ensuring a reduction in the deficit in the balance of payments, confirming the positive expectations of international investors; (b) the trade surplus has broken historical records, raising the level of reserves, as well as tax revenues.[v]; (c) the preservation of growth, which had been ongoing since the end of the pandemic, caused unemployment to fall more quickly, wages to rise and inflation to fall – positive indicators.
But this was not enough to reduce the far-right's audience among highly educated wage earners in the Southeast and South who earn between 3 and 5 minimum wages, and therefore did not lead to overcoming divisions within the working class. There is a question of method when we assess economic fluctuations: not everything can be explained by the economy, which leads us to consider other variables.
What are the consequences of what is happening in the world and, in particular, in the countries that have the greatest impact on the Brazilian situation, such as the influence of Donald Trump in the US, the election of Javier Milei in Argentina and the dizzying rise of the far right in Portugal? Such successes must have boosted the morale of Bolsonarism. What were the implications of the daily news about the massacre that Israel is carrying out in the Gaza Strip and Lula's denunciation of genocide?
This seems to have increased sympathy for the Palestinian cause among Lula supporters, but support for Zionism among Bolsonarists has also grown. We have also had the impact of the largest dengue epidemic in history, the arson attacks in the Cerrado and the Amazon, and the increase in feminicides. What was the national repercussion of the São Paulo Military Police operation in Baixada Santista? Or the escape of Comando Vermelho leaders from a maximum security federal penitentiary? What is the pro-Bolsonaro opposition’s capacity for initiative after the demonstration on Sunday, February 25th on Paulista Avenue? What will be the left’s response? Just as important as all of this, what has been the repercussion of the “deliveries” made by the Lula government, the Planalto’s big bet?
With the summer of 2024 over, the fate of the coalition government led by Lula remains uncertain. But the indeterminate formula that “anything can happen” is unreasonable. Although the government is at a crossroads, it is possible to make some calculations of probabilities. After the failure of the uprising of January 8 and the siege of the hard core of Bolsonarism, including high-ranking military officers, a new insurrectionary attempt would be unthinkable. The far right has decided to reposition itself to contest the elections in 2024 and 2026.
The electoral calendar sets the context. Broadly speaking, there are three major scenarios facing Brazil, but for now, a prognosis is still impossible. The government could reach 2026 with sufficient approval, as happened with Lula in 2006 and 2010, and be reelected. The government could reach 2026 as Dilma Rousseff did in 2014, and the outcome would be unpredictable.
Finally, the left could reach 2026 very worn out and with high rejection, as was the case when Fernando Haddad ran in 2018, and the far-right opposition could be the favorite in the elections. Of course, we must always remember the Forrest Gump factor: “shit happens"Shit happens. There is always chance, accidental, random. And two years is a long time. It is not uncommon for the analysis of trends and counter-trends in the evolution of the economic, social and political situation to be dazzled by the temptation of omnipotence and deceived by mental inertia.
However, tomorrow may not be a smooth continuation of yesterday. It is not possible to anticipate the changes in the global situation until 2026, the fluctuations in the economic situation, the twists and turns of ideological and cultural disputes, the transformations in the moods of classes and class fractions, the stratagems, the underhandedness, the scandals, the maneuvers, the twists and turns of parties and leaders, and to master all the variables. That said, it is most likely that the sequence of the electoral calendar will remain.
In this context, the first scenario is the possibility of Lula being reelected. The second is the possibility of an electoral victory for Bolsonarism. The third is the most disconcerting, because it is unpredictable. What if either Bolsonaro or Lula, or neither of them, is able to run? If, eventually and unfortunately, Lula is unable to run, the most likely scenario would be Haddad's candidacy. And it is no secret that his popularity is, qualitatively, lower than Lula's.
The Lula government's plan is to take advantage of the international context of economic recovery after the impact of the pandemic, with the hope that it will continue, driven once again by China and now also by India. The government aims to maintain a pact with the bourgeois faction that supported it in the 2022 second round against Bolsonaro and joined the ministries, and seeks governability in Congress with the Centrão to ensure continued growth and the implementation of reforms.
In the first year of the mandate, the transition PEC allowed growth of close to 3% and an increase in labor income of 12%, guaranteed the expansion of the Bolsa-Família program – which in 13 of the 27 states benefits more people than there are workers with formal employment contracts – the recovery of the minimum wage, the restructuring of IBAMA and FUNAI, the new Pé de Meia program for high school students, the recovery of the National Vaccination Plan, the support of public banks for the Desenrola project, which benefits indebted families, the expansion of access to credit with the fall in interest rates, the expansion of another 100 units of the Federal Institutes, in addition to other initiatives that benefit the masses.
The government seeks growth while maintaining inflation control within the target, insisting on a gradual fiscal adjustment, betting on the increase of foreign and domestic private investment through the fiscal framework, which replaced the Spending Cap. In short, it is a bet on a “weak” reformism, weaker than between 2003 and 2010, or almost no reforms, but with the guarantee of preserving democracy and the Broad Front against the extreme right. However, in Brazil, even small reforms change the lives of millions.
The strategy essentially repeats the project that was being constructed after the 2002 electoral victory, and which allowed the electoral victories of 2006, 2010, 2014 and, by a small margin, of 2022. The premises that support it rest on three calculations. The first is a bet that the danger of a new conspiracy, like the one that resulted in the institutional coup that overthrew the Dilma Rousseff government, has been ruled out.
The second is the assessment that the electoral defeat of the far right and the ineligibility of Jair Bolsonaro make the hypothesis of a Bolsonaro heir's victory in 2026 very unlikely, if not impossible. The third is the prediction that the bourgeois division over the need to preserve the democratic-electoral regime is irreversible and that, in a second round in 2026, the capitalist faction expressed through Geraldo Alckmin and Simone Tebet will once again defend Lula, because it is not willing to run the risk of a second far-right presidency.
The three calculations have more than a grain of truth, but they seriously disregard the terrible risks posed, and forget the lessons of the 2016 coup against Dilma Rousseff. These lessons refer to five errors: (a) the first is the underestimation of the neo-fascist current, the most catastrophic error of the last seven years: its audacity, its social and cultural implantation, its willingness to fight head-on, its confidence in Bolsonaro's political leadership, and finally, the resilience of the social support of the extreme right, which reveals that the dispute is not limited to the perception of improvements in living conditions, since it also has at its root a fierce political-ideological and even cultural struggle of a reactionary worldview.
(b) The second – is the fantasy that it is possible to maintain, indefinitely, a “cold” governability and the idealization of the Broad Front, believing that the bourgeois leaders incorporated into the ministries will maintain their loyalty, forgetting the role of Michel Temer and exaggerating the confidence in the stability of the government that rests on the agreements with the Centrão in the National Congress, and also forgetting the danger of unacceptable blackmail.
(c) the third is the personal underestimation of Bolsonaro as opposition leader and pre-candidate, even in the condition of being ineligible, since, if necessary, they can replace him with someone else – Tarcísio, Michelle, or even another “character” – since the ability to transfer votes remains possible.
(d) The fourth is the undervaluing of the emergence of popular demands, of black people, women, LGBTs, environmentalists and culture, a mistake that was fatal for Peronism in Argentina, since confidence in the continuity of economic growth, a condition for “turbocharging” progressive reforms, could be frustrated, since the fiscal framework limits the role of public investments and the international scenario of demand for commodities could change.
(e) the fifth is to ignore the election of Donald Trump in the USA, which will generate a catalytic effect worldwide and also in Brazil, as well as possible victories for the extreme right in the next European elections, in addition to an intensification of conflicts in the international system with China.
Finally, when we think about the future, we are faced with the problem of the role of individuals in history. The three scenarios outlined – Lula’s favoritism, a closely contested election, or the favoritism of the far-right opposition depend on so many factors that it is not possible to calculate probabilities in advance. A Marxist analysis cannot lose sight of proportion.
The leaders represent social forces. But it would be an unforgivable superficiality to diminish Bolsonaro's protagonism: his presence made a difference. Would the far right have transformed into a political, social and cultural movement with mass influence after 2016 even without Bolsonaro? This is a counterfactual, but the most likely hypothesis is that it did. Neofascism is an international movement.
The simultaneous strength of Donald Trump in the US, Marine Le Pen in France, Giorgia Meloni in Italy, Santiago Abascal in Spain and now André Ventura in Portugal and Javier Milei in Argentina cannot be explained as a coincidence. Objective conditions have driven a fraction of the ruling class to embrace a strategy of frontal clash. But the concrete form that neofascism took depended largely on the charisma of Jair Bolsonaro.
Jair Bolsonaro is crude, rude and untimely, but he is not an idiot. An imbecile cannot be elected president in a complex country like Brazil. Jair Bolsonaro does not have much education or repertoire, but he is smart, cunning, cunning and a scoundrel. No idiot would have achieved the leadership position that he still enjoys today, after so many accusations, after his disregard for the risks to the lives of millions, his personal appropriation of presidential jewels, a military coup conspiracy, etc.
The key to explaining his role is his disconcerting charisma, which drives passionate identification. He combined the representation of the interests of the bourgeois fraction of agribusiness, deniers of global warming, with the resentment of the military and the police, the resentment of the middle classes with the popular distrust manipulated by neo-Pentecostal church-businesses, the nostalgic reactionism of the military dictatorship with machismo, racism and homophobia.
He did not need the wild hair and “anti-caste” rhetoric of anarcho-capitalist Javier Milei, nor the xenophobic national-imperialism of Donald Trump, nor the Islamophobic fury of Le Pen. But if he is convicted and imprisoned, his authority will be diminished.
* Valerio Arcary is a retired professor of history at the IFSP. Author, among other books, of No one said it would be Easy (boitempo). [https://amzn.to/3OWSRAc]
Reference
Valerio Arcary. The Bolsonarism Trap and the Limits of Lulism. Editorial Plant, 334pp. [https://abrir.link/qnuNe]
Notes
[I]https://www.cartacapital.com.br/politica/governo-lula-pela-primeira-vez-atlas-capta-desaprovacao-superando-a-aprovacao/
[ii] On a scale of 1 to 5, where 1 is a Bolsonarist and 5 are PT members, 25% declare themselves to be extreme Bolsonarists, in position 1, and there are 7% who see themselves as more moderate Bolsonarists, in position 2. The rate of Brazilians who are extremely PT members, which are placed in position 5 on the scale, was 32% at the end of 2022, fluctuated to 30% in March of this year, to 29% in June and now remains at 29%. Moderate PT members, in position 4, were 9% in December 2022, 10% in both March and June of this year, and now they are 11%.
https://datafolha.folha.uol.com.br/opiniao-e-sociedade/2023/09/identificacao-com-bolsonarismo-se-mantem-apos-fim-de-seu-governo.shtml Consultation on 07/03/2024.
[iii] The rate of extreme Bolsonaristas is above the average among Brazilians with a family income of 5 to 10 salaries (33%), in the South region (33%), in the North and Central-West regions as a whole (34%) and in the evangelical segment ( 38%). Idem.
[iv] The most extreme PT members, in turn, have above-average representation in the range of 45 to 59 years old (39%), among Brazilians who studied up to elementary school (44%), among the poorest (37%), in Northeast (44%) and among Catholics (37%). Idem.
[v] The trade balance recorded in 2023 was the highest in the entire historical series, totaling US$ 98,8 billion, an increase of 60% compared to the previous year. Regarding the balance of payments, considering the three months ending in November, the deficit in current transactions was US$ 2,7 billion, compared to US$ 14,4 billion in the same period of the previous year.
the earth is round there is thanks to our readers and supporters.
Help us keep this idea going.
CONTRIBUTE
