Herald of the new slavery

If there is one person who has laid the theoretical groundwork for destroying the Brazilian welfare state project, that person is José Pastore, from USP (University of São Paulo). He has done this for money, as he traditionally provides services to business entities such as CNI (National Confederation of Industry), Fiesp (Federation of Industries of the State of São Paulo), and now the São Paulo Commercial Association. The task Pastore has assigned himself is to destroy the labor and social achievements of the last 80 years. He does this with ruthless disdain for the human condition of workers. He defends the pension reform.

I know him very well, because we were contemporaries and even friends in the CNI's advisory team during Senator Albano Franco's presidency. Albano was (and is) an extremely simple man, but suspicious of Pastore's calculations, according to which the social costs of the worker represented more than 100% of their salary. This, in his view, made the investment unfeasible. And Pastore wouldn't allow deducting from what he called social costs what was simply the indirect salary of the individual worker.

Yesterday, Pastore received significant airtime on Globo. In fact, Globo always knows where to find him when it wants to defend some infamous measure against the poorest segments of the population. He doesn't hesitate. And, to counterbalance any potentially bitter measures, he makes fabulous promises of jobs for next year on the condition that the pension reform is approved. He did the same with the labor reform. In that case too, Pastore promised millions of jobs. Today, we have 13,1 million unemployed!

It's difficult to classify Pastore. He's not ignorant, because he knows how to sell his consulting services very well. Businessmen adore him. He generally offers much more than they ask for. In fact, in my experience, the most socially backward businessmen only verbalize what their advisors indoctrinate them with. I remember that, during my time at the CNI (National Confederation of Industry), when I proposed some document or speech against the absurd interest rates, someone from the Economic Department would immediately chime in to point out that it wasn't advisable.

Pastore, as a herald of the new slavery, indoctrinated many people, both inside and outside the business world, with his proposals to destroy Brazilian social policies. The justification was always the same: by cutting workers' wages, investments would spring up from the ground and jobs would be created, increasing the efficiency of the economy. He preached in vain for a long time. I remember that Albano strongly opposed tampering with Social Security. Until, with Bolsonaro and Guedes, Pastore found the president and minister he deserved.

In his interview, I didn't see a single mention against the destruction of public social security that will result from the capitalization regime that the government intends to impose on the country. It's said of intellectuals divorced from the people that they find themselves in an impenetrable bubble. Pastore isn't quite like that. He is a bubble with tentacles because, like other intellectuals sold to capital, he penetrates deep into the peripheries through the influence of Globo and other broadcasters bought by the financial system, the great beneficiary of the reform.

The pension reform will set the country back to a time before 1917. This was the beginning of the great strikes and social upheavals that mobilized the country, especially São Paulo. After much struggle, the employers had to negotiate. The massacre of social rights that is happening, and which will be accentuated with the pension reform, could happen in the short term. If it does, everything will start again. Perhaps at the cost of many deaths, in this era of radicalization and terrorism. But it won't be without cost.