Come back, Isabel!

By Lindbergh Farias and Marcelo Zero 

We recently wrote an article stating that the coup threatens to dismantle the social legacies of Lula, Ulysses Guimarães, and Getúlio Vargas.

We were mistaken.

The reactionary and exclusionary appetite of the coup plotters goes even further. They also want to end the social legacy of Princess Isabel.

Indeed, that is what the president of the CNI, a supporter of the coup, implied when, after a meeting with the Interim Usurper, he announced that Brazilians have to work 80 hours a week, or 12 hours a day.

For the coup plotters, this is the solution to the crisis. To force Brazilians to work until they are 70 years old, with a 12-hour workday.

Cynically, they claim to be inspired by the new French labor law. They are lying. The new French labor law allows, only in exceptional circumstances, such as a serious company crisis, the extension of the workweek to 60 hours, after a registered collective agreement, and with the approval and supervision of labor inspectorates. Hours exceeding 35 hours per day will continue to be considered overtime. Even so, the new law is causing social upheaval in France. It will be reviewed.

But what our coup plotters want is to impose these 80 hours and not pay overtime. It's the return of slavery. The return of exclusion and inequality as a model for growth. They want the return of the "economic miracle" of the dictatorship. They want the return of the tripod of repression, inequality, and exploitation.

In reality, their inspiration is not 21st-century France. They got the country and the century wrong. Their true inspiration is England in the first half of the 19th century. That England described by Engels, whom the coup plotters affectionately call Hegel. That bucolic and pleasant country portrayed in the book "The Condition of the Working Class in England".

Ah! Those morally uplifting 14-hour workdays, which rebuild character destroyed by laziness. The edifying child labor, which produces disciplined and selfless citizens. The misery piled up and conveniently separated in exotic tenements, so suited to social peace. And, above all, those modest wages, so inviting to the entrepreneur.

Ah! The absence of subversive unions. The absence of rights and guarantees that hinder the proper functioning of the economy. And the omnipresent and omniscient presence of the Market. Beautiful times!

Ah! The dystopian beauty of a world without a public healthcare system. A world without the SUS (Unified Health System). Only with private health insurance plans. A world without public education. A world without Bolsa Família (Family Allowance Program), without Pronatec (National Program for Access to Technical Education and Employment), without Ciência sem Fronteiras (Science Without Borders Program), without Minha Casa Minha Vida (My House My Life Program), without ENEM (National High School Exam), without FIES (Student Financing Fund), without Prouni (University for All Program). A world based on the meritocracy of privileges. A world for the few. A Brazil for the few, as our tradition dictates.

What the coup plotters want is a return to "governance through social exclusion," something that the ruling classes have always advocated.

At the end of the 1988 National Constituent Assembly, which was building Brazilian social citizenship, Sarney called for a national radio and television broadcast to warn the country about the danger of a "brutal explosion of public spending" that the new Constitution would entail, making the country "ungovernable."

Ulysses responded admirably: Honorable members of the Constituent Assembly: the Constitution, with the corrections we will make, will be the guardian of governability. Governability lies in the social sphere. Hunger, misery, ignorance, and untreated illness are ungovernable. Social injustice is the negation of government and the condemnation of government (...).

The PT governments followed Ulysses' lead. They began building a country for everyone, governed for everyone. Governed by inclusion and social citizenship.

But the coup plotters now want a return to a Brazil for the few. A country governed by exclusion. An economy based on inequality, which doesn't want to spend money on rights, social security, and public services for the poor. The coup plotters believe that social citizenship doesn't fit within the budget. Only stratospheric interest rates and privileges would fit within the budget.

Inspired by Sarney and the reactionary Centrão of the Constituent Assembly, so similar in its opportunism and conservatism to Cunha's Centrão, they want the dismantling of social citizenship and our small Welfare State. They also want to dismantle Brazil, selling off the pre-salt oil reserves and all public assets. They want to alienate our sovereignty.

We thought the coup would take us back to the Old Republic. We were wrong. They want to take the country back to the times of a dependent, slave-owning colony.

The Temer/Cunha government didn't just come to remove Dilma from power. It didn't just come to remove the poor from the budget.

He came to put shackles on Brazilian workers. He came to put the poor in the stocks.

Out with Temer! Come back, Isabel!