DARK TIMES IN BRAZIL

Fernando Alcoforado *

This is perhaps a mission impossible to fight for social peace in Brazil after the second round of the presidential election, whatever its winner in the face of the confrontational climate that is dividing the Brazilian population and causing the rupture of relations even between family and friends. First of all, it must be said that social peace is a state of balance and understanding among the inhabitants of the same country, where respect between them is acquired by the acceptance of differences and conflicts are resolved through dialogue, the rights of people are respected and their voices heard, and all are at their highest point of serenity without social tension.

The antithesis of social peace is the civil war which is characterized by being an armed conflict between groups organized within the same country. Civil wars (also known as internal wars) are very serious conflicts for the nation involved, whether in the political, economic or social spheres. These conflicts are responsible for the death of a large number of civilians, as they are characterized by the active participation of the people in the fighting. The main victims are children, women and the elderly, who, even without fighting in conflicts, are the most affected by the attacks.

One fact is indisputable: Brazil is a politically divided country. On the one hand, there are those who want the return of PT (Workers Party) to power and, on the other, there are those who want the defeat of PT. It is quite clear that right-wing political forces consider the rise of Fernando Haddad to be unacceptable to the power that would mean the return of the PT and its allies to the Brazilian government, and the left-wing political forces, especially the radical ones, consider the right wing in power unacceptable, especially if Jair Bolsonaro wins the presidential elections. The country may be convulsed in these circumstances. This means that neither Bolsonaro nor Haddad will acquire the conditions of governability.

Between these two positions are those, as the author of these lines, who wish that the political conflict does not trigger a civil war, which means the war of everybody against everybody or a bloodbath among the population. In a situation of civil war, there would be no Democratic Governability which can only be achieved when the executive branch has the support of the majority of Parliament, the economically dominant classes and the vast majority of the population. These are the conditions for a government to exercise Governance which, in short, expresses the possibility of the government of a nation to carry out public policies with the support of Parliament, the productive sectors and the population. Bolsonaro can count on the support of the economically dominant classes and the majority of the Parliament, but will have the opposition of a significant portion of the population. Haddad, for his part, will have the support of a significant part of the population and part of the Parliament, but will not have the support of the economically dominant classes. This means saying that Bolsonaro and Haddad if they rise to the Presidency of the Republic will not be able to exercise Governability democratically.

Those who think that Brazil can be immune to the political-institutional rupture now or in the future are totally mistaken because the political dispute has turned into a war in which Bolsonaro’s extreme right makes it clear that his objective is to effectively destroy political capacity of his opponent, the PT, and of the leftist parties. The extreme fascist right-wing advance in Brazil is a consequence of the failure of the neoliberal economic policy put into practice by the PT governments that led the country to bankruptcy with the biggest economic recession and the highest rate of unemployment in history, of unbridled corruption in all the spheres of the governments Lula and Dilma Rousseff, and also the bankruptcy of the political system inaugurated with the 1988 Constituent Assembly. Bolsonaro, who is a far right politician, totally unprepared to exercise the Presidency of the Republic, appeared only as a solution for the country counting on the support of a large part of the population because its discourse has the objective not only to sweep the PT and its leftist allies from the political scene, but democracy itself if it opposes his designs. Who opened the way for the advent of Bolsonaro and fascism in Brazil was, therefore, the PT and its allies.

In practice, the extreme right adopts in Brazil what Clausewitz considers as the objective of the war, presented in his work On War, that would be to disarm the opponent, that is, effectively to destroy the opponent’s ability to fight.  It is not easy for the extreme right to destroy the PT and the leftist parties in Brazil because the more determined they are to fight for survival, the harder it will be to remove them from the political scene in Brazil. It is also Clausewitz’s claim that “war is a continuation of politics by other means”. This means that when there is no room for the exercise of politics, war becomes the means to be used to impose its will on the enemy. It was in this way that ruled Hitler and Mussolini. This is what can happen in Brazil with the victory of Bolsonaro.

The British political philosopher Thomas Hobbes believed that the human being lived in permanent war. Hobbes is the thinker of the authoritarian state, of repression, of absolutism and of all forms of dictatorship. His best known text, The Leviathan, expresses concern about the legal and institutional order of the State in accordance with this conception. He affirmed in this work published in 1651, that the human being, in his “natural” state, would live in permanent war. In the book, Hobbes states that this war occurs because each man rationally pursues his own interests, without the result satisfying the collective interest, a fact that would lead to the war of everybody against everybody. To avoid the war of everybody against everybody, Hobbes advocates instituting a strong and absolute power capable of inducing men by the fear of punishment and repression to respect the laws and the holders of power. This is what can happen in Brazil with the victory of Bolsonaro. The facts of history show that, as the struggle between the political forces of the right and the left grow up, dictatorship is imposed as a solution for those who are in power to impose by force their will on the nation. Faced with the impossibility of electing a president of the Republic to ensure democratic practice and social peace, we can only hope for dark times in Brazil.

* Fernando Alcoforado, 78, holder of the CONFEA / CREA System Medal of Merit, member of the Bahia Academy of Education, engineer and doctor in Territorial Planning and Regional Development by the University of Barcelona, ​​university professor and consultant in the areas of strategic planning, business planning, regional planning and planning of energy systems, is the author of 14 books addressing issues such as Globalization and Development, Brazilian Economy, Global Warming and Climate Change, The Factors that Condition Economic and Social Development,  Energy in the world and The Great Scientific, Economic, and Social Revolutions that Changed the World.