Brazil’s State & Market: Bolsonaro’s election within Brazilian slump

The presentation aims to go through the elements of the political economy that explain the Brazilian crisis and the rise of alt-right Bolsonaro. We will analyze the current crisis of Brazilian capitalism in three interdependent dimensions: the accumulation, the political scene and the relationship between the power block and the State.
We will show how the problems of capitalist accumulation and the political scene have been increasing and how they have gained a structural crisis character due to the effects of Car Wash Operation ("Lava Jato"). It is argued that the relationship between the Operation and the massive media exposed, through leaks, the relationship between the state (and its bureaucracy) and part of the power block of Brazilian capitalism. This, added to the growing conflict between capital and labor, the problems of obtaining profits and the international crisis, has temporarily interrupted the rules (explicit and implicit) of capital accumulation in Brazil. In this line, the inability of the dominant sectors to control the "core of power" of the Brazilian state has generated a war of all against all. The rise of Bolsonaro appears as a response to the crisis of representation in the political scene. However, the elements of the structural crisis remain.

Recommended Bibliography
Costa Pinto et Al (Mimeo). THE WAR OF ALL AGAINST ALL: The Brazilian Crisis