Crisis and austerity: the recent trajectory of capitalist development in Brazil

Abstract

ABSTRACTIn the methodological framework of comparative capitalism (CC) of this special edition, the article analyzes theoretically and empirically, in the scope of economic globalisation, the recent trajectory of Brazilian capitalist development. The objective is to emphasise the crisis of the variety of coordinated and state-regulated capitalism (2003–2016) and its subsequent metamorphosis into a variety of ultraliberal and undemocratic capitalism (2016 in progress), which has been dissolving the social protection and public policy network. The central issue that this article proposes to answer is how this transition was carried out, in view of the government's successful response to the systemic financial crisis of exogenous origin that emerged in 2008, and the political inability to face the endogenous crisis that erupted in 2014. The meaning of this last liberal/radical modality of capitalism is the fact that it conducted by the Michel Temer's government, which came to power by means of a parliamentary coup disguised by democratic legality, and which was welcomed by the Judiciary, the Congress, the press and the wealthy classes. The conservative coalition of parliamentary government deepened the fiscal adjustment initiated by Dilma Rousseff at the 2015 threshold, deteriorated the living conditions of the poor and accentuated the scope of financial capitalism despite the pressures of a mass based democracy.