Repoliticization of politics

Lenin arrives at Finland Station. Photo: YouTube playback
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By LUIZ MARQUES*

The novelty of the Lula 3.0 government's Participatory Multi-Year Plan makes politics escape the stupidity of Parliament and take to the streets. The news is great, but Finland Station is still a long way off

No political regime has the density of democracy. Even authoritarian regimes maintain the constitutional mechanisms enshrined in the democratic-republican paradigm, with the division of powers (Executive, Legislative, Judiciary) and political institutions, despite the siege on freedom. See the Institutional Act (AI-2, 1965) of the military dictatorship to ensure a majority in the Federal Supreme Court (STF), by increasing its members from 11 to 16. A State of exception simulates managing only things, not people, in a farcical effort to depoliticize politics.

In the new hegemonic reason, democracy navigates with the helm of fiscal adjustment, deindustrialization, privatization, unemployment and under the pretext of the “crisis narrative” guides the neoliberal rule of law. Needless to mention the car wash imposters who nurtured anti-politics in the name of combating corruption. The mask has already fallen. Today, the worthlessness of politics is spreading with the lawfare, without the militarily. Hate speech encompasses the toga, sponsored opinion and “parliamentary cretinism”, which considers the fight from the platform to be the main weapon of conflict in any situation. Spiritual weather does not choose day or hour. For João Cabral de Melo Neto: “There is no umbrella / against the world”.

View of the Big House

Luís Roberto Barroso, explains what led to the approval of the Outsourcing Law (31/03/2017) in the activity of companies, in “Judicialização da vida”, in the book 130 years: in search of the Republic, organized by José Murilo de Carvalho et al. “The majority of ministers agreed that the Constitution does not impose a specific production model, does not prevent the development of flexible business strategies nor does it prohibit outsourcing”. Until then, there is an opinion of the legality of the matter. The future president of the STF records the painful labor capitulationism, below.

“(i) Labor law and the trade union system need to adapt to changes in the labor market and society; (ii) Outsourcing does not, in itself, lead to precarious work, violation of worker dignity or disrespect for social security rights. The abusive exercise of their hiring is what can produce such violations, and there are ways to prevent and repress such behavior”. The imperative “they need to adapt” reveals that 350 years of slavery were not enough to guarantee justice for the newly enslaved. Disdain for toil remains unaffected.

The vision of the Big House is imposed, and the labor force is returned to the slave quarters in a contractual environment of a reduction in the wage bill, in the face of capital gains. The dismantling of in-person inspection bodies of labor and employment superintendencies and management contradicts the nonsense about “the means of preventing and repressing” outsourcing in cruel forms of super-exploitation.

In Paraíba, the Superintendence headquarters was closed due to the risk of fire in electrical installations. The Osasco Management, with six agents to monitor working conditions, health and safety in ten municipalities, in a few years recorded 54.318 accidents, 1.406 illness reports and 192 deaths. “Who is interested in the dismantling of labor inspection?” ask auditor Beatriz Cardoso Montanhana and TRT-15 judge Patrícia Maeda (Judges for Democracy Association, no. 70). There are no competent “means” of surveillance, alleged in the High Court.

Forgotten message

Inseparable from the idea of ​​freedom, as can be seen from the definition “government of the people for the people”, democracy has foundered. The birth certificate of the Contemporary Age was torn up, the declaration of rights of 1789-1791: “Men are born and remain free and equal in rights”. La porta de l'enfer opened. The worker was separated from the rights of the citizen. The business community subsumed the “general will”, and the STF assumed the role of society without the soul of the welfare state.

Unlike what prevailed until the middle of the XNUMXth century, focused on the enlightenment formation of citizenship, current journalism aims at the subjectivity of the homo economicus for acceptance of status quo. Ideas were disseminated (use value), and now goods (exchange value). The commercial dimension won. Economic journalists became financial ventriloquists, reproducing releases of consultancies in the form of information. Fake news “techniques” shielded bad economics from good politics. The left forces the State to intervene in the economy to stop inequalities. The right and its extremes absolutize the free market. There is no shortage of paddlers in the leaky canoe of commodity totalitarianism.

Ignored Message for the XNUMXst century, by Isaiah Berlin (1909-1997): “We are forced to make concessions, forge compromises, take advantage of opportunities so that the worst does not haunt us.” Cowardice threw in the garbage the possible vocation for the collective good and, on the altar, it put the volatile capital. Mandonism at the top of the pyramid sought to prevent, at the base, thinking with reliable data about the different angles of social existence – the economy, culture, law, way of life, etc.

Opacity was the rule in the quadrennium of right-wing populism. The president himself claimed that the country was ungovernable. On social media, pocketnaristas like Trumpistas have abolished public debate as much as possible, structuring themselves in a way that encourages depoliticization and organizes bubbles based on moralistic controversies in the Twitter. In cybernetic militancy, membership was confirmed by the number of likes. In the circle of the thief and company, confirmation came in boxes of million-dollar jewelry.

A new imaginary

The novelty of the Lula 3.0 government's Multi-Year Participatory Plan is that it makes politics available to everyone, universalizing deliberation on central themes for the federative units. Politics escapes the stupidity of Parliament and takes to the streets. Assemblies attract masses of interested parties and managers. Unlike the National Conferences of previous administrations, the PPA-Participatory has the institutional prerogative to choose priorities. Media silence is not a coincidence, but an attempt to disqualify the new social imaginary and its protagonists.

The timid essay on self-government overturns the dogma that the loci of politics is the legislature, and elected representatives. Politics takes place in places that welcome the people as subjects – rather than as objects of demagogue policies. The experiment bears the mark of socialist humanism in empowering the population, so that democracy develops the constituent potential of a more egalitarian sociological order. Rejects the assumptions of the Washington Consensus.

Without slipping into a Panglossian optimism that “everything goes better in the best of all possible worlds”, as we read in Cândido, by Voltaire, we can call this “pedagogy of the oppressed” or “counter-hegemony”. It's about slow construction, not the Hollywood epic about power grabs. It depends on a work of persuasion through praxis, with permanent interventions on several fronts – parties, unions, community entities, informal workers, women's movements, anti-racist, ecological, LGBTQIA+, NGOs. Everyday life must boost the civilizational process of repoliticization of politics, for another story – out of the shadows – to come to light.

However, in an article included in the Brazil under rubble, organized by Juliana Paula Magalhães and Luiz Felipe Osório, Breno Altman's warning is worth: “The organic factors of corrosion of social consensus are still present, only dimmed by the feeling that a greater evil was avoided. It would be a fatal illusion if this provisional pause led to a reversal of causality – Bolsonarism is a product of the systemic crisis, not its creator.” For economic liberals, present in the current government, the ceiling has been reached. For social democrats, Finland Station is still a long way off.

* Luiz Marques is a professor of political science at UFRGS. He was the state secretary of culture in Rio Grande do Sul during the Olívio Dutra government..


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