A contested state

Recent events involving political forces in Brazil highlight how the country is controlled by an elite whose main function is to act as a predatory force. Even with its contradictions, most evident after each election, where the control of state-owned companies and other apparatuses is divided beforehand; even weak and contradictory, the Brazilian bourgeoisie, initially influenced by English capital, and later aligned with and subjugated to American capital, founded the economic, ideological, and political bases of the republican state upon an illiterate and hyper-regionalized population, lacking a national identity.

The foundational bases of the Brazilian state enabled the bourgeoisie to maintain continuous management through capital structures and permanent occupation of state bodies such as business federations, hegemonic media outlets, the Federal Public Prosecutor's Office, State Courts of Justice, the Superior Court of Justice, the legal system configured in the Great Legal Family of Brazil, and control of the executive and legislative branches. Political parties are controlled by castes and conjunctions of interests alien to the common good. The reform of the political-electoral financing system brings yet another trap for those in power: self-financing, that is, a loophole to further exclude the less favored classes from the political system.

The political, economic, and legal control of the state guarantees the bourgeoisie the support of laws and policies that maintain levels of wealth accumulation through legalized and indiscriminate plunder. To cite some examples: changes in labor legislation to guarantee lower wages, tax reductions, monetary policy that favors public debt and reduces the state's investment capacity, forcing the opening of new sources of wealth to private capital, such as: the sale of our oil, concessions for the use of water sources, indirect sale of rivers (through the sale of public electricity companies), concessions for public works and services, permission for foreign nations to patent our biodiversity, among others.

This is a well-formed and refined apparatus, honed over years, operating both inside and outside the state, composed of the same entities acting in unison for the benefit of their class, the dominant class, the bourgeoisie. Some of the most recent cases demonstrate how they act in their own self-interest, legislating to reduce or suspend laws such as the CLT (Consolidation of Labor Laws), establishing a new policy on pesticides, forcing the strangulation of social programs, freezing the public budget to facilitate capital flight to foreign creditors/plunderers, restricting the role of science and technology to nothing, prioritizing the purchase of foreign technology, and encroaching on public social security to benefit large business groups through private pension plans.

Thus, the bourgeoisie has always maintained its own welfare state, prioritizing its economic interests, capturing politics, and opposing any semblance of programmatic change that would bring about a minimum of democracy and social inclusion. It stifles the demands for justice and the common good from peasant and marginalized communities, and stifles the unrestrained cry of youth and the working class for their just pleas to be heard—the very rights that would allow them to survive.

It can be concluded that the Temer administration, even weakened and incapable, is fulfilling the role that the state has been destined for until now; recent events explain this:

1 – Truckers' strike/lockout. After the strike/lockout, nothing changed; the government's measures pass the bill on to the population, and the main beneficiaries – the business owners – are no longer satisfied. They rebelled against the minimum freight price, and the obedient government backed down. In an interview with Poder360, CNI's Executive Manager, Flávio Castelo Branco, already demonstrates that they want more;

2 – Total institutional, bureaucratic, and budgetary incapacity prevents the government from responding quickly to any social demands, a fact that is generating popular dissatisfaction, elevating the coup leader to the level of the most unpopular president in history, and advertising campaigns are failing to reverse the situation;

3 – The large number of assassinations of social activists and human rights defenders gives the feeling that the country has gone back 20 or 30 years. The civil, military and federal police act with inaction and blindness in the face of these crimes, while the perpetrators, landowners and gunmen, act with the certainty of impunity;

4 – Criminalization of popular struggle.

5 – A gentleman's pact with corrupt individuals to operate in collusion across four branches of government: media, legal, executive, and legislative, legislating in favor of impunity, the sale of the country, and against the people.

A state completely devoid of concern for the common good, historically contested and plagued by recurring crises. In other words, the upcoming change of government will not solve the fundamental problem. The solution that rests on the discourse and actions of a select few – but which is the only one that will bring about paradigmatic and programmatic change – is a profound transformation of the Brazilian state.