[P2P-F] Fwd: [NetworkedLabour] Fwd: Alfredo Saad-Filho - The Debacle of the PT

[Michel Bauwens]

first one is a must-read analysis on brazil

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Date: Thu, Apr 2, 2015 at 4:32 AM
Subject: [NetworkedLabour] Fwd: Alfredo Saad-Filho - The Debacle of the PT
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The Débâcle of the PT
Alfredo Saad-Filho

Hundreds of thousands of chiefly white middle class protesters took to the
streets in Brazil on 15 March in an organized upsurge of hatred against the
federal administration led by President Dilma Rousseff of the Workers’
Party (*Partido dos Trabalhadores*, PT). These protests are far more
cohesive and better organized than the previous wave of anti-government
demonstrations, in 2013; their demands are unambiguously reactionary, and
they include primarily the country's elite.
<b1097.jpg>

While the protests are presented as being against corruption and for the
impeachment of President Dilma Rousseff, they are actually about party
political jockeying, shifting alliances between influential groups and
disputes about political funding.

The 2015 demonstrations erupted in the political vacuum created by the
paralysis of Dilma's administration because of its own ineptitude and
Brazil's worsening economy. Those difficulties were compounded by
aggressive media reporting of the *Lava Jato*
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opera%C3%A7%C3%A3o_Lava_Jato>corruption
scandal, focusing on a network of firms channelling vast sums to
individuals and political parties through the state-owned oil company
*Petrobras*. *Readers should not underestimate this crisis and its
devastating implications for the Brazilian left*.

At a deeper level, the economic and political crises in Brazil are due to
the achievements and limitations of the administrations led by Luís Inácio
Lula da Silva <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luiz_In%C3%A1cio_Lula_da_Silva>
(2003-06
and 2007-10) and Dilma Rousseff
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dilma_Rousseff> (2011-14 and 2015-present).
They led a partial economic and social break with neoliberalism that has
delivered significant gains in employment and distribution, but also
entrenched poor economic performance and left Brazil vulnerable to the
global downturn. In the political domain, the PT has transformed the social
character of the Brazilian state, while simultaneously accepting a fragile
hold on power as a condition of power itself. There has been no meaningful
attempt to reform the Constitution or the political system, challenge the
ideological hegemony of neoliberalism, neutralize the mainstream media or
transform the country's economic structure or international integration.
The PT also maintained (with limited flexibility in implementation) the
neoliberal macroeconomic ‘Policy Tripod’ imposed by the preceding
administration, including inflation targeting and central bank
independence, free capital movements and floating exchange rates, and tight
fiscal policies. The PT administrations were limited by the ‘reformism
lite’ allowed by their unwieldy political alliances. This strategy
alienated the party's base and provoked the opposition into an escalating
attack that came to the boil in March 2015.
Life before Dilma

Lula, the founder of the PT, was elected President on his fourth attempt,
in 2002. For the first time Brazil was led by a genuine worker-leader.
Lula's power was limited by a powerful Congress that is also fragmented
across two dozen raucous and unreliable parties. The PT has consistently
elected only around 15 per cent of Deputies and Senators, and the
‘reliable’ left (including the PT) rarely exceeded one-third of seats.
Consequently, Lula and Dilma have had to cobble together unwieldy
coalitions prone to corruption – both from government, through pork-barrel
politics, or from capitalists buying votes and funding rival parties
fighting elections every other year. The PT had to manage this ungainly
Congress under the gaze of an unfriendly judiciary, a hostile media, an
autonomous Federal Prosecution and a corporatist Federal Police often
working in cahoots.

The first Lula administration introduced moderate distributional policies,
including the formalization of labour contracts, rising minimum wages and
new transfer programmes. However, broader social and economic gains were
limited by the government's determination to buy ‘market credibility’
through the dogged implementation of the neoliberal Policy Tripod. The
ensuing policies constrained transfers, public investment and industrial
restructuring, and promoted the overvaluation of the currency and the
reprimarization of the economy.

Low GDP growth rates in the first Lula years frustrated everyone,
especially the PT's traditional base. They felt that their concerns were
being ignored and their support was taken for granted, while government
officials schmoozed with bankers and industrialists. Even this apparent
sell-out was insufficient to remove the political resistance against Lula,
and his administration was criticized both for what it did (‘packing up the
State with acolytes’ and ‘taxing producers to fund sloth’), and for what it
did not do (deliver rapid growth and social quiescence).

The political divide worsened over time. The opposition crystallized around
a ‘Neoliberal Alliance’ led by the financial bourgeoisie (suffering
economic losses and dwindling control of State policy), and populated by
the middle class (tormented by job losses and its dislocation from the
outer circle of power, and jealous of the economic and social rise of the
broad working class), and scattered segments of the informal workers.

Accelerating economic growth because of the global commodity boom and
Lula's political talent supported his elevation to spectacular heights. He
balanced the demands of rival groups through his legendary shrewdness and
the judicious distribution of resources through state investment,
development funds, wages, benefits and labour law. The economy picked up
speed, and taxation, investment, employment and incomes increased in a
virtuous circle. The dynamics was sufficiently strong to support bold
expansionary policies in the wake of the global crisis. By the end of his
second administration, Lula's approval rates touched on 90 per cent.

Yet, the ‘Lula Moment’ was limited. Even though the neoliberal policy
framework had been diluted, the government remained only weakly committed
to the rearticulation of the systems of provision hollowed out by the
neoliberal transition, and it was unable to diversify exports and raise the
technological content of manufacturing production. Brazil created millions
of jobs but they were mostly precarious, poorly paid and unskilled; urban
services were neglected, manufacturing shrank, and there was alarming
underinvestment in infrastructure.
Dilma Mark 1: Policy Zigzag

Dilma Rousseff was a revolutionary activist in her youth, and she rose
through the ranks of the PT as a competent manager. She had never been
elected to public office until she was chosen by Lula to be his successor.
At a personal level, it is unquestionable that Dilma is the most left-wing
President of Brazil since João Goulart was deposed in 1964.

Dilma's first administration shifted macroeconomic policies further toward
neo-developmentalism. Interest rates fell, fiscal policy became more
expansionary and new investment programmes were introduced. The government
intervened widely to reduce costs and expand infrastructure, and BNDES
financed an increasing portfolio of loans. Some capital controls were
introduced, and the government expanded its social programmes aiming to
eliminate extreme poverty. The strategic goal was to shift the engine of
growth away from a faltering external sector and toward domestic investment
and consumption.

This strategy failed. The international crisis tightened up the fiscal and
balance of payments constraints; quantitative easing in the USA and UK
destabilized the *real*, and global uncertainty and strident critiques of
‘interventionism’ limited investment. The public finances deteriorated,
inflation crept up and GDP growth sagged.

Government perceptions that the economic strategy was not working, that its
credibility was declining and that the external environment was unlikely to
improve led to a policy zigzag in 2012, when Dilma's economic team leaned
back toward the neoliberal Policy Tripod. Fiscal austerity returned, and
the inflation target became increasingly important. This about-turn came
too late to be effective, and too hesitantly to restore faith in the
government.

Dilma's administration had to confront not only a worsening economy but
also mounting political turmoil. Since Lula stepped down, the political
hegemony of the PT depended on perceptions of ‘managerial competence’, the
absence of corruption scandals, continuing growth and distribution, and
stable political alliances. None was easily achievable under adverse
economic circumstances; worse still, Dilma Rousseff never had Lula's
political talent. She is allegedly impatient with her allies, intolerant
with self-interested entrepreneurs and uninterested in social movements;
she also intimidates her own staff. A vacuum emerged around the President
just as the economy tanked. The media ratcheted up the pressure and started
scaremongering about an impending ‘economic disaster’; the government's
base of support buckled and it became difficult to pass legislation. The
judiciary tightened the screws around the PT, and successive corruption
scandals came to light.

In early 2013, the opinion polls suggested that support for the government
was falling, and, in June, vast demonstrations erupted. They exposed the
tensions due to the economic slowdown, the government's isolation and its
failure to improve public service provision in line with rising incomes and
expectations. The middle classes also vented their fury against the
widening of citizenship, changes in the State, transfer programmes,
university quotas for blacks and state school pupils, labour rights for
domestic servants, and so on.

As the economy halted, the government reverted more and more fully to the
Policy Tripod: once pinned to the corner, the PT abandoned their own social
and political base in order to try to please domestic, international,
industrial, financial and agrarian capital. This was still insufficient.
The government never had the support of the financial bourgeoisie, and was
not about to gain it now. It lost the middle class because of its
distributional and citizenship initiatives. It alienated the organized
workers because of the worsening economic situation, corruption scandals
and the policy turnaround. It distanced the informal workers for those same
reasons and the limitation of the transfer policies. And it lost the
internal bourgeoisie because of the economic slowdown, lack of influence
over the President and erratic public policies. These groups were bestowed
a semblance of coherence by a hostile media claiming that the government
was incompetent and the State was out of control. Finally, the
administration earned the hostility of Congress because of its inability to
negotiate.
Dilma Mark 2: The Wheels Come Off

Dilma Rousseff was re-elected in 2014 by the narrowest margin in recent
Brazilian history. Her victory was achieved through a last-minute mass
mobilization triggered by left perceptions that the opposition would impose
harsh neoliberal economic policies and reverse the social and economic
achievements of the PT.

In the first weeks of her second administration Dilma faced converging
crises leading to the collapse of the two axes of PT rule: the economic
model and the political alliances supporting the administration. The
government's earlier unwillingness to remove the Policy Tripod, the long
global crisis and the insufficiency of the country's industrial policies
fed the overvaluation of the currency, deindustrialization and a rising
current account deficit. Balance of payments and fiscal constraints
weakened the labour markets and induced inflation, and this vicious circle
eliminated the scope for distribution and growth. Rising incomes in the
previous period and insufficient investment in urban infrastructure led to
an intolerable deterioration in service provision, symbolized by transport,
in 2013, and water scarcity, in 2014-15. In both cases, the fulcrum was São
Paulo, the country's largest metropolitan area, its economic powerhouse and
– crucially – the bedrock of the political right as well as the birthplace
of the PT.

Dilma's desperate response to these crises was to invite a representative
of Brazil's largest private bank to the Ministry of Finance, and charge him
with the implementation of a ‘credible’ adjustment programme. The
government's weakness and its adoption of the macroeconomic programme of
the opposition triggered an escalation of the political crisis. Another
corruption scandal captured the headlines.

The *Lava Jato* operation led by the Federal Police unveiled a large
corruption network centred on Petrobras and including cartels, fraud,
robbery and illegal funding for several political parties, among them the
PT. This scandal catalysed a mass opposition movement demanding the ‘end of
corruption’ and ‘Dilma's impeachment’, even though there is no legal, moral
or political justification for it. Examination of the opposition's
grievances rapidly leads to a laundry list of unfocused and conflicting
dissatisfactions articulated by expletives rather than logic.

The protests against Dilma's administration are doubly misleading. First,
they pretend to want her impeachment, even though this is legally
untenable, the bourgeoisie knows that this would disarticulate the economic
‘adjustment’, and the PSDB (the neoliberal Brazilian Social Democratic
Party, the largest opposition force) has no interest in delivering power to
Vice-President Michel Temer's centrist PMDB or allowing the PT to play the
victim and recover in opposition, perhaps led by Lula. It is more
convenient to keep Dilma as a lame duck President. Nevertheless, the next
Presidential elections are still three years away, and the government could
collapse unexpectedly.

Second, the demonstrations pretend to be against corruption in general, but
this is not their target. The media and the opposition stress the financial
flows involving the PT and downplay the involvement of everyone else, but
almost every party and a large number of politicians are tangled up in *Lava
Jato* and other investigations. They include the Speakers of the Chamber of
Deputies and the Senate, the opposition leader Aécio Neves, and many more.
For the media, only the PT matters, for two reasons: because scandals can
be used to cut off the sources of finance to the Party, throttling it, and
they can detach the PT from the internal bourgeoisie, that has supported
and funded the Party since Lula's election. The detention of prominent
executives and the CEOs of some of Brazil's largest construction and oil
companies and the threat of bankruptcy against oil and shipbuilding firms
because of the paralysis of Petrobras sends a clear message that the PT is
not to be supported – or else.

The demonstrations against Dilma are not what they seem to be, and they are
not about what they ostensibly demand. While they are presented as being
against corruption and for her impeachment, they are actually about party
political jockeying, shifting alliances between influential groups and
disputes about political funding. At another level, the shrivelling of
Dilma's administration signals the exhaustion of the political project of
the PT: a historical cycle of the Brazilian left is now coming to the end.
Eight Lessons

The protests against Dilma Rousseff are based on a double false pretence:
they are not against corruption, and they do not seek her impeachment. This
implies that the mobilization cannot be controlled precisely, and it can
just as plausibly grow as it can taper off. In either case, it will leave
behind a residue of disgust that can fuel a political spiral of unintended
consequences. Beyond this irreducible uncertainty, the fate of the federal
administrations led by the PT suggests eight lessons.

First, under favourable circumstances the PT disarmed the political right
and disconnected the radical left from the working class. However, when the
economic tide turned policy confusion and political crisis fed a confluence
of dissatisfactions that now risks overwhelming Dilma's administration.

Second, unmet aspirations and the convergence of grievances, even if they
are mutually incompatible, can trigger political isolation and volatility
that can become hard to contain.

Third, while the PT administrations have managed to reduce the income gap
between the middle class and the working class, the political distance
between them has increased. This chasm creates political instability in the
short-term and obstacles for democratic social and political reforms in
Brazil in the medium- and long-term.

Fourth, economic growth, social inclusion, the distribution of income and
wealth, employment creation and the expansion of infrastructure remain
relevant goals, but the PT has become unable to build the political
conditions to achieve them.

“

This is not ... a crisis of the state or the political system, but a crisis
of the hegemony of the PT. ”

Fifth, despite its volcanic energy the opposition remains bereft of a
programme and deprived of popularity. The PT has been implementing the
opposition's neoliberal macroeconomic policies; the PSDB does not seek to
overthrow the government (although Dilma may step down if the situation
spirals out of control); the upsurge against Dilma and the PT did not raise
the popularity of the opposition (‘they are all thieves’), and no one aims
to ‘end corruption’. This is not, then, a crisis of the state or the
political system, but a crisis of the hegemony of the PT.

Sixth, the experience of the PT suggests that ambitious policy changes are
needed in order to break with neoliberalism and secure gains in
distribution and poverty reduction. They include changes in the country's
economic base, international integration, employment patterns, public
service provision, structures of political representation and the media.
These were never contemplated by the PT, and those limitations have now
returned to destroy the Party and its leaders. In Brazilian politics,
self-imposed weakness is rarely rewarded; instead, it elicits escalating
attacks targeting the jugular.

Seventh, the Brazilian opposition has become increasingly aggressive. The
2015 movement is large and cohesive; in the meantime, the left is
disorganized and bereft of aspirations and leadership. Despite these
successes, the right is constrained by its inability to outline a
consistent programme, and it has not gained popularity despite the
*dégringolade* of the PT. The combination of strengths and weaknesses on
the sides of the government and the opposition suggests that Brazil is
entering a long period of instability. The emergence of a new political
hegemony may take several years – and it is unlikely to be led by the left.

Eighth, as the ‘Pink Wave’ crashes in Brazilian shores, the Kirchner
administration walks toward the catafalque in Argentina and *Chavismo* crumbles
in Venezuela. These outcomes suggest that transformative projects in Latin
America, however radical (or not), are bound to face escalating resistance.
Its form, intensity and impact upon the alliances supporting the government
will tend to fluctuate with the global environment, making it difficult to
plan reformist strategies. It follows that broader alliances are not
necessarily better, because they are prone to instability, and that the
social, political and institutional sources of power must be targeted as
soon as possible. There can be no guarantee that the task will become
easier tomorrow, and no certainty that the future will be better than the
present. The future does not belong to the left; it must be seized. •

Alfredo Saad-Filho is Professor of Political Economy in the Department of
Development Studies SOAS, University of London.

***

Brazil uncovers multibillion-dollar tax fraud
by Agency staff, March 29 2015

Dozens of Brazilian firms, including industrial companies and banks, are
under investigation amid allegations they paid $5.9bn in bribes to tax
officials, police said on Saturday.

Brazil is already reeling from the biggest graft scandal the country has
known, a $3.8bn scam involving inflated contracts between construction
companies and state oil giant Petrobras, causing a storm after dozens of
politicians were implicated.

The new scandal, dubbed Operation Zeal, comes following a federal police
probe into an alleged scam at CARF, an offshoot of Brazil’s tax authority
that oversees appeals on tax disputes.

According to police, the body managed to obtain tax appeals board rulings
in the companies’ favor by either cutting penalties or waiving them
altogether.

In return, officials allegedly received bribes from some 70 companies
believed to have benefited from the scheme.

"The investigations, begun in 2013, showed the organization acted within
the body sponsoring private interests, seeking to influence and corrupt
advisors with a view either to securing the cancellation or reduction" of
penalties from tax authorities, a police statement explained.

Police said the scam could have netted the companies as much as 19 billion
reais ($5.9bn) but evidence uncovered so far amounts to around a third of
that amount.

Federal police organised crime chief Oslain Campos Santan said the total
sums could end up being "as much" as that involved in the Petrobras scam,
which has left the government of President Dilma Rousseff reeling after
dozens of political allies were implicated and charged.

The firms involved in the latest allegations are said to have used a series
of front firms to conceal their actions, along with laundered cash.

______________________________

Jai Sen

jai.sen at cacim.net / jai at openword.in

www.cacim.net / http://www.openword.in

Now based in Ottawa, Canada (+1-613-282 2900), and New Delhi, India (+91-98189
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