THE AGONIES OF ABERTURA IN BRAZIL

...More likely, however, is a merger of the PDT and the PTB (PARTIDO TRABALHISTA BRASILEIRO), the heir of the populist period...

...It is, alas, all too easy to write 220 into "popular social consciousness" anything one wishes to glean from it...

...The first of the three parties is the Partido Democratico Trabalhista (PDT), whose center of power is Rio de Janeiro...

...That, at any rate, is the plan...

...And this memory leads many on the left to the startling conclusion that, because the bourgeoisie is not much enamored of "bourgeois democracy," the only type of democracy sustainable in Latin America must be a socialist one...

...The Elections THESE ELECTORAL CONTESTS—for governor, federal and state legislators, mayors, and city councilmen—stand out from previous ones in two important ways...

...In fact, however, this felicitous idea has proved easily susceptible to distortion and manipulation...

...q ests and institutions in the society are recognized and permitted to interact...

...Hence the two most common words in the Brazilian political vocabulary are arbitrio, or arbitrary rule by governmental decree, and casuismo, the casuistry of new electoral laws...

...That Assembly will then rewrite the Constitution, permitting direct elections (with universal suffrage) for the presidency...

...But Spanish democracy has advanced despite the continuing threat of terrorism, a problem that Brazil does not face...

...Only then will it be possible to elude the co-optation at which the generals are so adept, and to move from there to more ambitious reforms...

...Divisions Within the Left UNTIL 1979 THERE WAS only one opposition party...

...Nor has President Figueiredo shown the same unswerving dedication to democratic principles as King Juan Carlos...

...That same skewing reappears in the electoral college scheduled to pick the next president...

...There is no question that the elections mark a significant advance in the abertura—the controlled liberalization initiated by the regime in the mid-'70s...

...Finally, supporters of government candidates engaged in a vast range of dirty tricks far beyond the limited imagination of the Watergate conspirators...

...The generals and planners realize that such harsh economic measures would probably be abandoned by any democratically elected president...

...that is the task of social movements...

...There was never a single figure, a Francisco Franco, on whom the Brazilian regime rested and whose passing would make reform inevitable...

...But the effect of the intellectuals' presence, according to some observers, was a discernible escalation in the revolucionismo of PT rhetoric...

...The regional distribution of seats in the Chamber of Deputies is weighted in favor of rural areas where large landowners exercise considerable, if informal, control over the voting...

...Concern with preserving their ethical purity has taken precedence over their commitment, shared with other opposition elements, to the reestablishment of democracy...

...Though still rather fluid, this multiparty system includes a democratic left...

...But winning power through elections requires compromise with those whom the PT continues to brand as the "class enemy...

...From this understanding of the current regime it follows that the top priority ought to be the establishment of a state of law...

...These provide a means of building "dual power" within "civil society," to use the going idiom...

...It has tended more often to see its adversary not in the autocratic rule of the rural oligarchy, whom it might in principle have wished to displace, but in the redistributive reforms of populist governments, whose rulers were always threatening to lose control of their unruly masses...

...Access to the broadcast media was severely restricted...

...Few radical movements in modern history could claim such humble origins...

...The poor showing of the party (10 percent in Sao Paulo, with insignificant support elsewhere) may now reveal to its ardent supporters the perils of such a course...

...But, in exchange, the workers' autonomy —their right to organize and act independently, without state tutelage—was sacrificed...

...But it does appear, at least for the moment, that the "hard line" within the officer corps, which remains skeptical of the abertura and would almost surely oppose such a proposal, exercises little influence with President Figueiredo...

...Coalitions between political parties were forbidden, preventing unification of the opposition groups...

...And in Brazil the enclaves of private life have never been subject to intensive surveillance...

...This is confirmed by the sizable public investments in slum communities that inevitably precede elections...

...The PMDB, Social Movements, and the State THE PMDB IS THE THIRD PARTY within which one finds elements of the democratic left...

...Yet the process of humbling oneself at the foot of the worker, rather than lecturing him about the dialectic of history, has proved a more successful strategy for winning his respect and, ultimately, his support...

...They marked the first chance for opposition candidates to win a measure of power in Brazil's highly centralized political system...

...When the police sought to punish the courtly director, public support for him was enormous...

...The interest groups of Western pluralism, with their incessant bargaining and constant demands upon the state, do not exist here...

...so, at least, one may hope...

...There could probably be no better symbol of Brazil's current preoccupation with the classic economic questions first raised by that early apostle of free trade...

...In this fact, at least, Brazilians may seek some solace and encouragement...

...And they registered the start of a multiparty system...

...As they would be the first to admit, the intellectuals in the PT offered very little in the way of new ideas...

...A byzantine jumble of such laws, decreed by the government in 1977, '79, and '81, ensured that the recent contest was something less than a fair fight...

...The dominant wing within the officer corps appears to favor retreat from any direct role in governance, while preserving intact its capacity for an occasional veto over the decisions of civilians...

...223...

...Hence the greater strategic significance with which the PT invests popular social movements of recent years (the independent unions, the neighborhood associations, the Christian base communities, the mothers' clubs, and so on...

...True to its beginnings in the sudden strikes of 1978-80, the PT has preserved an unusual degree of political spontaneity...

...Its 'apologists indeed even would claim to have repealed Michels's iron law of oligarchy, since major decisions are made only through extensive "consultation" with militants at its base...

...That division cost the opposition victories in at least two major gubernatorial races, although national coalitions in the Senate and Chamber still remain possible...

...He therefore is concerned that the incipient power of the social movements, with their millions of loyal followers, be used immediately to assist opposition candidates to power...

...It is a state that dominates capital and labor alike...

...Voters were not permitted to split their ballots between different parties...

...It was precisely at that moment, after the government's humiliation in the congressional elections of 1978, that the presidential staff began to contemplate a multiparty system, so as to fragment the rising discontent...

...The consequence of this analysis was a painful ambivalence about seeking state power, with PT candidates torn between wanting to unmask the elections as a fraud and wanting to win them...

...A third source of opposition within the PT to alliances with other social classes is the Catholic left—the base communities, radical priests, and liberation theologians...

...The battering that national capitalists have taken at the hands of state enterprises and multinationals is sufficient evidence of this...

...The argument runs as follows: Considering the success of populist governments in co-opting reform movements and the willingness of the middle class to abandon democratic principles as soon as its interests seem threatened, it is hard to see what good could be expected to come simply from electing PT officials...

...One sign of this is that the "democratic left" is now spread over three separate parties, although that balkanization cannot be attributed entirely to machinations of the government...

...The consequence of this self-image was a reluctance to exercise the social imagination, to speak in their own voice—at the risk of proving themselves inattentive to the voice of the popular classes...

...But the founders of the PT emerged from grass-roots struggles in the metallurgical unions, the neighborhood associations, and the base communities of the Catholic church...

...If the elections then marked a definite step forward, neither were they the orgiastic celebration of popular self-rule that Reagan was sure to see in them...

...Still possible, and now much discussed, is the formation of a socialist party, joining the PDT, the PT, and leftist elements within the PMDB...

...Its candidates span the spectrum from former cabinet members under the military to members of the outlawed Communist party...

...The Brazilian government did not win anything near the decisive majorities attained by the Mexican Partido Revolucionario Institucional...

...There it won all the state governorships and most of the legislative seats...

...The purpose of the electoral campaign, according to PT strategists, is not to put its militants immediately into places where they will be compelled "to manage the crises of capitalism...

...They see compromise with those who don't share all of their views as alliance with error, complicity in sinfulness...

...Most leaders of the other opposition parties began by challenging the military regime in the restricted channels of legislation, litigation, and journalism...

...In this way it becomes possible to show the worker "that his social consciousness already contains the presuppositions from which one can extract a superior conception of the world," as writes a recent Brazilian admirer of Gramsci...

...To engineer that retreat, the generals envision the creation of a highly restricted democracy that allows new channels of communication between state and society but will prevent the mass mobilization and inflationary social spending of the populist period...

...Hence the omnipresence of corruption...

...By no means, however, do these elements prevail within that party, which is sometimes described as center-left...

...The inundation of the cities with piles of pamphlets apparently reached a point of saturation, for it provoked a minor countermovement...

...The fascination that the party has exercised over the radical intelligentsia both here and abroad is based on its grass-roots origins in the urban social movements...

...Only after the cultivation of support among the working population does the assumption of positions within the state become a meaningful aim...

...Journalistic pundits read a "deeper meaning" into the incident—that it revealed a public exhaustion with the election...

...Perhaps...

...Its more vocal members were always getting banished from public life, especially if they sought to put up authentic resistance...

...Onethird of the Senate is appointed by the government and subject to no test of popular support...

...It may well prove excessively optimistic with respect to the readiness of military power to self-destruct...

...It is a curious question as to how the intellectuals came to exercise this influence...

...This argument already implies a rather different understanding of the nature of the Brazilian state than the one suggested by the PT...

...Because the state does not have an intrinsic class character, its capture by the general population becomes a plausible objective...

...Yet, although the bourgeoisie was a standard-bearer of democracy in Europe, it has proved to be a reluctant warrior on democracy's behalf in Latin America...

...Basic decisions of economic and social policy continue to be made by the president and his coterie...

...Ironically, that very fascination with the stirring from below led some of Brazil's leading intellectuals to assume important roles within the party...

...The theoretical analysis of Brazil's current crisis offered by the PT is quite distinct from that of the other opposition parties, although much of its actual electoral program overlapped with theirs...

...But in the quasi-euphoric atmosphere of the campaign, one could also detect precious appreciation of democratic liberties in those to whom such freedoms were so recently denied...

...It offers the best hope for Brazil's democratic left...

...The unpopularity of such measures makes a return to democracy even more difficult...

...But it is possible to extract such an analysis from the writings of its democratic left...

...Habeas corpus has been restored...

...The recent Spanish case of controlled transition from authoritarianism to democracy is now on everyone's mind here...

...Irritated by the defacement of his building, the director of Sdo Paulo's art museum painted the word merda across its walls, at once covering and commenting upon the political posters on display...

...Cardoso, for instance, appears to view them simply as an important electoral constituency for a reform administration, one that would dedicate itself seriously to social change...

...And the inability or unwillingness of the party to distance itself sufficiently from those who profit under the current regime has sapped its oppositional impetus in many states, and cost it an unexpected upset in Rio...

...There is no doubt, as opinion polls show, that estrangement from the regime now extends to very broad segments of the middle and upper reaches of the middle class...

...In their place one finds organizations (such as unions, professional associations, parties) whose interrelations are harmoniously orchestrated from above...

...The PT is much more wary than the other parties of any compromise with the middle and upper classes, as well as with the occupants of power...

...Among segments of the Catholic left there is a straight line from prophetic religion to sectarian politics, from the wholesale denunciation of an unjust world to the unwillingness to capitulate to its temptations...

...Only with a measure of power within the state will the opposition be able to deliver such services directly to its constituency, thus ensuring its continued loyalty...

...This observation is confirmed by a comparison with the creative output of the intellectuals associated with the Partido do Movimento Democratico Brasileiro (PMDB), who turned out several books of interesting proposals during the campaign...

...The names and numbers of candidates had to be written in, rather than merely checked off—a rule that could only have been aimed at semiliterates...

...The National Security Law, a very broad defamation act disallowing any explicit criticism of the president, was used against over 30 candidates...

...The left within the PMDB is no less sympathetic than the PT to the urban mass movements of recent years, although it must be said that it played a less active role in their formation...

...The openness of the party to anyone claiming to be "in opposition" to the regime has made for some strange political bedfellows...

...And, according to press reports, bribery of voters by the party was common...

...The party won mayoral contests in 75 of the 100 largest cities, with other opposition parties taking 8 of the remaining ones...

...The economic measures recently imposed by the 222 IMF on Brazil will almost certainly prove recessionary in the short run, involving restrictions on wage increases, credit, and government spending...

...The authoritarian regime has never fostered the campaign demonstrations of mass support so characteristic of fascist governments, if only because it has never felt entirely confident that the population would remain loyal to its masters...

...It had been 17 years since the citizens of most states in Brazil had been permitted to choose their governors...

...Although two-thirds of the voters registered support for the opposition, the government party (the misnamed Partido Democratico Social) will continue to possess the largest bloc of seats in the Chamber and a majority in the Senate and the electoral college...

...These regional limitations have prompted discussion of a possible merger between the two parties...

...But the government did succeed in driving a wedge between segments of the opposition...

...but rural labor organizers still disappear with some regularity...

...In the back of everyone's mind, as hope or dread, was the possible creation of a system like that of Mexico, in which the government party handily wins all electoral contests and the opposition, such as it is, remains split among several small factions...

...The second source of wariness within the PT is its skepticism about middle-class commitment to democracy...

...A change from proportional to district representation, which the government now is pushing, would make small parties impractical and would almost certainly precipitate mergers...

...Clearly, the most important expositor of this current within the PMDB is Fernando Henrique Cardoso, Latin America's foremost sociologist and newly ensconced senator from Sao Paulo...

...In this election Brazil seemed to be making up in vitriol for what it lacks in petrol (its costly import precipitated the current crisis...

...The PT's stronghold is among the industrial working class of Sao Paulo, that of the PDT among the workers of Rio de Janeiro...

...Those incapable of signing their name, roughly half the adult population, are already disenfranchised by law...

...That wariness has three principal sources...

...Hence the undisguised glee with which President Reagan has celebrated Brazil's rulers...

...The strength of the government party—the misnamed PARTIDO DEMOCRATICO SOCIAL (PDS)—lies in the rural and economically backward northeast...

...The support for the PARTIDO DO MOVIMENTO DEMOCRATICO BRASILEIRO (PMDB), by contrast, is centered in the cities and the economically developed states...

...Since the 1964 coup the president has always been a general, selected by polling within the officer corps...

...They hold a highly moralistic view of politics that missionary zeal gives a certain rigidity...

...If most of "our" authoritarian allies tend to look distressingly like "their" totalitarian ones, as Michael Walzer has la217 mented, it must be said that Brazil has recently become something of a welcome exception...

...Its leader is Leonel 218 Brizzola, ultra-left orator of the precoup years turned moderate social democrat during exile in West Germany...

...Why, then, run candidates at all...

...The PT and the Intellectuals THE MOST INTRIGUING DEVELOPMENT in recent Brazilian politics undoubtedly has been the emergence of the PT...

...The term, adopted from Max Weber, refers to a state that sets the conditions on which interSome Facts & Possibilities Regional differences, as the election results show, are crucial in Brazilian politics...

...The party's poor performance outside of Rio has elicited some interest in a merger with the Partido dos Trabalhadores (PT...

...It is not the function of the "organic intellectual" to dream up new ideas...

...Widespread middle-class support for the 1964 coup is not easily forgotten (or forgiven...

...The first objective of its newly elected legislators will be to pressure the government for the convocation of a Constituent Assembly...

...The obstacles to that desire are clear enough: whenever restrictions on speech and assembly are lifted, the new liberties are employed not merely by the excluded middle class, seeking involvement in a broader political pact, but also by the leaders of the poor, attacking the entire development model with its increasing concentration of income...

...Their principal demands were acceptable even to a sector of industrial management: the right to organize independently of the state, to bargain collectively, and to strike...

...Jews, Japanese, and women, if not yet blacks, occupied conspicuous places in the lists of all five parties...

...Such a party would combine regional breadth and relative ideological consistency with significant legislative weight...

...And what better adversary than Ricardo, a father of economic orthodoxy, on whom Brazil's left-leaning university students might cut their intellectual teeth...

...Cities that have been strong centers of support for the opposition are designated as "areas of national security" and not permitted to elect their mayors...

...Most "impressive" was the clandestine printing press that turned out a spurious copy of the Church newspaper (with remarkable verisimilitude) in which one of the country's best-known bishops was made to renounce his radical views...

...But to speak of "democratization" is to imply a gradual elimination of the impediments to the democratic process...

...Rather, democratic elections are simply "a stage in the organization of the working class," according to a PT senatorial candidate...

...But PMDB analysts have little sympathy for the view that such movements, in themselves, provide the be-all and end-all of leftist politics...

...It is worth observing, Cardoso argues, that many of the demands expressed by the new social movements, such as the provision of sewage and water hookups in the slums, are in principle entirely compatible with the survival of the authoritarian regime...

...But the differences, alas, are more conspicuous than the similarities...

...In fact, the PMDB is composed of highly disparate elements, whose recent victory in nine gubernatorial races may or may not prove sufficient to stem its centrifugal tendencies...

...Perhaps the most unfortunate feature of the PT's campaign was the part played in it by intellectuals...

...It is not possible, in this view, to use the "capitalist state" to democratize society...

...Because of the range of views within the PMDB it would be foolish to attempt to describe "its" theory of the Brazilian predicament with the same coherence as that of the PT...

...The leftist elements within the PMDB view the state as necessarily something more, or some221 thing other, than "the executive committee of the bourgeoisie...

...In fact, for every authoritarian restriction abandoned, a new one is often added in its place...

...The PARTIDO DOS TRABALHADORES (PT) and the PARTIDO DEMOCRATICO TRABALHISTA (PDT), even more than the government party, are regional parties...

...The probable explanation is the low profile that the "outsiders" maintained, never assuming an overtly pedagogical posture...

...At first sign of the enemy, it has tended to take to ignominious flight...

...These deal respectively with (1) the proper relation between the popular social movements and the opposition party, and (2) the existing connection between the Brazilian state and the dominant classes...

...Union leaders within the party were usually more moderate in this regard...

...There are other undemocratic features...

...The essential attribute of that state, according to this analysis, is its patrimonialism...

...This discontent is the result of the crowding by both the ever-expanding state sector and the multinationals of domestic producers, and of the fact that the era of the economic "miracle" has come to an end...

...This is precisely the emphasis of the PMDB, and not only of its left wing...

...It should be said (and it is to the PT's credit) that this criticism of its left wing, which talked openly of wholesale nationalization of foreign capital and renunciation of the external debt, was initiated from within the party in free debate, immediately following the tabulation of the election results...

...Disagreements about such economic orthodoxy and its contemporary embodiment, the International Monetary Fund, figured strongly in the country's election last November...

...There are two principal points of divergence between this analysis and that of the PT...

...The PT leadership has openly expressed doubts over the possibility of initiating social reform through control of the state...

...The "merely formal freedoms" of the democratic electoral process are an instrument for advancing the mobilization of the masses, for "building hegemony in civil society"—that is, of questionable value in themselves...

...If such grass-roots energy is not quickly channeled into support for a party within reach of power, then that energy may well be catered to by the regime itself...

...With the beginnings of the abertura, the party began to emerge as an authentic voice of dissidence...

...Sandwiched in between the usual soccer magazines and pornography one stumbles upon a new translation of David Ricardo...

...Their conception of the world exemplifies the "ethic of conviction," described by Max Weber, in which the obligation to follow one's conscience, above all else, precludes any assessment of the actual correlation of political forces and hence of their chances for achieving tangible results...

...219 The skepticism about coalitions between social classes has led to another conclusion...

...Nor has the regime made anti-Semitic appeals...

...In itself, this presented no great problem, and relations between party intellectuals and grass-roots militants have reportedly remained quite amicable...

...According to this view, the responsibility of the radical intellectuals in their relation with the masses is not to bring them knowledge of the science of history but simply to listen to them, to attune themselves to the masses' common sense...

...That reticence had its source in the theory of the "organic" intellectual formulated by the Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci, a theory much in favor among the radical intelligentsia of Brazil...

...the death squads are gone...

...The last five years have witnessed the end of censorship over the printed (but not the broadcast) media, and amnesty and an end to torture for political prisoners...

...His more radical past, however, has not been forgotten, and there have already been worrisome rumblings in military circles concerning his assumption of power...

...The first is the disappointing experience with "populist" regimes in Latin America, including a string of Brazilian governments from GetOlio Vargas to Joao Goulart...

...Another distinctive feature of the patrimonial state is the confusion of person with office, public resources with private wealth...

...These administrations, basing themselves on nationalistic appeals, involved forms of collaboration between labor and capital that provided significant short-term gains for the industrial working class...

...It was apparent that the most radical spokesmen within the party were those without any experience in the tugging and hauling— and the inevitable compromise—of real-world politics...