Papers > By author > Florentino Giselle

This article aims to analyze dependent capitalism in Brazil, understanding that its main brand is the super-exploitation of labor, arising from the dynamics of the unequal exchange between nations that results in structures that are not able to break with the transfer mechanisms of value center-periphery.

Brazil, at the same time, is characterized as a platform for international financial valorization, largely as a result of the deregulated external (commercial and financial) opening process, under the aegis of the hegemonic neoliberal project that advances in the process of withdrawal of social rights working class reforms through the implementation of a fiscal adjustment made possible by the consolidation of Constitutional Mention 95 and the Labor Reform prepared by President Michel Temer.

It is understood that these elements, together, accentuate the super-exploitation of the labor force and are decisive for the future possibilities of building emancipatory social projects. In this sense, the article advances to the analysis of historical movements, demonstrating the impacts of those elements (structural and conjunctural) listed above on the super-exploitation of the labor force, labor rights, precarious social policies and basic rights.

The fiscal adjustment, taken to the extreme in the current administration of the Federal and State Government, has meant severe cuts in the budget of social programs, which jeopardizes basic rights and contributes to exacerbate inequalities in the country, leading to an increase in crime cases. The 30 months of fiscal adjustment in Brazil during the Temer government resulted in increased income concentration and social inequalities, industrial deceleration, increased precarious employment, expansion of public debt with increasing fiscal disorder, economic stagnation and massive unemployment. The new economic team of the Government of Jair Bolsonaro led by the economist Paulo Guedes has already signaled the continuation of the implementation of an even more aggressive neoliberal prescription with severe attacks on the social movements and human rights guidelines.

Therefore, one of the main challenges of 2019 will be to curb the setbacks of conservative policies and ensure the continuation of social policies aimed at guaranteeing access to education, health, social assistance, work and employment, culture, housing, transport and public safety. Social rights are particularly at risk with austerity policies, resulting in a shrinking fraction of the public budget for Social Security and a depletion of the character of social protection as historical right fruits of arduous struggles of the working class.

Finally, the paper gives an account of the neoliberal prescription, of the structural reforms that correspond to it, and of the Constitutional Mention 95, which, together, confirm the continuation of capital accumulation in the current phase of financialisation of the relations of production and social relations of the working class in contemporary Brazilian capitalism.