By BRUNO MACHADO*
The dispute over narratives that has been taking place in Brazilian political life has been guided by PT reformism for two decades and this may have reinforced the public image of the left as a defender of the State and taxes.
Since the June 2013 protests, the growth of a worldview linked to anti-politics has become the strongest force in Brazilian electoral politics. This is due to the growth of a diffuse and poorly theoretically based national anti-system sentiment. The overwhelming failure of capitalism has made the anti-system agenda increasingly stronger.
The anti-capitalist left has had difficulty absorbing this popular sentiment, and the right, with its anti-state agenda, has fared better in popular opinion. With Lula's third election, the left finds itself in an increasingly dangerous position of defending the current system, while having to deal with the powerful moral panic of the right.
The growing failure of the capitalist system, which began with the oil crises of the 1970s and was accelerated by neoliberalism in the 1980s, is becoming increasingly noticeable in the stagnation of wage growth around the world, in parallel with the growth in revenues and profits of large oligopolistic multinational corporations. In central countries, this systemic failure has fueled racism and xenophobia. In the periphery, where immigration is less relevant, neofascism is fueled mainly by religious fanaticism, which is much more present in poor countries than in rich ones.
Since the rules that used to govern the world are no longer working today, the populations of central and peripheral countries have sought increasingly extreme alternatives. The global left, immersed in reformism, has no solutions other than an abstract defense of tax increases for the rich, which often does not translate into public policy, or, when it does, does not have the budgetary relevance it promised. On the other hand, the right offers a discourse “against everything that is out there” capturing this diffuse feeling of anti-politics and appropriating the religiosity of the Brazilian people to divert the focus of the debate on capitalism and the real problems that afflict workers.
Since the current system is clearly in the process of collapse, it was expected that the most vigorous political force would be guided by anti-system rhetoric. Whether this “system” is understood as capitalism managed by the property-owning class, the State itself commanded by an elite of politicians; or, in a more subjective and symbolic way, “subversive” modernity itself, or, on the other hand, the culture of the cult of performative individualism of today. The almost symbolic concept of system ends up being realized both on the concrete front, being capital or the government, and on the abstract front, being modernity or individualism.
While the electorally relevant left fails in its superficially anti-capitalist discourse without being anti-capitalist in its national projects, the right grows through the extreme right declaring war on immigrants in central countries and, in peripheral countries, on habitually corrupt politicians and mainly on state regulations and taxes. Furthermore, while the left combats the complex issue of individualism, the right takes advantage of popular conservatism to attack modern agendas related to minorities from the most moralistic and common-sense fringe possible.
On the one hand, the left sees capitalism as the system to be overthrown or at least mitigated; the right sees the State, with its taxes and legislation, as the system to be destroyed or at least contained. Since capitalism is a depersonalized mode of production, where capital dictates what capitalists should do, it is much more difficult for it to be understood as the system to be combated. Furthermore, the owning class as a demographic group is little recognized by the population, unlike the politicians who govern the State and who are exposed daily in the media, in addition to being formally those who govern the people.
The fact that the left uses the state apparatus to implement social policy and public investment puts it in the uncomfortable position of defending taxes. This inevitably places the left in the camp of defenders of the system, while the right positions itself as anti-system by defending the reduction of the state and taxes. This unpleasant political position is aggravated when the government of the day is occupied by left-wing parties, as is the case in Brazil today. In this way, the entire historical anti-system role of the Brazilian left is taken over by the right, which despite defending all the foundations of capitalism, manages to sell itself as the alternative to status quo.
The biggest challenge for the left today is to regain its role as an alternative to status quo and demonstrate that it is the right that exists to maintain the system in its fundamental structure. Without a liberating education at the base, the role of unions, social and student movements is to foster class consciousness in the working class and, consequently, the understanding that the system is capitalism and that the State, regardless of the elected party, is an instrument of capital governed by political, economic and military forces that go far beyond elections.
If the left calls capitalism the current system and sees individualism as a social value to be fought, the right sees the State as status quo and modernity as the enemy of morality. Thus, not only is it easier to defend the fight against the State than the fight against capitalism, but it is also much simpler to list modernity and current humanistic values as immoral and unethical than to debate individualism, self-exploitation and the illusion of meritocracy. Thus, the anger at having to pay taxes to the State and the moral panic against new customs become very powerful instruments, and allied with economic power and conservative religious leaders (who are the overwhelming majority) have been defeating the left in the public debate for hearts and minds.
The narrative dispute that has been taking place in Brazilian political life has been based on PT reformism for two decades, and this may have reinforced the public image of the left as a defender of the State and taxes. This gap, which was very well exploited by the right, gave substance to the anti-system sentiment that places the State as an imposing body of subversive customs and a bully of the popular economy. The left must now win back the working class by restoring its role as an anti-system alternative, which will probably only be possible by abandoning Lulaism.
*Bruno Machado is an engineer.
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