The condemnation of Lula was yet another act of the terminal crisis of Brazilian democracy. However, the narrative that Lula is the victim of a conspiracy between US imperialism and sectors of the judiciary and that an “election without Lula is a coup” does not help to understand the serious institutional crisis that shakes national life. Even acknowledging that Brazilian justice operates according to the norm “For friends, everything; for enemies, the Law,” as in the rest of the state apparatus, Lula’s participation in the 2018 election would not have the power to rescue the legitimacy of a rotten political system. The corruption jubilee cannot moralize a structurally flawed electoral process.

The widespread corruption that affects all parties of order is only one aspect of the serious crisis that shakes Brazil’s New Republic. The Journeys of June 2013 [the massive popular protests in June 2013 sparked by a rise in bus fares] were another expression of this crisis, revealed through the will of the youth that took to the streets against the adjustment agenda of big capital, which had already begun during the PT governments. For the underdogs, the crisis of the New Republic manifests itself in the impermeability of the state to popular demands. For those above, the crisis is revealed by the need both to purge the meager democratic achievements of the Brazilian people and to redefine the hierarchy of command among the capitalists.

The bourgeoisie’s response to this crisis took the form of a moralistic crusade against corruption. Judicial investigations proved what everyone knew: corruption is a structural element of Brazilian capitalism, and politicians function as agents of private interests in state apparatus.