Challenge: Brazil deserves more, not less.

Since the eruption of the global crisis in 2008, it was believed that the hegemony of the single thought imposed by neoliberalism was nearing its end. A grave mistake. Six years later, it is clear that only two regions (Asia and Latin America) and a few countries are not aligned with the Anglo-Saxon neoliberal economic and social prescriptions.

To a certain extent, the current experiences of post-neoliberal governments make it possible to attempt to build the foundations of development in a new multipolar world, in contrast to the unipolar perspective that prevailed in the United States after the collapse of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) in the late 1980s. In this sense, the evolution of the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa) has pointed towards the formation of a monetary and financial system favorable to development, an alternative to the bleak international landscape of competitive deregulation.

This, however, exerts enormous tension and pressure on the governments of countries that sovereignly seek to build their own paths to simultaneously address the problems of their people and the world, with greater social justice. Examples of this abound today in Brazil, which has recorded very satisfactory results, especially when compared to nations based on neoliberal policies.

Between 2008 and 2013, Brazil created 11 million formal jobs. During the same period, according to the International Labour Organization (ILO), the world recorded the destruction of 62 million jobs. According to the United Nations (UN), Brazil is managing – like few other countries in the world – to reduce poverty and the brutal inequality of income. In economies subjected to neoliberal policies, the situation has been bleak, with the erosion of social and labor rights amidst higher unemployment, poverty, and income concentration.

Continuing with this perspective will not be simple, as evidenced by the current complexity of managing the Brazilian economy. The gradualism adopted in the set of measures for economic transition to a new productive model with social justice requires popular support and a political majority committed to forging the country's own path.

Criticisms of the current project seek to offer paradise without presenting the path to be followed. Implicitly, they argue that the fight against inflation should be achieved through a drastic increase in interest rates and currency appreciation, allowing the resulting tariff hikes due to higher prices for oil, electricity, and other basic economic costs to act as a shock therapy. Simultaneously, cuts in public spending, including the suspension of hiring, wage freezes for civil servants, and reduced resources for social programs and investment, would complete the intensified fiscal adjustment.

In short, recession as a means of containing the size of the labor market, causing an increase in unemployment and a reduction in wage levels. This scenario – it's true – already played out in Brazil in the 1990s, when the base of the social pyramid paid the price for the economic adjustment, which lacked sustainable success over time.

During the Great Depression of 1929, Brazil was one of the first countries to recover its economy quickly and pursue a new model of national development. Even so, the 1930s were filled with criticism from those who did not accept the path the country had forged from then on. Today, the country, with due consideration for the differences in scale, is reinventing itself, betting on a better development project for all its people, despite the contradictions it presents. Understanding this moment is a substantial task for all those who believe that Brazil can and deserves much more, not less.