Brazil: The Lula Government and Financial Globalization

The electoral victory of Luís Inácio "Lula" da Silva in the presidential elections of 2002 epitomized two decades of social and political transformations in Brazil. Nevertheless, instead of launching an alternative mode of doing politics, the program of the Workers' Party affirmed a state logic with a view to gradually updating the economic structure of Brazilian capitalism by means of successive transitions directed by the state, avoiding the active intervention of the subaltern classes in this process. In this logic are inscribed fiscal discipline, social security reform, and giving value to private pension funds. Such funds established a bridge that makes viable the organic alliance of a union bureaucracy, now the manager of these funds, and globalized financial capital.