By GILBERTO MARINGONI*

We need to recover the rebelliousness of the left. If someone arrived from Mars and were to watch a TV debate, it would be difficult to say who would be the left-wing or opposition candidate.

1.

The 2024 campaign for mayor of São Paulo represented an electoral and political defeat for the left. The PSOL led a confusing campaign, lacking clear guidelines, childish and depoliticized. It sought at all times to avoid addressing some of the main problems in the city of São Paulo, such as the privatization of energy and real estate speculation, possibly to avoid creating friction with the PT, its ally. The candidate made the dubious decision to normalize fascism by accepting an interview with Pablo Marçal, a right-wing extremist who did not make it to the second round.

According to the TRE, the left-wing candidacy had a budget of almost R$84 million, something unprecedented in any progressive municipal candidacy in our country. The amount is 12 times greater than the expenditure in 2020, when the candidate collected a total of R$7 million. He also paid the price for having uncritically subordinated himself to Lulaism and to a federal government that has proven to be disappointing, given the expectations generated throughout 2022.

Compared to four years ago, the numbers are disappointing. In the dispute with Bruno Covas (PSDB), the percentages were 59,38% to 40,62% of valid votes. Today, the numbers are 59,35% to 40,65%.

The PSOL is now facing an existential dilemma. We may be losing the initial momentum that made the party possible. We left the PT 20 years ago, when the Lula I government approved the Social Security reform in the National Congress. In that process, Luciana Genro, Babá and João Fontes, who held positions in the Chamber of Deputies, and Heloísa Helena, a senator, were expelled from the party for refusing to support a measure made in conjunction with the financial market. Now the majority of the PSOL is moving towards undoing that rebellious and nonconformist impulse.

We can make several types of assessments of the municipal elections. It can be general, evaluating the initial framework of the dispute, the choices made, the results along the way and where we have reached, keeping in mind the general panorama of the Lula government having narrowly defeated the far right in 2022. Despite this, from the beginning the government decided not to confront the reactionary forces head-on. We can also make individual assessments, city by city, candidate by candidate. I propose here to take the first path, focusing on the dispute in São Paulo, as it is the largest and most important city in the country.

2.

I wrote above that the government is not clearly confronting the far right. This does not mean that the federal government does not have the courage, boldness or detachment to do so. This is not a moral judgment. The real reason is that the economic projects of Lula and Jair Bolsonaro do not differ substantially in economic terms, despite there being clear political distinctions between the two. That is why, after obtaining the repeal of the draconian spending cap, approved by Michel Temer's government, Lula rushed to produce a new fiscal rule, the framework.

Measures approved after the 2016 coup were not reversed, as promised during the campaign. These include the labor reform, the privatization of Eletrobrás and the Landulpho Alves refinery, among others. In March 2022, the PT even held a seminar to repeal the labor reform, which was attended by the then Vice President of Spain and Minister of Labor and Social Economy, Yolanda Díaz.

The agenda included an exchange of experiences to learn how the country had undone a neoliberal measure sanctioned years earlier by the right-wing PP administration. Furthermore, Lula repeated throughout that year his main objective, if elected: “To put the poor in the budget and the rich in the income tax”. These words spread throughout Brazil. None of this was even discussed in the government. The slogan is in the sights of the Finance Minister, who by cutting social spending, will end up removing the poor from the budget.

Lula's 2022 campaign was run by marketing experts and the president returned to Planalto without explaining a clear project. The new government apparently adapted to the existing situation. The usual claim was that there was no correlation of forces and that fascism was on the other side.

In the first few months of the administration, the economic team presented the mechanism that would become the government's only real project, a restrictive fiscal framework, based on the false argument that we were in the midst of a serious fiscal crisis, because our debt/GDP ratio was around 78%, considered very high. Therefore, we would need to cut spending, otherwise the economy would collapse and the situation would become worse for everyone. This is a false argument from financial capital. Japan has a debt/GDP ratio of 225%, the United States 124%, France 115%, Italy 130%, and so on. The debt/GDP ratio means absolutely nothing in macroeconomic terms. This is a pretext for a general tightening of public accounts and for allocating foreign currency to financial capital.

The financial accounts, absorbed by the Ministry of Finance, do not take into account that our largest deficit is nominal, which amounts to R$1,11 trillion. We have a primary deficit of R$225 billion, or 2,26% of GDP, which Haddad wants to eliminate. When this is added to the deficit in the interest account, we have that monstrous nominal deficit. If the government turns to cutting budgets, reducing public services, investing against constitutional minimums in health and education, unemployment insurance, unemployment insurance, BPC, etc., this could mean implementing, with different degrees, the same project that has been in effect for decades and that was implemented by the governments of Michel Temer and Jair Bolsonaro.

Let us repeat: this does not mean that the Lula government is the same as the governments of Michel Temer and Jair Bolsonaro. It means that the diagnosis of the existence of a fiscal deficit that increases the debt/GDP ratio is exactly the same in all three governments. If the diagnosis, solutions and public policy approaches are very similar to those of the right, there is no real confrontation of projects between the parties that represent these forces.

The PT state governments are glaring examples of the lack of fundamental differences at play. The PT has governed Bahia since 2007, and its police forces are the ones that kill the most in the country, and successive governments have privatized public assets. The same is true in Piauí, where the PT governor has just sold AGESPISA (Águas e Saneamento do Piauí SA), a company equivalent to Sabesp, sold by the Bolsonarist Tarcísio de Freitas. In fact, if we have privatized schools in São Paulo through public-private partnerships, we must take into account that the real partnership is between the Tarcísio and Lula governments, since the financing of these operations is provided by the BNDES. What does all this mean? That there is no substantial difference in the country's projects among the major parties.

3.

The 2024 election campaign showed, from north to south, with very few exceptions, the absence of confrontation or clash between candidates from different parties. There is no real polarization because there is no polarization of projects or conceptions of the country. Thus, the campaign becomes an exhibition of styles, methods and procedures. The differences are in the accusations against one person who practices domestic violence, another who vandalizes public property, yet another who participates in the daycare mafia, and so on. Of course, this is important information and voters have the right to know it, but this cannot be the focus of the campaigns.

Thus, if there is no differentiation, the dispute is not real and there is no politics, whose essence is the confrontation and dispute of spaces and power projects. If there is no confrontation, what there is is competition, in which the winner is the one who shows himself to be the best, the most friendly, the cutest, with the best slogans, the best brands, in short, the one who has the best marketing.

So there is no problem in hiring João Dória's marketing expert here in São Paulo, who directed a campaign with a heart copied from Maluf, with kittens and cuteness, and created the candidate-product, in different flavors for different audiences. And the aesthetics of each candidate increasingly resembles that of the competitor, all created in the labyrinths of artificial intelligence. And they all infantilize their presentations.

With so much love overflowing in videos and on social media, any and all confrontation is classified as hate. This is nonsense. There has to be confrontation, otherwise there is no politics. If there is no politics, if it is not clear to supporters of each side what the objective of the campaign is, there will be disengagement of party activists and voters themselves.

Thus, the campaign avoids confrontation not for moral reasons, but for design reasons. Despite spending millions, activist engagement is low. Large campaigns, run by the richest coalitions, are designed to not engage anyone, because engaged activists are often seen as a nuisance. Engaged activists will intervene and question the direction of the campaign. Engagement democratizes decisions, but is seen as a hindrance.

The PSOL candidate's campaign in 2020 was a day of confrontation. There were different conceptions of the city. In 2024, the situation changed, especially due to the alliance with the PT. How can there be confrontation now, if the candidate could not talk about the main violence committed against the city, the revision of the Master Plan? The rules and regulations for the construction of buildings and land occupation changed for the worse, based on a city hall project.

The changes exacerbated real estate speculation and were approved by the City Council in early 2024. In the final vote, five of the eight councilors from the PT, PSOL's main ally, voted in favor of Mayor Ricardo Nunes' proposal, for reasons that are still unknown. The PSOL bench was the only one that voted against it. The dismantling of entire neighborhoods increases soil impermeability, saturates water systems, and encroachs on water sources. A new rainy season will cause enormous damage. With the majority of the PT supporting the proposals of a far-right administration, it becomes difficult for the PSOL candidate to open fire against laws supported by an allied group.

There is a second example of the absence of real confrontation: São Paulo, like other Brazilian cities, is suffering from the problems caused by the privatization of energy services in the 1990s. The result involves extremely high prices and extremely precarious services, including constant blackouts in the city.

In addition to localized blackouts, there have been three major ones over the past year. The first was in September 2023, the second in March 2024, and the third now in September, coincidentally, one year after the first. It rains, the city goes dark. What's the problem? It's that Enel, a private company that serves the city, has laid off hundreds of technicians and reduced maintenance and network supervision teams to increase its profits and send them to Italy, the company's home country. The thing is, the concession is federal. The only one who can take action is the federal government.

However, on two occasions, in meetings held in Italy with Enel executives, both Lula and his Minister of Mines and Energy, Alexandre Silveira, assured that the company would have its concession automatically renewed for another 30 years. How could the PSOL candidate demand the cancellation of the concession in this situation? It is true that on the eve of the election, he completely changed course and, in a desperate move, stated that if elected he would renationalize the concessionaire, although a mayor does not have the power to do so.

Since this line of attack is impossible for a candidate sponsored by Lula, the candidate pulled another argument out of his hat to attack the mayor. “The problem is that trees are not pruned.” It is true that tree pruning is irregular in the capital. But one cannot invent arguments. Pruning trees intertwined with high-tension cables is a job for electrical specialists, professionals that the city government does not have. The responsibility for pruning lies with the concessionaire company. In his eagerness to find someone clearly to blame, the PSOL candidate lessened the responsibility of the multinational and the privatization process. Thus, once again, the campaign was depoliticized, avoiding a confrontation at its real point.

4.

If there is no real confrontation with Ricardo Nunes, a defender of privatization and the Master Plan, there is no real confrontation with Pablo Marçal either. The campaign did not set out to really confront anyone, but to be cute and friendly. Thus, over the last few months, the PSOL candidate has been cuddling kittens, claiming to be the same height as Taylor Swift, etc. It is no wonder that the big scene in the first round of debates was Datena throwing a chair at Pablo Marçal.

On other occasions, the PSOL candidate approached conservative theses, seeking to expand a hypothetical electorate to be contested. Last February, in an interview with the radio Band News, when confronted with President Lula's criticism of Israel's genocidal policies, he avoided the subject: “I am not a candidate for mayor of Tel Aviv. I am a candidate for mayor of São Paulo.” In September, TV Globo, classified the Venezuelan government as “a dictatorial regime”. The following month, UOL, the parliamentarian stated that the left needs to defend entrepreneurship as one of the solutions for the population on the outskirts.

The intervention does not seem to take into account FGV/IBE survey, released in July, attesting that 67,7% of self-employed workers want to have a formal employment contract and labor rights. Symptomatically, in the same electoral process, his party colleague, Rick Azevedo, was elected city councilor in Rio de Janeiro, with the most traditional labor demand, the reduction of working hours, through the campaign against the 6 x 1 work, which spread throughout the country.

In this way, the PSOL candidate can, without any problems, give an interview to Pablo Marçal, despite the latter having accused him of being a drug user and of having presented a false report on the matter. However, the most dramatic and sad example of the lack of differentiation between programs occurred in the debate on Globo network, in which Ricardo Nunes cornered the PSOL candidate, asking why he had voted against the fiscal framework last year in Congress.

It's unbelievable! The framework is a neoliberal measure by the Lula government, supported by the Brazilian right. The PSOL candidate wanted to support it in the plenary session of the Chamber of Deputies, but the bench decided against it. The candidate was unable to explain himself about a measure – which Ricardo Nunes called good for the country – that goes against any left-wing ideology. Once again, there was no confrontation.

5.

In both São Paulo and Porto Alegre, the left-wing campaign’s infantilization went even further. New characters were created. In the South, there was Maria, because Maria do Rosário is a Catholic name, which could hinder hypothetical debates with evangelicals. In São Paulo, the aim was to strip the candidate of any memories of his past as a leader of a social movement. In his place, a kind of noble savage appeared, in a mystifying desire to seek the center.

To repeat: in this scenario, there is no opposition and there are no real proposals in dispute. There are pieces or marketing ploys. It is “living periphery”, it is “SUS of education” and various slogans and clever touches. They are not proposals. This reminds me of the great journalist Aloysio Biondi (1935-2000), with whom I worked, who used to say: “I hate debates with proposals! They are so boring”. He was referring to these fake proposals, spread by clever marketers. Debates need to bring together concepts of the world, of life, of policies and not well-packaged advertising ploys.

There is another striking aspect of these elections. It is the extremely high abstention rate. The average rate in the second round was 30%, nationwide. In Porto Alegre, 34,83% of the electorate did not vote in the second round. This is a percentage in a country where voting is not mandatory. In a city devastated by an environmental catastrophe, one third of voters saw no reason to choose anyone, a sign not only of disenchantment, but of the dysfunctionality of institutional politics. Everyone must fend for themselves, because no one will solve anything. Democracy, then, becomes ornamental. This is very serious.

Government officials and illusionists on duty downplay the problem. “GDP is growing, employment is increasing and income is expanding.” Yes, just like in the first quarter of 2013. Two months later, Brazil would erupt in noisy protests. To this day, we have not formulated convincing explanations for those events. “Tout va très bien, madame la marquise,” said the French song, everything was going very well until the popular eruption. Grants for this and that and precarious jobs alleviate, but do not solve, age-old problems, no matter how much the sly words of charismatic leaders say otherwise, amidst promises of fiscal adjustments that will save everyone. Objective indicators possibly do not capture a hidden malaise or subjective frustrations that were waiting for a lit match to explode.

What does such disinterest mean and what can lead to? What solution can the absentees hope for, other than some saving power above politics, above the crushing daily grind? Why, at the same time, are a growing number of people around the world willing to support authoritarian or magical solutions? Why, in the face of despair at life that does not change, do bets become the new pandemic that can free everyone from the ordeal of underemployment, lack of prospects, climate destruction, and stray bullets? Let's bet on anything, because nothing is credible anymore.

It is crucial to reflect on this issue. We may be facing a new June 2013, silent and dormant, but dangerously grand.

Let us add to this analysis the astonishing interview given by Minister Fernando Haddad to journalist Monica Bérgamo one week before the elections. There, the Finance Minister openly, frankly and without any retouching declares his capitulation to the market's creed. The minister does not hide what other news in the newspapers of the day (15.10.2024) had already predicted: in November a package of deep budget cuts would be made for 2025.

The interview includes prosaic excerpts, such as this: “Faria Lima is rightly concerned about the dynamics of spending from now on. And it is legitimate to take this seriously.” Is it legitimate for a government elected by 60,3 million Brazilians hoping for change, with a difference of only 1,8% of the votes compared to the fascist one, to make a secretive turn and state that the powers at the top of society are legitimate?

His words can be summarized as follows: tough measures will come, as is the national tradition, after the elections. The minister should pay attention to the fact that the Lula government and his party suffered an unforgettable beating in the municipal elections, a fact that created a climate of fear in the Workers' Party and its allies. The frustration of the coming months could have unpredictable consequences.

Fernando Haddad has been the target of harsh criticism from the “market” because the economy is overheating than desired, with growth in employment, income and GDP, which would fuel inflation. The reason is that mandatory spending, especially that established in the Constitution, has not been cut. Let us follow his words: “The market is understanding that the sum of the parts – the sum of the minimum wage, health, education, BPC – is greater than the whole. In other words, there will come a time when this 2,5% limit [of growth in spending in relation to revenue] will not be respected. Even if revenue responds, the fiscal framework will not work if spending is not limited.” Although he has been ambivalent, the Finance Minister was clear in pointing out the targets of his cuts: the portion of the budget allocated to the poor.

6.

The Lula government seems to have surrendered across the board: it capitulates without a fight to the market, to the military, to the centrists and to the Globe. And there are still those who classify this as a government of class conciliation. Conciliation occurs when two or more parties seek understandings in view of common objectives. In general, each side gives in to secondary interests, without giving up basic principles, towards a position of balance. Capitulation, on the other hand, occurs when a certain force discards principles to adapt to a dominant situation. Brazil does not seem to have a government of conciliation, something within the acceptable limits. We are dangerously moving towards a situation of adaptation.

Can multi-class alliances represent gains for society in facing dilemmas and obstacles to development? History has shown countless times that it is possible, as long as it is clear what the objectives of the coalition are, which sectors are allied and who the struggle is against.

The government of Salvador Allende (1971-1973) in Chile brought together workers, the petite and middle bourgeoisie and sectors of the big bourgeoisie in an alliance that was possible amid the intensification of the Cold War. The governments of European social democracy – between the second post-war period and the end of the 1970s – made possible an articulation between sectors of the bourgeoisie and workers, with notable social gains for the latter.

Social democracy flourished when the European ruling classes were cornered by the disaster of the 1929 crisis, the collapse of their economies, the advance of the trade union movement and the affirmation of the Soviet Union on the international scene. Allende tried to establish himself in a phase of international erosion of the United States, on shaky domestic ground.

Today we have an unusual situation, in which dissent on the left is treated as if it were a kind of fifth column in the face of a government that considers itself defeated before beginning the fight. The pretext is the same as always. “You criticize, but you don’t see that on the other side is fascism.” It is the barrier to blocking criticism. Of course, on the other side is fascism. But the best way to strengthen it is inaction, sluggishness and the spread of cuteness about childish animals. We have something perverse here. Fascism becomes functional for lethargy; it becomes a scarecrow to avoid opposition and criticism.

The electoral assessment of Minister Paulo Pimenta, in Globe News, the day after the results were announced, was an exercise in mental gymnastics. What does it say? Something surreal: the parties that supported Lula's government, such as the PSD, MDB, União Brasil and MDB, won most of the city halls. If we apply this reasoning to São Paulo, we can turn a defeat into a victory, because Ricardo Nunes is from the MDB, which supports Lula's government, and therefore Lula won in São Paulo, against Lula's candidate. Let's do somersaults and somersaults! There is no opposition, there is no confrontation and there is nothing.

Debating defeats is very difficult, especially for party leaders who led the process. What do you do from there? There are at least two options. The first is a deep public self-criticism, explaining and trying to collectively understand what happened. It has nothing to do with expiating guilt, but rather with turning the setback into a lesson for future action. The second possibility is to resign. Neither of the two possibilities is very comfortable.

PSOL has been participating in elections since 2006. That’s almost 20 years. Throughout that time, we have grown continuously, slowly, but we have grown. This is the first dispute in which the party has shrunk. The numbers are dramatic. As reported by the website G1: “In 2012, the PSOL elected a mayor. In 2016, there were two. In 2020, the number rose to five mayors, including a capital: Edmilson Rodrigues, in Belém. This year, he tried to be reelected, but did not make it to the second round" In other words, we went from five city councils to zero. From the 90 council members elected four years ago, we now have 80. What happened? Has the PSOL stopped being a transformative novelty? Has it lost its momentum, its enthusiasm? Is this a trend or a setback that will be reversed in the next elections?

There is a third option for the leadership: to pretend not to understand, to produce a boastful and superficial assessment and to move on. It is the worst of the alternatives, but this seems to have been the path chosen by the party's candidate in São Paulo. In an interview with journalist Monica Bérgamo, from Folha de S. Paul On November 4, a week after the election, he stated: “Sectors of the PT, a very small minority, claim that the left was defeated because it did not give in enough in its positions. (…) They believe that the left has to disguise itself as the center because that would be the only way to avoid the chaos of the extreme right. They are wrong. They are wrong. (…). We need to go into the fight.”

It's incredible. The candidate speaks as if a few days earlier he had not ended a campaign in which there were many things, except confrontation, clarity of political definitions or a left-wing journey, as highlighted throughout this text. A double message generally leads the sender to expose his incoherence, which is not usually a positive thing. And he resorts to prevarication to avoid a careful examination of the defeat.

We must examine the defeats and also the victories we have had, when we have captured a fair dissatisfaction and shaped the reaction to it into political action. This is the case of the Rape Bill, formulated by Congressman Sóstenes Cavalcanti (PL-RJ), one of the luminaries of the extreme right in Congress. Bill (PL) 1904/2024 proposed changes to the Brazilian Penal Code, prohibiting abortion even in legal cases, such as rape or malformation. Everything indicated that it would be approved, last June. Popular pressure made the right back down on a sensitive issue. When the women's movement took to the streets from North to South, the reaction retreated. This is how politics is done. It is when people vote with their feet, as Lenin wrote. The same can be said of the popular demonstrations against the 6 x 1 journey.

We need to recover the rebelliousness of the left. If someone arrived from Mars, in the middle of the campaign, and were to watch a TV debate, it would be difficult to say who would be the leftist or opposition candidate. In fact, there was no opposition there. There were two situations, one federal and one municipal, all defending the left. establishment, or the system. No one was against the order, no one really wanted to change anything, no one opposed anything. That's why the campaign becomes childish. The problem is that the PSOL's action needs to be to voice discontent and rebellion.

I would like to conclude by expressing my concern about the future of the PSOL. The initial impulse that the party generated, to be an opposition to the left, or an uncomfortable ally of the government, was very healthy. But we are becoming a PT annex, as they say. This does not help the PSOL and it does not help Brazil, which needs an active, vigilant and critical left. We need to recover the PSOL, a party that will confront and show that there are clear and distinct areas of interest in society. Our Foundation has a decisive role to play in bringing about this turnaround. Otherwise, we will soon be drowning in fluff.^[1]

*Gilberto Maringoni is a journalist, professor of International Relations at the Federal University of ABC (UFABC) and affiliated with PSol.

Note

[1] At the suggestion of my friend João Machado, I wrote this adaptation of my intervention in the debate “Balance and perspectives of the left after the elections”, held on November 3rd by the Lauro Campos-Marielle Franc Foundation. The video can be seen here. Luciana Genro, Vladimir Safatle and I participated

It is worth noting that the PSOL national leadership has not yet carried out a comprehensive assessment of the disputes.

the earth is round there is thanks to our readers and supporters.
Help us keep this idea going.
CONTRIBUTE