The Nature of the PT Governments: A Variety of Neoliberalism? Part 2

The first part of this issue on the nature of the PT governments in Brazil (January 2020) focused on the macroeconomic, social, and political dimensions of those administrations, the coalitions that supported them in Congress, and the long-term implications of the party’s strategy. Several contributions stressed the neoliberal roots of the policies of the PT and their relationship to (old, neo- or social) developmentalism. The purpose was not merely to develop consistent classifications but to outline a conceptual apparatus robust enough to capture the processes that, in later years, would lead to the disintegration of Brazilian democracy.

This second part directs its attention to specific aspects of the PT policies and their consequences for particular sectors, institutions, areas, and regions and for the country’s social structures. It includes foreign policy, Brazil’s external economic constraint, and the government’s regional, distributive, social, and labor market policies and traces the emerging forms of collective action and the new forms of resistance of the working class.

As we write, the economic and political crises in Brazil and elsewhere in Latin America have intensified. At the same time, the U.S. government and its local allies have turbo-charged their attacks on dissenting administrations, leaders, and social movements across the region, while local elites in several countries have moved viciously against workers, the poor, women, indigenous populations, and a wide range of marginalized groups. Bolivia, Honduras, Paraguay, and Venezuela have suffered greatly. In turn, a new generation of movements of resistance against neoliberalism, authoritarianism, and imperialism has come to the fore in Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Mexico, and elsewhere. These movements are opening, often at the greatest cost, pathways for the construction of new forms of popular power in the region. Sadly, despite the depredations imposed by the administration led by Jair Bolsonaro this has not yet reached a point of maturity in Brazil itself.

The Latin American context is important in other ways, too. Examination of the coups and coup attempts in Bolivia, Honduras, Haiti, Paraguay, and Venezuela shows remarkable parallels with the ouster of Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff, which is examined in great detail in this issue. The new mass movements in the region also illustrate what the PT had been missing for the past two decades, having eschewed the spontaneous power of the organized masses in favor of backroom deals with corrupt politicians, self-interested billionaires, lazy bureaucrats, and Nimbyists of every hue. All manner of mass initiatives were throttled, drowned, quartered, or fossilized in Brazil’s political slaughterhouse with the complicity of the PT on the altar of “stability.”

To a large extent, then, the lack of mass mobilizations, the flimsiness of the resistance to the coup, and the emerging authoritarian trends in the Brazilian political system were conjured by the PT itself: in seeking to hold power without confrontation with established interests, it ended up becoming complicit in the rise of forces that would seek to destroy it and jail its one and only leader, Lula. His political talent is unquestionable, his energy seemingly infinite, and his political cunning a spectacle to marvel at, but the most talented leader in Brazil’s political history thrives alone, partly because his self-made genius distances him from common mortals and partly because every conceivable rival, successor, and source of support on the left has been aborted, flattened, or reduced to sycophancy. The PT was trapped in a golden cage from which it imagined that it ruled the country, but it suddenly realized that the building was on fire and evil hunters were shooting at the Big Red Bird from every angle. The end of the story came as a huge surprise.

Brazil finds itself, then, in desolate political, economic, and social terrain: low economic growth, persistently high unemployment, growing poverty and inequality, declining competitiveness, aggressive neoliberal “reforms” destroying established rights, citizenship, collectivity, and any possibility of sustained economic recovery, and a political system working overtime to demolish the channels by which the majority of the population could ever again influence any levers of state power. This is the reality, but what to do about it? What forms of resistance can be effective in these dire circumstances?

All this is about the drama; but there is also the light-and-sound show. The spectacular Car Wash operation against corruption was carefully planned to destroy Lula, Rousseff, and the PT. In doing this, it turned the ambitious judge Sergio Moro into a hero and the country’s sole moral reserve and sanctified his large retinue of acolytes and simpletons into icons of integrity. For years, they seemed to float above and beyond everyone else, able and willing to make Brazil an honest country single-handedly provided that they could incarcerate Lula. Eventually, a sequence of leaks and revelations by the Intercept showed that the heroes were fraudsters. Its investigations revealed that the entire “anticorruption” operation was compromised by short-term political interests, greed, and venality. Moro sold his services first to the United States and later to Bolsonaro; he was promoted to minister of justice and promptly defanged and left to suffer, lost and powerless, in the merciless tumble dryer of Brazilian politics. His reputation was ruined, his star team dissolved into a rabble. The president, in turn, was found to be a leader of gangsters, his sons directly implicated in the militias that plague Rio de Janeiro and that killed the councilwoman Marielle Franco.

While the Temer administration replaced the PT government with an unstable coalition of thieves, fraudsters, and conmen, Jair Bolsonaro’s improbable triumph brought to power the worst features of Brazil. Violence, misogyny, stupidity, mindless religiosity, and a horde of inexperienced, unqualified, and vociferous blabbermouths hijacked the state and proceeded to demolish any semblance of seriousness in public administration. It is as if there were a plan to destroy the institutions of the state in order to rule through a politics of violence backed up by militias funded by the trade in drugs and guns. The country is sliding toward a daily routine of intimidation, wanton destruction, and murder while the elites shelter themselves behind walls of prejudice and money. Nothing good can come of this, but then this is only the intensification of the way Brazil has existed for the most of its 500 years.

Understanding Brazil’s overlapping crises in the Latin American context requires a trenchant and multifaceted analysis not only of the current administration but also of the administrations led by the PT. This second part of the special issue on the nature of these administrations aims to contribute to this reflection. It includes, mainly, studies of specific dimensions of PT rule and the policies implemented by the PT administrations. Luiz Fernando de Paula, Fabiano Santos, and Rafael Moura claim that the PT implemented a set of social-developmentalist polices that were significantly different from the neoliberal policies typical of previous administrations. Their analysis of those policies and the challenges to them focuses on the economic and political limitations imposed by the external constraint on the PT governments’ redistributive efforts.

The next articles turn to foreign policy, the labor market, and inequality. Pedro Paulo Zahluth Bastos and Celio Hiratuka probe Rousseff’s foreign policy, showing that it closely followed Lula’s model despite shifts and changes at the margin. Ana Paula Colombi and José Dari Krein turn to the labor market. They show that the flexibilization of labor was not only a legacy of the neoliberal reforms of the Cardoso administration but was contiuously expanded under the PT. Pedro Mendes Loureiro shows that the redistributive policies of PT did not have any significant impact on Brazil’s social structure; on this basis, he relates the PT administrations to a “poverty-reducing variety of neoliberalism.” Andreia Galvão and Paula Marcelino review the complex web of relations between the PT and the unions and the subordinate role of the latter during the PT administrations.

The following contributions focus on social and housing policies. Lena Lavinas and Denise Gentil review Brazilian social policies. They show that, despite significant innovations, consumption was the main driving force for social inclusion during the PT administrations; the consequence was the growing indebtedness of large sections of the population even as they seemed to enjoy greater material prosperity. In contrast, after Rousseff’s impeachment, this “hybrid” system was gradually replaced by the private provision of social services. Lucas Andrietta, Patrícia Rocha Lemos, and Eduardo Fagnani review social security; their article stresses the distance between the strong rhetorical shift by the PT in terms of social provision and the practical continuities with the preceding (neoliberal) administrations, including extensive commodification of provision. Cristhiane Falchetti provides a historical overview of housing policies in Brazil that places the PT in a larger context, revealing the tendencies toward the intensified commodification of provision in parallel with continuing inefficiencies, insufficiencies, and waste. Finally, Soraia Cardozo and Humberto Martins examine the regional policies of the PT administrations, showing how difficult it is to find in them sufficient coherence or depth. As a result, despite the limited development of poorer regions, the overwhelming evidence points toward the continuation of regional imbalances in Brazil.

Taken together, the two parts of this issue provide the most comprehensive and penetrating examination available in the literature of the experience of the PT in federal power in Brazil. While the debate is certain to continue, the contributors have shown in unprecedented detail the achievements, significance, limitations, and puzzles of this remarkable experience, which has transformed Brazil in many ways and had consequences that will continue to reverberate over time and challenge analysts, scholars, and social movements for decades to come.