Sailing against the Wind: The Rise and Crisis of a Low-Conflict Progressivism

• Author: Gustavo Codas Friedmann,Claudio A. Castelo Branco Puty
• DOI: 10.1177/0094582X19884361
• Published date: 01 January 2020
• Date: 01 January 2020
• Subject Matter: Articles

https://doi.org/10.1177/0094582X19884361

LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES, Issue 230, Vol. 47 No. 1, January 2020, 83–99

DOI: 10.1177/0094582X19884361

© 2019 Latin American Perspectives

83

Sailing against the Wind

The Rise and Crisis of a Low-Conflict Progressivism

by

Gustavo Codas Friedmann and Claudio A. Castelo Branco Puty

Translated by

Luis Fierro

The governments of the Partido dos Trabalhadores (Workers’ Party—PT) in Brazil

(2003– 2016) were part of a cycle of progressive governments in Latin America whose

differences are more specific to the conditions of political struggle in each country—the

conditions of arrival in government, the structure of the political system—than funda-

mentally programmatic. They can be characterized as a low-conflict progressivism in that,

although there was no promotion of a neoliberal agenda on the model of European social

liberalism, there was accommodation within the framework of the established order that

was ultimately fundamental to the success of the 2016 parliamentary-judicial coup.

Os governos do Partido dos Trabalhadores (PT) no Brasil (2003 a 2016) fizeram parte

de um ciclo de governos progressistas na América Latina cujas diferenças dizem mais

respeito às condições específicas de luta política em cada país—nas condições de chegada

ao governo, na estrutura do sistema político—do que uma diferença programática funda-

mental. Podem-se caracterizar os governos do PT de um progressismo de baixo conflito à

medida em que, não obstante não ter havido a promoção de uma agenda neoliberal nos

padrões do social-liberalismo europeu, houve uma acomodação aos marcos da ordem esta-

belecida que, em última medida, foram fundamentais para o sucesso do golpe judiciário-

parlamentar de 2016.

Keywords: PT, Lula, Dilma, Progressivism, Neoliberalism

We write this article while Brazil is boiling politically, in September 2017. The

context is that of a country that has endured three years of deep economic

recession and high unemployment. The federal government, in the hands of

Michel Temer, the center-right former vice president who actively conspired to

overthrow President Dilma Rousseff in May 2016, is driving an unprecedented

agenda of neoliberal reforms with the support of the Partido da Social

Democracia Brasileira (Brazilian Social Democracy Party—PSDB), a party that

The late economist Gustavo Codas Friedmann (d. August 12, 2019) was a professor at the Perseu

Abramo Foundation. Born in Paraguay and exiled to Brazil for his political views, He was instru-

mental in the agreement between President Lula and President Lugo that readjusted the amounts

paid by Brazil for the energy produced in Paraguay by Itaipú Binacional and served as its general

director in 2010–2011. Claudio A. Castelo Branco Puty is a professor of economics at the Federal

University of Pará and at the University of International Business and Economics (Beijing). He was

a PT deputy in the Congress from 2011 to 2015. Luis Fierro is a translator living in the Miami area.

884361LAPXXX10.1177/0094582X19884361Latin American PerspectivesFriedmann and Puty / Rise And Crisis of a Low-Conict Progressivism

research-article2019

84 LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES

was defeated by the Partido dos Trabalhadores (Workers’ Party—PT) in the last

four elections. Lula’s possible candidacy is leading the opinion polls and draw-

ing crowds to the streets of Brazilian cities in caravans organized by the PT.

Meanwhile, right-wing forces are preparing, in broad daylight, to ban his pres-

idential candidacy and waging a fierce contest within the conservative bloc

over their alternative candidates. Amid the multiple layers of the crisis, an

assessment of the PT governments is fundamental for the reconstruction of

emancipatory paths for the Brazilian people.

Whom did the governments led by the PT represent? Would they have pro-

moted the same neoliberalism of the 1990s, mitigated this time by compensa-

tory social policies—a kind of “social neoliberalism”? Did they function as a

sort of indirect agent of neoliberalism by demobilizing the working class? Or

were they a true “post-neoliberal” experiment? And, after all, what comes after

neoliberalism on the periphery of world capitalism? We have reviewed the PT’s

political trajectory in Brazil’s recent history in an attempt to understand how

the party has approached the task of governing Brazil since 2003. We will criti-

cally address these governments, especially in their economic and social dimen-

sions, in the Latin American context and conclude with an effort to characterize

the PT experiment. The PT governments braved the turbulent seas of the polit-

ical struggle in Brazil and had good results while the economic conditions

allowed sufficient nautical speed. However, the incipient democratization that

they promoted triggered reactions in which constraints that had been latent for

many years became open opposition. The ship slowed down and, engulfed in

the vortex, capsized, astonishingly, in the coup of 2016.

PROGRESSIVISM IN THE ERA OF PROGRAMMATIC

DISORGANIZATION

The progressive cycle of governments in Brazil began in 2003 not as a result

of a linear programmatic and organizational accumulation of forces of the

Brazilian left in the previous period but because of the combination of the neo-

liberal crisis and popular resistance that opened the way for the conquest of the

presidency. The trajectory of the PT embodies these contradictions. Founded in

1980, in the following decade the PT passed through two very distinct phases.

After its origin, growth, and implantation across much of the national territory

there was a period of resistance to the neoliberal reforms of the 1990s, with a

reduction of its strategic perspective to purely electoral dynamics. Until the

election of 1989, electoral dispute was for the PT part of a strategy of democratic

“rupture.” In that year Lula came close to winning the presidential election

defending a popular-democratic, antilandowner, and anti-imperialist platform

in the wake of social struggles, including a two-day general strike in March

1989. A few months before, the PT deputies had voted against the approval of

the final text of the 1988 Constitution in protest of what was considered a

restricted and conservative redemocratization.

Beginning in the 1990s, with increasing institutional victories, elections

became more and more the PT’s path to power. This was at a moment of

immense defeat of the left at the world level with an accelerated reversion of