Lula’s Former Press Secretary on the Meaning of Lulismo
- Nicolas Allen
Today, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva can return to power and build a more equitable and prosperous Brazil. Former Lula press secretary André Singer spoke to Jacobin about what’s possible in power and the enduring appeal of Lulismo.
Luiz Inácio Lula Da Silva greets supporters after casting his vote and giving a press conference on October 30, 2022 in Sao Bernardo do Campo, Brazil. (Rodrigo Paiva / Getty Images)
- Interview by
- Igor Peres
Brazil’s presidential runoff election takes place today, pitting far-right incumbent Jair Bolsonaro against former left-wing president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva of the Workers’ Party (PT). As the contest comes to its nail-biting conclusion, with Lula’s lead in the polls narrowing and right-wing political rhetoric getting more extreme, it’s worth taking a closer look at the two candidates.
In the aftermath of Bolsonaro’s unexpectedly strong performance in the October 2 general election, almost every newspaper ran an article about the resilience of the right-winger’s candidacy and even the prospect of a “Bolsonarismo-beyond-Bolsonaro”: the possibility that, even in defeat, the leader could be outlived by the reactionary movement that bears his name.
Fewer pieces were written about former president Lula, who most agree is a known quantity at this point. However, as André Pagliarini has convincingly shown, one can understand neither the past nor future of Brazil without also studying the larger-than-life political phenomenon around Lula.
This has been the great achievement of one of Brazil’s leading political scientists, André Singer, a man dubbed by Perry Anderson as the Brazilian Workers’ Party’s “greatest thinker.” Coiner of the term “Lulismo” and the leading scholar of Lula’s model of “social liberal” governance, there are few analysts more capable of dissecting what is at stake in this election and what a Lula victory could mean for Brazil.
Igor Peres spoke to Singer to get a sense of how the “Lula phenomenon” has shaped Brazilian history and what it might have in store for the future.
In Os sentidos do lulismo. Reforma gradual e pacto conservador (The Meanings of Lulismo. Gradual Reform and Conservative Settlement), you mention research you conducted during the 1989 and 1994 Brazilian presidential elections. There, you put forward the idea of a “Septentrional issue,” in reference to the sociopolitically marginalized North and Northeast of Brazil where, you write, “the excluded tend to reinforce their own exclusion.” In short, you argue that the failure of the Left to make inroads in the Brazilian North was the stumbling block that, until Lula, kept them from building an alternative source of power.
Lula, as you point out, recognized this after his unsuccessful 1989 campaign: “the harshest truth is that we were defeated by the most disenfranchised parts of society.” I’d like to begin by asking you about how Brazil’s “Northern question” should inform our understanding of “Lulismo.”
The Northern question really has to do with the period before 2006, when it was still possible to identify a conservative political bloc that had a strong social base in the North and Northeast of Brazil. That base was so important that, earlier, it enabled the dictatorship to defeat one of the largest mass mobilizations in recent Brazilian history: the campaign for the “Diretas Já” (calling for an end to the dictatorship and direct elections), which took place in 1984. How was this conservative base developed? Through an articulation between regional oligarchies and electoral bases. When I speak of the “Northern question,” this is what I am referring to: the fact that Lulismo could break apart that traditionally conservative relationship and transform it into a new, stable base for the PT in the Northeast.
As you mentioned, after the 1989 presidential elections, Lula recognized the problem: “we were defeated by the periphery, not by the rich.” He was speaking not only of the North, but also the periphery located at the margins of large Brazilian cities in the Southeastern Region, such as São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, and Belo Horizonte. The peripheries of these larger Brazilian cities are actually formed to a large extent by people who’ve migrated from the Northeast.
There’s more: to understand what I am calling the Northern question, it is fundamental to grasp the distinction I make between the poor and the working classes. Of course, the poor are part of the working class, but they are a fraction of the proletariat that I prefer to call the sub-proletariat. When I began work on the Brazilian electoral question, I suggested that this poor sector was vulnerable and lacked what we might call “labor citizenship.” In other words, this specific fraction of the Brazilian working class lacks rights. Moreover, we should bear in mind that we are talking about nearly half of the labor force, which could never be fully integrated into the Brazilian labor market.
What Lulismo did was it managed to integrate a large part of this sector. Again, I sought to characterize this sector as uniquely vulnerable and lacking in rights, and, hence, unable to participate in “class struggle,” as Paul Singer once put it. The point is not that this poor working class cannot engage in class struggle at all, but that, under normal conditions, their participation is met with obstacles. Thus I began to think about how this condition helps to explain why part of the working class tended to not support trade unions, among other things, or why it gravitated toward political projects that emphasized social order over other, competing values. This configuration was what changed with Lula’s reelection in 2006.
It’s also in Os sentidos do lulismo that the concept of “Lulismo” is fully fleshed out. As you wrote there, the concept of Lulismo arose against the backdrop of a particularly adverse situation for Lula and the PT, marked by the corruption accusations of the 2005 “Mensalão scandal.” That context led the executive to adopt what you described as “public policies to reduce poverty and activate the domestic market without confronting capital.” The combination of all those factors gave rise to what you called an “electoral realignment” that finally give birth to Lulismo in 2006. Could you walk us through this history in some more detail?
Lulismo is the electoral equivalent of a practical program whose aim is to serve that same sub-proletariat of which I was just speaking about a moment ago. I don’t believe that this program was consciously imagined in that way, but it was what it ended up being in practice. What does it consist of? It is essentially a program to combat poverty, but I am not referring here to income distribution, which is actually a more complex concept. I am talking about a program of poverty reduction that does not confront capital.
Since 2004 there had already been a palpable reduction of poverty in Brazil, achieved in large part through the Bolsa Familia Program and through payroll deductible credits. In 2005, there was a minimum wage hike that further reduced poverty. This program was very successful, because it increased consumption levels among that part of the population that earned very little and thus supported them economically during a period of low growth.
It’s important to understand that this was all done without confronting capital: there was never any questioning of the central tenets of neoliberalism — high interest rates, low levels of public investment, and a floating exchange rate. By reducing poverty without credibly threatening capital, Lula’s two governments were able to find some room to maneuver within a relatively stable political environment. There was no social upheaval, contrary to the predictions of conservative sectors who had said the Lula government would unleash chaos.
What I call “electoral realignment” occurred in 2006, and it consisted of two elements. The first of those elements had to do with a new relation between Lula and the poor, which is what led to the emergence of electoral Lulismo. That is to say, up until 2002, the PT had a much more middle-class electoral profile. After 2006 a change took place and it was the poor who become his base. If one goes back and looks at the numbers in Brazil during that period, we notice that the overall number of votes Lula received from the 2002 and 2006 elections are actually quite similar. What changed dramatically in 2006 was the social profile of the PT voter.
The poorest started to vote for Lula en masse, especially in the Northeast. And they continue to do so to this day. Meanwhile, the middle class shifted its vote to the Brazilian Social Democracy Party (PSBD). The PSBD was always strongest among the middle class, but the middle class was itself a divided vote. The Mensalão scandal — a crisis based in allegations of corruption related to a vote-buying scheme in the national legislature — united the middle class against Lulismo and Lula, and against the PT in particular. In short, this was the realignment that gave birth to Lulismo, with the poorest on one side, and the middle class on the other. This social polarization persists to this day, and I would even argue that this electoral realignment has survived major political changes such as those introduced by Bolsonaro’s election in 2018.
In Os sentidos do lulismo you focus on the difficulty Lulismo faced in moving from what you call a “weak” to a “strong reformist” program. You analyze how the initial “Rooseveltian dream” with which Lula began his second term in 2006 ultimately gave way to a more realist program concerned with the balance of political forces. You argue that the conscious decision to keep antagonists in check and seek channels of arbitration with the PT’s adversaries ended up becoming not only a means but an actual end to the policies of Lula’s second term. Could you say more about this?
On the issue of whether there was a transition from a weak to a strong reformism under Lula, I’ve found the need to make a few modifications to my original ideas as time has passed. Both of my books — Os sentidos do lulismo. Reforma gradual e pacto conservador and O lulismo em crise. Um quebra-cabeça do período Dilma (2011-2016) (Lulismo in Crisis. A Jigsaw Puzzle of the Dilma Period (2011-2016)) — were written in the heat of the moment, so to speak. Looking back, I would say that Lula’s second presidency was the term under which the major neoliberal strictures began, somewhat, very slowly, to undergo changes. For example, the freeze on public expenditure began to thaw and expand. There was also some attempt to maintain lower interest rates and, in addition, exchange rate policy was slightly altered.
These were some tendencies pointing toward an economic policy closer to what is known as developmentalism. It never amounted to a fully developmentalist economic policy, but it was pointing in that direction. In that sense, I believe that Lula’s second term was different from the first one. Among other important changes, I would emphasize the change in the finance minister from Antonio Palocci to Guido Mantega as indicative of this change. Still, I think these ended up being sort of homeopathic measures, in the sense that the idea of not confronting capital, guaranteeing political stability, and keeping control of social conflict remained prominent features of the second term.
Now, the decision to pursue that strategy was based on a reading of the correlation of forces at that point in time. How can one measure the correlation of forces? Take, for example, the Chamber of Deputies, which is an expression — albeit distorted — of the electorate of each state. In 2007, the national Congress, both the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate, cut 30 billion reais in funding for investment in national health.
Brazil has a system known as the Unified Health System (SUS), which is guaranteed by the 1988 Constitution. It could be likened to England’s National Health System, which was the result of a strong reformist agenda after World War II. However, the SUS does not follow that kind of agenda, does not serve everyone, and does not meet standards of quality. Worse still, in 2007, the Congress made huge cuts to an already problematic system. And why did Congress do so? Because it has a conservative majority. Could there have been a social process outside Congress that pushed for more health funding in 2007? Yes, there could have been, but there was not. Here is an example where, to have had strong reformism, we have to think more about combining institutional action and social mobilization.
In O lulismo em crise, you suggest that Lula’s successor, Dilma Rousseff, pursued a more aggressive developmentalist agenda. You wrote: “encouraged by the political capital accumulated by Lula, Dilma took seriously the idea of accelerating the pace of the president’s initiatives, giving way to a developmentalist economic policy.” Could you say more about Dilma’s “developmentalist initiative.”
The main measure from that developmentalist phase was to sharply reduce the interest rate. Before the PT came to power in 2003, the Brazilian left had already taken aim at high interest rates as the main obstacle to growth. Whether this diagnosis was correct or not I cannot say. I am not an economist. But the entire Brazilian left had identified the problem of the interest rate as fundamental to the issue of income distribution. And in a sense this is logical, since we are talking about changing how income is distributed in one of the most unequal countries in the world. Everyone seems to agree that, if you want to do income distribution, then the economy has to grow — you can’t do income distribution while an economy is in recession.
Returning to Dilma, she made the courageous decision to sharply lower the interest rate in early 2012. She achieved this by launching a big battle to change the leadership of the central bank, when she was just starting her second term in office. She elected a central bank president who did not come from the financial markets, but from the central bank bureaucracy, which is very different.
The private banks reacted negatively to her lowering interest rates and unleashed what I call the “war of spreads”: the state lowered its rate, but the private banks maintained their own higher rates. Dilma then used the public banks to lean on the private banks to lower their interest rates, arguing that if the private banks did not do the same they would lose clients. Ultimately, the private banks were forced to lower their rates. In a sense, Dilma took the fight to the core of financial capitalism.
The second measure consisted in altering the exchange rate, which basically meant controlling imports and facilitating exports, that is to say, favoring Brazilian industries. Under Dilma the exchange rate was devalued by around 20 percent, and this unleashed a debate among economists: there are those who say that the magnitude of that devaluation was not enough, and that it did not guarantee sufficient competitiveness for national industries on the world market. Be that as it may, it is important to recognize that it was Dilma who took that decisive step, which was a big one in favor of Brazilian industry.
One could ask, if industrialists thought the size of the devaluation was insufficient, why did they not support the president’s decision? Why did they not push for further devaluations of the exchange rate? What happened instead was that, at the same time as Dilma was making these economic decisions, the industrialists paradoxically began to change their position with respect to her government. She did everything to favor them, but they opposed her for reasons that are not so easy to understand. This process, which began in 2012, was what lead to Dilma’s downfall in 2016.
Finally, Dilma changed the rules regarding the electric power sector, which was another demand raised by industrialists in electro-intensive industries. With expensive electricity, Brazilian products were losing competitiveness. So there was a change in the regulation that lowered the tariffs, including domestic ones, in September 2012.
These were the three main measures of the developmentalist phase under Dilma. I would add one more consideration: there are those who believe that public investment at that time was insufficient. It is true that there were cuts in public spending in 2011, but I believe that, while the size of expenditure was probably not ideal, there were several elements like those we’ve been discussing from the 2011 to 2014 that merit being characterized as a “developmentalist initiative.”
The Dilma government was a step forward in relation to the preceding PT governments. It’s as if she said: “now let’s step on the gas.” But the decision cost her dearly, because the reaction of national and international capital was violent and, once again, there was no attempt to mobilize workers to defend this “developmentalist initiative.”
Also, in the middle of the developmentalist path there was a rock: the 2013 protests. That moment seems to exemplify the so-called Tocqueville effect, in which it’s only when things start getting better that social upheavals take place. In Os sentidos do lulismo you forecasted that the sub-proletariat would begin to raise its own demands in the street; however, in analyzing Brazil’s 2013 protests, you come to different conclusions about the social composition of those who were demonstrating. How do you characterize that decisive moment in recent Brazilian history?
June 2013 represents, as Marx said in another context, a “lightning bolt in a serene sky.” I analyzed the available data and my conclusion was that the sub-proletariat was absent from those demonstrations, which were made up mostly of upper and middle sectors. What happened in 2013 was a kind of “transformism” but from the streets. It started as a leftist protest full of honest young people who had an interesting vision that was much more radical than Lulismo. These people, who, again, had nothing to do with the sub-proletariat, understood that the national situation was better but that it was necessary to take another step forward. However, what happened was that they awakened a monster that they could not control.
In a matter of days, between June 13 and the 17, the demonstrations completely changed their direction. It began as a series of left-wing demonstrations calling for a reduction in transport fares, especially in São Paulo. The first demonstrations ended with a massive display of repressive force on June 13, which was criticized even by the most conservative newspapers, because the police were really out of control. In reaction to that repression, another demonstration was unleashed and that one was quickly dominated by the conservative middle class. They rode on a wave of anti-repressive sentiment and started a mass movement against Lulismo, which in São Paulo was represented by Mayor Fernando Haddad, and against the federal government led by Dilma Rousseff.
At the time, I confess, I did not understand it: it looked like a big leftist demonstration. But it was not. So much so that two days later, in a third demonstration, the Left was expelled from the streets. Groups dressed in Brazilian national soccer jerseys suddenly began to appear. No one knew exactly where they came from, but today we can look back and recognize that this was the seed of Bolsonarismo.
I think all of this had to do with the phenomenon of social networks — those demonstrations were developed underground and could not have happened five years earlier. It was a form of “spontaneous transformism.” Many left-wing people participated in those protests, and I do not criticize them, because it was not easy to understand what was happening. At times, the extreme left and the extreme right were protesting on the same avenue. In São Paulo there were even clashes between the two forces.
In short, 2013 is a very particular event in Brazilian history. There are authors who connect it with the protest movements in Turkey or Egypt, but the Brazilian case is very different. What happened in June 2013 was a turning point, after which the right wing changed its posture and went on the offensive against the government, leading directly to the 2016 parliamentary coup.
In addition to the “developmentalist initiative,” in O lulismo em crise you argue that Dilma also tried to pursue a “republican initiative.” The attempt by former judge Sergio Moro to present himself as the representative of social indignation against corruption has perhaps relegated that idea to the shadows, but it would be interesting to hear you say more about this “republican initiative” under Dilma.
What I observed in my research was that Dilma, in addition to carrying out what I called a “developmentalist initiative,” also implemented systematic political transformations that attracted little attention. The former president implemented a systematic policy to combat what in Brazil we call fisiologismo [cronyism], that is, the use of public office for personal gain. Dilma took very direct measures toward combating fisiologismo, which cost her the majority in Congress (especially in the Chamber of Deputies) and for which she paid a high cost later.
As punishment for that decision to fight against cronyism, Eduardo Cunha of the Brazilian Democratic Movement (MDB), the representative par excellence of this practice, was elected president of the Chamber of Deputies. We are talking about an extremely aggressive politician, with enormous influence in the legislative branch.
What Dilma did toward fighting cronyism, once again, was very brave. But, once more, the problem was that she did not accompany that move with any supporting mobilization. Ultimately, she ended up awakening a slumbering beast, and she did it without the necessary social base to see that ambition through to the end. The only way to successfully tackle cronyism in Brazil would be through the massive mobilization of social forces. Instead she relied on the strength of the presidential investiture, which is great but not omnipotent.
Meanwhile, Sergio Moro was involved in Operation Lava Jato, which was an extraordinary trial and produced remarkable discoveries leading to unprecedented legal actions in Brazil. However, the operation ended up turning into a factional maneuver with the clear objective of destroying the PT and former president Lula. Even so, it had a republican aspect considering all that it uncovered. But the political and partisan use of the Operation was completely abhorrent from a democratic point of view. A judge has to be impartial, and Moro demonstrated his complete impartiality by accepting to join Bolsonaro’s government. And, of course, Bolsonaro was the main beneficiary of Moro’s legal manipulations.
In other words, Dilma’s republican initiative and Operation Lava Jato were two totally different processes. They did, however, intersect when Operation Lava Jato turned up findings concerning the state-owned Petrobras. Dilma had removed the entire management level of Petrobras more than a year earlier, without her actions being directly related to Lava Jato. Involuntarily, then, and in an unbelievable turn of events, the two processes intersected.
You wrote in O lulismo em crise that “Roosevelteanism emerged in the capitalist center during the dominant phase of Keynesianism.” You then go on to say of this “Roosevelteanism” that “applied to the Brazilian scenario in times of globalization and neoliberalism, it tore Lulismo apart, taking society to a place far removed from any egalitarian ambition.”
Perhaps today we are finally in a position to put a name to that “place” you mention — Bolsonarismo. Recently, you have been analyzing what you characterize as the “reactivation of the right wing” in Brazil. Could you explain what you have in mind when you speak of a reactivation?
First, I should say that I think the impeachment process was a parliamentary coup. It was not a coup d’état in the classic sense of the term, but a parliamentary coup typical of the processes of erosion of democracy that are occurring all over the world. It was a process that occurred within the strictures of the law. It did not break with the constitution, but rather used it — it was a use of the law to carry out a coup.
Naturally, impeachment is provided for in the constitution. But the same constitution states that this measure can only be applied when there is a “crime of responsibility,” and it is clear that President Dilma Rousseff did not commit a crime of responsibility. Therefore, I believe that it was a parliamentary coup that opened the door to the dismantling of Brazilian democracy.
I say all this because I believe that Bolsonarismo is an extension of this process. The government of President Michel Temer, succeeding that of Rousseff, already inflicted very important social and economic setbacks, and Bolsonaro’s government followed that trend. Now, the 2018 elections were relatively representative — I say relatively because Lula was prevented from participating in the contest, and this was the result of a deliberate action by Operation Lava Jato to prevent his return to government. Nevertheless, the PT decided to recognize the results, and if the PT recognized the results, they must be analyzed as legitimate.
Examining the results of those 2018 elections, one perceives a reactivation of a right-wing base that has been very strong in the Brazilian electorate, even if it is not a majority. The Right has an electoral base of about 30 percent, which is similar to the weight that Lulismo has in normal conditions, that is, in moments prior to the beginning of the campaigns. When that right-wing base is activated, voters located between the two extremes tend to move toward one or another electoral pole.
This dynamic of reactivation works, for example, when Bolsonaro adopts an anti-communist rhetoric. That rhetoric may seem a bit odd, because there is no real communist threat in Brazil. Certainly Lulismo is not a communist phenomenon. So why does the anti-communist rhetoric resonate? Because there is a base characterized by what I have called “popular conservatism.”
There is a great deal of academic literature on the subject, but at the same time the phenomenon of social conservatism remains little understood in Brazil. This base is composed of sectors of the lower middle class to which are added fractions of the working masses. These are sectors that do not have many resources, but which, due to the existence of a large sub-proletariat, function as intermediate middle sectors that are afraid of losing what little they own. The more vulnerable sectors — who have almost nothing — also fear disorder, since they are the weakest link. However, they prefer change, but, because they are constantly fed ideas that make them fearful of losing everything, they ask that any transformation take place from within a certain order.
This is popular conservatism, and the combination of a negative economic scenario — which began in 2015, during Dilma’s government — and a solid right-wing ideological tradition, which has a long history in the country, created the conditions for a reactivation of the political right wing, previously dormant, in the form of Bolsonaro.
In a recent study I tried to show that Lulismo neutralized that popular conservatism between 2006 and 2014, but that the price to pay for the temporary neutralization of the right-wing threat was the demobilization of Lula’s base. That is to say, the homeopathic policy of Lulismo, which sought to avoid confrontation, had the effect of softening conservatism but also of deactivating its social opposition.
We have to wait and see what will happen in the 2022 electoral process. Despite some continuities, we are today facing a new situation due to the presence of political phenomena with fascist components. This was not part of the global landscape in 2016, nor was it really present in Brazil in 2018. But it is something that, I believe, is here to stay.