Book Review: A Generation of Conflict in Contemporary Brazil

• Author: Ronald H. Chilcote
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/0094582X221138566
• Published date: 01 January 2023
• Date: 01 January 2023
• Subject Matter: Book Reviews

https://doi.org/10.1177/0094582X221138566

LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES, Issue 248, Vol. 50 No. 1, January 2023, 290–296

DOI: 10.1177/0094582X221138566

© 2022 Latin American Perspectives

290

Book Review

A Generation of Conflict in Contemporary Brazil

by

Ronald H. Chilcote

Armando Boito Reform and Political Crisis in Brazil: Class Conicts in Workers’ Party

Governments and the Rise of Bolsonaro Neo-fascism. Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2022.

Anyone desiring a comprehensive analysis of twenty-first-century Brazil and its

political economy should turn to Armando Boito’s Reform and Political Crisis in Brazil, a

substantially revised and updated edition of his 2018 work in Portuguese published in

Brazil. Boito is a participating editor of Latin American Perspectives and an editor in

Brazil of the important journal Crítica Marxista. The book is divided into two parts, a

useful explanatory preface, and an afterword. The preface identifies and distinguishes

the five governments: 1995 to 2022, under Fernando Henrique Cardoso, with the aban-

donment of the “developmental state” and establishment of the neoliberal form by

minimizing the state and pursuing a foreign policy in concert with the United States;

2003–2010, under Luís Inácio Lula de Silva, with neodevelopmentalism, involving state

intervention to stimulate the economy and reduce poverty; 2011–2016, under Dilma

Rousseff, with two governments in support of reforms for social movements; 2016–

2018, under Michel Temer, after the orchestrated impeachment of Dilma, with privatiza-

tions of national enterprises and neoliberal reforms; and 2019–2022, under Jair

Bolsonaro, with neoliberal reforms and a neofascist repression of democratic practice.

The first part of the book focuses on the Lula governments. Here Boito briefly identi-

fies early significant Marxist studies on Brazil and adopts their emphasis on state and

class to examine the Brazilian bourgeoisie, including bankers, industrialists, and large

landowners as members of the capitalist class within a state that serves its interests and,

using Nico Poulantzas’s concept of the “bloc in power,” to identify and analyze frac-

tions of that ruling class. His attention to social classes in the PT governments and the

power bloc leads initially to understanding the political rise of the industrial bourgeoi-

sie but ultimately to an understanding of the hegemony of financial capital and the

influence of neodevelopmentalism and its politics. His approach to the Lula years leads

him to a Marxist conception of populism and a critique of Lulism as a type of

Bonapartism. The analysis moves on to the influence of neodevelopmentalism on social

classes and foreign policy under the PT governments and then to unionism and its

decisive influence on Lula’s reelection in 2006.

The second part begins with the contradictions in Dilma’s neodevelopmentalist gov-

ernment and the rise of “new” neoliberal political forces challenging and seeking the

overthrow of her government and moving toward the interests of international capital.

The analysis explores the neoliberal offensive during the early years of the Dilma gov-

ernment, identifying the activity of the upper middle class and the role of the working

class to show the growing instability of democracy and the government’s retreat rather

than political offensive. Boito looks at the bloc in power and class alliances and exam-

ines the political regime and the contradictions within the state bureaucracy and the

role of the Brazilian Development Bank and the oil monopoly Petrobras for the big

internal bourgeoisie. He also delves into Operation Car Wash, which brought down the

1138566LAPXXX10.1177/0094582X221138566Latin American PerspectivesChilcote/BOOK REVIEW

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Ronald H. Chilcote is managing editor of Latin American Perspectives.