Abstract
The author observes the debates among Brazilian sociologists around the growth of a new middle class in Brazil. In reality, it was the growth of a new working class employed mostly in the service sector with low wages and precarious employment.
The author explains why the conservative financial-economic policy of the former Left-centrist governments corresponded to the interests of poor social groups that made up the mass base of those governments. In this connection, the phenomenon of coincidence between conservatisms of the poor and rich is the focus of the chapter.
Finally, Krasilshchikov scrutinises the problem of effectiveness in social expenditure. He underlines that the old approaches to this issue should be reconsidered according to the role of households in formation of human capital.
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Notes
- 1.
As Marcelo Neri noted in this connection, ‘the limits (low and upper, respectively—V.Kr.) of class C would be as boundaries for the Indian and Belgian sides of our Belindia’ (Neri et al. 2010: 29).
- 2.
Here I do not consider the cases of social-political archaisation that simplifies a socioeconomic structure of society. These are the cases of some African and Central Asian countries (e.g. Turkmenistan or Kyrgyzstan) as well as the dominating trend in Russia.
- 3.
Seemingly, there is formally a logical contradiction between assertions about the enlargement of the formal employment and the growth of precarious jobs. Really, both are sides of the same coin: what actually took place could be called as the process of formalisation of precarious employment (with signed contracts, transfer of salaries to the banking accounts, etc.).
- 4.
- 5.
Here, I do not consider the gender and race differences even within the total precarious employment. Although these differences decreased over the PT rule, they are still significant, showing the gender and race discrimination at the Brazilian labour market (Proni and Gomes 2015: 141–148).
- 6.
Certainly, today this internal periphery is mostly not rural but urban.
- 7.
Calling the PT as ‘the party of Order’, Ricardo Antunes refers to ‘The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte’ by Karl Marx.
- 8.
Francisco de Oliveira wrote: “Lulism is a political regress, the vanguard of backwardness and the backwardness of vanguard.” (de Oliveira 2010: 376).
- 9.
Data from the website of São Paulo metropolitan transport (http://www.metro.sp.gov.br/noticias/11-01-2019-a-partir-deste-domingo-13-a-tarifa-de-metro-e-trens-passa-para-r-430.fss. Viewed on 24.09.2019).
- 10.
According to the exchange rate on June 21, 2013 (data of the European Central Bank for the periods from 01.IX.2009 to 25.IX.2009 and from 01.I.2013 to 01.VII.2013, respectively).
- 11.
Also, there was such one as ‘Professor costs bigger than a soccer player’, which reflected a disappointment of some part of the so-called new middle class (the class of new labourers) in insufficiency of the government’s efforts in the sphere of education.
- 12.
Jessé Souza attempted to distinguish four large groups of the middle class in Brazil by their value and political orientation, not by the level of incomes. In his opinion, the first group (it can be subdivided into ultra-conservative and liberal-conservative subgroups – V.Kr.) is fully and voluntarily subjugated to the dominating class of financiers (a elite de dinheiro) and defends its interests, though often performs itself as ‘critically thinking’ and ‘morally perfect’ stratum. This group perceives ‘ordinary people’ with suspicion and sense of superiority, supposing that there is nothing good to expect from them.
The second group is liberal, supporting liberal values (‘liberty for all’). It has partly the same character features as the first group has, including a blind belief in proper ‘moral superiority’, and sometimes criticises the upper class but intuitively supports it if it feels a social threat ‘from below’ to its privileges.
The third group (‘expressivists’) has been characterised by its adherence to the cosmopolitan post-materialist values, such as opportunities for self-fulfilment or defence of environment, and can be called as ‘the middle class of Oslo’.
At last, the fourth group (with ‘critical consciousness’) refuses the really existing social order and intends to change it (Souza 2017: 166–179). It is possible to add to what Souza had written that this group is biased to see the roots of many social problems in capitalism and is largely presented by the Left intellectuals. Some of them participate in social-political struggle on the side of labourers and poor have tight contacts with the Leftist movements like the MST and sometimes critically assess the experience of the Left rule in Brazil.
- 13.
Strictly speaking, the sources of this story have been rooted in 2008 when businessman Hermes Magnus reported an attempt to launder money of suspicious origin through his company, Dunel Indústria e Comércio, that manufactured electronic components for other industries.
- 14.
It is hardly worth describing here this case in details. It had such big resonance that its main episodes are vouchsafed in Wikipedia and Encyclopaedia Britannica. It is sufficient to mention that such political figures as Lula, his and Rousseff’s former minister of finances Antonio Palocci, the former speaker of the Chamber of Deputies Eduardo Cunha who were sentenced to many years of prison. On March 21, 2019, Michel Temer, successor of Dilma Rousseff in the presidency, was arrested, too, being accused in a framework of Lava Jato story.
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Krasilshchikov, V. (2022). Brazilian Society as the Obstacle to Self-Modification. In: Brazil - Emerging Forever? . Societies and Political Orders in Transition. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-50208-9_8
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