Abstract: Lulism, Populism, and Bonapartism

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Lulism, Populism, and Bonapartism

by Armando Boito

Lulism is one of the most important political phenomena of twenty-first-century Brazil. It can be compared to the Varguism that dominated Brazilian politics between 1930 and 1964 in its broad popular but politically unorganized base and its policy of state intervention in the economy to stimulate economic growth, increase the state’s room for maneuver against the imperialist countries, and promote a moderate income distribution. These two variants of populism differ, however, in that Varguism was based on the working class while Lulism, which may be called “neopopulism,” is based on the marginal mass of workers and has less potential to destabilize the political process. Bonapartism, to which Lulism has also been compared, is distinct from it in that what links its leadership to its base is the fetish of the state based on order rather than the fetish based on protection.

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Political Report # 1374 To understand the 2018 elections

by Fabio Luis Barbosa dos Santos

On the surface, the Brazilian presidential election seems complex. Despite the coup and Lula´s arrest, the PT seems to be the favorite in the week before the election, facing a fearsome creature of the dictatorship - Bolsonaro. What is in dispute in this election? Who is the candidate for large capital? What is the strategy of the bourgeoisie? And the answer from the left? I will now address these issues. 1. For the Brazilian bourgeoisie, the economy is not in dispute in the elections: whoever wins will confront the problems of neoliberalism with more neoliberalism. Whether through the utopian way of an "inclusive neoliberalism" preached by the PT, or by the ultraneoliberalism of the Toucans (PSDB) or Bolsonaro. What the bourgeoisie contests is the political form to manage Brazilian crises. What will be the face of the institutional, legal and cultural arrangement that will replace the New Republic[2], definitively condemned. On the immediate plane, there are two paths. In his own words, Lula offers credibility and stability. The credibility of which he speaks is not with those from above, but with those from below: what Lula says, society will accept. In other words, Lulaism offers its capacity for persuasion and popular neutralization, as a path for order. If Dilma Rousseff was the shadow of Lula, Fernando Haddad is projected as the avatar of this policy.[3] At the opposite, complementary pole, is Bolsonaro. How to understand him? Bolsonaro is the frightening response of a frightened society. Those who are out of work are afraid of hunger, and those who work are afraid of unemployment. Everyone is afraid of violence, and also afraid of the police.