Introduction
For decades
social critics have bemoaned the influence of sports and entertainment
spectacles in ‘distracting’ workers from struggling for their class
interests. According to these analysts, ‘class consciousness’ was
replaced by ‘mass’ consciousness. They argued that atomized
individuals, manipulated by the mass media, were converted into passive
consumers who identified with millionaire sports heroes, soap opera
protagonists and film celebrities.
The culmination
of this ‘mystification’ – mass distraction –were the ‘world championships’
watched by billions around the world and sponsored and financed by billionaire
corporations: the World Series (baseball), the World Cup (soccer/futbol),
and the Super Bowl (American football).
Today, Brazil
is the living refutation of this line of cultural-political analysis.
Brazilians have been described as ‘football crazy’. Its teams have won the most
number of World Cups. Its players are coveted by the owners of the most
important teams in Europe. Its fans are said to “live and die with
football” … or so we are told.
Yet it is in
Brazil where the biggest protests in the history of the World Cup have taken
place. As early as a year before the Games, scheduled for June 2014, there have
been mass demonstrations of up to a million Brazilians. In just the last few
weeks, strikes by teachers, police, construction workers and municipal
employees have proliferated. The myth of the mass media spectacles mesmerizing
the people has been refuted - at least in present-day Brazil.
To understand
why the mass spectacle has been a propaganda bust it is essential to understand
the political and economic context in which it was launched, as well as the
costs and benefits and the tactical planning of popular movements.
The Political
and Economic Context: The World Cup and the Olympics
In 2002, the
Brazilian Workers Party candidate Lula DaSilva won the presidential
elections. His two terms of office (2003 – 2010) were characterized by a
warm embrace of free market capitalism, together with populist poverty
programs. Aided by large scale in-flows of speculative capital, attracted
by high interest rates, and high commodity prices for its agro-mineral exports,
Lula launched a massive poverty program providing about $60 a month to 40
million poor Brazilians, who formed part of his mass electoral base. The
Workers Party reduced unemployment, increased wages and supported low-interest
consumer loans, stimulating a ‘consumer boom’ that drove the economy forward.
To Lula and his
advisers, Brazil was becoming a global power, attracting world-class investors
and incorporating the poor into the domestic market.
Lula was hailed
as a ‘pragmatic leftist’ by Wall Street, and a ‘brilliant statesman’
by the Left!
In line with
this grandiose vision (and in response to hoards of presidential flatterers
North and South), Lula believed that Brazil’s rise to world prominence required
it to ‘host’ the World Cup and the Olympics and he embarked on an aggressive and
ultimately successful campaign.
Lula preened
and pontificated: Brazil, as host, would achieve the symbolic recognition and
material rewards a global power deserved.
The
Rise and Fall of Grand Illusions
The ascent of
Brazil was based on foreign flows of capital conditioned by differential
(favorable) interest rates. And when rates shifted, the capital flowed
out. Brazil’s dependence on high demand for its agro-mineral exports was
based on sustained double-digit economic growth in Asia. When China’s economy
slowed down, demand and prices fell, and so did Brazil’s export earnings.
The Workers
Party’s ‘pragmatism’ meant accepting the existing political, administrative and
regulatory structures inherited from the previous neo-liberal regimes. These
institutions were permeated by corrupt officials linked to building contractors
notorious for cost over-runs and long delays on state contracts.
Moreover, the
Workers Party’s ‘pragmatic’ electoral machine was built on kick-backs
and bribes. Vast sums were siphoned from public services into private
pockets.
Puffed up on
his own rhetoric, Lula believed Brazil’s economic emergence on the world stage
was a ‘done deal’. He proclaimed that his pharaonic sports complexes - the
billions of public money spent on dozens of stadiums and costly infrastructure
- would “pay for themselves”.
The
Deadly ‘Demonstration Effect’: Social Reality Defeats Global Grandeur
Brazil’s new
president, Dilma Rousseff, Lula’ protégé, has allocated billions of reales to
finance her predecessor’s massive building projects: stadiums, hotels, highways
and airports to accommodate an anticipated flood of overseas soccer fans.
The contrast
between the immediate availability of massive amounts of public funds for the
World Cup and the perennial lack of money for deteriorating essential public
services (transport, schools, hospitals and clinics) has been a huge shock to
Brazilians and a provocation to mass action in the streets.
For decades,
the majority of Brazilians, who depended on public services for transport,
education and medical care, (the upper middle classes can afford private
services), were told that “there were no funds”, that “budgets had to be
balanced”, that a “budget surplus was needed to meet IMF agreements and to
service the debt”.
And for decades
public funds had been siphoned away by corrupt political appointees to pay for
electoral campaigns, leading to filthy, overcrowded transport, frequently
breaking down, and commuter delays in sweltering buses and long lines at the
stations. Schools were in shambles, teacher rushed from school to school to
make-up for their miserable minimum-wage salaries leading to low quality
education and neglect. Public hospitals were dirty, dangerous and crowded;
under-paid doctors frequently took on private patients on the side, and
essential medications were scarce in the public hospitals and overpriced in the
pharmacies.
The public was
outraged by the obscene contrast between the reality of dilapidated clinics
with broken windows, overcrowded schools with leaking roofs and unreliable mass
transport for the average Brazilian and the huge new stadiums, luxury hotels
and airports for wealthy foreign sports fans and visitors.
The public was
outraged by the obvious official lies: the claim that there were ‘no
funds’ for teachers when billions of reales were instantly available to
construct luxury hotels and fancy stadium box seats for wealthy soccer fans.
The final
detonator for mass street protests was the increase in bus and train fares to ‘cover
losses’ – after public airports and highways had been sold cheaply to
private investors who raised tolls and fees.
The protestors
marching against the increased bus and train fares were joined by tens of
thousands Brazilians broadly denouncing the Government’s priorities: Billions
for the World Cup and crumbs for public health, education, housing and
transport.
Oblivious to
the popular demands, the government pushed ahead intent on finishing its
‘prestige projects’. Nevertheless, construction of stadiums fell behind
schedule because of corruption, incompetence and mismanagement. Building
contractors, who were pressured, lowered safety standards and pushed workers
harder, leading to an increase in workplace deaths and injury. Construction
workers walked out protesting the speed-ups and deterioration of work safety.
The Rousseff
regime’s grandiose schemes have provoked a new chain of protests. The Homeless
Peoples Movement occupied urban lots near a new World Cup stadium demanding
‘social housing’ for the people instead of new five-star hotels for affluent
foreign sports aficionados.
Escalating
costs for the sports complexes and increased government expenditures have
ignited a wave of trade union strikes to demand higher wages beyond the regime’s
targets. Teachers and health workers were joined by factory workers and
salaried employees striking in strategic sectors, such as the transport and
security services, capable of seriously disrupting the World Cup.
The PTs embrace
of the grandiose sports spectacle, instead of highlighting Brazil’s ‘debut
as a global power’, has spotlighted the vast contrast between the affluent
and secure ten percent in their luxury condos in Brazil, Miami and Manhattan,
with access to high quality private clinics and exclusive private and overseas
schools for their offspring, with the mass of average Brazilians, stuck for
hours sweating in overcrowded buses, in dingy emergency rooms waiting for mere
aspirins from non-existent doctors and in wasting their children’s futures in
dilapidated classrooms without adequate, full-time teachers.
Conclusion
The political
elite, especially the entourage around the Lula-Rousseff presidencies have
fallen victim to their own delusions of popular support. They believed that
subsistence pay-offs (food baskets) to the very poor would allow them to spend
billions of public money on sports spectacles to entertain and impress the
global elite. They believed that the mass of workers would be so enthralled by
the prestige of holding the World Cup in Brazil, that they would overlook the
great disparity between government expenditures for elite grand spectacles and
the absence of support to meet the everyday needs of Brazilian workers.
Even trade
unions, seemingly tied to Lula, who bragged of his past leadership of the metal
workers, broke ranks when they realized that the ‘money was out there’ –
and that the regime, pressured by construction deadlines, could be pressured to
raise wages to get the job done.
To be sure,
Brazilians are sports minded and hey avidly follow and cheer their national
team. But they are also conscious of their own needs. They are not content to
passively accept the great social disparities exposed by the current mad
scramble to stage the World Cup and Olympics in Brazil. The government’s vast
expenditure on the Games has made it clear that Brazil is a rich country with a
multitude of social inequalities. They have learned that vast sums are
available to improve the basic services of everyday life. They realized
that, despite its rhetoric, the ‘Workers Party’ was playing a wasteful prestige
game to impress an international capitalist audience. They realized that
they have strategic leverage to pressure the government and address some of the
inequalities in housing and salaries through mass action. And they have
struck. They realize they deserve to enjoy the World Cup in affordable,
adequate public housing and travel to work (or to an occasional game) in decent
buses and trains.
Class-consciousness, in the case of Brazil, has trumped the
mass spectacle. ‘Bread and circuses’ have given way to mass protests.
READ THE BIO AND MORE ARTICLES BY
JAMES PETRAS ON AXIS OF LOGIC
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