By IGOR GRABOIS & LEONARDO SACRAMENTO*

How to combat fascism with a neoliberal economic policy?

The result of the municipal elections for the left was a disaster that had been predicted months in advance. Today, analysts and political actors are searching for the causes and those responsible for the electoral defeat. Within the multiplicity of opinions, there is a common thread in the analyses. For the most part, these analyses ignore, or only touch on, the political economy and the new patterns of capital accumulation that produce changes in sociability and, consequently, in electoral behavior.

The recent municipal elections are yet another nail in the coffin of the post-dictatorship institutional order. Now, the social democracy represented by the PT and PSOL is exhausted. This exhaustion reflects the loss of importance of the social base of this political movement, the salaried workers in the formal sector. The disarticulation of the formal labor market produces its effects on political representation.

The exhaustion is institutional. If in the New Republic the political pact consisted of the alternation between two parties, one social democratic and the other neoliberal, with the MDB as an instrument of control over an amorphous allied base represented in the Centrão, the 2016 Coup, trying to destroy the PT, destroyed the neoliberal party and, with part of the coup, elevated the supporting party to lead the country.

Michel Temer, with his “Bridge to the Future,” captured the upper-class rentier class, which demanded the end of historical social pacts, such as the CLT and the Constitution itself, especially social rights. As an important addition, the end of Brazilian public assets, which should be privatized to the rentiers. Income concentration, always one of the highest on the planet, has increased, and since capital is finite, inequality has increased along with it. If the rich are getting richer in a context of low growth, it is because they are taking from the poorest. And no less important, they are consuming the accumulated social capital, sterilizing it through hoarding.

This situation left a space in national politics, which was occupied by the extreme right, the main popular political force of the 2016 coup. Just as happened in 1964, neoliberalism married fascism, causing the extreme right to advance in the main cities in each election, as occurred in the northeast in 2024.

Far from understanding the structural issues of the electoral performance of the social democratic camp, the political leaderships seem to see only what is circumstantial and, therefore, present exclusively circumstantial diagnoses and proposals for solutions.

The published measurements of how many mayors each party elected, without differentiating the electoral and economic weight of each municipality, contributes to making the panorama seem amorphous. It can lead to an overestimation or underestimation of the weight of each ideological field, be it left, right or center. Ideological fields analyzed disconnected from social reality, of course.

On the left, “identitarianism” is chosen as the villain of the thinness of the polls. The so-called identity-based agendas were used as legitimization, in the absence of government policies for social and economic development. Given the impossibility of the so-called identity-based agendas to mobilize by themselves, without corresponding concrete improvements in living conditions, adherence to these agendas is elected as responsible for the distancing of the parties from the population in general. As if the anti-racist struggles, for sexual and reproductive rights and for LGBT rights were repudiated by the electorate.

In a broader sense, on the left, but still common sense, the culprit would be the “poor right-winger”. This character, who emerged on the internet during the rise of Bolsonarism, was elevated to the sociological category by a certain academy. The explanation given by Brazilian sociologist Tim Maia is that Max Weber is nothing, and if he didn’t talk about the “poor person who votes for the right”, he thought so.

The figure of the “right-wing poor” reinforces the thesis of an innate conservatism of the Brazilian people. Therefore, the left should modulate its discourse to the right. There was even a PT candidate for mayor who repudiated “gender ideology.”

Another explanation is more ethereal, more generic. The problem of the lack of votes would be “communication”, as the left does not have control over social media, a field in which the extreme right is swimming. Communication is certainly bad. It is even worse when there is nothing to communicate.

According to the government's political line, the only work available is fiscal responsibility, to the delight of big financial capital and for that segment that economist André Lara Rezende classified as asset lumpen, the fauna of funds and operators located on Avenida Faria Lima and surrounding areas.

It is doubtful that the strategy of adopting a conservative discourse and giving everything the market demands will yield electoral results in the future. Some analysts have highlighted the importance of mandatory parliamentary amendments. The importance of these amendments is certainly significant. But is it valid for cities like São Paulo or Rio?

By reducing the electoral phenomenon to communication and marketing strategy, we forget, intentionally or not, that elections are political phenomena. This depoliticization is accompanied by the fact that politics is reduced to elections. An electoral defeat is, above all, a political defeat.

And, hard to admit, there is a rejection of PT candidates and the left in general. Without this rejection, the people of Porto Alegre would not have reelected the mayor of the flood and the people of São Paulo would not have re-elected a corrupt mayor, responsible for a disastrous administration and whose name, before the election period, you had to do a Google search to find out.

It is important to remember that in São Paulo Lula and Haddad won the elections and in Porto Alegre the current governor almost lost his seat in the second round to the PT candidate. Rejection persists, even after a victory in the presidential election against all odds. Understanding the reasons for this rejection by the left in the electoral plan is fundamental for the political dispute from now on.

Believing that the left will regain electoral ground by adopting the right's slogans is, at the very least, a tautology. An error that has been repeated many times. And one of the reasons for this rejection is not the fact that the left does not follow the right's lead.

The Lula government is trapped in a difficult situation, aggravated by its economic policy choices. By failing to produce tangible results, beyond a mediocre GDP growth rate, the government is eroding its own social base. Impeachment may be avoided with this policy, but defeat in the 2026 general elections cannot be avoided.

The government's economic policy is imposed by the financial sphere of capital. An example was the Quaest survey published on October 02. The approval rating of the Lula government fell among its social base. The biggest drop was among the elderly and people who earn up to two minimum wages.

The drop among the elderly, from 59% to 49%, is easy to understand. Lula announced cuts to the Continuous Benefit Payment (BPC) for the year 2026, as he was reportedly alarmed by the increase in the benefit in recent years. The BPC has been used by people over 60 who can no longer retire, as well as by families whose adult children with disabilities are unable to find work.

But was the government satisfied? Of course not. Lula obtained approval in Congress of a Law that allows the INSS to cut retirement pensions summarily, without the right to defense.

The measures meet the “need” of a neoliberal economic policy led by Fernando Haddad, who promised Faria Lima a zero deficit, which has required measures to contain investments and social rights. They may even adopt a discourse of taxing the rich – which in practice has not happened so far, as profits and dividends remain exempt – but the data show that retirees understood the government’s message.

Workers who earn up to two minimum wages are also suspicious of the government – ​​disapproval rose from 26% to 32%. Although general economic data indicate some improvement, the employment created is terrible. In large cities, precarious workers work for more than 10 hours, not counting transportation. They earn little, although slightly more than before. What happened to the proposal for a new CLT? The repeal of the labor reform?

As a result of political conformism, the government adopted a naturalizing discourse of desperate entrepreneurship, removing the qualifier to create, as well as coaching and Luciano Huck, the idea of ​​positivity. Lula even stated that workers do not want the CLT. Rick Azevedo's election as city councilor in Rio de Janeiro indicates at least one contradiction in the government's discourse. He was elected defending a reform in the CLT and the end of the six-day work shift, that is, a reduction in the working day while maintaining the salary.

GDP can grow by 10%. On the other hand, employment… not employment, employment will always be bad, with no prospect of improvement. Neoliberalism is so violent that GDP growth, which used to be more positively received, no longer impacts people's expectations.

Even so, the epigones of the financial system are demanding more. Ministers Fernando Haddad and Simone Tebet did not even wait for the second round to announce the preparation of a package of spending cuts. Even this does not appease the rage of the so-called market. Any editorial in the mainstream press is enough for ministers to rush to swear their fiscal goodwill.

Fiscal goodwill consists of endorsing the new budgetary and political structure, with some weight for the right leaning on Arthur Lira. Parliamentary amendments have taken on part of the executive's role, making investments in municipalities, with some competitive function with the executive, with specific directions for mayors and councilors in works that city governments are unable to carry out due to debt and very low budgets.

But this applies to smaller municipalities. As already mentioned, the impact is much smaller in large cities. Using the amendments as an excuse hides a simple and important fact: the federal government does not make any public investments due to the “fiscal framework” with a “zero deficit” invented by Fernando Haddad.

Without social investments, there is no federal government involvement in the municipalities. What school, bridge, doctor, UPA, or affordable housing was built or contracted in your municipality in the last two years? The left has come to believe in a messianic way in Lula's charismatic leadership. His touch alone would be enough. Lula did not transfer votes. Here is a fact from this election.

In fact, the parliamentary amendments are part of a new political structure. But the economic policies of Lula and Fernando Haddad have destroyed left-wing candidacies throughout Brazil. Just look at the data from the capitals and the main cities in the northeast. The far right has entered what the press calls the PT’s “stronghold.”

If the economic debate, or rather, if the dispute over economic policy has already been resolved, with the victory of the financial sphere of capital, there is little left to differentiate left from right. The renunciation of so-called identity-based agendas completes this lack of differentiation.

Adopting the right-wing discourse is not a strategy. It is surrender. It is preparing the ground for the return of the far right to the federal executive branch. Only to the federal executive branch, mind you. Congress, most state governments and, now, important city governments are either dominated by the far right or led by figures who give in to the gravitational power of fascism.

What lies ahead is the exclusion of left-wing forces from the institutional life of the country. This objective is not hidden by the leaders of fascism in our country. The solution is to intensify the political struggle, which needless to say has economic and cultural dimensions. How can we combat fascism with a neoliberal economic policy?

Understanding the changes in the world of work and the pattern of accumulation in Brazilian capitalism is necessary, but not sufficient. It is necessary to attack the main enemy, which controls the public budget and the division of socially produced value: financial capital, and its allies in agribusiness, the media, religion and the state bureaucracy.

It is only possible to have a political strategy that mobilizes concrete social forces when one identifies who the enemies are and who the allies are. Victory or defeat, whether in elections or outside them, depends on this.

*Igor Grabois é researcher at the Mario Schenberg Institute.

*Leonardo Sacramento é basic education teacher and pedagogue at IFSP. Author, among other books, of Discourse on Whiteness: Notes on Racism and the Apocalypse of Liberalism (Mall). [https://amzn.to/3ClPH5p]

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