Brazil seems stuck in a permanent political crisis. After three years of agony, President Dilma Rousseff of the Workers’ Party (PT) was impeached last August. Now her traitorous vice president Michel Temer’s administration is disintegrating under a cloud of scandal, not to mention its mind-boggling incompetence.

Four common illusions prevent us from clearly understanding why this political instability has only intensified under Temer: that Brazil has a unified right wing; that capital acts together; that the bourgeoisie controls the state and the political process; and that social conflicts revolve only around the fundamental disputes between capital and labor.

Instead, rifts within the ruling class are threatening the Temer administration. A rogue judiciary, backed by powerful media outlets, has turned the upper middle classes against the government, stalling the nation’s return to neoliberalism. The Left can — and should — take advantage of this situation.