Reasons for the fall of lulism

Abstract

This article aims to present a contribution to the debate on the meaning of the “Lulist” political-economic cycle in Brazil and the reasons for its dramatic decline. The text seeks to point out some of the causes
for the exhaustion of a model that posed itself as an alternative to the liberalism that characterized the 1990s, also called neoliberalism or the Washington Consensus. In our hypothesis, one of the reasons for the exhaustion of the class conciliation formula symbolized by Lula was the strengthening of a capitalist reproduction pattern that exporters of productive specialization, embodied in the agribusiness and financial activities sector. Although the large trade surpluses provided by this sector were decisive for the social programs that ensured the political success of Lulism, when the economic environment changed after the 2008 world crisis, agribusiness became the pivot of a realignment in the region power bloc, which expressed itself in the collapse of Lulism in the 2016 impeachment.