By DAVID MACIEL*

The election for the presidencies of the Chamber and the Senate point to the emptiness of the commitment of the right of order with what remains of democracy in the country

The elections for the presidency of the House and Senate left a clear lesson for the workers' movement and the entire left: the bloc in power does not want Bolsonaro to leave, but rather his domestication. To this end, not only does it reveal all the crimes committed since the first days of his mandate ─ immensely intensified during the pandemic ─, keeping the more than 60 requests for impeachment already filed in the dark, but also seeks to create the most favorable political conditions for approval of the political and economic agenda of the 2016 coup.

Hence the statements by various business leaders against impeachment and/or support for Arthur Lira's candidacy, which worked as an imperial ukaze for all right-wing parties that supported the candidacy of Baleia Rossi. The adherence, open or veiled, of the DEM, PSDB and MDB to the government candidate left the left of order “with the brush in hand”, supporting alone a notorious coup leader, “Temer’s man” in the Chamber and government fawn in parliamentary votes .

In the “take it, give it to me” negotiations, funds, positions, ministries and perhaps a vacancy on Bolsonaro’s ticket in 2022, a dream of the DEM of ACM Neto e Caiado, rose to the table. In the Senate, the government's victory was even more crushing, as the victorious Rodrigo Pacheco also had the support of the largest parties on the left of order, PT and PDT.

With the victory of Lira and Pacheco, the path to approval of what is still missing from the political and economic agenda of the coup is facilitated, since what is left of the decapitated right-wing opposition agrees with this agenda, and the left-wing opposition melted even more under the weight of parliamentary cretinism and inaction. At the moment, the agenda for the coup involves advancing the program of privatization of companies and public resources, deepening the fiscal adjustment and further strengthening the repressive apparatus and violence as mechanisms of social control.

Among the priority projects for the government in Congress are: the privatization of Eletrobrás; mining on indigenous lands; the legalization of land grabbing through “land regularization”; the release of new forest areas for deforestation, mining and agribusiness; tax reform; the final dismantling of public service with administrative reform; the autonomy of the Central Bank; facilitating the possession and carrying of weapons; reducing the age of criminal responsibility; the exclusion of illegality, which guarantees the impunity of the armed forces and police in the repression of social struggles and in their daily dealings with the poor.

Even with the second wave of covid-19 galloping across the entire country, while vaccination is advancing at a snail's pace, and with the expectation that the economic and social crisis will worsen in 2021, the bloc in power, particularly big capital, is betting in the deepening of neoliberalism and authoritarianism, as it intends to maintain the super gains obtained with the pandemic in 2020. While the economy regressed at unprecedented rates and workers' income was depressed by unemployment, wage reduction and inflation, almost all sectors of the economy achieved positive rates of growth and profitability, intensifying the process of capitalist concentration and centralization.

This year, big capital intends to maintain this successful trajectory by advancing even more on public goods and reducing labor costs, while at the same time reinforcing the repressive mechanisms of social control, in order to prevent popular dismay from becoming in protest and mobilization. After all, the 2016 coup needs to continue reconfiguring the relations between capital, work and the State and the system of political representation, which implies economic deregulation, privatization of the State and public goods, the suppression of social and labor rights, the precariousness of of the world of work and the restriction of the workers' political space.

If for this it is necessary to allow the fascistization of the State apparatus and of social life, the implosion of the judicial rite, the dismemberment of the parties, and courting fascism so that the threat of a coup remains on the horizon as a deterrent factor for the forces of left and the workers' movement, so much so! Even in a scenario of unimaginable worsening of the pandemic, with the spread of new strains of covid-19 even more contagious, the normalization of everyday life and dropper vaccination being pierced on all sides by crooks of all kinds, if it depends of the bourgeois classes, for the workers the worst is yet to come!

Another lesson left by the election for the presidencies of the House and Senate is the emptiness of the commitment of the right of order with what remains of democracy in the country and with the containment of Bolsonarism. In the name of the alleged “democratic commitment” of the main protagonists of the 2016 coup, the left of order let itself be carried away by the siren song of the “broad front”, putting it into practice in several places in the municipal elections of last year and now in support of Baleia Rossi.

In the vote, the left of the order was “washed”, and, in political terms, suffered a serious political and ideological defeat, as it contributed to legitimize the 2016 coup and its agents in the eyes of the working masses, becoming even more hostage from the right of order in opposition to Bolsonarism. The electoral and political failure of these initiatives is now more than evident, giving reason to those who warned against such a political and ideological mistake. However, “parliamentary cretinism” prevailed, determined by bargaining for positions on the board of directors and in parliamentary committees and by the illusion regarding the ability of parliamentary dynamics to express the real correlation of forces between classes and social groups in a situation of hegemony crisis. like the one we live.

The situation of Rodrigo Maia clearly expresses this disconnection: as a first-time articulator of the 2016 coup, the main political leader of the right of order and the non-Bolsonarist fractions of the ruling bloc and presidential candidate in 2022, in one week Rodrigo Maia was reduced to the status of a minor figure, betrayed by the party itself and by its main allies. He will be remembered as the greatest “shelve” of impeachment requests in the history of Brazil. Meanwhile, the right of order seeks to show service, reaffirming its commitment to Guedes' ultraliberalism and to the political and economic agenda of big capital.

The lesson that remains for workers, social movements and left-wing forces is that, without mass mobilization, without occupying the streets, without obstinate resistance against this genocide programmatically extended in time and space, parliamentary negotiations and maneuvers, the indignation morale and pots and whistles from windows and balconies will not be able to stop the ongoing genocide, the bourgeois offensive and the fascist escalation, much less overthrow Bolsonaro and Mourão. Impeachment now! Vaccine for everyone now!

*David Maciel He is a professor at the Faculty of History at UFG. author of History, politics and revolution in Marx and Engels (Gargoyle editions).

Originally published on the website www.contrapoder.net