By TARSUS GENUS*

Bolsonarism contains fascist ideologies, right-wing extremism in politics and economics, but its most complex side in the catacombs of the networks is the side that involves organized crime.

Companies such as Siemens, Basf, Allianz, BMW, Mercedes Benz, Krupp Porsche, Bosch, are German “mega economic conglomerates” that benefited from the “Nazi-fascist regime (which used) slave labor during the Second World War” (…) “and their owners, closely linked to Nazism, were pardoned, becoming some of the richest men in the world in the second half of the 20th century”.^[1]

In the same text, Pedro Campos mentions the work of Edwin Black,^[2] IBM and the Holocaust and also comments on the “emblematic” case of Volkswagen, in Brazil, which, according to information recorded in historiographical research, allowed the company’s security guards to commit physical violence against its employees, activists of the new unionism resisting the dictatorship, at its unit in São Bernardo do Campo.

In early 1963, President João Goulart presented the Triennial Development Plan, organized by Celso Furtado, to the nation. Its objective was to organize the economic process and, within the political context of that moment, to generate a surge in development and modernization of the country by combating inflation and streamlining the public sector. FIESP initially supported the Plan, but later distanced itself from Jango and helped promote the 1964 coup, motivated by its opposition to the Basic Reforms, which were supposedly inspired by communism.

With the “communist danger” removed, Bolsonaro’s “thinkers” (?) invented “cultural Marxism” as the threat that has now replaced the fight against communism, as a conceptless ideological rancor. I make these observations for the record: the techniques and technologies adopted in a company — in any political system — are products of the technical and scientific praxis accumulated by humans throughout history, but their standards of use in a given production regime are under the direction, not of the businessmen who founded the company in the past, but of the businessmen and “CEOs” of the present.

Brazil went through a pandemic with a president who mocked the dead by imitating the heavy breathing of that infected part of his people, who were doomed to die. Every day, the president practiced medicine illegally, in the public health sector, and then tried to organize a military coup to avoid leaving power. He made huge illegal expenditures in an attempt to be reelected and humiliated and embarrassed the country in the eyes of all civilized nations. What is surprising, therefore, is not the return of companies that originated in Nazism, but that many businesspeople today are not “in tune” with the future, beset by climate transition and global warming.

Rio Grande do Sul was hit by the climate disaster and saw a group of far-right militants land on its territory, who belittled all the efforts of the health authorities (“only the people help the people”) and the solidarity of the most affected communities among themselves and, especially, belittled the massive presence of the Armed Forces, the state Public Security contingents and the other civil servants of the three federated entities, who fought bravely to reduce the suffering of the people of Rio Grande do Sul.

Currently, these same political forces are dedicated to degrading the STF, especially Minister Alexandre Moraes, especially because he has in his hands the legal proceedings against the coup plotters who invaded and vandalized federal properties in their coup-mongering madness, and because he dared to tell “X” that we are not a Banana Republic. The Supreme Court only defends the normative force of the Constitution!

As is known, Bolsonarism contains fascist ideologies, right-wing extremism in politics and economics, but its most complex side in the catacombs of the networks is the side that involves organized crime in its various instances of power (theoretical and “practical” influencers of authoritarianism in various social sectors), the religions of money and illicit enrichment, predators and arsonists, and far-right academics — linked to national and international sects of repressed “olavismo” — incandescent with hatred for those who are different of all kinds.

The concept of a “good businessman” in the capitalist system, as an abstract generality, tends towards a fairly simple conclusion: a “good businessman” is one who owns and runs a profitable company. However, since such a “system” generates different forms of business institutions—in the different historical cycles that they acquire in a given period—it is important to go a little further in exploring the concept.

To understand the business phenomenon politically within the theory of the modern company, which originated in the First Industrial Revolution, we need to go a little further. This is necessary because the political and moral demands for social recognition of what it means to be a “good businessman” are different in different political regimes. Just as the institutions of democratic regimes change, whose forms of legitimizing state power evolve more or less quickly, the forms of social recognition of the company change in each cycle of the global economy.

It is clear that these “states” (as “situation” of companies) have different modulations in each era, but it is worth exploring the subject in greater depth: in a fascist regime, in terms of social recognition, being a “good businessman” is different from being a “good businessman” in a social state governed by the rule of law; or even different from what it means to be a “good businessman” in any state governed by the rule of law, in which a strong concentration of power in the Executive is required in situations of war, as occurred mainly in World War II, or in cases of natural disasters that shake the governability of an entire territory.

In the first hypothesis (the fascist one), being a good businessman means adapting absolutely to the totalitarian purposes of the State and its imperial-colonial developments; in the second hypothesis (that of the Social State of Law), being a good businessman means knowing how to combine the search for profitability of the company with the social functions of property; in the third hypothesis (in the State of Law subjected to an external war or facing national climate catastrophes) it means knowing how to identify the company with the survival of the nation.

The duty of the State to defend the nation against an external enemy — “natural” or national — and to defend the nation and the well-being of its people, is the main challenge that democracy faces in these second and third hypotheses. In these hypotheses, not only the functionality of the State is tested, but also its capacity to defend the constituent people, in a concrete situation that challenges the existence of the country. And it is impossible to guarantee the nation the possibility of consciously building a future, without taking into account the issue of climate transition and global warming, which plagues all families, all classes and all nations.

*Tarsus in law he was governor of the state of Rio Grande do Sul, mayor of Porto Alegre, Minister of Justice, Minister of Education and Minister of Institutional Relations in Brazil. Author, among other books, of possible utopia (Arts & Crafts).

Notes

[1] Pedro Campos. “Nazi Soul” in: Magazine four five one — comment on the book Nazi Billionaires by David Jong.

[2] Edwin Black. IBM and the Holocaust. New York, New York, 2001.

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