A guerra de todos contra todos: a crise brasileira

Abstract

The inability of the dominant sectors to control the “power nucleus” of the Brazilian state has generated a war of all against all. This paper analyzes the current crisis of Brazilian capitalism in three interdependent dimensions: accumulation, political scene and the relationship between the power block and the State. We show how the problems of the capitalist accumulation and the political scene have been growing and how they have gained a character of structural crisis from the effects of Operation Car Wash (Lava Jato). It is argued further that the relationship between the Operation and the mainstream media exposed, through leaks, the relationship between the state (and its bureaucracy) and part of the power bloc of Brazilian capitalism. This – added to the increasing conflict between capital and labor, the problems of profit realization and the international crisis – has temporarily disrupted the (explicit and implicit) rules of capital accumulation in Brazil. For the capitalist order to be reestablished in Brazil, the dominant sectors will have to (re)place its rules in a new format or even in an old one.