Article

Vargas and the populist legacy

ARMANDO BOITO JR.

Getúlio Vargas committed suicide half a century ago, but populism, in a new version, is still alive among us.

Populism is a particularly strong political phenomenon in peripheral countries of the capitalist system. It existed in much of Latin America between the 1930s and 1960s and, in the neoliberal period, it returned, but with a new political content. The concept of populism is much discussed in political science. Here, as we cannot present this discussion, we will simply say that populism results from the convergence between, on the one hand, a diffuse and politically impotent popular dissatisfaction and, on the other hand, a deliberate action by political parties and the State to rely on this dissatisfaction. and direct it towards a political objective that is defined without popular participation. The State defines a political direction for this diffuse popular dissatisfaction, directing unorganized workers “from above”. The direct relationship between the populist politician and the disorganized mass is the most prominent formal aspect of this political phenomenon.

Varguism was a type of populism. Today, given what we are witnessing in neoliberal Brazil, we can see more clearly that it was a case of progressive populism. Getúlio Vargas relied on the diffuse dissatisfaction that prevailed among broad layers of urban workers to carry out the 1930 Revolution and implement a policy of capitalist industrialization and modernization of Brazilian society. This diffuse (without defined program) and inorganic (without organization) revolt had accumulated throughout the Old Republic. The popular revolt was motivated by the anti-popular economic and social policy of big coffee capital and by the exclusionary political regime of the republic of oligarchies – precarious civil rights, political rights distorted by the halt vote and the practice of pen and ink, etc. There was, on the other hand, an entire political and social framework that made it difficult to organize this revolt politically and, therefore, to form an alternative that was neither passivity nor a populist solution. The Brazilian peasantry was dispersed and its political action was ephemeral, taking the form of religious insurrections. The factory workers, already minimally organized at the time, found themselves under anarcho-syndicalist hegemony, which confined them to a workerist and economistic position, as it made abstentionism in political matters a doctrinal value. In this context, unorganized urban workers tended to express their revolt in a blind and inconsistent way. Historian Edgar Carone recorded the frequency of riots throughout the history of the Old Republic. It was in this popular revolt that the 1930 Revolution sought and obtained support.

The opponent of Vargas populism was, firstly, the old ruling class, represented by big coffee capital. Throughout the entire period opened by the 1930 revolution, it remained firm in opposition. Already in 1932, through the PRP, it organized the Frente Única Paulista, which would lead to the civil war of 1932. After 1945, this great bourgeoisie took the initiative to organize the former UDN – União Democrática Nacional -, a party with which it coordinated several coups of State, including the August 1954 coup that deposed Getúlio Vargas. This “oligarchy” was opposed to the capitalist industrialization of Brazil. This process required the reformulation of the old international division of labor in a way that prioritized the interests of industry and the domestic market and implied, in exchange rate, credit and foreign trade policies, countless losses for the large export and import trade. Another opponent of Vargas populism was American imperialism. US companies intended to continue enjoying the favorable situation guaranteed to them by the old international division of labor and, therefore, were against Brazil's capitalist industrialization policy. History shows that, in the game of competition between powers, industrialist policy was able to rely, at the beginning, more on the new industrializing investment of European capital than on that of American capital. A third opponent of Vargas populism was the upper fraction of the middle class. This social sector was marked by elitism and joined the ranks of the UDN against the expansion of popular participation, even though it was superficial and controlled as it should be in the populist pattern.

Getúlio Vargas faced these three adversaries and sought to rely, at the same time, on urban workers and the industrial bourgeoisie. For the former, it “offered” the CLT, a diploma that contains, on the one hand, the labor legislation that still torments neoliberals today, but, on the other hand, the corporate state union structure that prematurely bureaucratized the Brazilian union movement. Getúlio Vargas used this union structure to maintain the capitalist State's control over the union movement and prevent the unification of the communists' political struggle with the workers' demand struggle. To the industrial bourgeoisie he offered the policy of industrialization and enjoyed their somewhat hesitant support. In moments of crisis, he had to seek to reconcile urban workers with industrialists in order to break the siege of imperialism and the old ruling class on industrialization policy. In the crisis of 1954, finding himself under siege by enemy forces and experiencing the hesitations of the industrial bourgeoisie, he sought to broaden and deepen popular support for his government. On May 1, 1954, he granted a 100% increase in the minimum wage, for an accumulated inflation rate of just 12% in the previous twelve months. He presented this increase with a radicalized speech in which he stated that, “by force of numbers”, the workers would eventually come to power – “today, you are with me in power, tomorrow you will be power”. The political effect was the opposite of what Vargas expected. The industrial bourgeoisie abandoned him and his government was deposed in a coup d'état on August 24, 1954. The popular reaction came late and in the classic populist form: riots in the country's main capitals that lasted three days and They targeted targets such as conservative newspapers and commercial houses and institutions reminiscent of the USA.

As indicated above, the populist government, thanks to diffuse popular support and contradictions within the bourgeoisie, can maneuver between conflicting forces. Scholars speak of a crisis of hegemony and a draw in weakness as the main condition for this wide margin of maneuver for such governments. The Getúlio Vargas government did not represent the workers nor, in the strict sense, did it represent the industrial bourgeoisie, although this fraction of the ruling class was the great beneficiary of its policy. It was a government directly controlled by the Brazilian State bureaucracy that supported a capitalist industrialization project with the creation of a minimum of labor and social rights.

As we know, the deposition of Getúlio Vargas was a general rehearsal for the deposition of João Goulart ten years later and this deposition ended the cycle of populist governments. Why do we say, then, that populism is still alive, in a worse version, today?

Neoliberal populism

In Brazil today, the same fetish of the protective State, which Getúlio Vargas used to advance industrialization, to control the union movement to expand, homeopathically, the rights of workers' rights, this same fetish is revived by imperialism and the big bourgeoisie finance to deindustrialize the country and suppress conquered rights. The spell returned against the sorcerer.

It is certain that Brazil has changed since then and that populism is no longer the widely dominant trend it was in Brazilian society a few decades ago. Since the 1970s, a new trend began to grow in the Brazilian labor and popular movement. This trend was consolidated with the formation of the PT and CUT. Its characteristics were and are different from those of populism. Based on the sectors of the working class and the salaried middle class with greater power of organization and union struggle - metal workers, bank workers, oil workers, public servants - this new trend believes more in the strength of workers to conquer their demands at the union level and has conceived and organized a political party to be the electoral and governing instrument of the workers' struggle for demands. The CUT and PT seemed to have definitively left populism behind. Furthermore, they consciously aimed for this goal and, throughout their history of struggles, the new unionism and the PT members proclaimed that they would definitively bury populism. But, that's not what happened. Today, in government, PTism also makes use of the new populism and does so to maintain the neoliberal economic model.

We do not have space to discuss the reasons for this revival of populism. We will go directly to the facts. In 1989, Fernando Collor de Melo called on the “descamisados” to support his fight against the “marajás” and achieved, as we know, electoral success. If voting intention surveys are correct, in the 1989, 1994 and 1998 elections, Lula's candidacy was defeated by voters at the base of the income distribution pyramid – families with incomes of less than five minimum wages per month. The poorest and most disorganized workers voted, for the most part, for neoliberal candidates. These are the symptoms of resurgent populism in Brazil and Latin America.

Vargas populism did not implement a welfare state in Brazil. On the contrary, it left a large part of the workers on the sidelines. During the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s, rural workers were excluded from labor and social rights. In the 1960s and 1970s, when social rights began to reach the countryside in the form of rural unionization, the Rural Worker Statute and Funrural, the rural worker was becoming an urban worker without a formal contract and, therefore, remaining no rights. Our hypothesis is that this led to the accumulation of a diffuse revolt against the exclusionary nature of the developmental model. The socialist, communist or PT left, for different reasons that would be worth discussing on another occasion, was unable to widely organize this revolt. When imperialism and the most reactionary sectors of the bourgeoisie began the neoliberal offensive, this dissatisfied mass, excluded from social citizenship and legitimately revolted, found itself politically available and was converted into a support class for the neoliberal offensive. The neoliberals surrounded the left from the rear. Imperialism and the most reactionary sectors of the Brazilian bourgeoisie managed to obtain support, thanks to a complex political and ideological mechanism, among the most impoverished sectors of the working population, and this without making economic concessions to the interests of these sectors. To obtain such support, they radicalized a discourse against restricted social rights, which could be presented as privileges, and staged the expansion of these rights using insufficient and uncertain compensatory policies based on targeting. Focusing is the reactionary neoliberal response to the restricted citizenship of developmental populism.

We are, therefore, faced with a very different picture from that of developmental populism. The promoters of the new populism are, as we said, imperialism and the big financial bourgeoisie, the most reactionary sectors of the ruling class. In government, there is no special autonomy of the State bureaucracy. This bureaucracy now acts as a political representative of big financial capital. The opponents of current populism are organized workers, their rights, and national industry. It is almost an inversion of Vargas populism. The fundamental similarity lies in the social basis, ideology and instrument that make both policies viable. The fetish of the State, the political disorganization of workers, the direct appeal of the Executive's occupant to the masses, these same elements are used today, but with different objectives from those that Vargas pursued yesterday.

---------------------
Armando Boito Jr. is a professor of Political Science and researcher at the Center for Marxist Studies (Cemarx-Unicamp). He is the author of the book The coup of 1954: the bourgeoisie against populism. São Paulo, Editora Brasiliense, 1982, Everything is history collection.

Top