JU - Despite being new, the Brazilian university played a fundamental role in implementing public policies and qualifying the country's political framework. What does pension reform for universities represent for you?
Ricardo Antunes – I will start with a more general consideration. I view the future of the country with great reservations, if this policy continues to be followed. My comment is comparative. When Fernando Henrique took office in his first term, he faced the oil workers' strike. That strike shaped the face of the FHC government. For those who did not have full intellect until that moment, that strike was enlightening.
JU – What are the similarities with the current scenario?
Ricardo Antunes – It's sad, but the civil servants' strike and the clash that the Lula government is waging against the state in its public dimension, against the “res Pública” [public thing], will give the government its appearance. And this reform is not in the past or recent history of the PT or in its program. It is sad to note that the first reform of the Lula government is in fact a “counter-reform of social security”. It destroys social rights of a segment of the organized working class, but which is not privileged. It is clear that a minority have high salaries. But this arises from a deformed trait of the Brazilian State, which could be clearly controlled, simply by implementing existing restraining legislation. It is also sad because it demonizes the public service, creating an apparent enemy. But the real enemies are others and, when the government acts in this way, it fails to face the real enemies.
JU – Who would these enemies be?
Ricardo Antunes – I recently saw press demonstrations that said that now the market, especially the international financial system, is more satisfied because all debt service will be paid with this pension reform. That is the essential question. The Lula government, in its first reform, slavishly subordinated itself to a counter-reform that is of neoliberal soul, ideology and pragmatics. We could wait up to four years from the PT government, no one is demanding changes all at once, but the signs would have to be different. For example: we will courageously face the issue of internal and external debt and interest; we will face the issue of the concentration of the agrarian structure, the urban explosion and the lack of housing, the issue of wage squeeze, the financialization of the economy, opposition to the FTAA, the autonomy of the Central Bank, among many other issues. The problem is that we are already entering the ninth month of government and the signs are that financial capital is happy, the IMF is satisfied and social movements feel orphaned and to a large extent incredulous.
JU – What, in your opinion, will be the result of this policy?
Ricardo Antunes – The “res public”, public pensions, public health and education will lose. Not only will workers in these respective activities lose, but the poor salaried population will lose. Who seeks public welfare, schools and hospitals? It's the working population. It is sad to imagine that the role played by this left is to create a system that will generate a wealth of resources that some economists say is greater than the entire volume of privatizations under the FHC government. This volume of money goes to pension funds, for a financial and speculative logic. The government will transfer a huge volume of resources to private pension funds.
JU - Do you think the reform will remove professors from public universities? And for future generations, what would be the effects?
Ricardo Antunes - The university will obviously suffer from this. Why do many of us dedicate ourselves fully to public universities? For the ideal that in the public space scientific reflection is free, less permeated by market injunctions. If we knew that our remuneration was limited when compared to market remuneration, it was because we were certain that, after a life dedicated to public teaching and research, we would receive compensation through a public pension system that you paid for during decades of active service. . All of this falls apart. Furthermore, the university career (our RDIDP) will be destroyed. His public career will be severely affected. It is evident that the new generations, when they see a public career dismantled, broken, precarious and with no prospect of a public retirement, will look for their alternative in the “admirable world of the market”. The consequences for universities will be great. My expectation is that this movement by civil servants will be able to at least mitigate and reduce these harmful consequences, even if the most plausible alternative today is for the government to win in the Senate, a body that is much more susceptible to pressure from financial capital, from the productive world. and the large estates, than the world of work. The Lula government, at no point during the campaign, said that it would become the champion of neoliberalism, against the “res publica” and in particular, against the public university.
JU - Do you think he betrayed the party's guidelines? Didn't the political campaign already signal that the PT would take more conciliatory positions?
Ricardo Antunes – Yes, there was a visceral, profound mutation in the PT, before and after the elections. This is a very complex issue that we will just indicate here. Firstly, in the 90s there was a true global storm, with strong consequences for Latin America and Brazil: neoliberalism, productive restructuring on an intensified scale, the end of Eastern Europe, social democratization of the left, neoliberalization of social democracy . They were of such intensity that the PT did not ignore them. It underwent this mutation and arrived, at the end of the 90s, as a party increasingly distant from the social movements of the countryside and the city, where it originated. It increasingly became an institutionalized party, a Party of Order. In this sense, this conversion of the PT is not a complete surprise. But the virulence, intensity and speed with which this happened is a surprise. Instead of resisting, he acts like a paladin of this order.
Secondly, the PT was part of a left whose greatest strength was its link with social struggles. But it has always been enormously lacking in terms of theoretical formulation. In his ideas, he always oscillated between a very vague socialism, a varied spectrum of social democracy and radical republicanism.
JU - Do you mean by this that these changes would be predictable?
Ricardo Antunes – I often say that the electoral victory in 2002 was late. The victory that did not come in 1989, the year that condensed a decade that is often mistakenly called the “lost decade”. Maybe for capital, but for the working class and social struggles it was one of the richest decades in the country's social and political history. It would be enough to say that the PT was born in 1980, the CUT in 1983 and the MST in 1985/6, there was the Diretas campaign, the Constituent Assembly, etc. The first three examples are the best organic expressions from the world of work. The Collor x Lula dispute was the political condensation of this social impulse. The victory came a decade and a half later, 2002, at a time of ebb. The PT made all sorts of concessions to come to power. The electoral campaign seemed like an Americanized campaign – it was the prevalence of marketing in relation to concrete political proposals. And the result was the victory of the PT with a greatly altered program and without the emphasis on profound changes that the country needed. Still, the electorate believed in Lula and the PT, as they were both heirs of these social struggles in the 80s and the resistance to neoliberalism. Even the PT and CUT, undergoing mutation in the 90s, each in their own way resisted neoliberalism. Both tried, for example, to make privatization and the dismantling of the university more difficult. When the PT came to power in 2002, this situation changed. This right-wing trend has become intense and this has created a very difficult situation for the left.
JU - What would be the consequences for the left, which invariably already bears the reputation of being historically split?
Ricardo Antunes - How can we explain to the electorate that, in just over six months, the PT is carrying out the (counter)reforms of the Fernando Henrique government with more virulence? The consequences of this for the left are large and negative.
JU - And for the government?
Ricardo Antunes – It is clear that, if this course is maintained, the Lula government will be deepening its own defeat, because in four years a right-wing will return and be elected on top of the pieces that will remain.
JU - Don't you think the prediction is premature? Isn't there the possibility of a turnaround or even a kind of purification?
Ricardo Antunes –Latin America can no longer support neoliberalism, whether it comes from Menem, FHC, Gutierrez, Lula, wherever it comes from. Therefore, in Argentina, it is possible to see that the Kirchner government, even though it does not have a history of social struggles like Lula's, has been taking measures that show that other alternatives are possible. Of course, the Argentine situation is not the same as that of Brazil. But be careful: doing as Lula is doing, in the first international crisis whose epicenter is in Brazil, we will realize the enormous vulnerability of this policy.
JU - What makes you foresee a turbulent scenario?
Ricardo Antunes – It is an illusion to imagine that, by being docile, you can conquer global financial capital. The more servile the economic policy is, the more global capital demands and will clearly put pressure on the Lula government at a time of greater social tension. And the government seems not to notice the erosion of part of its social base, which has already started with public sector employees. And it is laughable to imagine that it will be supported by transnational financial capital. How are you going to handle a country with unemployment rising? The productive system is at a standstill, and violence takes over large cities and the Brazilian state. In this context, the “spectacle of growth” fallacy is almost laughable. We know that, with the enormous changes in the world of work, growth is not directly synonymous with a significant increase in employment. Of course, as growth tends to lead to an increase in employment, but the level of unemployment in Brazil is so brutal that a development policy anchored in the interests of the majority of the salaried population is needed, completely contrary to what has been carried out by Palocci .
JU - In the event of the emergence of a new left, what would be its role and in what field would it act?
Ricardo Antunes – She will be heir to the 80s, to these social struggles, refusing this movement of institutionalization à la Third Way, à la Tony Blair, à la New Labor. We know that classical social democracy was completely decimated in Europe, which was its birthplace. And it becomes an out of place idea to imagine that social democracy could find its natural bed in desertified Latin America. The biggest challenge will be to reinvent a social left that is capable of vividly articulating the social struggle and the political struggle at the beginning of the 21st century. There are signs of this in various parts of the world – from Seatlle, Nice, Genoa, Florence, Prague – and who express this rebellion in the face of current destructiveness, whether representing social forces of work, or representing social forces that have been somehow expelled from work, but that have links with the working classes. And this is also the challenge that will arise for Brazilian trade unionism.
JU - How do you evaluate the role played by CUT in recent events involving pension reform?
Ricardo Antunes – It appears, at its top, like an appendage of the government. The CUT only started to say that it was partially against pension reform when a lot of water had already flown. She did not participate effectively in any of the demonstrations against social security. And what is the Lula government’s biggest “weapon” for the unions? It is to implement what we can call union capitalism. CUT would take a “leap in quality”, becoming a partner, a participant in pension funds, an agent interested in financial speculation. It is enlightening to see the example of an important part of North American and European trade unionism. It is configured as a “financial business unionism”, which is no longer concerned with the wages and rights of the working class, but with stock exchange shares. It would be, it is good to anticipate, the complete perversion of Brazilian trade unionism.
JU - Do you think CUT is heading towards this?
Ricardo Antunes – I have no doubt that the currently dominant sectors of the CUT are moving in this direction. Why wasn't the CUT viscerally against this pension reform? Because many segments are preparing to enter this great financial-union symbiosis.
JU - But can we generalize?
Ricardo Antunes – No, the CUT is home to an important and consequential left. There are several unions committed to social struggles. It is a mistake to imagine, for example, that public service unions will disappear. They will go through a new phase: there will be a clash with the government, which in the recent past was their main ally.
JU - In this line of reasoning, the purification will not only take place at the level of the political sphere, but also in the ideological field?
Ricardo Antunes – Surely. The Taylorist and Fordist era that dominated Brazil from the 30s until recently – and in a certain sense it still exists – was dominated by vertical companies, which were created by vertical unions. The social democratic union is vertical. Brazilian trade unionism also historically has a vertical structure. The world of capital today has become horizontal, to the extent that it has become enormously outsourced. Capital spreads throughout its networks. The union that must be born must be deeply horizontalized and de-verticalized.
JU - What would move you?
Ricardo Antunes – The polysemic character of its representation. At the same time, you will have to represent the male and female worker; stable workers, semi-precarious, precarious (outsourced) workers and even the unemployed, who must also be the object of the union's organizational action. The union must today, therefore, be class-based at the same time. It needs to be able to tie together the different ends that make up the heterogeneous Brazilian working class. This will allow the reappearance of a (new) type of union that carries out, at the same time, social struggle and political struggle, is less institutionalized and less verticalized.
JU - Do you think there is space in Brazil for such different areas of activity?
Ricardo Antunes - Undoubtedly. One would be negotiating unionism, the union capitalism of pension funds. The other, a trade unionism more committed to the daily social struggles that emerge from the working class. And, in the midst of all this, a nefarious union bureaucracy that will oscillate between the union right and the benefits of the State.
JU - In Europe, there was an expectation that Lula's victory could rescue some of the paradigms of the left...
Ricardo Antunes – At a time when social democracy is experiencing its most critical situation, defeated in Austria, Italy and Portugal, Lula's victory was hailed as the victory of the left. But the first measures of the Lula government are more in line with Tony Blair and neoliberalism than with what we could call a left-wing policy.
JU - Wouldn't it be naive to imagine that the Lula government would change things overnight?
Ricardo Antunes – I had no illusions that the Lula government would revolutionize the Brazilian state, change everything overnight. Lula is not a leader of a revolutionary movement. Lula was victorious in the electoral process. What the social movements and an important part of the electorate expected was that the PT would begin the deconstruction, the discontinuity of neoliberalism in Brazil, initiating some important reforms to rescue the dignity of the Brazilian people.
JU - What would they be?
Ricardo Antunes – Let’s briefly list them. 1) It is unacceptable, for example, that the most important economy in Latin America has one of the lowest minimum wages on the continent. 2) If we have a contingent of almost 60% in the informal job market, almost 20% unemployment in several capitals, what we expected from the Lula government, from day one, is that a process of reducing this barbarity would begin. One of the greatest tragedies that plague Brazilian workers is the scourge of unemployment. An employment policy is essential, creating new rights that include people in the market, such as, for example, the reduction of working hours, which would reduce unemployment. Combat the flexibilization of labor legislation, which capitals are doing in practice, circumventing the laws. 3) The Lula government was expected to have an economic policy that would be anchored in the production of salaried consumer goods, in such a way that it would reactivate the economy by incorporating workers. 4) It is not possible to bear all the service and debt that arises from interest on internal and external debt, while the country is completely paralyzed and socially desertified. None of these measures have even been outlined.
JU - In a hypothetical projection, let's imagine that the government took positions to the right once and for all. What would be the consequences?
Ricardo Antunes – If the PT imagines that it will be the Brazilian variant of New Labor, it may be sealing its end as a left-wing party. It will be triggering a huge identity crisis whose scale we will feel in four years. Of course, your most depoliticized voter will resort to an anti-political conception of the type “there is no point in voting because they are all the same”. And the PT will, in fact, be providing many elements so that this anti-political prejudice can be shown as such. I hope that in this polymorphic, heterogeneous and multifaceted field of the social left something new will emerge.
JU - In voting for the reform, the government made alliances with the right and with sectors historically linked to physiology. How do you see this practice?
Ricardo Antunes – If the left needs to take on the appearance of the right to govern, it is better to let the right govern. Jospin lost the election in France because he took over as a reformist government and was unable to carry out his project. Between the left that acts like the right and the classic right, European voters sided with the right in the last elections. It was embarrassing to see, in parliament, the PT make concessions of all kinds. The consequences will be seen in the next elections. I have no doubt that, if there is no profound change in this policy, the party will receive a resounding “no” from many of its voters, the public servants, opinion makers, ahead. The litigation is so enormous that the gap created seems irrecoverable. It feels like that separation that has no return. The divorce process was so contentious that it is practically impossible for it to be resumed later. The fundamental link of the tripod that supported the PT, formed by the private sector, rural workers and average wage earners in the public sphere, was broken. We will see the other developments soon, when the other reforms come, especially the labor reform. And his trials are already quite worrying.