THE NEOLIBERAL DICTATORSHIP IN PROGRESS IN BRAZIL

The neoliberal economic model implemented in 1990 is largely responsible for worsening Brazil's social problems today. Social devastation has been the main result of the neoliberal economic model in Brazil inaugurated by President Fernando Collor in 1990 and maintained by Presidents Itamar Franco, Fernando Henrique Cardoso, Lula da Silva, Dilma Roussef, Michel Temer and Jair Bolsonaro. The current economic recession, social inequality, mass unemployment and the extreme poverty of the country demonstrate the infeasibility of the neoliberal model implemented in Brazil. The social devastation suffered by Brazil with social inequality, mass unemployment and extreme poverty is demonstrated through indicators of concentration of income, unemployment, social inequality and extreme poverty.

The aim of this article is to demonstrate the urgent need to abandon the neoliberal economic model implemented in Brazil in 1990, as its failure is evidenced by the poor results obtained in the economic and social spheres, and to replace it with the national developmental model along the Keynesian lines, in which the State would assume the role of inducing economic and social development. The neoliberal economic model was adopted globally as a political project launched by the capitalist class when the global capitalist system showed a decline in the profitability of capital and felt greatly threatened, politically and economically, in the late 1960s and 1970s with the advance of socialism in the world. The neoliberal economic model adopted in Brazil has contributed to causing true devastation in the Brazilian economy since its implementation in 1990, resulting in: 1) poor economic growth; 2) a drop in investment rates in the Brazilian economy; 3) the deindustrialization of the Brazilian economy; 4) the worsening of Brazil's social problems with the increase in income concentration, unemployment, and extreme poverty; and 5) the incapacity of the Brazilian State to solve economic and social problems. For the Brazilian State to regain its capacity to act as an inducer of development in Brazil, it is urgent to ensure that the country's progressive forces gain a majority in the National Congress, in addition to the Presidency of the Republic, to neutralize the retrograde political forces that defend neoliberalism and put an end to the policy of privatization of state-owned companies, the policy of capping public spending, and the autonomy of the Central Bank.

Historical Materialism-research in Critical Marxist Theory, 2005

The post-neoliberal experiment in Brazil hinged on the idea that the state should take an increasingly greater role in most aspects of a country’s life, especially the economy and in its general development mode. From the early 2000s, the return of the state, powered by the so-called “New Left” post-neoliberal policies and governance stance seemed to work as a novel approach to a return of the all-encompassing socially inclusive welfare state. Until the second semester of 2015, the project of post-neoliberal inclusive development attained remarkable success. Benefitted by a benign global economic scenario, buoyed by China’s growth and bolstered by rising commodity prices, the Brazilian state created and maintained food and social security policies, and reached a certain level of improved fiscal policy and reduced external and internal debt. The tensions of overt and covert agreements between government and businesses, weak governance mechanisms and growing unsustainable social expectations foundered the experiment. I specifically examine the roles of BNDES, Petrobras, the Bolsa Família program, China as a trade partner and the Lava Jato Operation as drivers of the multiple crises Brazil faces in 2016. This article explores the unsustainability of the economic and political basis of the post-neoliberal experiment in Brazil (2003-2014) and argues that it in fact ended in the first semester of 2015.

According to Credit Suisse, the recent adoption of a ceiling to limit the expansion of Brazilian government spending and the possible approval of the pension reform will be insufficient to avoid the deficit on the Brazilian public sector accounts that will only lose to the deficit of Venezuela between 2015 and 2018. The picture described by Credit Suisse reveals the tendency to deepen the recession provoked by neoliberalism that makes it possible to trace the causal connection between stagnation, social crisis, social conflicts and the erosion of democracy. In Brazil, we are experiencing economic stagnation with deep recession with the widespread bankruptcy of countless companies and state and municipal governments and the social crisis with 12.5 million unemployed. The social conflicts are expected to grow in the coming months due to the inability of the Michel Temer government to offer answers to the economic crisis and also to the social crisis. This situation will pave the way for chaos in the political environment with unpredictable consequences, putting in check not only this government that is in the service of financial banking, but democracy itself in Brazil.

In 1985 Brazil returned to democracy after more than twenty years of military rule. Political transformation was accompanied by economic changes as well. The former state-led development model collapsed giving way to a new economic model. In comparison with some Latin America countries, Brazilian neo-liberalism is peculiar because of its relative lateness and gradualism. Brazil liberalised its trade and capital accounts during the 1990s, while other countries adopted neo-liberal policies in the late 1970s and 1980s. Only in 1994 did Brazil experience a successful stabilisation of the economy (essential antecedent of any structural reform) through the implementation of the Real Plan, designed by the Ministry of Finance, Fernando Henrique Cardoso. In the following years, Cardoso occupied the presidency for two terms and implemented some neo-liberal reforms. Nevertheless, in the last years of his second term, the support for his government’s economic policy eroded. There was an evident necessity for an alternative way to address the social conflicts and diverse interests of Brazilian society. In 2002, Luis Inácio Lula da Silva, a left-wing candidate, was elected and expected to transform the country. Surprisingly, Lula’s government has not implemented a progressive programme. Conversely, his economic policy is much like a continuation of Cardoso’s economic model, despite Lula’s rhetoric of change. The aim of this dissertation is to analyse the underlying causes of Lula’s continuity. It argues that the continuum of reforms and economic policy is part of a dual process of limitation and choice, which are founded on the political and economic development of the country.

A president with origins in the working class, elected by a left party, in a peripheral capitalist country, eleven years after the capitalist restoration [in the former Stalinist countries], was an atypical event, that is, under the viewpoint of capitalist domination, it was not an anomaly. But it was no surprise. The trajectory of the Partido dos Trabalhadores (Workers’ Party) - PT, as an electoral opposition party to the national governments, in slightly more than two decades, empowered it before the people, and Lula consolidated in this process as the unquestionable leadership of the party.

This paper offers a political economy analysis of the two systems of accumulation in the postwar Brazilian economy: import-substituting industrialisation (ISI) and new liberalism, and the industrial policies associated with them. The transition between these two systems of accumulation from the early 1980s to the mid-1990s is reviewed in the light of the country’s key macroeconomic indicators and the political developments which have determined the choice and implementation of economic policy in each period. It is argued that, despite their significant achievements, both ISI and new liberalism were implemented unevenly and inconsistently, and that their shortcomings can be analysed at two levels: internal micro- and macro-economic limitations preventing these development strategies from achieving their stated aims, and external limitations imposed by social conflicts during each period of time. The paper concludes, first, that industrial policies are closely associated with specific state structures, economic constraints, and political configurations which can be analysed only concretely (there can be no general theory of industrial policy, and there is no ‘optimum path’ of accumulation under late development). Second, each system of accumulation is limited by a distinctive set of historically specific economic and political constraints, which set limits to its potential development. Third, and precisely for these reasons, industrial policy is irreducibly political and context-specific.

SSRN Electronic Journal, 2000

What are the determinants of economic reform efforts? This paper tries to throw light on this question by examining recent reforms in Brazil, a country which followed a gradualist approach and was a late-starter among Latin American economies. We argue that these first generation reforms (trade liberalization, stabilization, privatization and the adoption of a new macro-policy framework) were driven by