By JEAN MARC VON DER WEID*

Anyone who believed in a left-wing victory in the 2024 elections was living in a world of fairies and elves.

1.

To begin with, why the surprise, the depression, the revolt? Did anyone really expect a victory for the left? Whoever believed this was living in a world of fairies and elves. But from the reactions I've read in the messages on WhatsApp, there were quite a few self-deceived people.

Illusions lead to curious explanations for defeat.

For some, the left-wing candidates made a mistake in trying to win the vote of the center and diluting their political identity. The most radical of “political realism” point to a mistake in the choice of candidates from the outset. If the goal was to seek the vote of the center (of the “Centrão”?) it would be better to give up names marked as leftists. The discussion of alternative names to Guilherme Boulos (duly “marked” on the left) ranges from Tábata Amaral to Ricardo Nunes (yes, as incredible as it may seem).

Or Luciana Brizola in Porto Alegre (opposite the PSDB governor!). The logic of this position reveals a closer connection with reality and the perception that left-wing candidacies were doomed. It also reveals a very broad front strategy that includes the entire non-Bolsonaro right. Since this has been the logic behind the formation of the government's “support base” (the expression is almost ironic), this strategy is far from being just a deviation from an ultra-realist wing of the PT. It was applied, discreetly or not, in several clashes in the second round, in Goiânia and Curitiba, for example.

This strategy implies the renunciation of a left-wing identity, and I will discuss this later, but it has another problem. In order to have a (democratic?) front, the interlocutors of the center or the centrists would need to be willing to welcome the left-wing parties into their ranks, and this was clearly not in the plan. script. Even right-wing parties with seats in the ministry would not agree to go up on the stage together with PT or PSOL members.

Since these parties (so-called centrist parties, but which are part of the most radical right wing) court the electorate where Bolsonarism thrives, allying with the left would be electorally toxic. See the electoral tactics of Eduardo Paes in Rio de Janeiro or (in the second round) of Fuad Norman in Belo Horizonte. The former refused to accept a PT vice-presidential candidate and even hid Lula's support. The latter, having a small PT candidate in the first round, did not even make any gestures to this electorate in the second round. Even a PT candidate in Cuiabá (not coincidentally, the party's best-placed candidate outside of Fortaleza) forgot Lula and even the party itself in his campaign.

Other explanations for the defeat of the left and, let’s admit, of the government or of President Lula, are also debatable. In fact, some consider that there was a defeat of the left, but not of the government or the president. This is a tortuous logic. It is claimed that there was no defeat because the Centrão parties that won the election (PSD, MDB, União Brasil, Republicanos) are part of the government and “allies” of the president.

And Jair Bolsonaro was involved in several losing candidacies, in addition to the embarrassment in the São Paulo election, where the winner would be (and was, in fact) Tarcísio de Freitas. Lula stayed as absent from the fray as he could, so as not to upset his “allies” or to not be burned by an announced defeat. In fact, Jair Bolsonaro came out of these elections less favored, but Bolsonarism won the largest number of mayors and city councilors, not only in the PL.

But Lula and the government are leaving much weaker than when they entered, and not only because the PT made a meager “advance” in terms of numbers, only recovering (in the photochart!) a city hall in Fortaleza. On the “left,” the PSB won overwhelmingly in Recife, but lost some city halls in total. The PCdoB and PDT collapsed. The PSOL had a bittersweet result. Boulos got just over 40% of the São Paulo electorate, which is not a small amount, but he only repeated his performance in 2022, when he was his party’s solo candidate, with little TV time and few resources, and now he is ahead in the party with 10 times more resources. And the PSOL lost the reelection in Belém, with a percentage of less than 10%.

2.

There are several explanations for the failure. According to many media analysts, these were the elections that consecrated the power of parliamentary amendments, which would have boosted the re-election of the vast majority of incumbent mayors. If this were an absolute truth, the PT should have obtained a more significant vote, since it was the party with the largest number and values ​​in amendments, pix or others. It is worth analyzing how PT deputies and senators used their amendments and comparing them with the performance of the other parties.

We lack research that shows how these funds from the amendments were used and to whom they were directed. We have some data that indicate that they were mainly directed to mayors, but it is also said that many were given to NGOs linked to deputies and senators. The guidelines for the use of the funds appear in the media only in cases where a scandal breaks out: paving roads to benefit their excellencies' farms or "Fufuca's little arenas."

But these reported cases (but never investigated) cannot be the focus of the amendments, as this would not have a significant electoral effect. Electoral funds must have some benefit for the voter, even if small or symbolic, teaches the old fox of Rio de Janeiro populism, Chagas Freitas. At the time, this practice was known as the “water tap policy” and was aimed at the favelas of Rio de Janeiro. They were small water supply works at fountains that shortened the journey of women with water cans on their heads climbing the hill, as an old samba song goes (“water can on the head, there goes Maria. Climb the hill and don’t get tired…”, don’t you get tired?).

What is the equivalent of a water tap today? I have an example from my own experience promoting the development of rural communities in the semi-arid northeast. The success of the “One Million Cisterns” program, promoted by civil society since the turn of the century, led city governments to compete in the construction of these projects, which have had a huge impact on the lives of rural populations, especially women.

But the city governments adopted a perverse practice. The cisterns built by the NGO program were supplied by rainwater collected from the roofs of houses, while the city governments' cisterns were located far enough away from the houses that they could only be filled by the city governments' water tanker trucks, generating a captive vote. The mayors' cisterns were built of masonry and cost three times as much as those built by the popular program, not counting the embezzlement of funds by companies hired in collusion with the authorities. And, to top it all off, they were of poor quality and would quickly crack.

Lula's government, with its sights set on the 2004 municipal elections, tried to entrust the construction of cisterns to the city governments and was only stopped by a backlash from social movements in the countryside of the Northeast. Dilma Rousseff tried again, on a larger scale, with its sights set on the 2012 elections. In this new proposal, the cisterns would be made of plastic, produced in São Paulo and transported to the remote corners of the Northeast for distribution by the mayors on properties chosen by them. A huge protest organized by the Articulação do Semiárido (ASA) on the Petrolina-Juazeiro bridge led to the suspension of this indecent proposal.

And today? To what extent were the amendments applied? What is the real benefit for voters? If the reelection of the vast majority of incumbent mayors indicates approval of their administrations, we are faced with something that common sense suggests is not real. It is well known that the management of city halls in small municipalities is more than precarious, being little more than job opportunities that benefit the cronies of local authorities, certainly in insufficient numbers for electoral success.

The results of the 2022 election indicated that Lula had won over a loyal electorate in these corners of Brazil. Many have explained this fact by the impact of social programs in the poorest regions of the country, particularly in the north and northeast. In the 2016 municipal elections and the 2018 and 2022 presidential elections, the left has repeatedly threatened to suspend the Bolsa Família program if the right wins, and at least in this latest opportunity, the argument seems to have worked, in part. I say in part because, despite all of Jair Bolsonaro's statements mocking the people of the Northeast, the vote for the madman in the Northeast was higher than expected, including an increase in the second round.

The truth is that the confidence of the Lula front parties in voters’ memories of the social progress brought about by the popular governments between 2004 and 2016 was not confirmed by the electorate as a whole or even by the beneficiaries as a whole. The economic disaster of Dilma’s second term, the corruption allegations of Lava Jato and the loss of income and employment during the governments of Michel Temer and Jair Bolsonaro left voters from the “new class C” with a bitter taste in their mouths. The expansion of the beneficiaries and amounts of Bolsa Família during the government of the madman must have had a deleterious effect, despite the fact that he initially opposed these measures. For the needy, it does not matter who decided to approve the measures (Congress), but who distributed the money (the federal government). The PT discovered that it does not “own” social policies and that the right can use them electorally as much as it can.

In a country with so many social deficiencies like Brazil, “solutions” via welfare tend to predominate and they are subject to the perceptions of beneficiaries that vary with the situation and the flow of available resources.

3.

The Lula III government bet on the recovery of the economy to boost its popularity, but the current situation is not making things easier. There are fewer resources to distribute and this was felt by the electorate, despite the favorable figures for formal employment, the real increase in the minimum wage and income in general. It seems that the electorate did not feel these gains significantly and, in fact, they were of little importance due to the inflation of food, the increase in energy costs (cooking gas, electricity) and the precariousness of informal employment, which grew the most during the period. Progress was little and little felt by the electorate.

The government can explain all this by its inability to invest, hampered as it is by Congress, which sucks resources from the executive branch without remorse (50 billion reais compared to the 150 billion available for federal government investments) and by the Central Bank, which keeps interest rates sky-high, increasing the share of the treasury (700 billion) that goes to rentiers.

Everything becomes even more difficult when many of these resources have to be applied through federal entities, most of which are controlled by opponents. This is how the victory of the execrable mayor of Porto Alegre in the elections can be explained. The money invested by the federal government in the capital of Rio Grande do Sul was brokered by the city government and the mayor, as an attentive local observer assesses, took great care to be present with those affected by the catastrophe that he himself caused, while the left-wing opposition wrote tirades on WhatsApp. Once again, it matters less who provides the resources and more who distributes them.

In another line of explanation, we find those who attribute the defeat to the sinister evangelicals, the most notable group of the “poor right-wingers”. There is no doubt that this electorate is largely influenced by the pastors, the vast majority of whom are right-wing and pro-Bolsonaro. But what the PT and the left in general have not yet understood is that the power of the pastors is not primarily ideological, although the so-called “cultural issues” have their place in this support. In my view, the power of political control of the evangelical churches lies elsewhere.

The most important element in this influence of pastors is the role these churches play in people’s lives. An evangelical community has multiple functions, beyond prayers and “miracles”. They are a space where the faithful find collective solidarity, organized by pastors and workers. They help each other to solve countless (individual) everyday problems: finding a job, occasional shelter, emergency resources and even food.

These communities are also spaces for leisure, culture and education, in the best cases. Last but not least, communities play a role in providing collective moral support and create a sense of belonging that is as powerful as political parties, trade unions and football fans.

It can be said that evangelicals have taken the place of the Catholic Church, which has been abandoning its charitable and community-organizing character. In Catholic churches today, the faithful (who are increasingly rare) gather only to follow the rites at mass and only interact when everyone greets one another. Gone are the days when grassroots ecclesial communities organized millions, and even more so are the times of Catholic youth movements (JOC, worker youth movement, JAC, peasant youth movement, JUC, university youth movement and JEC, high school student youth movement) that were the basis for the creation of a left-wing party, Ação Popular.

The Pentecostal movement, strongly influenced by denominations of American origin, preaches an individualistic ideology where success is the result of each person's efforts and not of changes in social relations. And failure is the fault of the individual, punished by God for his or her sins.

The Pentecostal movement also preaches a reactionary, almost medieval worldview, standing out for its opposition to everything it considers a threat to the conventional family – abortion, gay marriage, secular education, etc. They are against women’s empowerment, reject environmentalism (ecological crises are seen as God’s will, to punish humanity for its sins) and are against all religious expressions other than their own, in particular, against beliefs of African origin. But of all these characteristics, the most important is the ideology of entrepreneurship, which is reflected in the view that each person should seek independent means of survival and in the view that the State interferes negatively in people’s lives.

There is no doubt that the Pentecostal movement is an important reactionary force and it is here to stay, being one of the most important bases for the right and extreme right. But we must remember that, until the progressive turn of the encyclical Populorum Progressio in the 1964s, the role of the Catholic Church from an electoral point of view was more or less the same as that of evangelicals today. Catholic anti-communism was an important force in national politics, including in its support for the XNUMX coup.

Just as the Catholic Church has been influenced by the changes of the last 50 years, evangelicalism is not invulnerable to political changes either, and we have examples (still in the minority) of progressive communities in these denominations. But it is not by stigmatizing evangelicals that we will be able to change their way of thinking and voting.

4.

Among the causes of the defeat, one factor that was conspicuously absent in these elections remains to be analyzed. We voted in a year in which the climate crisis had a brutal impact on us, both due to excess and lack of rain. More than half of the country was affected (and is still being affected) by the most widespread drought in our history, accompanied by catastrophic forest fires and one of the most spectacular floods in recent years (and there were many). However, environmental issues did not define the votes, neither in the flooded Porto Alegre nor in the parched and burning Amazon, Cerrado, Pantanal and Caatinga regions.

The case of Rio Grande do Sul has already been discussed above, and it is worth noting that the issue of flooding was the main focus of candidate Maria do Rosário's campaign, with no effect on the electorate. However, in other biomes, if there was a reaction from the electorate, it was not against the responsible authorities, but against the environmental control agencies, IBAMA and ICMBio, especially in the Amazon. Right-wing candidates in these places advocated an end to government interference in environmentally destructive practices, whether mining, land grabbing or deforestation. And, more than ever, we have elected mayors and city councilors representing the interests of the devastators.

Environmental issues are not being addressed in the elections for two reasons. First, because left-wing candidates do not adopt them in their campaigns, because they do not understand or prioritize them, or because they believe that the electorate does not understand them. This is an extremely dangerous sign for our future. If environmental issues are not a priority (beyond the president's inconsequential speeches) for the federal government, the candidates for mayor or city council will not take them up.

The most left-wing criticism of the behavior of progressive candidates in these elections explains the defeat by the lack of radicalism, by the abandonment of a historical identity, centered on the defense of the rights of the oppressed (poor, black, indigenous, women, LGBTQIA+, rural and urban workers), by the reinforcement of the power of the State to guarantee distributive development, by the deepening of democracy and the strengthening of social movements, by the secular State, by quality education and health for all.

In this sense, left-wing parties were condemned for having reduced themselves to a shallow debate, aiming to attract centrist votes and avoiding talking about things that are not part of the electorate's common sense. All of this is true, but it does not mean that repeating the left's traditional discourse would bring an electoral victory. The defeat would probably be even more resounding.

Should we conclude that the defeat was a foregone conclusion? Of course, but the explanation lies not in the present, but in the past, in the path taken by the left over the last 30 years.

To start this flashback, we need to analyze Lula's victory in the 2022 election. The left believed it had won the election when in fact what won was the electorate's rejection (slightly majority, let's remember) of Jair Bolsonaro, much broader than the left-wing vote. If I remember correctly, the PT vote for the Chamber of Deputies, which clearly expresses the party's weight in the election (and not the vote for Lula), was 23%, while the rest of the left (PSB, PDT, PCdoB and PSOL, even discounting the fact that the first two have already drifted to the center-right for some time) remained at 6 to 7%.

Lula reached 48% in the first round. Furthermore, in the second round, Lula won photochart with the votes of Simone Tebet. The result of all this was the defeat of Jair Bolsonaro, fundamental for the survival of democracy, but also the election of a Congress with a large majority of the right and extreme right.

With this institutional framework, the Lula III government depended, even more than in previous governments, on concessions to the Centrão parties. However, Lula and the PT did not read the results as I (and the Flamengo and Corinthians fans combined) did. They set up a government of the PT and its associates in the most important ministries and gave some trinkets to the Centrão parties, except for the very important Ministry of Agriculture. I understand that the Brazilian context in that election did not allow the government to do what would be recommended: propose a broad front program with its potential allies. The PT did not have a clear program and the others did not have any program, other than to occupy positions in the ministry, if possible “behind closed doors”.

Lula treated the other parties on the basis of “buying”. I give you a ministry (or more) and you give me the votes of your base in Congress. It is a repeat, in another form, of the Lula I and II and Dilma I and ½ governments, with the purchase being made in the retail of the mensalão in the first government and in the wholesale of the petrolão in the others.

Now the picture is different. Congress, empowered since the coup against Dilma and Bolsonaro's capitulation, has more firepower than ever, and the parties, with the amendment spree, depend less on the executive branch to satisfy their physiological needs. Unhappy with the ministries with small budgets and few positions to administer, the Centrão parties support the government when it suits them. Without pressure from society to support the agendas it defended, the Lula government has been giving away more and more rings and is already giving away the knuckles on its fingers. And everyone on the left is asking whether it is worth being in government to implement a right-wing policy.

5.

Here it is worth analyzing why left-wing parties and social movements did not counterbalance the situation to level the playing field. To understand this phenomenon, we need to look at past left-wing administrations. Over the course of 14 years, the progressive administration co-opted a large number of cadres, both from parties and social movements, into the executive branch.

The same thing happened in state governments and city halls. On the other hand, all parties in government adopted a stance of lowering the stakes in social mobilizations, only taking their demands to the space of the countless (say, six hundred!) councils created during the period. With the exception of La Via Campesina and the MTST, practically all union and association movements adopted a stance of waiting for their demands to be incorporated by the government, applying at most behind-the-scenes pressure and demobilizing their bases.

The so-called identity movements and environmentalists were left out of this picture. It is no coincidence that these were the movements that grew during this period, while the others withered. Precisely when this government needs movements to support it in putting pressure on Congress, those with the power to convene are those whose agendas most distance Lula from his allies on the right.

Lula never proposed to take on (while in government) the role of social leader, calling on the grassroots to support his causes. This is very evident in the issue of tax reform, reduced to a parliamentary debate, without the participation of society. Lula has already been accused of adopting a stance similar to that of Gustavo Petros of Colombia, calling on the masses to demonstrate. But it is important to remember that Petros has much more solid parliamentary support than Lula and that adopting this stance would put him in direct conflict with his allies in Congress and with the conventional media, with the right to concrete threats of impeachment. And there you have it, the trap is closed, and there is no mass mobilization.

Once in government, the left adopted a practice of increasing concessions, betting on an electoral turnaround that would give it more breathing room to be more daring in its policies. The strategy of the parties in power has always been to promote inclusive development that would broaden their electoral base. But the reality of the economy's evolution was different than expected. And the economic gains of the new C class did not generate the expected electoral loyalty.

How can we explain this stance? On the one hand, as Frei Beto and Gilberto Carvalho say, without political education there is no political and ideological advancement among the masses. And I would add that without a participatory movement, without struggles for demands and politics, there is no advancement in class consciousness. The benefits enjoyed by the poor, as a result of the economic and social policies of popular governments, were handouts handed out on a silver platter, with the rare exceptions already mentioned of the rural movements, particularly Via Campesina, which maintained, albeit in a more moderate manner, their land occupations and other forms of pressure.

Even in this case, I wonder what effect the emphasis on using resources from the Ministry of Agrarian Development for the minority of the so-called agribusiness has had. From what can be deduced, without more precise data so far, the rural bases voted, in their vast majority, for right-wing candidates.

On the other hand, the economic gains of the popular sectors in the Lula and Dilma governments were very ephemeral, and collapsed heavily in Dilma's second term, bringing these beneficiaries back to classes D and E over the years that followed, with Temer and Bolsonaro.

The frustration of hope tends to be more corrosive than the situation of inequality in which they lived before. In particular, it is impossible not to note that a key, everyday element of this decline in status was the increase in food costs. It is also worth remembering that these economic losses occurred in parallel with the intense campaign to denounce the corruption of progressive governments. The people's interpretation could not fail to be that politicians were enriching themselves while the "newly well-off" were being led back into poverty. All this adds up to the fact that a significant part of the poorest electorate, instead of voting for the return of the left to government, stopped voting or voted for other politicians on the right.

I'm not just talking about these elections, but about all of them since 2016, when the decline of left-wing parties began.

There is another type of political perception among the popular electorate: the left in power has become more similar to the center and the right, frustrating the electorate and creating the feeling that “everyone is the same.” The left has lost its aura of transformative force and has become, in the popular perception, part of the establishment. And those who came out with a speech “against all this that is out there” were Bolsonaro and the far right.

The concessions made by the left in government have been justified, in all governments, but now more than ever, by the correlation of forces in Congress, a result of the political hegemony of the Centrão and the “new” Bolsonarist right in the elections. This is a reflection of the cursed legacy of the military regime, which left us with perverse electoral legislation.

Let us remember that the new Constitution failed to change the electoral system where the weight of the most populous states, particularly São Paulo, is proportionally lower than that of the smaller states. An indication (with approximate data) is the electoral coefficient of Roraima, with 10 thousand votes per deputy, and that of São Paulo, with 200 thousand.

These imbalances gave enormous weight to the vote of the “corners,” the most economically and politically backward areas of the country. This allowed for a strong gap between the progressive vote for president and the predominant conservative vote in Congress in the post-constituent elections. Added to this is the history of political dominance of Arena and its offshoots after the end of the dictatorship in the so-called corners.

Interestingly, the profile of the PT electorate has been changing. Before it came to power, the progressive forces were centered in metropolitan regions, particularly in the Southeast and South, while the PMDB and PFL dominated the smaller municipalities, rural areas, and the North, Northeast, and Central West regions. Today, the Lula electorate has gone to the remote areas, while the progressive vote has been losing strength in the most important urban centers, particularly in Rio de Janeiro, Belo Horizonte, Porto Alegre, Curitiba, and Brasília. São Paulo still shows some vitality for the progressive vote, but as seen in the last elections, it is also declining.

The welfare system of left-wing governments has shown its limitations in terms of building voter loyalty. And the electoral decline in the heart of the country's largest industrial area, ABCD, Mauá and Campinas, the birthplace of the workers' movement that gave rise to the PT, only confirms this trend.

6.

The question underlying this entire analysis is: was winning the government in 2002 a correct alternative for a strategic project of change? By climbing the ladder without political hegemony in the country, Lula and the left took a step too far. With a Congress greatly strengthened by the Constituent Assembly and accumulating more and more powers as it faced an executive that was becoming weaker, what could Lula or Dilma have done differently?

I participated in the preparation of the electoral programs of the progressive fronts that had Lula as their candidate from 1989 to 1998, representing the PSB on the agrarian and agricultural policy committee. These were interesting and advanced formulations, but they received little space in the campaigns. In the last one, the program, written by me, the PSB and Plinio Sampaio, the PT, and approved by the representatives of the PCdoB, PDT and PCB, was simply discarded and summarily replaced by another, prepared by Graziano and launched by Lula.

An old friend and fellow exile in Chile and France, an important figure in the PT and close to Lula, justified the outrage and told me that with a radical program like the one we proposed, Lula would never have won the elections. My answer was that without that program it was not worth winning the elections. “We are getting old,” he told me. “The way you want us to do things, we will never come to power.” “Coming to government is not the same as coming to power,” I said, closing the debate.

The implicit strategy of this type of thinking is to, once in government, implement policies in a way that is more radical than those outlined in the campaigns and to increase public support for policies that can be approved. The reality of governing with the right in the majority in Congress and in society has led to ever greater concessions in order to do the bare minimum, causing the political identity of the left to change. What is worse is that this process has led to the abandonment of any strategy and the reorganization of the game with a much lesser objective: remaining in government.

That's where we are now. In order to stay in government, we are moving closer to the center and the non-Bolsonaro right and mixing with this physiological mess that dominates Congress. Do you want a better example than the negotiation for the presidency of the Chamber of Deputies? The PT and the parliamentary left support the nefarious candidate Artur Lira in the Chamber of Deputies and the opportunist Alcolumbre in the Senate, joining forces with the PL and other right-wing parties. In exchange for what? A position on the board of directors? A nomination to the TCU? The PL's condition for supporting Motta is to vote for amnesty for Bolsonaro. The PT's condition is to set the agenda for the government's projects.

Who do you think will win in this election for the Chamber of Deputies? The argument in defense of this position is that there is no force to propose anything else. It seems that they have forgotten that in politics, losing with a fair and defensible position is better than joining the dominant bloc and sinking into the swamp, confusing the electorate. Left-wing parties are increasingly perceived as part of the establishment, of the elite far removed from the people.

Another factor that is changing the political and electoral scenario is the radical change in the employment profile and sources of income for those who depend exclusively on work to survive. Deindustrialization, combined with the expansion of the service sector, has led half of the workforce to the informal economy, in a situation of precariousness and income instability, with the poorest relying on social policies, which have expanded enormously with the pandemic, to supplement their income.

The so-called uberization leads to the dispersion of these workers and the elimination of organizational spaces. The so-called “factory floor” no longer exists, at least in the dimensions we were accustomed to in the past, the place where the PT’s workers’ leaderships, including Lula, were formed. This, combined with the flow of leaders and activists to public service spaces and political positions, has left a vacuum and created the perception that the left “does not speak to the periphery.”

The ones who speak to the outskirts today are the evangelical churches, with their conservative orientation. And the rap singers, who the left does not know or does not understand. And we cannot forget that the urbanization movement continues to be stimulated by rural-urban migrations that are swelling the favelas, the large area of ​​population concentration that has seen strong growth in recent censuses.

In completing this assessment of social changes, it is important to note that an increasingly significant portion of the poorest youth is being drawn into organized crime. This has been happening for some time in urban areas, but a series of economic activities in the northern region and in the remote areas in general are being taken over by drug trafficking organizations. Illegal mining in the Amazon has an estimated 300 workers, as do land grabbing, fishing and the extraction of hardwood, all of which are illegal.

The Amazon region is now a lawless space, and the tentacles of the PCC, CV, and ADA have the support of governors, military police, police chiefs, judges, prosecutors, mayors, and city councilors. To make matters worse, the Bolsonaro administration has made it easier for many of these workers to access weapons, and they see federal institutions (IBAMA, ICMBio, and PF) as enemies to fight in order to secure their nest egg.

7.

Last but not least, we must note the spread of communication via the internet, which has now penetrated even the most remote corners. Social media today plays a fundamental role in shaping public opinion and in breaking the population (and the electorate) into closed bubbles where ideas are forged in fake news that activate the feeling of hatred in society. It has become very difficult to discuss, dialogue, argue and even converse with those who do not share the same beliefs and this (discussing, …) is the basis of politics.

No matter how much the government achieves reasonable results in the economy, the perception of this public, trapped in internet bubbles, will always be negative. No matter how much the government expands its social programs, misinformation prevents it from capitalizing on its successes. And every mistake, stumble or blunder by the government is magnified by its detractors.

Having said all this, where can a left-wing movement go to create an organized social base? For now, it is limited to the so-called identity movements, the only ones that have maintained a dynamic of participation and mobilization. However, the relative success of these groups has been slowed down by fads, sectarianism and the irritating “political correctness”. Could there be a more obvious shot in the foot than the national anthem sung in neutral language? Guilherme Boulos can tell you all about it.

Critics who point to a dichotomy between identity demands and class struggle are right. This does not mean that identity demands should not be incorporated into left-wing programs, but that they need to be articulated with demands for deeper changes in society. The movements, perhaps as a result of their relative inexperience, emphasize their specificities, and the left-wing parties, centered on the “third international” way of thinking, do not attempt or are unable to make the connection between the general and the specific.

It turns out that society does not manifest itself or organize itself only in conventional historical forms (unions, etc.). Thousands of local movements are springing up in Brazil, carrying a wide variety of banners, both in urban and rural areas. They are related to people's daily lives trying to solve their problems.

A recent example was the number of groups that formed during the pandemic to ensure food for the poorest, or those from the favelas demanding improvements in housing, transportation, lighting and sanitation. These movements are the still incipient response of the most disadvantaged in our society, and there is no expectation of an adequate and comprehensive response from the public authorities, whether municipal, state or federal, in the current context.

These fragmented movements are the new space in place of the “factory gate”. “Returning to the grassroots” means interacting with these nuclei and seeking to connect and politicize them into broader groups, starting in the closest territories (neighborhoods, villages, rural communities, etc.) and expanding until creating geographically broader movements. The role of the left should be to seek more appropriate solutions to the problems and to forge movements that politically express a new program.

None of this is easy for a left that has institutionalized itself in public services and has grown old. The old activists of my generation are urging each other to return to the grassroots, but we are too old to organize collective purchasing groups in the favelas, for example. And it is frustrating to struggle in messages on the internet, waiting for someone to do what we no longer have the energy to do. What I try to do is make myself available to any grassroots group that wants to discuss the past, present and future. Maybe because of my origins as a student leader, I end up speaking to students or, because of my work with family farmers over the last 40 years, with rural communities. It is not much, but it is what I can do.

Finally, we need to look ahead and anticipate what will happen in the coming years. I have written many times before that we are on the eve of a series of catastrophes that will test the ability of our society (here and around the world) to reinvent itself. The combined crises of energy, global warming and other environmental catastrophes will shake us all, right and left.

I am concerned to know that the right denies this future that is fast approaching and that the left prefers to ignore the increasingly clear signs of the end of our world, of the globalized capitalist world, preferring to swallow the current paradigms of an economy increasingly disconnected from social needs and focused on rentier accumulation.

*Jean Marc von der Weid is a former president of the UNE (1969-71). Founder of the non-governmental organization Family Agriculture and Agroecology (ASTA).

---

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