By PRMI reporters in Brazil, 23 January 2025
This article can also be accessed in Portuguese here
2024 was an apprehensive and discouraging year for left-wing and progressive people in Brazil. In the midst of so many crises, such as the environmental one, and the urgent need for social transformation, the conservatives and the right were the big winners in the municipal elections. There was also Trump’s landslide electoral victory in the US, warning of the return of the far right – the same one that attempted a coup d’état in our country. Despite all this, hope for change remains alive and the left and the working class must continue to analyze these events, but on the condition that this analysis can turn into action to radically transform our society.
The last 15 years in Brazil have been intense, with great struggles by the working class, many twists and turns, actions and reactions. After so much struggle, it’s discouraging to see the right’s electoral victory in city halls and conservative projects advancing, such as privatizations, including of schools, as in São Paulo, the “Rape Bill”, which bans abortion in any circumstance, fiscal adjustments with budget cuts to rights and pressure from the big bourgeoisie for them, among many others. But why are we in this situation? Brazil is being governed by Lula yet nothing seems to be moving forward. What is needed is a concrete analysis that avoids some of the simplistic statements that are so often made, especially on social media – for example, about “poor right-wingers”, “uneducated people”, “Brazilians are really conservative”, “we lost because the left cares too much about identity politics”, etc.
Lula government: “broad alliance” in which only the powerful win
After the nightmare years of Michel Temer’s coup government (2016-2019) and Bolsonaro’s extreme right-wing and genocidal attacks on working people, there was hope that Lula’s return would mean a big change, especially for the sectors that suffered the most during that period. However, even though the defeat of the far right at the polls was hugely significant, Lula is not delivering on the promises of improvement that were the hallmark of his campaign.
The main achievement of the Lula government, halfway through its mandate, is the installation of the new fiscal framework, or the new Spending Ceiling, i.e. a harsh fiscal adjustment policy that drastically reduces budget spending on social rights, such as education, health, social security, housing, etc. Such a measure has historically been criticized by the left and the working class organized in movements and unions. On the other hand the entire bourgeoisie, from foreign billionaires to the average countryside businessman, from the financial sectors of Faria Lima Avenue to the mainstream media has demanded it as something naturally essential for the economy. Now, it has become the main banner of the Finance Minister Fernando Haddad.
Nothing differentiates the PT (Workers Party) government in economic terms from any other neoliberal government: it will take money away from education and health, removing the current minimum investment requirements, it will tamper with the BPC (the meager aid for vulnerable elderly people) meaning no real increase in the minimum wage, among other compulsory expenses. The bill, despite altering the military’s pension and raising the income threshold for paying income tax to 5,000 reais, still has an undeniable essence: to take funding away from public services and the rights of the poorest population so that there is money left over for the financial market. Even so, “the market” is still dissatisfied and is putting pressure on the government to back down from modest measures that could benefit the population and to further advance austerity. In the end, the bill approved in Congress is far worse than the original bill.
The government’s few progressive projects and actions, especially at the beginning of 2023, are now being blocked by Congress, such as taxing large fortunes. Meanwhile, pro-market consensus and far-right projects are being approved at a rapid pace. With these results, the question remains: what is the point of the PT government’s many agreements and alliances with the traditional right?
The PT’s narrative is repeated in many media outlets and by many voices: we need to make broad alliances to defeat Bolsonaro, not to mention the number of right-wing and far-right sectors that are part of the executive and run ministries (União Brasil, Republicans, PSD, etc.).
The truth is that these groups have grown stronger over the last two years. There were almost 63 billion reais in parliamentary amendments alone, a scheme where federal money is passed to members of congress and the senate to be ‘distributed’ in their constituencies that is riddled with corruption. Most of this money went to the deputies and senators of the right-wing parties that are part of the broad alliance. These amendments are used at will by these parliamentarians, strengthening their local electoral fiefdoms. In essence they privatize public policies, since the money technically doesn’t come from the government, but individual politicians with “good intentions.” This can range from populist measures like buying ambulances for small towns and supplementing public service budgets, or for personal favors and in some cases to strengthen militias and buy weapons to execute indigenous people and rural workers.
Despite all this, the economy has shown good signs: there has been economic growth, around 4% in 2024, one of the highest rates in the world, inflation is under control (although it accelerated at the end of the year and exceeded the target, at 4.7%) and unemployment is at its lowest level in history, at 6.1% in the quarter to November.
The government wonders why the people don’t see this. For the masses who suffer the daily onslaught of informal and poorly paid work, expensive, crowded and time-consuming transportation, shattered mental health, growing social violence, especially from the police, machismo, racism, lgbtphobia, among other daily miseries, it seems that the pretty indices of economic analysts won’t move anyone. And, in fact, what we have seen is that these indices seem to have little or no impact on the lives of working people. In any case, there’s no genius that can stop the trend: with the economic policy of fiscal adjustment and a global structural crisis, Lula and Haddad won’t maintain these superficially impressive growth figures for long.
The strategic plan of the PT and Lulism
Now in its fifth presidential term, the PT’s plan for Brazil and its results are clear. There is no denying the gains in terms of guaranteeing rights and creating public policies that were finally made possible precisely during these governments: a real increase in the minimum wage, Minha Casa Minha Vida (My House, My Life), Bolsa Família (Family Allowance), quotas for black and indigenous people at universities, implementation of the National Social Assistance Policy, among others, all of which were the fruit of historic struggles by the working class and social movements. However, the implementation of these policies has always come with conditions, openly discussed by the PT leaders, of a great national agreement between all classes and political groups – only the “right-wing opposition” and now “fascism” would be left out.
Part of the PT’s narrative is the denial of opposing class interests, the class struggle and the scale of the system’s crisis, including the economic one. But it doesn’t make these disappear. In fact, the popular uprisings, the 2016 coup, the growth of the extreme right, the growth of repression and violence throughout Brazilian society: all these are the “normal” of the current period not the exception, as the PT would have us believe.
From Lula’s first term, which began in 2003, to now, what is the balance sheet? In the Lulaist narrative, there has been non-stop progress, only paralyzed by the coup and the Bolsonaro government. But over the last twenty years, the balance sheet of the PT governments with a broad alliance has been one of deepening the policy of fiscal adjustment and cuts to public services , continuing the privatization of state assets, mainly through Public-Private Partnerships (PPPs) and the use of Social Organizations ( where private or third sector organisations administer public services), loss of wages and rights for public servants, further deregulation of work, including the opening up of outsourcing in public services.
The Dilma government oversaw a strong setback in agrarian reform, especially in expropriations of land, the strengthening of agribusiness, large estates and GMOs and the financialization of the countryside, the destruction of the Amazon and Cerrado, including the large hydroelectric dams of the PT governments, deindustrialization and the strengthening of agricultural commodities and mining.
There has been the growing militarization of politics, an increase in racist violence, especially by the police in the favelas with measures such as the anti-drug law introduced by PT governments (the Military Police of the state of Bahia, governed by the PT, is the most lethal in the country) and in the countryside against indigenous people, etc, etc.
In other words, in the PT’s attempt to appear more “reliable and responsible” to the bourgeoisie, they strengthened the ruling class system by advancing neoliberal policies demanded by the capitalists. When times were good, such as the commodities boom of the 2000s, there was room for the granting of some social policies, which affected class conciliation, but this changed after the economic crises from 2014 onwards. This paved the way for the 2016 coup and for Temer and then Bolsonaro to advance with a much more aggressive and barbaric agenda aimed at taking away the few rights that the people had won.
But the biggest factor in creating space for the right to grow is the guarantee to the “government supporters” amongst the bourgeoisie and the right that there will be no major mobilizations of the working class. And if there are mobilizations, to ensure they do not have a program or demands that could disrupt the conciliation plan.
The PT and Lula emerged directly from the class struggle, from the workers’ struggle mainly in the 1970s and 1980s and, with the successful struggle against the dictatorship of the entire working class, this sector became the main leadership of the class for more than 40 years. The CUT union federation, which was founded with the PT, is still the main federation that runs many unions in Brazil. Also the CTB union federation and the UNE (National Students Union) for students are basically run by the PT and their close allies. In the countryside, the MST (Landless Workers Movement), although not organically linked to the PT, also reflects the same policy of conciliation.
Lulism’s narrative about the mass protests of 2013/2014, painting them as a right-wing conspiracy, has this objective: to discourage independent popular mobilization. In 2017, when the masses were beginning to participate in a decisive struggle to overthrow Temer, the CUT deliberately boycotted the second General Strike (after the victorious General Strike in April and Occupy Brasilia in May, which had prevented the pension reform from going ahead at that time) with the promise that Lula would win in 2018.
The “Fora Bolsonaro” struggle was always channelled into the institutional sphere away from street protests and, when bolsonarists began to set up road blocks across the country and invaded state institutions on January 8th after Lula’s electoral victory, Lula’s orientation was to stay at home because the new government would solve everything. Within the unions and social movements, the strategy is similar, with local bureaucracies making inflammatory speeches against Bolsonarism, but making it difficult to organize at the grassroots level and to use the historic tools of struggle of the working class, such as strikes, since Lulism’s project is the center of power.
Now, there have been two years without major struggles, under a Lula government but with the strengthening of the extreme right, with the working class demotivated to action by the majority leadership of the unions and movements. This project of Lulism, to curb independent popular struggles and mobilizations, still shows an ironic, autophagic face: the inability of these leaderships to mobilize their base when they need to, for example, in electoral campaigns.
After years of demobilization and street actions just for show, the working class doesn’t recognize these calls for action as their own, they don’t identify with them and they don’t get involved. In December, the Lulist leadership called for new protests for Bolsonaro’s arrest, and then sectors of the movement included the demands for an end to the 6 days work week and for a budget that would defend rights and public services. Although these agendas were included in the call for mobilizations, the low level of publicity and the failure to organize the mobilization at the union, student and neighbourhood levels once again show the strategy of Lulism: to call for mobilizations, but with the handbrake on.
Faced with the multiple structural crises that capitalism is now going through, with increasing distrust in institutions, politicians and the system, people are extremely dissatisfied and looking for alternatives or something that points to a way out. But the continuation of the policy of broad fronts with the representatives of the system, together with an abstract defense of the institutions of bourgeois democracy, while struggles are put on hold, are so repeatedly frustrating and demobilizing that it seems absolutely unsurprising that this tired and demotivated class no longer votes for the PT.
The municipal elections revealed this, with the PT winning only one mayoralty in one state capital, Fortaleza, by a tiny margin. In the rest of the country, the institutional left was defeated, including in São Paulo, where Guilherme Boulos’ PSOL candidacy continued to repeat the same methods that have already been criticized. The only place where the “progressive” camp (using the broadest possible definition of the word) won comfortably was in Recife, with João Campos of the PSB (Brazilian Socialist Party) winning in the first round. The space left by the lack of a left-wing alternative opened up space for new extreme right-wing fanatics like Pablo Marçal who, even though he didn’t win, influenced the situation.
After the results, commentators rushed to declare that these elections were victories for the center. But in reality, many of these supposed center figures won or kept their mandates with extreme right-wing policies, such as Ricardo Nunes in São Paulo, Eduardo Pimentel in Curitiba and Bruno Reis in Salvador, as well as the four PL (Liberal Party, Bolsonaro’s party) candidates who carried state capitals.
Will Bolsonaro be arrested?
Now that the reports of the Federal Police investigation have started to come out, the whole conspiracy of Bolsonaro and a sector of the Armed Forces in the attempted coup at the end of 2022 and beginning of 2023 is becoming clearer. Everyone already knew that this was Bolsonaro’s strategy if he lost the elections, but now it’s clear how they planned the action in detail. It just didn’t work because they didn’t have enough support among the bourgeoisie, imperialism and even in the Armed Forces.
All this history shows that the propaganda about the strength of democracy is a mere illusion. In reality, the correlation of forces between the classes, including within the bourgeoisie, determines what will happen. When the bourgeoisie felt the economic crisis tightening in 2015 and reacted to the great struggles of 2013/2014, it joined forces to organise a coup against Dilma and support Bolsonaro in the 2018 elections and finally pass the pension reform in 2019. When Bolsonaro wasn’t enough of a tool to implement its policies and appeared more like a clueless buffoon, a section of the ruling class withdrew its support and rejoined Lula’s broad alliance in 2022.
With the coup attempt, it’s easy for the bourgeoisie to support the arrest of a few hundred poor and middle-class Bolsonaro supporters on January 8 and to indict Bolsonaro and some of the military. Even with former Minister of Defence Braga Netto’s arrest in December, the loopholes in the justice system mean that the big fish can get away with it. The Supreme Court judge Alexandre de Moraes and the entire judiciary are just tools in this strategy of the big bourgeoisie looking for the best landscape to maximize their profits.
Based on this context, will Bolsonaro be arrested? As far as the judiciary of the rich is concerned, it could take a long time. After his indictment and possible conviction, years could pass. There will be appeals, of which, without a trial, he still can’t be arrested. After a final judgment (how many years in the future?), then he can serve a sentence that can still be reversed with house arrest or something similar. Of course, all these rules only apply to the rich, since poor people, and especially black people, are imprisoned without proof or trial. Could there be a preventive arrest of Bolsonaro? After all the scenes we’ve seen, if there hasn’t already been a request, it seems unlikely that this will happen in the coming months, even after Braga Netto’s arrest.
But if the bourgeoisie suddenly thinks that his arrest will serve its interests, things could change in an accelerated way, as happened with Lula himself. What it really seems is that the bourgeoisie can still count on him as a card up its sleeve, which can be used in a possible new major political crisis in the country and even a possible preventive arrest can be used politically.
The justice system, but especially the Supreme Court, has never been impartial and is immersed in politics. Figures like Moraes are acting, at least at the moment, more in tune with the Executive in relation to the issues of bourgeois democracy that interest them and to contain a common enemy that is Bolsonarism that threatens their positions. This creates an image that the Supreme Court is on the “right side of history”, but this is just an illusion. We mustn’t forget, for example, that Moraes was appointed by the coup plotter Temer.
The reality is that the judiciary, like the other state institutions, has the function of guaranteeing class domination in our society and not to do justice, much less social justice, nor to defend democracy. Only the oppressed classes in their collective struggle can do that, as has been the case throughout the history of human society.
2026
As already mentioned, there were attempts to anticipate the scenarios of the 2026 elections in the municipal elections. Now, after the results, many are already looking ahead to the next period with this in mind. Both the threat of arrests of Bolsonaro supporters and the military, the ineligibility of Bolsonaro and others, and the PT’s difficulties, raise uncertainties about what the scenario will be like by then.
Even with all the attempts to please the “market” and the ruling class, the PT is far from being in a comfortable position. Everything still revolves around the figure of Lula. A Quest poll in December showed that, if the second round were held now, Lula would win in all scenarios, including against the then-eligible Bolsonaro. But this is just a snapshot of the moment and there is still a lot that can happen between now and then. There are doubts as to whether Lula will be able to run in the elections, with health issues and age affecting him. In this scenario, the PT would have to face the historic problem of not having enough of Lula’s cadres to run in the presidential elections. Haddad is still the most likely figure and in the Quest polls he still comes out ahead but with a lower ranking (remembering that this was also true in 2018 when he lost). Meanwhile, the market is revealing its morbid desires when, just as Lula is returning for further head surgery, the stock market soars and the dollar falls.
What the bourgeoisie really wants is one of them back in charge. They want a representative who is more predictable for them and who can guarantee their agenda. Figures like Tarcísio de Freitas, governor of São Paulo, and Ronaldo Caiado, governor of Goiás, are possible alternatives. Both are Bolsonaro supporters but are seen as “more serious” or more “technical”, in other words, more reliable hands to guarantee the agenda of the bourgeoisie. But anyone who follows the news of police violence or the privatization agenda in São Paulo can imagine who would benefit and who would lose from a Tarcísio presidency.
Others like governor of Minas Gerais Romeu Zema or even Bolsonaro’s sons might try to run. But there is also a danger of new figures emerging now in the face of Bolsonarism’s difficulties, such as Pablo Marçal, who has quickly become a national figure and represents a new extreme right that is not linked to Bolsonarism’s vacillations and is vying for its base.
The mass struggle of the working class is the only way to steer us from the abyss
Despite all the repression, the ideological propaganda, the means of distraction used by the bourgeoisie and the daily work of the Lulist bureaucracies to block the fight back of the working class, struggle always rises again, even from the ashes. The contradictions of the system, exploitation, oppression and the daily life of the population are preparing the ground for the great revolts of oppressed masses.. Although many of the effects of the elections experienced in 2024 try to anticipate the 2026 electoral race, in addition to the polarizing surface debate that focuses on the possible presidential candidates, the only guarantee of having a victorious left in the presidential elections is if we achieve a series of struggles that starts with victory in the streets and that can build an alternative to power that discards the class conciliation project once and for all.
In recent months, the agenda of ending the 6 day working week and reducing working hours has had a wide repercussion throughout society thanks to a militant effort by the Vida Alem do Trabalho movement (Life Beyond Work movement) and its founder, the young LGBT+ and black worker Rick Azevedo, and pushed through Congress by PSOL deputy Erika Hilton with a bill to end the 6 day working week. It’s incredible how a simple thing made the bourgeoisie tremble with fear, silenced the government and put the far right against the wall with its crude hypocrisy. It showed that an agenda to improve the lives of millions can drive mass struggles – and the bourgeoisie and Bolsonaro’s supporters know this very well.
Also, women have been building great struggles all over the world, outraged by macho violence and winning rights, such as abortion. This feminist consciousness is growing structurally and at the base of the working class, especially among young people: the future. Attempts by the far right to attack rights, such as the “Rape Bill” , which removes any right to abortion in Brazil, could generate mass action by young women, as already happened at the beginning of the year with the PL 1904 bill – an attempt to criminalise women and girls that seek an abortion after the 22nd week even in cases of rape – which forced them to back down.
In addition to these threats orchestrated by the extreme right and the fundamentalist sector of parliament, the practice of municipal and state governments has been to dismantle already legalised abortion services, showing that the scrapping of healthcare also serves a right-wing policy of privatisation and control over our bodies. There is growing dissatisfaction about gender-based violence. Trans people have had their rights violated in the attack on their identity cards. The rates of sexist and lgbtphobic violence remain high, with femicide increasing even during Lula’s government.
At the same time, anti-racist awareness is growing, forcing some of the bourgeoisie to make concessions and propagandise this struggle – they are losing their fingers so as not to lose their arms. The big bourgeoisie understands that this struggle can be explosive, even more so as a revolt against the violence of the military police, which is increasingly denounced on social media with videos and all kinds of evidence. The bourgeoisie and the far right know this, even more so after the Black Lives Matter uprising in 2020, which left lessons and advances in consciousness that accumulate in the historical experience of our class.
Public service workers have also been fighting hard, since a large part of the fiscal adjustment policies are aimed at taking away their rights and with a strategy to end this category through privatisation plans. The strike at federal universities and institutes in the first half of the year, the strike by INSS (National Institute of Social Security) employees and various movements, strikes and stoppages, especially in municipal and state education, such as the movements against the New High School (proposed reform of the education system and curriculum), show the way.
We are also living through the years in which climate catastrophes and the environmental crisis are worsening and throwing humanity into an abyss of no return. The year that began with the catastrophes in Rio Grande do Sul state exposed the fact that capitalism has no control over or plan for the effects of climate change. The year continued with new events in every corner of the country of continental proportions. In all of them, the poorest members of the working class footed the highest bill. These effects have had a greater impact on regions with greater economic inequality, such as the North and North-East of the country.
In these moments of absolute alarm and social calamity, the greatest solidarity is among the working class, which is using every method available to it to put out fires, mobilise the distribution of food and supplies, organise donations and support for victims of loss of their homes, severe smoke poisoning from the fires, and all the other ways it can. Meanwhile, we have seen a municipal election that has not been able to bring solutions against this nefarious system that always causes the next big crisis, even in the face of one of the biggest power blackouts experienced in Latin America’s richest capital, São Paulo, in the midst of an election.
The way out of the generalised and worldwide crisis of the system, of humanity and of planet Earth can only come from the mobilisation and collective struggle of the oppressed masses. As long as capitalism continues its march, the road to the abyss is certain. It is not one or other left-wing government or Lula, with all due respect to his great historical importance, that can change this march, since they are proposing to maintain it. Humanity can reverse this path, provided it collectively builds, through struggle, a project for an anti-capitalist society, for coexistence with nature and natural resources, for social justice and harmony, for freedom, equality and fraternity, a socialist project for the future.