“Capitalismo, formação econômico-social e pandemia: a gestão bolsonarista da crise sanitária da COVID-19 no Brasil"

Abstract

In this research, we defend the thesis that the Bolsonaro government's weakness and negligence in the face of the Covid-19 health crisis is the result of a planned strategy based on the combination of sabotage to prophylactic measures to contain the spread of the virus, and the use of scientific denialism as a government practice in order to serve capitalist interests in maintaining the production and circulation of commodities, and the consequent exploitation and oppression of the working classes. As a working hypothesis, we argue that the Bolsonaro government's logic of action is part of the crisis of the Brazilian liberal-democratic regime, which was established by the ruling classes after the 1988 Federal Constitution in a slow, gradual and negotiated transition after more than twenty years of corporate-military dictatorship. This process engendered the always difficult maintenance of a so-called liberal democracy in a country with a dependent economic-social formation, which, in the face of periods of organic crisis, requires autocratic measures and actions by the dominant classes via the Brazilian state to maintain capitalist sociability. The Bolsonaro government and its management of the Covid-19 health crisis are the fruit of this mediation between the interests of the class fractions of the Brazilian bourgeoisie and the state. With this in mind, our thesis aims to analyze the management of the health crisis carried out by the Bolsonaro government between 2019 and 2022 in relation to tackling the Covid-19 pandemic in Brazil. In order to do this, we used the Marxian dialectic as a method, through successive approaches to the object of investigation, from which we built a corpus through a bibliographic survey of theses; dissertations, books and academic articles; a selection of livestreams made by former President Bolsonaro and members of his government; journalistic articles; epidemiological data and documents on the management that allowed us to understand the Brazilian situation between 2019 and 2022. With the construction of this corpus, we carried out a triangulation of analysis techniques that comprised: a) critical dialog with the literature; b) documentary analysis; and c) content analysis. The results of our investigation are subdivided into three organically connected parts: in the first part, we present the theoretical-methodological elements of our investigation, drawing attention to the reflection on the capitalist mode of production and the potentialization of pandemic diseases; in the second, we undertake a reflective itinerary on the relationship between the capitalist mode of production, health and Brazilian economic-social formation; in the third, we outline elements for characterizing the Bolsonaro government and unveil, through the analysis undertaken, the main aspects of the government's management of the health crisis: sabotage of SUS management mechanisms; use of scientific denialism as a government practice; catering to the interests of fractions of the Brazilian bourgeoisie to the detriment of workers; delay in the acquisition of immunizers and lack of mass testing; federal management's role in the collapse of the Manaus health system, and creation of inter-institutional conflicts with the judiciary; governors and mayors not aligned with Bolsonarism.