The sketches for Miguel Magno’s play “Who’s Afraid of Italy Fausta? », Inspired by the most important Brazilian actress of the first half of the 20th century, were fundamental to recover the woman who began the modernization of the mentality of the national theater, removing it from the doldrums and lack of creativity in which he was at that time.
Italia Fausta, in an era opposed to feminism, confronted the establishment and contributed to the evolution of theater. Will the Brazilian left, in the show planned for 2022, evolve, determined to open up to a new stage without fear, or will it remain in awe of the already known scenario, submitted to the establishment?
The Workers’ Party (PT) seems to want to repeat the path taken previously which resulted in Bolsonaro. After being put back into the political game by the STF, Lula visited former President José Sarney, received PSD leader Gilberto Kassab, and signaled his closeness to Senators Renan Calheiros and Eunício de Oliveira of MDB , who led the impeachment of former President Dilma. , and listened, in silence, his friend Jacques Wagner, current senator and former governor of Bahia, declare that he has always been a politician of the center.
In a context where the far right is in power and Brazilian society has regained its conservative identity following the PT cycle, the left-wing debate concerns its actors because it divides forces, shows errors and its representativeness is brought back into line. cause. Different from what Lula (PT) imagined, the candidacy of Ciro Gomes (PDT) undermines his plans to be anointed as the only alternative to “poquenarismo”.
Two competitions in the next elections
In the elections next year, there are two conflicts: on the one hand the left against the extreme right, and on the other the “left of tradition” with the “left of difference”. To simplify the concepts, I define the first as the left of the Marxist-Leninist-Trotskyist tradition, which does not coexist with its peers without being hegemonic, represented by the PT, and the second as the workers left, the center-left, which has democracy in its genesis, represented by the candidate of the PDT. I add a prediction: the political center, which seeks to articulate, will not rally its forces for the coming confrontation with two clearly defined poles.
And it is in the second argument that Lula’s difficulty lies. Petismo has guided the “us versus them” since 1994, when he managed to characterize the tucanato as a right-wing association. The polarization is the strategy of lulopetismo, in the victory and the defeat. Also in 1989, in order to unite the forces on the ground that he intends to lead, he bluntly accuses Brizola of spending too much for the construction of the Integral Centers for Popular Education-CIEP.
History repeats itself as Hegel taught us. Therefore, the challenge for the PT will first be to confront Ciro Gomes and the new job. But how to succeed? Will Lula once again defend the BNDES financing policy for large Brazilian companies? If the class struggle is a concept of the traditional left, then it is the perfect example of the PT’s renunciation of the Marxist concept.
Will Lula spend another eight years without proposing political, fiscal and educational reforms? The two terms of the former president could be classified in economics, as a mixture of liberal without ceasing to be patrimonial and, in politics, to democratize without ceasing to be well-being. With the exception of the creation of FUNDEB, the basic education fund, there was no other structuring action that could be understood as leftist.
Lula was the ‘social pact’ itself
As ex-president José Sarney Lula rightly invented it, it was, at the time, the “social pact” itself. On the right, he made the necessary concessions to be reconciled with big capital (“the banks have never profited as much as in my government” are the words of the former president himself); on the left, in practice, compensatory policies are combined with a vigorous emancipatory discourse which rediscovers revolutionary nostalgia. The enviable political talent of Lula, who has succeeded in subjecting the left to a semblance of lame social democracy with the support of intellectuals, artists and activists.
Lula’s speech, for the moment, does not propose a nation project, it only opposes the pocketnarist madness with repetitive slogans such as “genocidal government” or “no to privatizations”. On this point, the left does not diverge, but, obviously, it is insufficient. While the PT has not yet presented a project for society and national development, Ciro Gomes proposes a process of industrialization, technological development and reconstruction of internal savings. The PT is struggling to cope with the debate for the left proposed by Ciro, because there is no room for “us versus them”, nor can it be accused of representing the national elite.
The left debate brings the PT out of its comfort zone. Intellectual bureaucrats, forged in the state structures of their governments, are programmed to oppose the National Development Project present in the election campaign of the PDT candidate – sometimes reacting in such a way as to deconstruct the subject and not the proposal – which embarrasses a part of the intelligentsia which recognizes in this formulation a plan for the country.
In this context, Lula and the PT will have to decide how to face the candidacy of Ciro Gomes, otherwise the Brazilian people will find in him a left alternative. What Italia Fausta generated by opening the theater to the new at the beginning of the 20th century, notably by subsidizing the criticism of the generation of the playwright Miguel Magno in the 80s of the same century, bears little resemblance to the current Brazilian electoral scene. , if not for the fear that Ciro Gomes causes in setting up the left, taking the stage and positioning himself in the political center and at the same time to the left of Lula
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