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What Do Young Brazilian Students Think About Socialism? Class-Consciousness Past, Present and Future

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What Do Young Brazilian Students Think About Socialism? Class-Consciousness Past, Present and Future AWRY: JOUR NAL OF CRIT I CAL PSY CHOL OGY A r t i c l e What Do Young Brazilian Students Think About Socialism? Class-Consciousness Past, Present and Future Antonio Euzébios Filho1 | Raquel Souza Lobo Guzzo2 1Professor of Psychology, Institute of São Paulo University, São Paulo, Brazil With the fall of the Berlin Wall and neoliberalism, we have 2Professor of Psychology, PUC-Campinas, witnessed the decline of socialism as an alternative model Campinas, Brazil of society. Drawing on Marxist theoretical categories such Correspondence as class-consciousness, we wanted to understand what young Email: [email protected] people from a Brazilian university and a low-income prepara- tory college course in State of São Paulo think of socialism. In this context, we were interested in understanding how students relate to socialism. The information was collected in a small sample - not statistically delineated - and was qualitatively interpreted and theoretically categorized. The results suggest that are two types of prevailing views of so- cialism: (1) as a more just society, but utopian, and (2) as a mode of social organization prescribed by a strong state, either positive (tendency to guarantee social rights) or neg- ative (in the form of authoritarianism). While more than half of the participants indicated that they were open to so- cialist ideas, a number of them were less sympathetic. For many people, both positive and negative elements coexist in parallel. KEYWORDS class-consciousness; youth; socialism; ideology; neoliberalism 89 90 Euzébios Filho & Guzzo 1 | INTRODUCTION In this paper, we aim to understand what young students in university and in a low-income college preparatory course1 think of socialism. While a number of studies explore the political and electoral behavior of young people from dif- ferent social strata in Brazil (eg. Florentino, 2008; Messenberg, 2015; Segrillo, 2004), they rarely interrogate their conception of socialism, especially in psychology (Lott, 2016). With the rise of neoliberalism, we are experiencing an intensification of oppression and economic exploita- tion, outsourcing, a relaxation of labor laws, criminalization of social movements, and a loss of class references (An- derson, 1995; Antunes, 2008; Marcelino, 2008). At the same time, social movements, trade unions and parties, often associated with left-wing movements2, also resist and are able to polarize society and ideologically counter capitalism. However, we can understand that, in the last years, especially after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, there was a political and symbolic defeat of socialism (Ali, 2012), with the latter falling into popular discredit, even among the sectors that had historically supported class-based popular and union movements as well as intellectualized middle classes. This phenomenon can be observed despite the electoral victory of left candidates in the Latin America, for example, in the 2000s (Cardoso, 2016; Ricci, 1993). One factor following the fall of the Berlin Wall that increasingly made socialism a distant, harmful or outdated idea (Segrillo, 2004) was the weakening of union struggles through the processes of outsourcing and productive restructuring (Marcelino, 2008). Another factor in the fragmentation of the left-wing and the accommodation of left- wing parties to liberal politics - as we see in Brazil, for example, with the Workers Party (Euzébios Filho & Guzzo, 2018) – as well as other elements that have shifted the focus of social movements towards defensive guidelines for guaranteeing social rights eroded by the neoliberal state. At the same time, we are witnessing an increasing isolation of revolutionary organizations from one another - whether or not these organizations are linked to Marxism, which has made it challenging for people to embrace openly socialist ideas in layers of the population who once sympathized with these ideas but who have now become more suspicious and fearful of socialism more generally. In this context, we would like to understand how these aspects, added together, generate action, reaction, or perplexity in the conscience of those who are concerned with social change. We will briefly characterize this situation and attempt to identify elements of an exceedingly difficult scenario for the left, especially for those who declare themselves to be socialists. We adopted the post-fall scenario of the Berlin Wall as the historical starting point, the end of the so-called cold war and the consolidation of neoliberalism (Anderson, 1995). According to Paulino (2008), the fall of the Berlin Wall was a symptom of the intensification of the processes of oppression and exploitation engendered by capital in the 1970s and 1980s. We understand, on the other hand, that Stalin’s Soviet “socialism” - which officially fell with the Wall - was far removed from the process opened by the Russian revolution in 1917. Its complete exhaustion represented a political (and ideological) victory for the bourgeoisie, which imposed itself on a history of confrontations operated by popular struggles of socialist traditions (Antunes, 2018; 1Low-income college preparatory course is a free course, support by social organizations, that prepares low-income high school students who are preparing to do exams to enter in the Brazilian universities. 2According to Cardoso (2016) and Ricci (1993) the term left-wing has been legitimized by usage since the French Revolution and refers to all sectors of society that fight for justice and social equality, inside and outside the parliament. This is what we refer to broadly as the left field. Within it there is what we refer to as the socialist left or what, according to Tonet (2002), can be divided between the democratic and the revolutionary left. Both speak openly of socialism, but the difference is that the former proposes to get there by gradual reforms within the state, and the latter proposes revolutionary rupture as a way for workers seizure of power. Right-wing, in turn, is also a term legitimized since the French revolution, as pointed out by Cardoso (2016) and Ricci (1993) and it will be used throughout the text as a political configuration that, according to the authors, press for individual freedom, even if it implies social inequality. But it is important to highlight that the right also has its fragmentations and differences, which, for Cardoso (2016), range from economic liberalism to conservative liberalism. However, it is valid to recognize that these differences are tactical, not principled. Still, we will not be able to go into these details, just as we will not have time to analyze how the right and left have taken different forms throughout history and that they give rise to so-called center positions. Euzébios Filho & Guzzo 91 Segrillo, 2004). Stalinism3 started to collapse after the 1930-s. The social achievements that the Russian revolution pointed towards - guarantee of political opposition organization, transient models in economic culture guaranteeing small trade, eg the creation of universal health and educational system, etc. (Paulino, 2008) - were quickly marginalized with Stalin’s rise to power in 1924. The economic achievements that the revolution seemed destined to fulfill - based on the industrial planning model, which began to organize and modernize the productive process of a country until then semi- feudal - remained for a longer time, but also at the expense of violent processes such as the forced collectivization of peasant lands (Paulino, 2008; Bettelheim, 1983). Even so, the complete collapse of the Soviet state represented a reconfiguration of forces in the world geopolitical field. From the 1990s onwards, this collapse transformed the center of political struggles from a fierce antagonism between socialism and capitalism to a more moderate (and sometimes confusing) field of opposition be- tween left, center and right-wing movements. The weakening of this antagonism between socialism and capitalism, which lasted throughout the cold war, represented the strengthening of a neoliberalism movement that began in the mid 1940’s (Melo, 2015) in academia (with authors such as Hayek) and in society beginning with the opposition to the strong state in Hitler’s “national socialism” and the welfare state – both of which were viewed as synonymous with socialism in general. Thus, the end of the Soviet Union was the fact used by the bourgeoisie to prove the definitive bankruptcy of the “strong state” socialist experiences (Lott, 2016) and the relative victory of capitalism and its way of life (Antunes, 2018; Euzébios Filho & Guzzo, 2018). Since then, social questions have been furnished with new economic and ideological contours which have given shape to neoliberalism (Anderson, 1995). In a number of ways, the neoliberal turn further reinforces Marx and Engels’ (2005) socialist thought4. As we know, these authors saw in socialism a historical possibility, the result of the development of productive forces and a universal economic situation posed to the working class, and which may become conscious (or not) of class "itself" (Marx & Engels, 2005). This possibility must always be observed, especially when we recognize that the cyclical crises of capital (Lott, 2016) generate more inequalities and situations of exploitation and oppression, as we see nowadays with increased exploitation and surplus value extraction processes associated with repression and the erosion of social rights (Antunes, 2008; Marcelino, 2008). To determine whether socialism remains a historical possibility, in the present study we have engaged young people to try to understand if they see (and how they see) paths of social change. But first, it is important to understand a little of the past and present elements of the situation, which still imposes obstacles to the socialist movement, but which, in no way, put an end to history. 2 | NEOLIBERALISM & THE SCOURGES OF SOCIALISM Neoliberalism inaugurated a scenario in which the market has invaded all spheres of human life. In Brazil, for example, the 1990s represented a milestone in which the so-called free market imposed itself (even more strongly) on the state, on the organization of work and ways of life (Antunes, 2018).
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