A precarious hegemony: neo-liberalism, social struggles, and the end of Lulismo in Brazil

ABSTRACT

Analysis of Brazil’s political and economic crisis tends to emphasize the economic ‘errors’ that President Dilma Rousseff’s Workers’ Party (PT) government inherited from her predecessor Luíz Inácio Lula da Silva. It is clear, however, that political regulation is too narrow a focus to understand the current crisis. Such an explanation is unable to reveal the changes in class structure that took place during the Lula era as well as the effects of the international economic crisis. This article identifies the limits of the Brazilian development model and the main features of Lula’s mode of regulation; analyses the conflicts produced by the neo-liberal regime of accumulation and the Lulista mode of regulation, emphasizing the role of precarious work in the current historical cycle of strikes and popular struggles in Brazil; and, finally, interprets the palace coup promoted by the social forces behind the impeachment of President Rousseff.

KEYWORDS:

• Brazil
• Lula
• neo-liberalism
• precarity
• strikes
• workers’ party

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

ORCID

Ruy Braga http://orcid.org/0000-0002-8512-4306

Sean Purdy http://orcid.org/0000-0001-6859-3525

Notes

1. By dynamics of and conflict around Brazilian distributive efforts, we understand, principally, the disputes over public funds by different social classes after the promulgation of the 1988 Constitution. The conflict pits the financial sector, which retains approximately half the government budget by way of interest and amortization payments on the national debt, against the majority of the Brazilian population, which depends on public spending for healthcare and education and on financial aid transfer programmes to the poorest in society (Druck & Filgueiras, 2007; Ferreira & Fragelli, 2012).

2. We define the urban precariat as a social amalgam formed by the most dominated and exploited sectors of the working class, as well as those fringes of the middle class facing proletarianization. It comprises workers that swing between formal and informal jobs in underpaid and degrading occupations or between deepening economic exploitation and full social exclusion (Braga, 2016).

3. All USD amounts given are historic amounts valid at the time of the events under discussion.

4. A side effect of this policy has been the formation of an intensely speculative bubble in the housing market, with house prices and rents rising at significantly higher rates than the increases in income and construction costs (Rolnik, 2015).

5. The larger aim of this research was to investigate the PT’s micro-foundations and macro-hegemony.

6. Since there was no legal basis for Dilma Rousseff’s impeachment, we refer to the process as a parliamentary coup. We use ‘coup’ here not in terms of its military connotations but to denote a break with existing legislation and a reconfiguration of laws in terms of the interests of a particular interest group. In this sense, Brazil experienced a parliamentary coup in 2016, accomplished with the support of certain sectors of the judiciary, public prosecution offices, the federal police, business and media (Bianchi, 2016; Purdy, 2016).

7. These jobs were mostly occupied by women, young people and black people, thus workers who traditionally earn less and are more discriminated against in the labour market (Alegretti & Warth, 2014).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Ruy Braga

Ruy Braga is head of the Department of Sociology at the University of São Paulo. His most recent book is A rebeldia do precariado: trabalho e neoliberalismo no Sul global (São Paulo: Boitempo, 2017).

Sean Purdy

Sean Purdy teaches and researches the history of workers’ and social movements in the Americas at the University of Sao Paulo.