One of the most renowned sociologists in the country, Professor Ricardo Antunes is launching the book “A Desertificação Neoliberal no Brasil (Collor, FHC and Lula)”. More than a collection of articles published in the press over the last 15 years, the work functions as a faithful portrait of the transformations experienced by Brazilian society during the period. “Publishing the book now was a small requirement of time, of our days. It was necessary to remember, to search in the recent past, but in the photographs presented, some of the explanatory elements for the existence of our sad social ills”, writes the author in the presentation of the work. In the following interview, Antunes talks about the book and the causes and effects of neoliberalism.

Ricardo Antunes breaks down
the neoliberal prescription

ALVARO KASSAB

The work

This book is a compilation of articles from the national and foreign press. These are texts aimed at analyzing a concrete situation, in which we condense the reflection accumulated over a certain period to help understand the meaning of the Collor, FHC and Lula governments, the latter contemplating its initial period, inserted in the international context – the world of globalization and the so-called era of globalization – which permeated this entire picture. I think that an intellectual in the human sciences, who lives at a public university, has to express his opinion at the most relevant moments in the country. It's just our opinion, but we have to say “at this moment, this is our position, this is how we see it”. And that is what we try to show throughout these various photographs – the Collor, Itamar, FHC and Lula governments. We kept the original writing so that the reader could perceive the oscillations and movements.

And then

The central idea of ​​the book is to try to understand the 90s in Brazil. These were years marked by a profound process of change, which we call “the era of neoliberal desertification”. We know that, in 1989, with Collor's victory, this neoliberal wave began in Brazil. The Collor period was characterized by a kind of “adventurous Bonapartism”. He had a Bonapartist streak, with a high dose of adventurism, which led to his impeachment two years later. With Fernando Henrique Cardoso, a much more complex process took place. Victorious in 1994, after being responsible for the Real Plan, he “stabilized” in a certain way, the Brazilian economy and implemented a bourgeois rationality whose pragmatics were in tune with neoliberal ideas. FHC himself, in his inauguration speech, said that he would implement Collor's economic program without his political adventurism. And FHC marked the era of mutations in Brazil in line with neoliberalism, of which the accentuated privatization of the State, the deregulation and precariousness of work, in addition to the financialization of the economy, are very accentuated trends.

FHC 3

There was, for example, no illusion when the FHC government was elected. In the first months of his government I wrote an article saying: “this government came to implement a neoliberal project, even if it did not have a neoliberal origin”. We all know that FHC never had a neoliberal origin. He was an intellectual, a sociologist at USP, considered progressive, but in politics he chose to defend order in order to get to where he is. We hoped that in 2002, with Lula's victory, a process of deconstruction of the era of liberal desertification could begin, just the beginning. What we have seen, over a year and a half later, is that the measures that the previous government implemented have been intensified by the current government. On the other hand, the measures that FHC was unable to carry out – because the then PT, the then CUT, the union movements and the left-wing parties prevented them – have been implemented by the current PT government. Hence the observation: despite the differences, the way of being and the distinct traits of the two governments, there is a clear tendency of continuity between the policies of FHC and Lula, which made several critical intellectuals say that we are in the FHC 3 era. If we think about the economic policies of Malan and Palocci and the Central Bank policy of the two governments, there is much more continuity than discontinuity.

More than the king

The PT was the heir to the social struggles of the 80s and 90s and was a drain on social struggles. There was an expectation, albeit small, that we could put some sand in the neoliberal gears. But the way in which the party comes to power, the brutal repercussions of the neoliberal decade on the party's political and ideological action, its imprisonment by the international financial system, by the IMF, by large transnational capital, its contingent policy, combined with a lack of theoretical training , political and ideological, and an excessive desire for power, made the PT more realistic than the king.

“Popular capitalism”

The PT not only privatized Social Security, released GMOs and opened up even more capital suction taps for the disproportionate payment of interest and internal and external debt. Everything contrary to what he preached throughout the 80s and part of the 90s. He advanced FHC's proposals, implementing a more intense and harmful surplus policy for the country and our working class. He delivered, for example, the Central Bank – which was nominated (or appointed?) by the international financial system. This has a new element: the PT in power is trying to implement what Thatcher perhaps jokingly called “popular capitalism”: every Englishman would become a small investor, a small privatist, a tiny speculator in the world dominated by giant speculators. Lula is imagining that, through the privatization of Social Security, every Brazilian will become a small investor, failing to realize that, with R$260 minimum wage per month, Brazilians cannot even afford to feed themselves.

Fund managers

This Social Security privatization policy serves the interests of the financial system and “business unionism”, fund managers who, in some way, calibrate the forms of capital accumulation in Brazil. Therefore, today I no longer have any illusion that the PT can return to its origins. In my opinion, this no longer applies. The episode of expulsion of parliamentarians consistent with PT's previous policy is symptomatic. The PT's policy of freezing the left - those who do not vote, as in the minimum wage, are losing space within the party and only those parliamentarians who either accept this policy or are negotiating their positions and election possibilities remain in it. Others, for their part, are analyzing the opportune moment to leave the party. It is necessary to respect the time of these internal sectors that are currently unhappy with the PT, but I no longer see the possibility of internal change.

union elite 1

It was natural that when the PT came to power, the founding union groups would have an important role within the power structure. It would be good if the country could have workers' representatives in the conduct of public policies, as long as they had not lost their original link with their social class and as long as they had not been completely swallowed up by the benefits of the union bureaucracy and, now, by the labor machine. State and the charms of the world of capital. Result: what relationship does Berzoini have with his union past? What relationship does Gushiken have with your banking past? Note that there is a path: they are born in the union struggle, they take over the leadership positions of the CUT and the PT, they make the leap to candidacy for deputy – that is easy for a union leader, who represents a category with 200, 300, 400 thousand workers, such as bank employees, metal workers, teachers, etc. They all arrive in direct administration positions, combining this social ascension, devoid of political-ideological density, having their ties cut with the working class. Everyone becomes a kind of manager of public funds and places them at the service of private interests.

union elite 2

What could be positive – the participation of trade unionists linked to the working class in the government – ​​has transformed, Leopardically and Prussianly, into its opposite: they are former trade unionists who no longer have any links with the trade union struggles in which they participated in the 80s and 90s. and today they are in commanding roles in the State apparatus, doing what the big dominant interests demand. If we could play with words, they changed the representation of the “labor corporation” that so scared Hayek, the theorist of neoliberalism, and today they are true representatives of the capital corporation. One of the Lula government's next measures will be to discuss labor legislation and they are being mainly responsible for carrying out the dismantling of workers' rights. Berzoini, who has already entered history as an enemy of public workers, responsible for the privatization of Social Security, is now in the Ministry of Labor with the task of disrupting, deregulating and making social labor legislation precarious through the euphemistically called flexibilization of laws social conditions of work which, in plain English, means making working conditions even more precarious.

union elite 3

How vital was CUT? She was born in 1983, deeply connected to social struggles. The CUT is also formed, in its origins, by the new unionism, by the movement of union oppositions and by rural unionism. This was the tripod that supported CUT. Anyone who studies and followed union life in the 80s knows that there was not a strike, an action, or a measure involving workers in which the CUT was not present. For example, the 88 Constitution was only relatively progressive in the chapter on social labor rights because the CUT played a decisive role. This is the challenge of the 2000s: either follow the path of vertical, top-down, negotiating unionism, as the CUT is following in an (almost) irreversible way, or return to the condition of a socially based unionism, which refuses this verticalization, which refuse to be an appendage of the government and combine social action and political action. Little by little, a statutory rule was created that converted the CUT into a central leadership center. And there is something very important: throughout this period of the CUT's history, many resources from European union social democracy came to support it. This had a price and an ideological cost.

New cuts

Taylorist and Fordist-based trade unionism was vertically based, companies were vertical. The working class was predominantly male, with relatively stable contracts. Not today. Companies have become horizontal, there is a huge process of feminization of the working class. The gender and generational (age) dimensions are even more pronounced than in the past. Some “modern” companies, for example, only hire workers aged 20 or 22. Why? These companies say: they don't have union experience, they don't have Fordist experience, they don't have Taylorist experience. It is the “ideal proletarian” to be intensely exploited by factories in this wave in which rights are being undermined. The challenge is to think about horizontal unionism, which takes into account this new polysemy of work.

New order

We have entered a new phase of capitalism, of intense technological development, which has completely changed the notion of time and space and is here to stay, whose rationality, at the microcosmic level, of companies, generates an unmeasured global irrationality, of which structural unemployment is exemplary. There was an intensification in the pace and conditions of labor exploitation. Versatility presents itself as the ability to have the working class perform all activities. This is here to stay, as long as capital society is dominant. And our challenge is to find another form of societal organization, a new way of socializing humanity.

Alternatives

History is the result of human invention, history is not previously written, it is an everyday construction. No one could imagine that the Soviet Union would collapse without any invading army; even if we had the battle of Seattle in the heart of the United States; nor that the United States, which was preparing for Star Wars, would be invaded by three planes that, using conventional methods, hit the twin towers and the Pentagon and almost missed the White House as well. This is an unusual feature in history. In the 80s and 90s, when Fukuyama said we were at the “end of history” and Margaret Thatcher repeated “there's no alternative”, no one could imagine that the MST would be born with the strength it was born in Brazil, that the Zapatistas would break out in Mexico, for the World Social Forum to become an alternative to the Davos Forum. These are constructions of history and the 21st century is challenging us to seek alternatives beyond this societal logic, almost spectral, very involucral and highly lethal. This is our biggest challenge today.

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