WHEN REALITY NEEDS LULAS:
The Conscience of Lula, the Decisiveness of Brizola,
and the Determination of Enéas
The recent victory of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has demonstrated that the Brazilian Left remains capable of mobilizing a nation. Whether it can transform that nation is another question. Between the social conscience of Lula, the political decisiveness of Leonel Brizola, the industrial nationalism of Getúlio Vargas, the strategic outlook of Ernesto Geisel, and the national determination of Enéas Carneiro lies a neglected argument about the responsibilities of government. It is an argument that ought to concern conservatives no less than socialists, particularly in an age when patriotism is too often divorced from economic sovereignty and pragmatism is increasingly invoked to excuse the abandonment of principle.
The morning after the victory
The re-election of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva to the Brazilian presidency on October 25, 2026, has naturally occasioned considerable satisfaction among those who regard the defeat of the Bolsonaro political movement as an essential condition for the preservation of Brazilian democracy. For the Workers’ Party and its allies, it was another demonstration of an organizational resilience that has survived political scandal, imprisonment, electoral defeat, ideological fragmentation, and the formidable growth of a conservative populism increasingly capable of appealing to constituencies once regarded as the natural preserve of the Left.
The victory was remarkable in its own right. Having trailed Flávio Bolsonaro in the first round, Lula recovered sufficiently to secure a majority in the second. The renewed mobilization of supporters, particularly through the combined use of public demonstrations and digital communications, exposed the mistaken assumption that the techniques of mass political agitation perfected by the contemporary Right were beyond the capacity of its opponents. The Left, which had often appeared uncomfortable with the language and methods of the new popular politics, demonstrated that it could contest the field upon which its adversaries had acquired a substantial advantage.
There is something rather amusing about the indignation of those conservatives who regard such methods as perfectly legitimate when employed in their own campaigns but as evidence of political impropriety when adopted by the opposition. Political communication is not the hereditary property of any ideological movement, and the ability to mobilize public opinion through contemporary technology is no more inherently conservative than the newspaper, radio, or mass meeting was inherently socialist. Indeed, a movement that professes to represent ordinary people would be singularly incompetent if it refused to employ the means through which those people increasingly conduct their political discussions.
Nevertheless, the achievement invites a question that should be addressed before the excitement of victory becomes a substitute for political judgment. Does the successful defeat of a political opponent necessarily represent a corresponding victory for the principles upon which the successful movement was established? The election has determined who is entitled to govern, but it has not resolved the more difficult questions of what government is expected to accomplish, what economic arrangements it ought to defend or reform, and what place Brazil intends to occupy in an international order increasingly characterized by great-power competition and the renewed assertion of economic spheres of influence.
For those who take political principle seriously, such questions cannot be dismissed as the complaints of purists insufficiently appreciative of electoral realities. Political parties must win elections if they intend to influence government, and there is nothing inherently dishonourable about adapting their methods to prevailing circumstances. Yet political success becomes a questionable achievement when the acquisition and preservation of office gradually displace the purposes for which that office was originally sought.
There is a particular danger in making the defeat of the Right the permanent measure of the Left’s political accomplishments. It is perfectly possible for a left-wing administration to defeat its conservative opponents while leaving substantially undisturbed the economic arrangements that contributed to the growth of conservative dissatisfaction. A government may restore democratic conventions, enlarge social benefits, and conduct itself with greater civility than its predecessors, yet still fail to provide a convincing answer to the declining security of industrial employment, the concentration of productive power, regional inequalities, and the continued dependence of national development upon financial decisions made beyond the country’s borders.
The Brazilian electorate has given Lula another mandate, but a mandate is an instrument rather than an accomplishment. Its historical importance will depend upon whether the administration can convert electoral legitimacy into a programme of economic and institutional development that outlasts the next political campaign. The president’s social conscience remains one of his greatest political assets, but conscience requires an executive capacity equal to its ambitions and a national purpose that does not evaporate upon encountering the objections of the market.
The Capitulation disguised as Economic Wisdom
One observes a curious development in modern political life. Men who begin their careers denouncing the established economic order frequently conclude them explaining why that order cannot substantially be altered. Others who enter politics in the name of national sovereignty, cultural tradition, and public authority become enthusiastic advocates of economic doctrines that leave much of the nation’s material existence to the discretion of private interests whose loyalties are not necessarily national. The socialist learns to accommodate the financial establishment, while the conservative increasingly accepts the market as an authority before which the institutions of society must justify their continued existence.
The vocabulary employed to defend these adjustments is familiar enough. Comparative advantage, market efficiency, competitiveness, fiscal responsibility, investor confidence, and the efficient allocation of resources have become indispensable expressions in the rhetoric of contemporary government. They possess the considerable advantage of appearing scientific, and their employment often permits a political leader to present controversial decisions as the unavoidable consequences of economic laws rather than choices involving competing social purposes.
There is no reason to deny the analytical value of these concepts. Comparative advantage is an important explanation of the benefits obtainable through international specialization. Efficient allocation matters because resources are finite, and the government that persistently wastes them will eventually diminish the welfare of those it claims to serve. Fiscal responsibility is an indispensable consideration in any country whose public obligations must be sustained over generations. Foreign investment may introduce capital, technology, and access to international markets that could not otherwise be readily obtained.
But these propositions are not a complete philosophy of government. Economic analysis can identify the costs and advantages of particular arrangements; it cannot determine, without reference to political and moral judgment, what kind of society a nation ought to become. Nor does the existence of a comparative advantage under present conditions establish that a country must preserve those conditions indefinitely.
If comparative advantage were treated as a permanent prescription rather than an explanation of relative costs, the industrial ambitions of many countries that subsequently became advanced manufacturing economies might never have been pursued. Their governments and enterprises undertook investments in education, machinery, infrastructure, technological development, and industrial organization precisely because they wished to acquire capabilities that existing circumstances did not yet favour.
This distinction was understood by Friedrich List in his criticism of an international economic order whose apparent benefits were unequally distributed between already industrialized nations and those attempting to acquire comparable productive capabilities. It was subsequently reflected, under different historical conditions, in the developmental arguments associated with Latin American structuralism and thinkers such as Celso Furtado. Their common concern was not that trade should be abolished, but that participation in trade must not become a permanent justification for remaining technologically and industrially subordinate.
The problem arises when economic efficiency is elevated from an instrument of public policy into the final purpose of political society. A factory may be closed because a foreign producer can manufacture its products more cheaply. In purely commercial terms, the decision may be rational. But a government must also consider whether the closure destroys accumulated technical knowledge, undermines a regional community, diminishes the domestic supplier network, or increases strategic dependence upon sources over which the country exercises little control.
These considerations do not establish that every factory should be preserved at public expense. Some industries become obsolete, some enterprises are badly managed, and others have survived only through the cultivation of political privilege. A government that refuses to recognize these realities will eventually acquire an economy of subsidized inefficiency. Nevertheless, the opposite proposition, that every productive institution must survive or perish exclusively according to immediate market profitability, mistakes the commercial interests of individual enterprises for the total economic interests of the nation.
The economist may reasonably ask whether a particular industry justifies the resources devoted to it. The statesman must additionally ask what consequences its existence or disappearance will have upon the country’s long-term productive capacity. The two questions are related, but they are not identical, and the politician who answers the second exclusively by reference to the first has already conceded more than he may recognize.
This is where principle becomes indispensable. A government need not reject markets in order to refuse their elevation above all other social obligations. Nor must it reject foreign capital in order to insist that investment should contribute to national development. It requires only the confidence to acknowledge that the economy is part of a political and historical community whose interests extend beyond the immediate calculations of buyers and sellers.
What, precisely, does the "modern conservative" conserve?
The contradiction becomes particularly conspicuous among those political movements that have made national greatness and public order the principal ornaments of their appeal. They are remarkably insistent that the state must possess sufficient authority to restrain crime, protect property, defend territorial sovereignty, and uphold the institutions of public life. Yet when discussion turns toward the productive foundations upon which those institutions depend, the same advocates of authority frequently become reluctant to recognize any substantial governmental responsibility.
Jair Bolsonaro provides a revealing example of this tendency. His political identity developed through military associations, conservative social positions, and a reputation for defending the interests of soldiers and sections of the public service. He appealed to voters who believed that the political establishment had become indifferent to institutional discipline, national pride, and the obligations of government toward those who served it.
Yet his presidency became closely associated with the programme of economic liberalization advanced by Paulo Guedes, whose conception of reform emphasized privatization, fiscal retrenchment, and the reduction of what he regarded as excessive state participation in the economy. Bolsonaro’s administration pursued the pension reform of 2019, while the separate restructuring of military retirement and career arrangements produced a different balance of obligations and benefits for the armed forces.
The circumstances surrounding these measures were complicated, and one should not pretend that pension reform is inherently incompatible with social responsibility. A retirement system that cannot meet its future obligations is ultimately a threat to the very beneficiaries it purports to protect. Nor would it be reasonable to deny that military service involves professional conditions distinct from those of ordinary civilian employment.
The question is whether the political leadership possessed a coherent principle governing the distribution of economic obligations, or whether the language of necessary sacrifice was applied according to the changing priorities of fiscal policy and political constituency.
Bolsonaro’s administration illustrated the difficulties that arise when a populist nationalism, strongly concerned with the authority and prestige of the state, becomes dependent upon an economic philosophy inclined to regard much of the state’s developmental role as an impediment to efficiency. National greatness was invoked as a moral and political objective, but the mechanisms through which national productive power might be deliberately strengthened received considerably less consistent attention.
One may inquire why the conservative who desires a powerful military should be so indifferent to the industrial arrangements upon which military capability depends. Modern defence requires engineering, electronics, advanced materials, communications, transportation, energy security, and a substantial domestic knowledge base. A nation cannot develop sophisticated military capabilities merely by cultivating patriotic sentiment or increasing the ceremonial prominence of its armed forces.
Equally, the defence of the family cannot be separated from the material conditions under which families are established and maintained. Employment insecurity, inadequate housing, the decline of productive communities, and the inability of younger generations to acquire stable livelihoods are matters of conservative concern because they threaten the continuity of social institutions. A conservatism that regards these consequences as morally regrettable but economically beyond the responsibilities of government has narrowed its understanding of society to an extraordinary degree.
The old conservative argument was never exclusively concerned with the protection of capital. It involved the defence of inherited obligations, institutional authority, and the social relationships that preserve continuity between generations. Such obligations may require the regulation of private economic power no less than the restraint of governmental excess. Indeed, the conservative tradition has contained substantial currents of paternalism, economic nationalism, Christian social thought, and opposition to forms of commercial individualism regarded as destructive of established communities.
The modern identification of conservatism with market liberalism is therefore historically contingent rather than philosophically inevitable. It is possible to believe in private property, constitutional authority, religious and cultural continuity, and the importance of national independence without believing that the market should possess exclusive jurisdiction over the country’s industrial development.
Why, then, should a Brazilian conservative regard the revival of the country’s industrial capabilities as an offence against his political philosophy? Why should the desire to establish domestic technological competence be treated as an unacceptable concession to socialism? Why should the protection of essential productive institutions be considered inherently less respectable than the protection of traditional moral arrangements?
A political movement that professes national greatness but regards the economy chiefly as a field for the unrestrained calculations of investors may discover that its patriotism possesses remarkably little practical content. The danger is not simply inconsistency. It is that a nation may retain the symbols of sovereignty while steadily surrendering the material capabilities necessary to exercise it.
Lula's conscience and the incomplete promise of Trabalhismo
Lula’s political importance begins with an understanding of labour that the purely commercial conception of economic society cannot adequately supply. His emergence from the industrial working class endowed him with a familiarity with the social consequences of economic insecurity that many professional politicians encounter only through statistical reports and constituency briefings.
For the industrial worker, unemployment is not merely a temporary misallocation of labour. It may mean the interruption of a household’s income, the abandonment of educational plans for children, the loss of accumulated savings, or the necessity of leaving a community in which several generations have lived. The economic condition of labour therefore acquires a moral significance that cannot be measured entirely through wages or productivity.
The Workers’ Party drew much of its original legitimacy from the proposition that working people were entitled to participate in the decisions affecting their economic lives. Lula’s political achievement was to convert this principle into a broad democratic movement capable of governing a society whose political institutions had historically been dominated by established elites.
His social programmes, particularly Bolsa Família, became symbols of an effort to alleviate poverty through public policy rather than leave the improvement of poorer households entirely dependent upon the uncertain diffusion of economic growth. Their contribution to the material condition of many Brazilians deserves recognition. A government that reduces hunger and gives families greater access to education and basic necessities performs a public service that cannot be dismissed merely because its methods offend a particular economic orthodoxy.
Nevertheless, a society cannot be permanently reconstructed through the administration of social benefits alone. Income transfers may alleviate deprivation, but they do not automatically create productive employment, modern industries, advanced technical skills, or the economic independence of communities that have historically depended upon external sources of capital and production.
The distinction is important because the political success of a social programme may encourage its administrators to mistake the enlargement of assistance for the accomplishment of structural reform. It is possible to improve consumption without producing a corresponding transformation in the country’s productive capabilities. Such improvement is valuable, but its permanence may remain vulnerable to changes in commodity prices, government revenue, financial conditions, and the availability of domestic employment.
The older Brazilian trabalhista tradition possessed a broader conception of the relationship between labour and national economic development. It did not consider the working class solely as a population requiring protection against poverty. It also regarded labour as a principal participant in the construction of an industrial nation, with public institutions responsible for establishing the conditions under which production, employment, and social improvement might advance together.
There were important differences between the trabalhismo associated with Getúlio Vargas and Leonel Brizola and the independent trade-union movement from which Lula emerged. Vargas’s labour institutions were closely tied to state supervision, whereas the Workers’ Party arose partly from struggles against authoritarian controls over union organization. These differences should not be concealed merely to manufacture a convenient continuity between political traditions.
Yet there is a common economic question beneath them. How can the state organize the conditions under which labour becomes not simply an object of social assistance but a beneficiary and participant in national productive development?
Lula’s more recent industrial initiatives suggest an increasing recognition that social policy requires a productive foundation. Nova Indústria Brasil, launched in 2024, seeks to strengthen manufacturing, technological development, industrial innovation, and strategically important sectors through a combination of public financing and private investment.
Such a programme is more substantial than the idea that government should merely distribute the social benefits made possible by growth generated elsewhere. But its historical importance will depend upon execution, institutional discipline, and the willingness of government to distinguish genuine productive development from the distribution of incentives to politically influential enterprises.
The public development bank, the research institution, the industrial ministry, and the purchasing power of the state must become instruments of a coherent strategy rather than separate bureaucratic establishments engaged in the administration of fashionable programmes.
Lula’s conscience requires an appreciation of this distinction. If his legacy is to extend beyond Bolsa Família and the political defeat of his conservative opponents, it must demonstrate that Brazilian workers can acquire a greater share not only in the distribution of economic wealth but in the industrial and technological capacity through which that wealth is created.
Getulio Vargas and the unfinished task of Trabalhismo?
To invoke Getúlio Vargas in this discussion is to invite objections from more than one ideological direction. Conservatives may regard his corporatism and extensive economic intervention as excessive exercises of state authority, while socialists may recall his repression of communists and his restrictions upon independent working-class organization. Liberals have substantial grounds for condemning the Estado Novo, whose censorship, arbitrary rule, and suppression of political opposition cannot be excused by reference to its economic policies.
Such objections are necessary to any serious historical appraisal. They do not, however, settle the question of Vargas’s contribution to Brazil’s transformation from an economy principally associated with agricultural exports toward one possessing more extensive industrial institutions.
The Brazil that emerged from the Revolution of 1930 was not a country suddenly liberated from every influence associated with the old oligarchic republic. Regional elites retained substantial power, rural inequalities remained severe, and the political system acquired new forms of authoritarian centralization. Nevertheless, the period marked an important change in the conception of federal authority.
The Brazilian state increasingly assumed responsibility for economic coordination, industrial development, labour regulation, and the creation of institutions capable of supporting a more diversified national economy. The country would no longer be regarded merely as a collection of regional producing interests whose prosperity depended principally upon access to foreign markets.
The development of the Companhia Siderúrgica Nacional was particularly significant. Steel production was not simply another commercial undertaking but an industrial capability upon which machinery, transportation, construction, and other productive activities could subsequently develop. The same broader ambition informed the establishment of institutions associated with industrial finance and the development of national energy resources, including the creation of Petrobras during Vargas’s elected presidency.
The Consolidation of Labour Laws similarly reflected a recognition that the relationship between labour and capital could not be left exclusively to private contract. Its corporatist foundations and restrictions upon union independence were substantial limitations, but the social legislation represented a durable attempt to establish labour rights within the institutions of the national state.
The political contradiction was considerable. Vargas sought to integrate labour into the national community while limiting its freedom to organize independently of the government. His administration could advance industrial development while suppressing political liberties. It could present itself as the defender of ordinary workers while denying many of those workers the capacity to contest the authority exercised in their name.
These contradictions belong to his historical legacy and should not be concealed. But the existence of authoritarian defects does not establish that the industrial project itself was without merit or that subsequent democratic governments must abandon developmental responsibilities merely because an authoritarian predecessor once exercised them.
The Brazilian Left has sometimes approached Vargas through the injuries inflicted upon its predecessors, while the liberal Right has emphasized the economic inefficiencies and institutional distortions associated with state intervention. Both perspectives contain important truths. Neither fully addresses the historical significance of the proposition that Brazil required a deliberate strategy to escape excessive dependence upon primary commodities.
This is why Vargas remains relevant to the present argument. He recognized that the possession of sovereignty in the constitutional sense was inadequate without an economic structure capable of sustaining national independence. Brazil required institutions, skilled labour, machinery, steel, energy, and capital investment if it intended to exercise greater influence over its own economic future.
There is something particularly incongruous about contemporary politicians who celebrate the language of national grandeur while proposing an economic order that would make Brazil increasingly dependent upon the export of primary products and the importation of sophisticated manufactured goods.
Brazilian agriculture today is technologically advanced and internationally competitive; it should not be caricatured as a mere survival of the plantation economy. Its achievements in agricultural science, mechanization, logistics, and productivity are substantial. But its success offers an argument for extending technical capability into additional sectors, not for accepting a narrow conception of national economic specialization.
A country capable of developing sophisticated agricultural technology ought also to seek advanced capabilities in machinery, biotechnology, pharmaceuticals, energy systems, electronics, transportation, and industrial services.
One must therefore ask why a self-described nationalist would prefer Brazil to become principally a quintal of larger economic powers, rather than a country increasingly capable of producing the machinery, technology, and industrial knowledge upon which its own prosperity depends.
The old café com leite republic was not conservative in any noble sense merely because its dominant interests were established and wealthy. It represented a particular political and economic arrangement in which regional power and commodity production acquired extraordinary influence over national government.
To regard an analogous economic dependency as the natural future of contemporary Brazil would be an abandonment of much of the developmental inheritance that made the modern country possible.
Leonel Brizola and the politicial duty to decide
If Vargas represents the institutional beginnings of a more deliberate national economic policy, Leonel Brizola represents the proposition that such a policy requires political courage as well as administrative design.
Brizola’s public career was marked by a willingness to confront established interests and to exercise governmental authority in circumstances where accommodation might have been politically more convenient. His nationalization of utility operations in Rio Grande do Sul, his role in the constitutional crisis of 1961, and his later educational initiatives in Rio de Janeiro reflected an understanding of public office fundamentally different from the contemporary conception of government as the cautious management of arrangements determined by other institutions.
During his governorship of Rio Grande do Sul, Brizola regarded essential services as matters of public responsibility extending beyond the contractual rights of their private operators. The assumption of state control over electricity and telecommunications enterprises associated with foreign capital produced substantial controversy, but it also expressed a belief that the development of infrastructure must be judged according to the needs of the wider community.
This did not mean that foreign ownership was necessarily incompatible with adequate public service. Private capital can operate essential utilities successfully under appropriate arrangements. But Brizola refused to assume that private ownership automatically exhausted the legitimate considerations governing the organization of such services.
His role in the Campaign of Legality during 1961 was a more dramatic illustration of his political disposition. When military opposition threatened to prevent Vice President João Goulart from succeeding President Jânio Quadros, Brizola organized resistance in defence of the constitutional order. The radio became an instrument through which public opinion was mobilized, and the governor demonstrated that the legitimacy of constitutional government depended in part upon the willingness of political authorities to defend it against unlawful interference.
The eventual compromise that allowed Goulart to assume office under a parliamentary arrangement did not resolve all the difficulties confronting Brazilian democracy. Yet the episode demonstrated a principle often neglected by those who equate moderation with political virtue. Constitutional order does not preserve itself merely because its provisions have been elegantly drafted. It requires institutions and officeholders prepared to defend the lawful exercise of authority.
There is no reason why such determination should be understood as inherently authoritarian. Brizola’s defence of succession in 1961 was directed against an attempt to obstruct constitutional government. His decisiveness in that instance served legality rather than replacing it.
His educational programme in Rio de Janeiro, associated particularly with Darcy Ribeiro and the Integrated Public Education Centers, revealed a similar understanding of government in a less dramatic field. The intention was to provide children from disadvantaged communities with institutions capable of addressing educational and social needs that could not be satisfied through the conventional classroom alone.
The undertaking encountered disputes over expense, effectiveness, administration, and long-term sustainability. Such questions were legitimate, and the historical record cannot be reduced to a celebration of admirable intentions. But Brizola’s willingness to devote public authority and resources to a concrete institutional project distinguished him from politicians whose commitment to education consisted chiefly of speeches on its importance.
He recognized that the advancement of the poor required the construction of institutions, not merely the expression of sympathy.
For Lula and the Workers’ Party, the lesson is particularly relevant. A government may possess extensive popular legitimacy and yet gradually become hesitant to confront interests whose cooperation it regards as indispensable to political stability. Coalition management is a necessary part of democratic government, especially within Brazil’s complex parliamentary arrangements. But the cultivation of coalition support can eventually become a substitute for exercising the authority that the coalition was established to obtain.
Brizola’s example does not prescribe confrontation for its own sake. His political temperament could be excessively combative, and the capacity to provoke opposition is not necessarily evidence of statesmanship. Rather, his career demonstrates that a reforming government must be prepared to distinguish between objections requiring reasonable accommodation and resistance intended to prevent any substantial alteration of existing arrangements.
The social conscience of Lula must therefore be accompanied by the decisiveness associated with Brizola, not because the president should imitate every aspect of Brizola’s political conduct, but because a programme of national reconstruction will inevitably require choices that cannot satisfy every constituency.
An administration unwilling to make those choices may remain popular, respectable, and constitutionally legitimate while accomplishing considerably less than its historical responsibilities demand.
Ernesto Geisel and the problem of Strategic Continuity
Ernesto Geisel presents a more difficult historical figure because his developmental policies were undertaken within the institutional framework of Brazil’s military dictatorship. His government continued to exercise authoritarian powers, and its responsibility for political repression cannot be cancelled by the economic or diplomatic achievements of the period.
The gradual political opening associated with his administration was neither equivalent to immediate democratization nor evidence that the regime had abandoned coercive methods. The dictatorship remained a dictatorship, and the eventual restoration of constitutional democracy should not be understood as a justification of the system that preceded it.
Nevertheless, the economic programme pursued under Geisel deserves examination, particularly because it illustrates the importance and the limitations of strategic industrial planning.
The international oil crisis confronted Brazil with a serious difficulty. The country had acquired an expanding industrial base, but its dependence upon external energy supplies and imported capital goods left important sectors vulnerable to changes in international prices and financial conditions.
The Second National Development Plan attempted to address these problems through large-scale investment in energy, basic industries, transportation, communications, and industrial capabilities that private enterprise could not readily establish without substantial public coordination.
Geisel’s administration did not simply interpret the oil shock as evidence that Brazil should abandon its industrial ambitions and adapt itself to a reduced position in the international economy. It attempted instead to alter the conditions that had made the economy vulnerable.
The programme also depended upon a particular conception of relations between the state and private capital. Government and public enterprises would undertake large investments in foundational sectors, while domestic private firms were expected to participate in equipment supply, industrial development, and related activities.
Foreign investment was not excluded, but its role was to be considered within the larger objectives of national development. The state was therefore expected to possess sufficient institutional competence to distinguish strategically important sectors from those in which private and foreign capital could operate with greater freedom.
This was an ambitious undertaking, and its financial weaknesses were serious. Heavy external borrowing contributed to vulnerabilities that became increasingly apparent as international monetary conditions changed. The debt crisis that subsequently afflicted Latin America exposed the dangers of industrial development financed through obligations whose costs and availability could not be reliably controlled.
The experience suggests that the possession of an industrial plan is not sufficient to guarantee successful development. Government must also consider fiscal sustainability, foreign-exchange constraints, technological feasibility, and the capacity of enterprises to achieve improvements in productivity.
The lesson should be particularly important to anyone tempted to turn developmental nationalism into a doctrine of unlimited state expenditure. Public authority cannot repeal economic scarcity, and the mere designation of an enterprise as strategically important does not ensure that it will become technically proficient or financially sustainable.
Yet Geisel’s failures do not invalidate the proposition that government must concern itself with strategic capabilities. They demonstrate instead that industrial policy requires discipline and a realistic assessment of the financial and technical conditions under which it operates.
His foreign policy provides a related lesson. Brazil’s pursuit of diversified international relationships and the nuclear cooperation agreement with West Germany reflected a determination to acquire greater freedom of action in technological and diplomatic affairs.
The nuclear agreement encountered formidable practical difficulties and did not fully deliver the technological independence originally anticipated. Nevertheless, its objectives reflected an understanding that advanced scientific capability was an important component of sovereignty.
The interesting question for contemporary Brazil is whether a democratic government can maintain an equally serious commitment to long-term strategic development while avoiding the authoritarian practices and financial vulnerabilities of Geisel’s administration.
There is no inherent reason why the answer should be negative. Constitutional government can establish industrial priorities through legislation, public investment, development financing, and institutional coordination. Democratic accountability may also expose errors and inefficiencies that an authoritarian administration would prefer to conceal.
What is required is a conception of government in which national development survives changes in political leadership without becoming immune to criticism or correction.
The appeal of Geisel’s example should therefore be understood as an appeal for strategic continuity, not for the restoration of military government. Brazil requires institutions capable of pursuing projects whose useful lives extend beyond a presidential term, while preserving the constitutional mechanisms through which the public may examine their costs, purposes, and consequences.
Enéas Carneiro and the material content of sovereignty
Enéas Carneiro occupies an unusual position in Brazilian political memory. He was a conservative nationalist whose public reputation was shaped partly by his extraordinary television appearances, combative manner, and willingness to advocate positions far outside the accepted assumptions of the political establishment.
His reputation for eccentricity often overshadowed the seriousness with which he approached questions of science, technology, industrial development, and the material foundations of national power.
The founder of the Partido de Reedificação da Ordem Nacional was not a socialist, nor was his political outlook readily compatible with that of the Workers’ Party. His conservative social positions and advocacy of nuclear weapons are among the many reasons why an unqualified adoption of his political programme would be neither necessary nor desirable for a democratic Left.
Nevertheless, his insistence upon Brazil’s capacity to become an advanced industrial and scientific power deserves more consideration than is usually granted by those accustomed to classifying political arguments according to the ideological reputation of their advocates.
Enéas believed that national sovereignty required the possession of capabilities that could not simply be purchased whenever circumstances demanded them. A country dependent upon imported technology for its essential industries, foreign expertise for critical infrastructure, and external political approval for the acquisition of strategic knowledge could not reasonably regard its independence as complete.
Such a position does not require the rejection of international cooperation. The acquisition of technology frequently depends upon cooperation with foreign institutions, while participation in international markets may provide the resources necessary for further development.
The issue concerns whether these relationships increase national capabilities or perpetuate an arrangement in which the country remains dependent upon the same external suppliers indefinitely.
A nation may import machinery for the purpose of establishing an industry that will eventually produce comparable equipment. It may also import machinery year after year because it has never developed the scientific and industrial institutions necessary to manufacture it. The commercial transaction may appear similar in both cases, but the implications for national development are substantially different.
Enéas was concerned with the second possibility. His nationalism involved the assertion that Brazil should become capable of producing increasingly sophisticated technologies and maintaining the institutions necessary for scientific independence.
One may disagree with his emphasis upon military strength while recognizing the economic importance of advanced engineering, research establishments, energy technology, and industrial design.
His nuclear ambitions, especially the development of weapons, should be subjected to an exacting appraisal of strategic necessity, international legal commitments, regional security, and opportunity cost. It does not follow that a nation must acquire nuclear arms in order to become technologically independent, and Brazil has powerful reasons to preserve its peaceful nuclear commitments.
Yet the broader issue of technological competence remains. A sovereign country must be able to determine which capabilities are essential to its security and development, and it must possess the capacity to pursue them through institutions accountable to the national community.
Enéas’s importance is especially evident when contrasted with contemporary politicians who employ nationalist language but regard the acquisition of productive capacity as an incidental consequence of market activity.
He did not understand sovereignty merely as a matter of territorial possession or diplomatic recognition. He understood it as a condition requiring industry, technical knowledge, resources, and political determination.
There are ample reasons to criticize particular policies he proposed. But the historical importance of his argument should not be dismissed because of its conservative origins.
The Workers’ Party does not need to become PRONA, and a democratic developmental programme should not seek to reproduce the entirety of Enéas’s political thought. It should, however, be prepared to answer the questions he raised concerning Brazil’s material independence.
If the Left proposes to emancipate labour, it must explain what productive capabilities will sustain that emancipation. If conservatives propose to defend the nation, they must explain how the nation will acquire the industrial and technological strength necessary for effective sovereignty.
Neither question can be answered adequately by appealing to patriotic sentiment or confidence in the market alone.
The impartiality that History demands
The inclusion of Vargas, Geisel, Brizola, and Enéas in a discussion of Lula’s political future does not constitute an attempt to establish an artificial lineage between men whose political positions were frequently opposed. Nor does it imply that their historical controversies should be subordinated to the usefulness of particular policies.
It is instead a demand for a more serious method of political judgment.
The Brazilian Left has good reasons to remember the dictatorship, the suppression of independent labour organization, the persecution of communists, and the restrictions imposed upon democratic institutions. Its historical memory includes individuals who suffered imprisonment, exile, torture, and death in conflicts with authoritarian government.
Among the important figures in that history are Luís Carlos Prestes and Carlos Marighella, whose political commitments and methods were themselves subjects of intense controversy.
Prestes’s association with the communist movement and his understanding of revolutionary political organization cannot be examined without considering the influence of international communism and the strategic disputes of the twentieth century. Marighella’s commitment to armed resistance must likewise be assessed in relation to the repressive circumstances under which he acted, while retaining the distinction between understanding the reasons for political violence and endorsing every method employed in its name.
Their histories deserve careful study because they illuminate important conflicts within Brazilian political life. The same standards should apply to political figures whose ideological commitments fall outside the Left.
The industrial programmes of Vargas and Geisel do not excuse their authoritarian governments. Brizola’s constitutional courage does not establish that all his administrative decisions were wise. Enéas’s concern for national sovereignty does not oblige anyone to accept his positions on nuclear weapons or social policy.
Yet it would be equally unreasonable to conclude that their industrial and strategic concerns were therefore without merit.
A political movement that accepts only the historical contributions of those who share its complete ideology deprives itself of the ability to learn from experience. It is possible to condemn the suppression of civil liberties under an authoritarian regime while recognizing that a particular industrial institution established during that period subsequently contributed to national development.
Such recognition is not an act of political absolution. It is an acknowledgment that history consists of institutional consequences as well as ideological intentions.
The more important question is whether contemporary democratic government can preserve useful achievements while correcting the institutional defects under which they were produced.
If a developmental state can acquire scientific competence, industrial depth, and strategic independence while preserving constitutional freedoms and democratic accountability, it may recover the constructive objectives of earlier national programmes without perpetuating their authoritarian characteristics.
This is a more demanding political undertaking than either unconditional celebration or indiscriminate condemnation, but it is also more likely to produce useful conclusions.
The Trabalhista inheritance in the age of "Don-roe" doctrine
The international setting has made the question of Brazilian independence more urgent than it appeared during the comparatively confident years of post-Cold War globalization.
The renewed prominence of the Monroe Doctrine in American strategic policy, particularly under the Trump administration’s so-called Donroe Doctrine, reflects the reassertion of a conception of hemispheric order in which Washington claims a privileged interest in determining the strategic circumstances of the Americas.
The American government has legitimate reasons to concern itself with threats arising within the Western Hemisphere. Great powers have always considered their immediate geographical surroundings especially important to national security, and the United States is not exceptional in this regard.
But the legitimate defence of national security must be distinguished from the assumption that the strategic or economic choices of other sovereign countries require the approval of a dominant regional power.
The 2025 American National Security Strategy explicitly proclaimed a Trump corollary to the Monroe Doctrine, emphasizing American pre-eminence in the hemisphere and the denial of certain strategic positions to outside competitors. Its language reflects a broader movement away from the confident universalism of the earlier liberal international order toward a more openly competitive conception of great-power relationships.
For Brazil, the implications are considerable. The country possesses extensive economic relationships with the United States, China, Europe, and numerous other partners. Its industrial and technological development may require cooperation with enterprises and institutions from several competing geopolitical centres.
A foreign policy organized exclusively around the preferences of one great power would unnecessarily restrict these choices.
There is an uncomfortable historical resemblance between certain contemporary arguments for hemispheric predominance and the doctrines once employed by the Soviet Union to limit the independence of states within its own strategic sphere.
The comparison should not be mistaken for an assertion that the two political systems or their methods are identical. The Brezhnev Doctrine emerged within a particular ideological and military alliance, and its justification of intervention against socialist governments possessed characteristics that cannot simply be transferred to every aspect of American foreign policy.
Nevertheless, the underlying problem is recognizable. A great power may begin by asserting a legitimate interest in its security and gradually treat that interest as conferring a right to restrict the sovereign choices of other countries.
For nations situated within its sphere of predominance, the practical result may be a narrowing of the freedom to pursue independent diplomatic and economic relationships.
This is especially relevant to Brazil because the country’s ambition to acquire advanced technology and strengthen its industrial capabilities cannot be confined indefinitely to a single international source.
A government committed to national development must preserve the capacity to cooperate with different countries according to the technical, economic, and diplomatic merits of particular arrangements.
Such an approach is not an appeal for indiscriminate alignment with American adversaries. The replacement of dependence upon Washington with dependence upon Beijing or Moscow would accomplish little in the way of genuine independence.
Brazilian autonomy must be measured by the country’s ability to maintain relationships without allowing any one partner to determine the entirety of its national policy.
The trabalhista tradition possesses a historical interest in this problem because the development of Brazilian labour was understood as part of the development of the Brazilian nation. Economic sovereignty was not merely a matter of diplomatic prestige; it concerned the ability to provide employment, build industry, and determine the social uses of national resources.
In the present circumstances, that tradition requires a sophisticated approach to international capital. Brazil cannot afford to reject investment simply because it originates abroad, but neither should the government treat every foreign investment as equally beneficial to national development.
An enterprise that establishes domestic research, develops local suppliers, trains engineers, and expands export capabilities contributes differently from one whose activities consist principally of extracting resources or acquiring existing assets without substantially improving productive capacity.
Both may be lawful and commercially profitable, but the government has legitimate reasons to encourage the former more actively than the latter.
The distinction acquires greater importance when foreign investment is accompanied by strategic political conditions or the prospect of external control over essential infrastructure.
A democratic developmental state must therefore possess the capacity to assess international economic relationships as part of a national strategy. It should welcome cooperation without surrendering judgment, and pursue independence without confusing it with economic isolation.
Principle, Pragmatism, and the danger of the Fading Flag
There is a persistent tendency among political commentators to divide public men into two broad categories: the principled ideologue, who is assumed to be incapable of compromise, and the pragmatic statesman, who is regarded as possessing the wisdom necessary to accommodate political reality.
The distinction is misleading because it treats principle and pragmatism as mutually exclusive qualities.
A political principle identifies an objective or obligation that a movement regards as fundamental. Pragmatism concerns the selection of methods through which that objective may be pursued under particular circumstances. The two become incompatible only when the selection of methods begins to determine the purpose itself.
A socialist government may temporarily accommodate private capital because it recognizes the productive and financial limitations confronting the state. A nationalist administration may enter into agreements with foreign enterprises in order to acquire technology and investment that domestic institutions cannot immediately supply. A conservative government may enlarge social provision because it considers the preservation of social stability an obligation of public authority.
None of these decisions necessarily constitutes an abandonment of principle.
Indeed, a political movement incapable of distinguishing between immediate objectives and ultimate purposes may find itself unable to govern at all. A programme that requires the simultaneous satisfaction of every ideological ambition before accepting any practical improvement will almost certainly achieve less than its advocates intend.
But there is an equally serious danger in a political pragmatism that gradually ceases to recognize any purpose beyond the maintenance of office and the avoidance of conflict.
When every industrial undertaking is postponed because investors may object, every labour reform diluted because employers demand reassurance, and every strategic initiative abandoned because international financial institutions question its efficiency, one may reasonably inquire what remains of the original political programme.
The language of pragmatic necessity then becomes a means of concealing ideological surrender.
The problem is especially acute for movements whose symbols and historical identities were formed through struggles against economic arrangements they now find themselves administering.
The red flag need not be carried into every governmental decision as an instrument of theatrical militancy. Its historical meaning, however, cannot be reduced to a decoration employed at election rallies while the party accepts the permanent subordination of social objectives to the requirements of established capital.
A political movement may moderate its methods without abandoning its social philosophy. But when the objectives themselves become progressively less distinguishable from those of its opponents, the claim of ideological continuity becomes increasingly difficult to sustain.
Lula’s political career has been characterized by an unusual capacity to negotiate among institutions and interests whose support might otherwise have been impossible to obtain. This quality has contributed substantially to his electoral achievements and to his ability to govern a politically fragmented society.
It would be foolish to suggest that Brazil could be governed successfully through a permanent refusal of negotiation.
Yet the virtues of compromise must be assessed according to their consequences. A coalition that permits the establishment of lasting developmental institutions may justify concessions that would otherwise appear regrettable. A coalition whose principal achievement is the continued survival of the government, while its original economic objectives are indefinitely postponed, presents a different proposition.
The principled pragmatist accepts temporary limitations while preserving the means of future advance. The unprincipled pragmatist gradually adjusts his conception of what ought to be accomplished until it becomes indistinguishable from what established interests are already prepared to permit.
The Workers’ Party must decide which conception will govern its future.
Towards "Left conservatism?"
The political synthesis suggested by these historical experiences may be described as left-conservative, although the expression is likely to offend those who regard the conventional ideological categories as sufficiently comprehensive.
The objection is understandable. Conservatism and socialism have frequently been opponents, and their disagreements over property, class, political authority, and the organization of production cannot simply be dissolved through an appeal to patriotic sentiment.
Yet the conventional association of conservatism with economic liberalism conceals an older concern with social continuity, inherited obligations, and the preservation of institutions necessary for a functioning national community.
A conservative understanding of society recognizes that the individual is born into relationships that precede his own choices. Families, communities, professions, religious institutions, systems of law, and national traditions create obligations that cannot be reduced to voluntary commercial exchanges.
The economy operates within this larger social order. Its institutions are necessary because society requires production, employment, investment, and the distribution of resources, but they do not exhaust the purposes for which society exists.
The disruption of productive communities may therefore be a conservative concern even where it results from lawful market activity. A country whose younger generations cannot acquire stable employment or establish independent households has reason to question whether its economic arrangements adequately serve its social institutions.
Likewise, a nation whose industrial capabilities are progressively diminished may be weakening the material foundations of the sovereignty and continuity that conservatives profess to defend.
The Left approaches many of these difficulties through its concern with labour, equality, social rights, and the unequal distribution of economic power. Yet these concerns also require attention to the institutions through which society creates wealth.
A government cannot indefinitely improve wages through legislation alone if productivity stagnates and productive investment disappears. It cannot maintain comprehensive social services without a sufficiently capable economy. Nor can it ensure broad access to education while neglecting the creation of skilled employment for the people who receive it.
The resulting political convergence does not require ideological uniformity. It requires recognition that the preservation of a functioning national community and the improvement of the material condition of its members are mutually dependent objectives.
Such a conception would defend private property while recognizing its social obligations. It would support enterprise while opposing the conversion of economic power into permanent political privilege. It would encourage international trade without accepting the permanent limitation of national industrial ambitions to presently profitable activities.
It would also recognize a legitimate role for public ownership in sectors where strategic requirements, natural monopoly, or the scale of investment justify such arrangements, while refusing to presume that a state enterprise is necessarily efficient simply because it belongs to the public.
The governing consideration would be whether institutions contribute to the long-term development of national productive capacity and the welfare of the population.
In this respect, a left-conservative developmentalism would have as much reason to oppose inefficient public monopolies as to oppose private monopolies whose market power imposes excessive costs upon the national economy.
Its economic nationalism would not consist of hostility toward foreigners but of responsibility toward the national community. Foreign investment would be welcome where it advances productive capabilities, employment, technological knowledge, and export development.
Its social conservatism would likewise be judged by the material seriousness with which it supports families, communities, and the institutions necessary for intergenerational continuity.
It would not regard national independence as a ceremonial abstraction, but as a continuing obligation to cultivate the scientific, industrial, agricultural, and administrative capabilities through which sovereignty becomes effective.
This is a demanding conception of politics because it refuses the conveniences of both doctrinaire anti-capitalism and doctrinaire market liberalism. It requires government to make distinctions, assess institutions, and maintain long-term commitments without mistaking state intervention for an automatic guarantee of success.
The institutions of a productive social republic
If these propositions are to become more than historical reflections, they must acquire institutional content.
Brazil already possesses important foundations upon which a renewed developmental strategy can be constructed. Its public development institutions, universities, scientific establishments, agricultural research organizations, industrial enterprises, energy companies, and technically proficient workforce represent accumulated capabilities that many developing nations have struggled for generations to acquire.
The problem is not that Brazil must construct an industrial society from nothing. It is that the country’s existing productive capacities must be strengthened, diversified, and integrated into a more coherent strategy capable of addressing technological dependency and uneven social development.
The public development bank has an important role in this undertaking, but its legitimacy must rest upon measurable productive results. Financing should support enterprises that undertake technological upgrading, expand domestic production, develop suppliers, increase exports, and establish skilled employment.
The state should not distribute industrial assistance indefinitely without establishing conditions governing its use.
Enterprises receiving public support must be expected to demonstrate improvements in capability, and there must be mechanisms for withdrawing support from those that persistently fail to meet reasonable objectives.
Such discipline is indispensable if industrial policy is to escape the familiar accusation that it merely transfers public resources to politically influential businesses.
The development of domestic technological capability should receive particular attention. Universities and research institutions require more than academic prestige; they require relationships with enterprises and public agencies capable of translating scientific knowledge into productive activity.
Brazil’s agricultural achievements demonstrate that research, technical education, and practical production can reinforce one another. Similar relationships may be cultivated in advanced manufacturing, energy technology, pharmaceuticals, medical equipment, transportation, aerospace, and digital infrastructure.
The development of these sectors must be guided by realistic assessments of existing capability and international demand. Government should not assume that every strategic industry must be entirely domestically owned or that every component must be manufactured within national territory.
Such ambitions may impose excessive costs while diminishing the competitiveness of the very enterprises they are intended to protect.
What matters is whether Brazil acquires progressively greater influence over design, production, technology, and the organization of industrial supply chains.
The country should also employ international investment as a means of enlarging domestic capabilities rather than treating it solely as an immediate source of finance. Partnerships that involve technical training, joint research, local procurement, and export expansion may be particularly valuable.
There is nothing inherently unpatriotic about foreign participation in national development. The danger lies in allowing the terms of participation to be determined without adequate regard to national objectives.
A similar responsibility applies to infrastructure. Energy systems, ports, railways, communications networks, and urban transportation should be understood as elements of productive development rather than isolated opportunities for construction contracts.
Their economic significance depends upon the activities they make possible, the regions they connect, and the costs they reduce for enterprises and households.
An industrial strategy that neglects transportation, housing, and public services will eventually discover that its benefits are limited by the conditions under which workers live and producers operate.
Labour policy must therefore remain integral to development. Technical education, apprenticeships, occupational protections, collective bargaining, and the provision of social security should not be treated as dispensable expenses introduced after industrial investment has already taken place.
They are part of the institutional arrangements through which productive capacity is established and sustained.
A nation whose workers acquire increasingly sophisticated skills possesses an important economic advantage. A country that relies principally upon inexpensive and insecure labour may attract particular forms of investment, but it risks remaining dependent upon activities whose competitiveness rests upon the continued suppression of domestic purchasing power and social improvement.
The objective should be the development of productive employment capable of supporting rising living standards without undermining international competitiveness.
Such an undertaking requires administrative competence and a willingness to examine results. It will produce successes and failures, and government must possess the capacity to learn from both.
A developmental state that cannot acknowledge unsuccessful investments eventually becomes a mechanism for protecting its own mistakes. A market-oriented government that refuses every industrial initiative because some previous interventions have failed commits the opposite error.
National development requires institutions sufficiently confident to act and sufficiently accountable to correct themselves.
The Responsibility that survives the ballot
The political experience cannot end with the ballot and the subsequent victory of those who have sought it.
An election is an indispensable instrument through which citizens authorize government, but it is not a substitute for the institutions, economic relationships, and social organizations necessary to sustain a functioning republic.
The Brazilian Left has demonstrated an impressive capacity to mobilize voters. Its more demanding responsibility is to transform that mobilization into institutions capable of surviving the electoral cycle.
Trade unions, cooperatives, professional associations, universities, local governments, research establishments, and productive enterprises must participate in the broader process of national development.
A movement that regards ordinary people principally as voters to be mobilized and beneficiaries to be assisted has not fully realized the democratic ambitions that originally justified its existence.
Citizens should possess opportunities to participate in productive economic life and in the institutions through which public decisions are examined and implemented.
This requires more than a change in presidential rhetoric. It requires sustained investment in local capabilities, the strengthening of technical institutions, and a political culture capable of treating national development as an undertaking that extends beyond the immediate electoral interests of the governing party.
It also requires the opposition to recognize obligations extending beyond the defeat of the administration. A conservative movement that wishes to replace Lula must offer an economic conception of Brazilian society more substantial than the promise to reduce regulation, attract investment, and restore confidence among financiers.
Those objectives may have legitimate places within economic policy, but they are inadequate as a complete programme of national development.
The Right must decide whether its nationalism includes responsibility for the productive life of the country, just as the Left must decide whether its socialism includes a coherent strategy for expanding productive capacity.
There is considerable danger in allowing both sides to evade these questions by concentrating upon the cultural and personal controversies through which electoral polarization is most easily sustained.
Brazil’s political disagreements are real, and many concern matters upon which reasonable compromise will remain difficult. Yet the country’s industrial development, scientific advancement, and the provision of stable economic opportunities are responsibilities that cannot be postponed indefinitely while political factions contest the symbolic ownership of the nation.
The nation possesses a future beyond the ambitions of its parties.
A government that understands this must pursue objectives whose benefits may not become evident until after its members have left office. Its success should be judged partly by the institutions and productive capabilities transmitted to succeeding administrations and generations.
This is not a demand that politics cease to be partisan. It is a demand that partisan competition take place within a more serious understanding of the enduring responsibilities of the state.
Lula’s re-election provides an opportunity to recover such an understanding, but it does not guarantee that the opportunity will be used.
The Conscience, the Decision, and the Will
The political significance of Lula, Brizola, Vargas, Geisel, and Enéas lies neither in their agreement upon a common doctrine nor in the possibility that contemporary Brazil might reproduce their historical programmes.
Their political differences are too substantial, and the controversies surrounding some of them too grave, for such a conclusion to be credible.
What they offer is an opportunity to reconsider the relationship between social purpose, public authority, and national productive capacity.
Lula’s political conscience remains indispensable because an economic programme that neglects the ordinary citizen can acquire impressive industrial establishments while failing to justify the sacrifices imposed upon the population. Social improvement must remain the purpose of development rather than a benefit expected to emerge incidentally from it.
Brizola’s decisiveness remains relevant because democratic legitimacy must be accompanied by the courage to exercise lawful governmental authority. A reforming administration cannot indefinitely avoid difficult decisions merely because they may provoke resistance from established interests.
Vargas’s developmental inheritance deserves consideration because the creation of modern productive institutions required Brazil to move beyond the assumption that its economic future should be determined principally by the interests associated with its existing commodity exports.
Geisel’s strategic outlook remains instructive because industrial development involves long-term institutional commitments, technological planning, and an appreciation of the vulnerabilities created by external dependence. His government’s authoritarianism and the financial weaknesses of its programme also demonstrate why such ambitions must be subject to constitutional restraint and economic discipline.
Enéas’s determination retains its force because national independence cannot be sustained solely through diplomatic language and patriotic symbolism. It requires the cultivation of scientific, industrial, and technical capabilities through which a country becomes increasingly capable of determining its own future.
The synthesis is therefore not an attempt to reconcile every proposition advanced by these political figures. It is an argument that the qualities they represented, when subjected to democratic accountability and practical judgment, address weaknesses that have become increasingly apparent in contemporary political life.
The conservative who wishes to preserve the nation must recognize that the preservation of national society involves responsibility for its productive institutions and the material security of its people. The socialist who wishes to improve the condition of labour must recognize that social provision requires a productive economy capable of sustaining it. The nationalist who wishes to defend sovereignty must recognize that economic and technological independence cannot be acquired merely through the declaration of political will.
The modern state must therefore possess a conception of national development extending beyond both the administration of welfare and the unrestricted pursuit of commercial profitability.
Such a conception requires political judgment precisely because the objectives involved cannot always be reconciled without difficulty. Industrial investment competes with immediate social expenditure. National strategic projects impose costs that must be measured against alternative public requirements. Foreign capital may offer indispensable resources while introducing new forms of dependency. The defence of established industries may preserve useful capabilities, but it can also obstruct innovation when protection becomes permanent.
These problems cannot be resolved through slogans or ideological formulas. They require government to establish priorities, assess consequences, and maintain public accountability.
That is why the appeal to principle must not be confused with a demand for doctrinaire rigidity. Principles provide the purposes against which practical choices are judged. Pragmatism supplies the methods through which those purposes may be pursued under circumstances that are inevitably imperfect.
When pragmatism becomes a reason to abandon the purpose, it has ceased to be a political virtue. When principle becomes an excuse to ignore the conditions of successful action, it has ceased to provide responsible guidance.
Brazil’s contemporary challenge lies in maintaining the distinction.
The election of October 2026 has demonstrated that Lula remains capable of assembling a majority sufficient to defeat a formidable political opponent. It has not established that his governing coalition will prove equally capable of undertaking the more difficult work of national reconstruction.
The historical accomplishment will depend upon whether Brazil emerges from the years ahead with stronger productive institutions, greater technological independence, a more capable labour force, and a social order in which ordinary citizens possess better opportunities to sustain themselves and their families.
That outcome requires the moral imagination associated with Lula’s political career, but it also requires a determination to establish institutions and pursue objectives whose immediate political rewards may be uncertain.
In this sense, the conscience of Lula needs the decisiveness of Brizola and the determination of Enéas Carneiro. The historical experiences of Vargas and Geisel supply further reminders that the development of national productive capacity has been a continuing Brazilian concern, rather than the exclusive property of any particular political tendency.
Their achievements may be examined without excusing their failures, and their failures may be condemned without denying the importance of the questions they attempted to address.
For the Brazilian Left, the object cannot be merely to preserve the electoral position it has recovered. For the Brazilian Right, the object should not be merely to restore conservative authority while leaving the organization of national economic life to impersonal forces whose operation may undermine the very institutions conservatives claim to defend.
Both must contend with the proposition that Brazil is more than a market, a collection of competing constituencies, or an administrative territory within the international economy.
It is a historical community possessing accumulated institutions, productive capabilities, natural resources, and obligations toward generations that have yet to enter political life.
A government worthy of that community must regard the improvement of its material and institutional inheritance as a principal responsibility.
The victory at the polls may establish the opportunity to undertake this work, but it supplies neither the determination nor the competence necessary to complete it. Those qualities must be demonstrated through the ordinary and frequently unglamorous affairs of government: the development of industry, the education of labour, the organization of investment, the construction of infrastructure, the preservation of constitutional authority, and the cultivation of scientific and technological capability.
If Lula’s new mandate is to amount to more than another successful episode in an extraordinary political career, it must be judged against these responsibilities. His government must show that social conscience can extend beyond the relief of deprivation toward the transformation of the economic conditions that perpetuate it, and that democratic compromise need not require the abandonment of a national developmental purpose.
The larger question is whether Brazil will continue to organize its ambitions around what the existing international economy is prepared to permit, or whether it will acquire the institutions and confidence necessary to enlarge the range of possibilities available to its people.
The answer will not be supplied by the election returns alone. It will emerge from the political and economic decisions undertaken after the electoral struggle has ended, when the victorious movement must assume responsibility not merely for defeating its opponents, but for governing the nation it has been entrusted to serve.