Book by Plínio de Arruda Sampaio Jr. criticizes the 13 years of the Lula and Dilma governments
In “Chronicle of an announced crisis: criticism of Lula and Dilma's economic policy”, professor Plínio de Arruda Sampaio Jr., associate professor at Unicamp's Institute of Economics (IE), reflects on 13 years of political economy in the PT governments, presenting contradictions that are considered responsible for the serious crisis that currently paralyzes the economy and polarizes the class struggle.
“The book is a chronicle with texts I wrote over these thirteen years, due to academic demands and social struggle”, says Sampaio Jr. “I got my hands dirty to understand the PT government and the contradictions in its policy economic, which emerged in an incipient and sometimes ambiguous way, to, at the end of it all, show that the problems faced by Lula and Dilma were inscribed from the beginning, in the options and choices they made.”
In the book released on May 30, during the 23rd National Meeting of Political Economy, hosted by Unicamp, the IE professor attributes “the problems that shake national life to the subaltern insertion of Brazil in the global order, a process initiated by Collor de Mello in the beginning of the 1990s, consolidated by Fernando Henrique Cardoso with the launch of the Real Plan and deepened and legitimized by the PT administrations of Lula and Dilma Rousseff from 2003 onwards”, as highlighted in the presentation. In the interview below, the author seeks to summarize his answers to questions highlighted on the back cover of the book.
Jornal da Unicamp – Why did the Workers' Party frustrate the expectations of those who imagined that hope would overcome fear?
Plínio de Arruda Sampaio Jr. - I was a PT member since its foundation [today he is a member of Psol] and this was the subject of a lot of controversy. There are people who think that the PT did not fulfill the program, there are people who see a moral problem – which, I think, exists, but I will not go into the merits, because it is not the dominant one. The main problem is that the PT did not build correlations of forces to face the structural problems responsible for the people's woes – underdevelopment and dependence. There was a promise to put a finger on the wounds and thaw the reforms that had been frozen by the military dictatorship: urban reform, agrarian reform, the urgency of organizing a universal social policy.
It turns out that all these issues would require confronting the secular privileges of Brazilian society. And the PT did not build forces for this confrontation, to change the State. He could still try to stick to the program and see what would happen, but his choice was different. As the PT did not change the State, the State changed the PT. And so the PT gradually adapted, molding itself to the demands of the State and the Brazilian bourgeoisie, to transform itself into what I call a “party of order”, that is, one that does not question the pillars of order, but seeks, within this order, do the least worst.
JU – What changed in Lula’s economic policy in relation to Fernando Henrique Cardoso’s and in Dilma’s in relation to Lula’s?
Plínio de Arruda Sampaio Jr. - Economic policy is always a response to the concrete problems of each moment. This answer will be given by the correlation of forces and the strategic policy orientation we have. From a structural point of view, there is a common denominator in the three governments: the Real Plan, which everyone adopted and everyone celebrated. And what is the Real Plan? It is the plan that organizes Brazil's subaltern insertion into the global order. What's different about these governments are the problems they faced and the range of maneuver each had, at each historical moment.
We had two Fernando Henriques, one from the first term – which consolidates the Real Plan – and a second, from the adjustment – which is struggling with the exchange rate crisis. Lula took over the Brazilian government at a time of an inflection in the international situation, a brief cycle of expansion of the world economy, driven by unbridled speculation. It was perfectly predictable – so much so that I and several colleagues saw it – that the speculative bubble would one day burst. The growth of international trade allowed the Brazilian economy to resume growth and gave Lula room for maneuver to pursue social policy. Dilma caught the bubble burst and had to deal with the adjustment demands imposed by capital as a way out of the crisis. From 2013 onwards, Dilma already entered the gears of adjustment, at first covertly and slowly, but, after the campaign, explicitly. And there it came to an end.
JU – What is the relationship between the crisis that paralyzes Brazil and the contradictions inscribed in the growth cycle that boosted the so-called “neo-developmentalism”?
Plínio de Arruda Sampaio Jr. - The PT did not face Brazil's structural problems, typical of underdeveloped and dependent economies, which are ultimately economies without autonomy to face their problems; they are reflex economies, which fluctuate according to international winds. The PT made an option for international capital. It worsens exchange rate vulnerability. He chose to pay the public debt to the detriment of social policies. It made a choice not to tackle income distribution in depth and, when the expansionary cycle ends, the internal market does not have the strength to continue growing. The policy of facing the crisis by encouraging the indebtedness of families, especially low-income families, ended up worsening the recession.
Anyway, the basics are that growth was driven by the business of international capital and by a policy that encouraged the mimicry of consumption patterns and lifestyles in central economies – this is what is behind the current crisis. Just as the poor cannot have the standard of living of the rich, a poor society cannot intend to generalize the consumption pattern of the rich to the entire population. When Lula encourages this, he is promoting, from a structural point of view, a concentration of income, even if in the short term he can make a personal distribution of income, as happened.
JU – How do economic and political crises condition each other?
Plínio de Arruda Sampaio Jr. - This is a complex relationship. But ultimately, what is the political crisis? It is the end of social peace, which in my opinion was decreed in June 2013. From a structural point of view, the political crisis was caused by the end of growth. Social peace was fueled by the accommodation of contradictions provided by growth. When growth slows down, Brazil's old problems, and new ones, emerge with great force. This dismantles social peace and creates a political crisis. On the other hand, how is the bourgeoisie resolving the economic crisis? With the adjustment: the worker pays the price. But to have the adjustment you need to have a pattern of domination that controls people. Then, the end of social peace begins to combine with the bourgeoisie's demand for strong, authoritarian measures to hold back those below. As long as the bourgeoisie does not recycle its pattern of domination, political uncertainty feeds back into economic uncertainty, as businesspeople look and do not know where the country is going. Thus, the economic crisis and the political crisis feed each other, creating a vicious circle.
JU – What explains Dilma Rousseff’s deposition?
Plínio de Arruda Sampaio Jr. - Basically, Dilma's deposition is due to the electoral fraud she carried out in the 2014 elections. When Dilma says “I'm not going to make adjustments even if the cow coughs” and, before the cow coughs, she appoints Joaquim Levy [Minister of Finance] as starting a very harsh adjustment policy (which even deepened the recession that was already part of the economy's movement), it shot itself in the foot. The only chance Dilma would have of staying in government was with popular support. When she explicitly betrayed her electorate, she was left with zero and, zero, what was her policy? It was to surrender to capital. It turns out that capital is asking for more and more. After denying all her electoral promises, Dilma began to outsource her own government. We cannot forget that Temer served as Dilma's main political coordinator. It has outsourced government to such an extent that it has become superfluous. She left with a flick. Dilma is the victim of the blow she gave to the working class, which emptied her government, creating a power vacuum that these criminals led by Eduardo Cunha and Temer occupied.
JU – Why doesn’t the liberal adjustment solve the crisis?
Plínio de Arruda Sampaio Jr. - The liberal adjustment does not solve any fiscal problem. And this is very clear in the Brazilian case, where the spending cut has a multiplier effect on the economy of contracting revenue well above the original spending cut. On the other hand, part of the adjustment is to increase interest rates to satisfy the demand for profitability of the capital that is sheltered in public debt, which increases debt service expenses. Fiscal austerity is a policy that has not worked anywhere in the world. In fact, the objective is not to bring order to finances, but to fuel financial speculation at a time of uncertainty, in which capitalists demand public debt as a fictitious mechanism for capital appreciation.
JU – Mr. will participate in a panel [day 1] at the National Meeting of Political Economy, here at Unicamp, on “Social movements and confronting adjustment policies”. Can you tell us what you are going to explain, in general terms?
Plínio de Arruda Sampaio Jr. - I believe that the fundamental thing is to combine resistance against the attack on rights and democracy, concrete struggles, with structural changes that open new horizons for Brazilian workers – this is the great challenge of social movements. The indigenous people will resist the attacks of the landowners, the homeless will resist the attacks of financial speculation, the unions will resist the attacks on their rights. The challenge is to politicize resistance in the sense of linking each specific struggle to a general struggle, because the attack that the bourgeoisie is making is not specific, it is general; She is not just attacking the Guarani Kaiowas. Everyone who lives off their work is under heavy fire. What is required, therefore, is a collective response.
Workers need to open some way out for the Brazilian people, putting the urgency of structural changes on the agenda, because this economic policy framework does not offer us alternatives; the alternatives serve only capital and, in times of crisis, require particularly draconian policies for workers. If there is no prospect of a paradigm shift, there is no possibility of facing the problems that afflict the population. If the left does not have the capacity to shine a light at the end of the tunnel, the ultra-right will surf on the despair of the working class. This is what is happening in Europe and the United States.
JU – Do you believe that we are experiencing an unprecedented crisis in the country’s history?
Plínio de Arruda Sampaio Jr. - This is a profound crisis. Your question is one that Brazilians needed to be discussing, regardless of whether they agree with my answer. Looking from a historical perspective, what is Brazil? It is a long transition from the colony of yesterday to the Brazil of tomorrow; It is not a colony, nor exactly a nation. This long transition is interrupted. Brazilian society faces a process of neocolonial reversion. They are destroying all the minimum elements that constitute a reasonably civilized society – we were never very civilized, but the minimum is being taken away. Why? Capitalism is going through a very delicate moment and, within the structural crisis of the mode of production, what is the solution that is being given? It is the American way out, which corresponds to the interests of big capital.
One of the elements of the way out is what I call “passing on the trouble” of the crisis to your neighbor. This implies a reorganization of the international division of labor. The ongoing change gives Brazil an even more degraded position in the world economy. The neoliberal adjustment destroyed the national economic system. Brazilian industry does not have the capacity to compete with either the first division industry (United States) or the second division industry (China); We have neither dynamic competitiveness nor spurious competitiveness to defend the industry. And what is going well in the country? Agribusiness, which is a large estate; mining, which is a large estate. We are regressing to a colonial-type economy. This is the adjustment that is being put into practice, an adjustment that compromises the future of Brazilian society as a civilizing project. In short, this is probably the biggest crisis in the history of Brazilian society. If nothing is done about the national project, no stone will be left unturned.
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Who is it
Plínio de Arruda Sampaio Jr. He is a full professor at the Institute of Economics at the State University of Campinas (IE/Unicamp). With research in the area of Brazilian economic history and development theory, he is dedicated to studying the impact of capitalist globalization on the Brazilian economy. Member of the editorial board of several academic journals, including New Themes e Marxism XXI, has dozens of articles, published in Brazil and abroad. He is the author of Between the nation and barbarism: the dilemmas of dependent capitalism (Vozes, 1999); and book organizer Capitalism in crisis: the nature and dynamics of the global economic crisis (Sunderman, 2009); It is June days: the popular revolt in debate (ICP, 2014).
