By JUAREZ GUIMARÃES & CARLOS HENRIQUE ARAB

Lula governs, but does not transform: the risk of a mandate tied to the shackles of neoliberalism

1.

Any normal observer of the Brazilian political scene would certainly assess the positive and qualitative differences between the Lula government and the governments of Michel Temer and Jair Bolsonaro. They would recognize that there is, without a doubt, an incremental improvement in the lives of workers and the majority of Brazilians.

But as Maria Rita Kehl warned us a few years ago, these are not normal times. There is a virulent, anti-democratic and anti-pluralist dispute over opinion formation: on one side, a widespread and daily mechanism of lies on social media; on the other side, a corporate media that openly flirts with barbarity, for example, interviewing for the umpteenth time as a citizen political actor the former president who organized an attempted coup d'état that intended to assassinate the elected president, the elected vice president, a minister of the Supreme Court, the PT leader José Dirceu and anyone else who stood in his way of power. In a context of democratic formation of public opinion and pluralism, the Lula government would certainly not have the mostly critical evaluation that it still has today.

But it is necessary to recognize that today there is a significant degree of dissatisfaction among the social base that elected the Lula government and among the social movements that have historically supported it with the direction and pace of the government changes undertaken to date. And there is certainly a majority willingness among Brazilians and social movements to actively support a deeper direction and an acceleration of these changes.

This dissatisfaction is visible, for example, in the position of rejection of the unions regarding the continued increase in the Selic rate by the Central Bank, which is already run by a president and a majority of directors chosen by the current government. In fact, in recent months, these have legitimized the escalation of interest rate hikes by Bolsonaro supporter Roberto Campos Neto and continued this anti-popular policy in the first two Copom meetings of his new term.

Furthermore, the trade unions had their minimum wage adjustment, delayed by the austerity measures implemented during the Michel Temer and Jair Bolsonaro period, reduced at the end of 2024, at the same time that they suffer negative jurisprudence from the STF in relation to their rights, in a scenario in which the parliamentary base of the Lula government does not have the votes to review the anti-labor reforms previously approved.

There is certainly a lot of dissatisfaction among federal civil servants, who have been subjected to severe cuts under the Temer and Bolsonaro governments, and who have not yet seen a clear dynamic of real wage adjustments in the two and a half years of Lula's government. Federal university budgets continue to be tight and underfunded. Meanwhile, the FUP, the highest organization for oil workers, is expressing its criticism of the current management of Petrobras, which continues to reward minority shareholders with a generosity that it does not demonstrate toward its employees or the company's necessary investments.

2.

In a context of rising food prices, the MST and movements fighting for agrarian reform have rightly criticized the small budget earmarked for land expropriation, as well as the continuation of policies such as incentives for the use of pesticides. The historical organizations fighting for public education in the country have maintained a strong critical tension with public-private partnerships, often encouraged by the Ministry of Education itself.

The Brazilian health tradition, which held a beautiful National Free Conference with President Lula in attendance, did not see its demands for a qualitative increase in federal investment in health met in a context of serious health emergency (federal investment is still basically the minimum required by the Constitution). Neither women nor black people, who voted overwhelmingly for Lula in 2022, had public policies effectively prioritized and implemented during this period. The proposal for ecological transition does not yet have a clear public investment guideline.

The leaders of these social movements generally recognize that there have been important incremental gains in improving their lives, such as in the Bolsa Família program, in the minimum wage, in the provision of jobs, and in the reconstruction of social programs disorganized by Bolsonarism. But, with all legitimacy, they expect more: that the Lula government fulfill the program for which it was elected!

A clear dynamic of affirmation of this program, however, as has already been demonstrated, is in conflict with the neoliberal regime. The way of “confronting it” with strategic concessions, as was the case with the New Fiscal Framework and as has been the conduct of the Central Bank, ends up limiting the pace and, above all, the direction of the government (of its program and its discourse).

It is important to understand that the program elected in 2022 either confronts the neoliberal regime or it will not be implemented. This neoliberal regime – its laws, institutions, procedures and case law – was decisively deepened during the periods of Michel Temer and Jair Bolsonaro.^[1] If this neoliberal regime is not confronted, publicly and decisively, by the PT and the left and center-left party fronts, the Lula government will remain a prisoner of its neoliberal institutional impasses until the end of its term.

This is the risk that the PT runs if it confirms an official candidacy, of mere adherence to the government, in its important achievements but also in its profound limits in fulfilling the program for which it was elected. It is based on these considerations that a critical dialogue is established here with the candidacy of comrade Edinho for the presidency of the PT.

3.

After reading the Manifesto launching comrade Edinho's candidacy for the presidency of the PT, listening to his presentations at the launch in Brasília and at the Fernando Henrique Cardoso Institute, as well as interviews with Globo Television Network and CNN, there is no consistent analytical argument that is antagonistic to the neoliberal regime that confronts the program for which the Lula government was elected. Therefore, there is no minimally alternative proposition to this regime and these policies.

There is, in fact, a serious error in critical assessment. The focus is correctly placed on the democratic struggle against the Donald Trump government, understood as the “world leader of fascism,” and Jair Bolsonaro (whose social base would encompass around 20% to 25% of Brazilians) is identified as an expression of this “fascism” in Brazil. But the analysis of the Trump government and Bolsonarism as typical fascist identities without linking them to the political dynamics and programs of neoliberalism is unsustainable and fails to understand what is essential in confronting these leaders.

There is already a vast area of ​​study and debate on the relationship between neoliberalism and contemporary fascist expressions, distinct from their classical historical expression in the interval between the two world wars. This debate brings together the main international scholars on neoliberalism and fascism.

Henry Maher's essay, “Neoliberal fascism? Fascist trends in early neoliberal thought and echoes in the present” identifying fascist sympathies and engagements of minority neoliberal authors, but expressive in the original formation of the neoliberal tradition. A good updated assessment of this controversy on the relationship between neoliberalism and fascist expressions in contemporary politics is in the essay by Lloyd Cox & Brendon O'Connor, published on March 26, 2025 in Journal of Social Theory, "Trumpism, fascism and neoliberalism".

Seeking a balanced common sense between “alarmists” (who identify Trump with fascism, against the grain of more traditional scholars of fascistology) and “skeptics” (who underestimate the clear signs of certain characteristics that bring the two phenomena together”), the authors characterize the Donald Trump government as having fascist tendencies, but still inserted in a dynamic whose origin has its explanation and structuring in neoliberal capitalism.

Fascist tendencies: the authoritarian charismatic sense, nationalist expansionism, the racist vision of an internal enemy to be purged, patriarchal violence, intolerance towards pluralism and diversity.

The neoliberal sense in relation to the fundamental classes, capitalists and workers: the reinforcement of economic deregulation, tax cuts for companies and the richest, the cuts in social rights and the exaltation of hyper-individualistic competition, which point more to the penetration of the interests of a business oligarchy in the North American State than a corporate centralization of finance, companies and labor in a hyper-centralized State regime, as in fascism.

The rupture with the dimensions of so-called free trade, part of the neoliberal financialization program under North American hegemony, could be explained in a nationalist geopolitical sense of a power in crisis.

There is in fact a whole library of studies – a small part of which has already been published in Brazil – on the relations between neoliberalism and autocratic governments, which grew after the international financial crisis of 2008. These relations generated, based on national differences and singularities, hybrid and combined experiences between neoliberalism and governments with positions that clearly violated basic human rights.

The transition from the Donald Trump phenomenon to Bolsonarism could not, as in comrade Edinho's presentation, be made under the sign of identity. There is a fundamental difference between Donald Trump's nationalism and the complete subordination of Bolsonarism to North American interests, in addition to a very different insertion in the Armed Forces, among other decisive dimensions.

In fact, the “cultural and anthropological” (not economic) assimilation of Brazilian society to North American society made by comrade Edinho in his presentation at the Fernando Henrique Cardoso Institute is an absurd contradiction, against everything that the classical interpreters of Brazil have taught us, from Euclides da Cunha to Abdias do Nascimento, from Manoel Bomfim to Florestan Fernandes, from Caio Prado Jr. to Lélia Gonzalez and Antonio Candido, committed to understanding its singularity.

This decisive interplay between neoliberal policies and the emergence of authoritarian governments with some fascist characteristics is fundamental to explaining the rise of Donald Trump – and also of Jair Bolsonaro. It is also decisive to explain the reason for Donald Trump’s recent electoral victory: it certainly does not result exclusively from the growing power of Donald Trump’s candidacy (around two million more votes than his previous presidential candidacy) but from the collapse of the vote for the Democratic Party’s candidacy (ten million fewer votes than in the previous election).

In other words: it was because it was unable to create a government that would fulfill its promises to resume the dynamics of New Deal – in fact, only very partially fulfilled – that the Democratic Party lost the elections. In addition, of course, to the late replacement of Joe Biden by Kamala Harris.

This mistake of naming fascism without identifying its contemporary neoliberal roots – what is gained in rhetoric is lost in the ability to understand what is at stake – can be fatal. Because for the majority of the Brazilian population and for workers, the frontal war waged by neoliberal forces against their fundamental rights – which continues and has even gained a more aggressive dimension by its spokespeople during the Lula government – ​​remains in the shadows, absent or in the background.

Comrade Edinho does not say anything critical about the privatization of public water, energy, education and health companies, which continue to be at the center of the neoliberal agenda. The open and convincing defense of the public dimension of goods and services that are fundamental to the Brazilian people is overlooked.

When repeatedly addressing the situation of the new working classes, for example, comrade Edinho says nothing against the neoliberal anti-labor laws, which allowed the generalization of precarious contracts, against the true war on workers' unions and on the Labor Court itself and on the legislated law.

At a decisive moment in the debate at the Fernando Henrique Cardoso Institute, in which President Sérgio Fausto harshly criticized President Lula for having spoken out against the high interest rates practiced by the Central Bank during the administration of former President Roberto Campos Neto, comrade Edinho simply came out with the argument that it was a “moment of tension” that had already been overcome!

Now, without this clear contrast, the limits of Lula's government appear as mere fruits of his will and not as a result of the impediments created by the neoliberals themselves, who accuse him of not fulfilling the program for which he was elected. This creates a split or a fracture in the narrative that organizes the historic struggle to reelect President Lula.

4.

This serious error in assessment results in a strategic proposal for the 2026 elections that could be fatal for democratic and popular forces.

There is only one apparent paradox in the proposal repeatedly put forward by comrade Edinho to avoid polarization and, at the same time, focus exclusively on political confrontation with Bolsonarism, identified as “fascist” and believed to have the support of 20% to 25% of Brazilians. What he is actually proposing is an effort to engage in dialogue with this important portion of Brazilians who, not being loyal to Bolsonarism, do not support Lula’s reelection today.

Comrade Edinho always uses the metaphor of two football fans shouting and repelling each other: it certainly confuses more than it clarifies, since it implicitly attributes to the Brazilian left an extreme position like that of the far right.

In fact, it fails to understand that neoliberal language is a radicalization and deepening of “cold war” politics, extending the label of “communist” or “socialist” to liberals with some social sensitivity. And this radicalization of the language of the neoliberal far right is certainly fully expressed in its economic language, which accuses even the defense of minimally or moderately Keynesian or distributivist positions of being “populist” and “fiscally irresponsible.”

According to this understanding of neoliberalism, the problem of the left would not be exactly one of “radicalism”, but rather of radicality, of going to the root of the fight for values ​​of civilization, in defense of work, women's rights and anti-racism.

This exclusive focus on combating Bolsonarism is based, as comrade Edinho formulates, on the hypothesis that it is certain or almost certain that the Bolsonaro family will present itself in the 2026 presidential elections with its own candidate, following the strategy of claiming the legality of the candidacy of the head of the clan until the last moment.

In this scenario, Governor Tarcísio de Freitas would not be a candidate for president and the other candidates would not be able to build competitive candidacies. Now, it is definitely not a good political strategy – to rely on “Fortuna”, always unpredictable, and downgrade “Virtu”, without preparing for the most difficult scenario – constructing a scenario in which the central hypothesis is the one most favorable to the construction of a victory in Lula's election, that is, the one in which Jair Bolsonaro, probably convicted and imprisoned as the head of an attempted coup d'état, is the central adversary.

It will never be good policy to make a victory depend on decisions that are not within one's own sphere of influence, but those of one's adversaries.

Therefore, the correct centrality of the fight against Bolsonarism should not be confused with the exclusivity of the fight against this leadership, but against the group of leaders who organize a neoliberal anti-Lula agenda, extremely aggressive towards the rights of the Brazilian people, through different types of leadership, such as those of Tarcísio, Zema, Ratinho Jr., Ronaldo Caiado or even Eduardo Leite.

These five certainly do not appear in the typical Jair Bolsonaro mold, coming directly from relations with militiamen and military advocates of torture, but they comprise the attack on fundamental human rights in different forms and typicalities. There are already many political initiatives underway to build unity among these leaders with Jair Bolsonaro or with his support, in the first or second round, which should in no way be disregarded.

A correct political strategy should focus on recovering the popularity of the Lula government, its relations with its social and electoral bases, in such a way that it presents itself in the elections as a democratic force that polarizes the Brazilian people's hope for better days.

The necessary polarization is one that organizes, with credibility because it is supported by decisive government actions, the hope of overcoming the anti-popular and anti-democratic program of the neoliberal far right. This dynamic brings together the Lula government, the left-wing and center-left parties, and social movements in public action. It is this political strength and this capacity that can even displace sectors that are physiological or in some degree in contradiction with the always factional leadership of Jair Bolsonaro.

5.

It is surprising that the proposal to end the 6x1 work week without reducing wages has received public support from leaders far beyond the democratic-popular camp. In addition to its strong popularity measured in polls, this proposal has left the leaders of the neoliberal far right in disarray.

Another recent positive moment was the proposal defended by Fernando Haddad for higher taxes on the rich and lower taxes on low-income workers. Such proposals put the voices of the neoliberal and far-right opposition in neutral: to oppose them would reveal their real program of violence against popular rights.

Despite being topical and still having a long and difficult path to their implementation, these initiatives show a strategic path towards a likely victory for democratic and popular forces. The more the Lula government succeeds in implementing the program for which it was elected in 2022, the more difficult the far-right forces will be, and the more political leaders and social movements will have an open field to build a political agenda of hope.

This year, 2025, is decisive: Bolsonarism is on the defensive and under public trial; the forces of the neoliberal far-right have not yet been able to build their unity for 2026; the Lula government – ​​with inflation at a low rate and the real valued – has a whole range of possible actions in defense of the rights of the Brazilian people. The construction of a democratic agenda to overcome the neoliberal regime is on the agenda!

The elections for the leadership of the largest party on the Brazilian left are a decisive moment for the construction of this political will on the left, which is so much broader democratically precisely because it contains an explicit confrontation with the neoliberal regime that attacks and prevents the realization of the fundamental rights of the Brazilian people.

*Juarez Guimaraes He is a full professor of political science at UFMG. Author, among other books, of Democracy and Marxism: Criticism of Liberal Reason (Shaman). [https://amzn.to/3PFdv78]

*Carlos Henrique Arab, economist, holds a PhD in political science from Unicamp and is Director of the Perseu Abramo Foundation.

Note

[1] See the article “The macro-economics of hope”, available at https://aterraeredonda.com.br/a-macro-economia-da-esperanca/

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