The scenery was set. An unprecedented economic crisis. A business community exhausted from the privileges of an inoperative and expensive political class and bureaucrat. The arrival of new ways of thinking and the search for more inclusive and republican relationships.
We are not talking about Brazil in 2021, but France in 1789. The French Revolution, which gave rise to the world as we know it, started from frustration with privilege and was born with the concept that all men are equal. And if this scramble in the old continent helped to write the political history of the modern world, in economics the turmoil was as chaotic as it was productive. And none of this happened by chance.
The most visible face of the French Revolution was the guillotine. The least visible was the adoption of the decimal metric system and that, yes, transformed the economy, as it allowed for a principle of globalization of the economy. And from time to time consolidated social structures come to a boil, a phenomenon known in Gilles Deleuze’s philosophy as “social orgasm”. The motivation is economic, and the consequences too. While change often starts from the bottom and is powerful enough to transform society and the economy, it is often the owners of the money who define what will happen so that they maintain their social and economic standing.
Fast forward from 18th century France to 21st century Brazil. The moment calls for an inflection. The pandemic caused very serious problems, but worsened some that had existed for a long time. And the federal government’s inability to take any practical steps added a dash of drama to the plot that unfolded against a backdrop of frustrated business, a fragile population, and indifferent rulers and bureaucrats.
Just like the guillotine at Praça da Bastilha, the lines for the vaccine and the painful scenes of serial funerals are the perfect recipe for forcing Brazilian society to think about alternatives. And I’m not talking about fire and weapons. This is very 18th century. I’m talking about understanding the present to create new paths for the future.
I recently read the book “Una breve de la equaldad”, still unpublished in Brazil, which was written by French Thomas Piketty, author of “Os Mistérios do Capital”. In general terms, the work shows that not all revolutions are catastrophic or involve coups, deaths and Institutional Acts. The fall of the Brazilian monarchy, in the Tupiniquim fashion, was a revolution. There was also the church’s distancing from the management of public affairs and the search for secularity in the State. It was also supported by the business community. And he also wanted to review privileges, but there was no decapitated governor at the end of the process.
Now the pandemic has come to underscore the need for profound change. “Today’s world needs a society concerned with the common good. May the working class and business people commit to finding solutions. It is time to rethink the concentration of income and privilege – whether in democratic governments, monarchies or dictatorships”, wrote Piketty. And believe me, this is an optimistic view of the future. The Brazil of today is better than the Brazil of 1889, just as France today is better than that of 1789. But there is still a lot to evolve. We cannot accept, catatonic, that the National Congress approves R$ 16.2 billion in unfunded parliamentary amendments. We cannot accept that, in a secular State, the head of one of the Powers speaks of wanting “terribly evangelical” members in the Federal Supreme Court (STF), in charge of guarding precisely the Constitution that guarantees the secularity of the State.
We cannot accept that magistrates and congressmen accumulate Nababesque privileges and pensions while 25 million Brazilians are unemployed, discouraged or underemployed. It is not possible for public loans to be destined only to the king’s friends, nor for the minister of economy to speak of “letting the small ones break” in allusion to smaller businesses. It is necessary to demand a better future. And if he doesn’t, the best guillotine of the 21st century is voting.
Paula Cristina is the Economics Editor at DINHEIRO
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