Lula’s Passive Revolution and the Consolidation of Neoliberalism in Brazil

The Oceanic Conference on International Studies,
Auckland, 30 June – 2 July 2010

“Lula’s Passive Revolution and the Consolidation of Neoliberalism in Brazil.”

Tom Chodor
School of Politics and International Relations
The Australian National University [e-mail] Abstract
The Presidency of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (Lula) in Brazil has been seen as a watershed in the country’s development. Not only is he Brazil’s first ‘working class’ President, he has managed to bring the stability, prosperity and unity to the country that has so often eluded it in the past. This feat has been even more impressive because it has been achieved by pursuing a broadly neoliberal accumulation strategy which has failed to produce similar results in most other countries in the periphery. The key to Lula’s success lies in the combination of traditional neoliberal strategies with economic, social and foreign policies inspired by the ‘Third Way’ and its international counterpart the post-Washington Consensus. This paper argues that in doing so, the Lula government has carried out a Gramscian ‘passive revolution’ of the Brazilian social order, which, in blunting some of the worst excesses of neoliberal economy, has managed to win consent for neoliberalism while seemingly moving away from it. The paper explores the specific economic, social and foreign policies of the Lula government that work towards this end and examines their continuities and departures from the original neoliberal project and how they contribute to its hegemony. It concludes by briefly assessing the significance of this achievement, not only for Brazil but also more importantly for the broader neoliberal world order, where it is part of an ongoing ‘passive revolution’ also intent on rearticulating consent for neoliberal globalisation.

The victory of the Workers’ Party (Partido dos Trabalhadores, PT) candidate Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (Lula) in the 2002 Brazilian Presidential election was

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