DEMOCRACY AND LEGITIMACY OF THE POLITICAL POWER IN BRAZILIAN SOCIETY IN CRISIS 

 José Ribamar Rodrigues Tôrres PhD in Education from USP Master in Education from PUC / SP Internship in Teacher Training in the IUFM of DOUAI / France  Former member of the State Board of Education / PI Coordinator of the State Education Forum Member of Appraisers Bank MEC / INEP 

 ABSTRACT 

This article was produced from the classes taught by Maria Victória de Mesquita Benevides in the discipline Sociology of Education VIII - State, Democracy and Education in Brazil in the Doctoral Course in Education of the University of São Paulo - USP in 1997. It is discomforting to realize that the theoretical discussions and the reality, clashed by classic and contemporary authors on the subject denounce the intensification of the problems and prove their actuality. It is a discussion about the legitimacy of power in Brazilian society in an ethical-moral, political and economic crisis that is responsible for one of the greatest social and hopeful crises in the country. 

Keywords: Democracy. Legitimacy. Political power. Brazilian society. Crisis.

 RESUMÈ

 Cet article a été produit à partir de la leçon enseignée par Maria Victoria Benevides Mosquée dans la discipline de la sociologie VIII Education - Etat, la démocratie et l'éducation dans le programme de doctorat Brésil en éducation de l'Université de São Paulo - USP en 1997. Il est discomforting de réaliser que les discussions et la réalité théoriques, se sont battus par des auteurs classiques et contemporains sur les dénoncer sujet des problèmes de recrudecimento et prouver sa pertinence. Ceci est une discussion sur la légitimité du pouvoir dans ma société brésilienne sur la crise éthique et morale, économique et politique responsable de l'un des plus grands social et espérons que la crise du pays. 

Mots-clés: Démocratie. Légitimité. pouvoir politique. société brésilienne. Crise.

 RESUMEN 

Este artículo fue producido a partir de las clases impartidas por María Victória de Mezquita Benevides en la disciplina Sociología de la Educación VIII - Estado, Democracia y Educación en Brasil en el Curso de Doctorado en Educación de la Universidad de São Paulo - USP En 1997. Es desconcertante percibir que las discusiones teóricas y de la realidad, trabadas por autores clásicos y contemporáneos sobre el tema denuncian el recrudecimiento de los problemas y comprueban su actualidad. Se trata de una discusión sobre la legitimidad del poder en una sociedad brasileña en crisis ético-moral, política y económica responsable de una de las mayores crisis sociales y de esperanza del país. 

 Palabras clave: Democracia. Legitimidad. Poder político. Sociedad brasileña. Crisis. 

SOMMARIO 

Questo articolo è stato prodotto dalla lezione insegnata da Maria Victoria Benevides Moschea nella disciplina della sociologia VIII Istruzione - Stato, Democrazia e educazione in Brasile Dottorato in Formazione dell'Università di São Paulo - USP nel 1997. E 'sconfortante rendersi conto che le discussioni teoriche e realtà, combattute da autori classici e contemporanei sui problemi recrudecimento soggetto denunciare e dimostrare la sua rilevanza. Questa è la discussione della legittimità del potere nella società brasiliana ma sulla crisi etica e morale, economica e politica responsabile di uno dei più grandi sociale e la speranza di crisi del paese. 

 Parole chiave: Democrazia. Legittimità. Potere politico. Società brasiliana. Crisi. 

 Zusammenfassung 

Staat, Demokratie und Bildung in Brasilien Promotion im Fach Erziehungswissenschaft der Universität von São Paulo - - USP 1997. Dieser Artikel wurde aus der von Maria Victoria Benevides Moschee in Soziologie Disziplin VIII Bildung gelehrt Lektion hergestellt. Es ist unbehaglich, dass die theoretischen Diskussionen und Realität zu verwirklichen, von klassischen und zeitgenössischen Autoren zu den Themen denounce recrudecimento Problemen bekämpft und ihre Relevanz unter Beweis stellen. Dies ist eine Diskussion über die Legitimität der Macht in ma brasilianischen Gesellschaft aus ethischen und moralischen Krise, wirtschaftliche und politische Verantwortung für eine der größten sozialen und hoffen, dass die Krise des Landes. 

Stichwort: Demokratie. Legitimierung. Die politische Macht. Die brasilianische Gesellschaft. Krise. 

РЕЗЮМЕ

 Данная статья была подготовлена из классов преподаются профессор доктор Марией Мечеть Виктории Benevides в социологии дисциплина VIII образования - государства, демократии и образовании в программе Бразилии докторантуры в области образования в Университете Сан-Паулу - USP в 1997 году. Это неутешительный понимать, что теоретические дискуссии и реальность, воевавших на классических и современных авторов по проблемам recrudecimento субъект разоблачать и доказать свою значимость. Это обсуждение власти легитимности в бразильском обществе по этическому и моральному кризису, экономический и политический, ответственному за один из самых больших социальных и надеюсь, что кризис в стране. 

Ключевые слова: демократия. Законность. Политическая власть. Бразильское общество. Кризис. 

REZYUME 

 Dannaya stat'ya byla podgotovlena iz klassov prepodayutsya professor doktor Mariyey Mechet' Viktorii Benevides v sotsiologii distsiplina VIII obrazovaniya - gosudarstva, demokratii i obrazovanii v programme Brazilii doktorantury v oblasti obrazovaniya v Universitete San-Paulu - USP v 1997 godu. Eto neuteshitel'nyy ponimat', chto teoreticheskiye diskussii i real'nost', voyevavshikh na klassicheskikh i sovremennykh avtorov po problemam recrudecimento sub"yekt razoblachat' i dokazat' svoyu znachimost'. Eto obsuzhdeniye vlasti legitimnosti v brazil'skom obshchestve po eticheskomu i moral'nomu krizisu, ekonomicheskiy i politicheskiy, otvetstvennomu za odin iz samykh bol'shikh sotsial'nykh i nadeyus', chto krizis v strane. 

Klyuchevyye slova: demokratiya. Zakonnost'. Politicheskaya vlast'. Brazil'skoye obshchestvo. Krizis. 

 

 

 First, it is necessary to understand what kind of democracy we live in Brazil. Its historical roots, the minority interest groups that, for centuries, plunder the nation and seize the majority of all the goods produced by the marginalized, suffocated and deceived majority in every election. What they consider change is pure accommodation of forces that group together and take turns in power to maintain privileges and condemn the others who watch the show as mere excluded people who legitimize and give strength to their tormentors, disguised as “saviors of the homeland”.

 It is not enough to say that the people elected and thus want to show legitimacy, but it is necessary to reflect that the people elected, but under what conditions? A majority population manipulated by the new populism that in reality is nothing new because it is based on old welfare practices as opposed to the right proclaimed in the Magna Carta. A population adrift due to lack of access to the basic elements for building citizenship. A majority population who are unschooled and prevented from exercising the faculties of analysis, judgment and choice. A population with a working majority hostage to economic and political power. A majority population excluded from work, health, education, security, minimum conditions for survival and the exercise of freedom of choice and quality of life. 

 

How politicians see the voter:

                                                  Voter before Election
                                   

                                                        

   

                                                   Elector after the election 

 Fonte: Miro Stefanovic. Beska - Sérvia. 01/07/2015.

 In “The Future of Democracy” Norberto Bobbio (1986, p. 17-40; 151-171) proposes a minimal definition of democracy opposed to other forms of autocratic government. For him, democratic rules define who is authorized to make decisions and with which procedures whose starting point lies in the number of those entitled to vote and under certain conditions. For Bobbio, a large number of citizens who have the right to participate directly or indirectly in collective decisions is not enough. Legitimation rules such as majority or unanimity criteria are not enough. 

It is necessary that those who will decide are placed in front of real alternatives and are guaranteed the conditions to choose one or the other to overcome the discourse and practice and between what has been promised and what has been done and to enforce the collective will in order to transform subjects into citizens. Representative democracy defends the conception that democracy has a collective characteristic where there are groups and not individuals, which, in Bobbio's words, changes from centripetal to entrifugal, polycentric and polyarchic due to the distribution of power. The author warns that political representation is not to be confused with representation of interests, the first (political representation) represents the nation and the second (representation of interests) represents voters and, as a result, there is favoring the persistence of oligarchies. 

On the other hand, Joseph Schumpeter (2003) considers that democratic government is not the absence of elites, but the presence of many elites which, in our view, is the democratization for the formation of various elites, that is, the overcoming of inequalities and access to all to the decision-making bodies. In this sense, it is appropriate to speak of a regulated society (a society without government) defended by Gramsci, (1975) that is, a society without class division, which would have the same sense as Karl Marx gives the evolution of the capitalism-socialism –communism trilogy, the latter being the latter to the utopia of the perfect society that in Mikhail Alexandrovich Bakunin's (1995) most radical anarchist and libertarian vision would evolve directly from capitalism without the need for a socialist transition. 

 

   Free election?

Fonte:Seyedbehzod  Ghafarizodeh. Montreal. 01/07/2015.

 

  For Bobbio, without the right to control power, there is no guarantee of respect for rights-freedom. The concept of elite presented in this article is not to be confused with economic power. Elite, for the author of this reflection, comprises several fractions of classes, namely: economic elites, religious elites, political elites, student elites, union elites, communication elites, professional elites, artistic elites, among others that form a network of social conformation and act as a control mechanism for social groups whose organizations they participate or with whose organizations they identify. 

This process of relations not only defines fields of cooptation but also neutralizes possible popular liberation movements towards the self-determination of citizens. There is no way to defend the maximum control of power by the citizens, without also defending the maximum control of the citizens by the power. For this, the condition is the educated citizen, a promise not fulfilled in the words of Bobbio and which means education for citizenship. In this sense, Stuart Mill believes that citizen education has as its point of origin the very exercise of democratic practice, placing electoral participation as a great educational value. 

 In Brazil, however, breaking the rules of the game for the benefit of groups makes this electoral process uneducational and harmful to the conscious process of analysis, judgment and choice of its representatives where there is a true "collusion" whose vote is a bargaining chip in function of individual or group interests.

Selfie de Político

                          Selfie of Politician

 Fonte:  Carlos Augusto R. Nascimento.Belém do Pará. 01/07/2015

 Bobbio considers that the transition from a family economy to a market economy and from that to a regulated, planned, protected economy requires technical skills that, according to Saint Simon, would favor the replacement of legislating governments by scientists, increasing the bureaucratic apparatus organized from the apex to the base when political power in democracy organizes itself from the base to the apex. In this sense, the author questions that if democracy is a set of rules, how can one intend active citizens? The same author establishes the difference between “the government of laws and the government of men”, considering not only who and how many are the rulers, but their way of governing. In this sense Plato says: [...] I called here servants of the laws those who are ordinarily called rulers [...], however, the rulers also need the law [...] that cannot be subjected to passions. 

Now, the law has no passions which, on the contrary, are in every human soul” (Politics, 1286 a). Bobbio concludes that the government of men is linked to the figure of the sovereign-father, sovereign-boss that approximates paternalistic or patriarchal conceptions where the State is considered a family whose ties that unite them to the group are not legal, but ethical, which for Kant government founded on the principle of benevolence, paternalism is the worst despotism. 

Reflecting on these authors' ideas, contrasts and advances are evidenced where the democratic ideals were not reached, as well as their transformations not carried out in the modern State, where the technical apparatus and issues of citizenship and values stand out. On the other hand, positions are raised in favor and against the government based on laws and the one based on the sovereign's will. 

Political representation and its relations with general and private interests collide with the question asked by Bobbio: “is there any general criterion capable of allowing the distinction between particular interests and group interests?”. 

We assume that there is not one or the other in pure state although we can identify interest representation trends in the so-called AGREEMENTS. It seems not appropriate to say that there is only interest representation, even because such agreements are subject to general rules under certain conditions of economic systems and social. Therefore, it involves broader interests that at the same time satisfy particular group interests. 

I assume that the agreements, although they often assume corporate positions, ensure a series of conditions aimed at guaranteeing “social stability”, linked to the survival of groups in their most immediate interests. I believe the author touched the question of “general criteria”. 

He considers agreements as a “typical expression of representation of interests”, however he considers agreements at the union level to be different. Unions (today) in Brazil represent different conceptions of the worker's struggle that ranges from extreme positions to cooperation and from strength to negotiation, from contestation to the search for results, from corporatism to the dilution of struggles in the general movement. 

A proof of this is that unions have elected several militants to the parliament and even so the union struggle doesn't seem to advance in their divergences. The expansion of the democratic process is not defined by the place where the right to choose, to vote, is exercised, but by how this right of choice is exercised, that is, the quality of the exercise of this right and how this can avoid chronic processes of co-option and manipulation ( populism). 

The phenomenon of the renouncement of their own right by the citizen seems to be an authoritarian statement since it is admitted that only the use of the right to vote (positively) would favor an education for citizenship, eliminating the possibility of choosing what would be undemocratic. I assume that “the waiver of the right itself” does not constitute a waiver, since together with the right of use is the right of non-use and non-use is in itself an option of use. On the other hand, renunciation does not seem to refer only to abstention, but to other forms of expression of will, such as the mulo, blank or “clientelar!” vote. 

The latter, despite characterizing the use of the right itself, does not guarantee a free act, aware that otherwise we would be putting it on the list of those considered in the opinion votes. Barely comparing the “clientelar” vote, although it shows the condition of exchange, it can reveal another facet: the voter's strategy for a few moments to make the politician commit to their interests, even if they are private, which does not justify the error. 

The legitimacy of power does not only imply the number of votes and even the number of votes must be a parameter of legitimacy when the fairness of the election is proven with the absence of influence peddling, vote buying and exchange of favors and no one has the courage to restrain . Legitimacy is not a legal imposition, but above all a fiduciary process, resulting from a white contract between the citizen and his representatives. This process is based on a set of socio-economic and ethical-moral conditions that govern the legally established social and political relations.

 In addition, among the various imaginable conditions for a legitimacy of the citizen's power of representation, there is a basic condition for this to happen, which is a society where citizens have minimal conditions of understanding and mastery of social processes and code to build a capacity for analysis, judgment and choice that is only possible by an educated citizen. It is not about cultural leveling of citizens, but about unevenness, since a society must be identified less by similarities and more by differences. In this case, the differences should not be parameters for classifying citizens as occurs in a capitalist society, but the differences as a parameter for guaranteeing freedom rights (civil and political) and credit rights (social rights) as characteristics of a society democratic. 

The process of distancing citizens from their political representation in Brazil is a process that has been deepening vertiginously as a result of the non-commitment of this representation not only to political-democratic ideals, but also to the interests of society that influenced their choice as popular representative. 

 In view of this, the power resorts to the force of law to guarantee an apparent legitimacy that does not have popular support. In this case we have an authority supported by the force of law and not by the self-determination of citizens. In fact, the Brazilian history of legitimation of power less by popular force and more by the conciliatory process of interest groups that organize and reorganize themselves based on the maintenance of privileges that are distributed intra-groups and passed on from generation to generation by the same groups , excluding the majority of the population from the social benefits generated by all to feed only a privileged part. 

 Thus, it is easy to conclude that Brazilian society adopts a democratic and republican legal discourse, but a practice fully based on authoritarian monarchical processes where privileges are distributed to dominant groups that consider themselves above the law and are perpetuated due to apathy of the citizen (subjects) who in turn are divided between those who struggle to build a counter-force and those who are diluted on the periphery of power, legitimizing their strength in exchange for crumbs that fall from the privileged. Brazilian society needs a revolution in education, organization without cooptation, awareness of collective interests to neutralize the action of interest groups that claiming to act in the name of democracy and collective interest obtain the adhesion of class fractions to consolidate privileges. 

As an example, the national congress this week led the discussion on the renegotiation of the debts of rural producers, placing the benefit for the farmer on the sidelines of this discussion, but behind everything to benefit large producers, including the rapporteur of the matter and a large part of the politicians who own large estates and claim to be farmers. A highly unequal society like Brazil's, the detachment of the citizen from a class ideal, from a political ideal and from its representation also totally disconnected from the interests of society, will never be able to build a society that values the differences that constitute the basis for a construction democratic. Inequality and differences are not confused. While inequality is the mother of exclusion and the denial of rights, differences are essential for building access to social processes, rights and the legitimacy of democracy and the construction of citizenship. 

What legitimacy do political mandates have in Brazil? None! Because the vast majority are due to illegitimate processes and, therefore, are void of law. But all of this is not the responsibility of politicians alone, it is all of us who, with our vote, legitimize this historic disaster that does not only refer to the current rulers. It's been 500 years of a few elites luxuriating and massacring those who work and those who produce. Brazil needs a popular and non-populist revolution where citizens take over the country's reins by being aware of the exercise of citizenship and by voting, and learn to decide according to their collective interests. In this aspect, we are defenders of the institution of the RECALL mechanism where, after a certain time in power, the people can be called to give an opinion on the continuity or not of a government through a popular referendum. 

 

References 

BAKUNIN. Marxism and Philosophy of Language. São Paulo: hucitec, 1995.

BOBBIO, Norberto. The future of democracy (a defense of the rules of the game). Trans. Marco Aurélio Nogueira. Rio de Janeiro, Peace and Land, 1986.

 CANIVEZ, Patrice. Educate the citizen. 2. ed. Campinas: Papirus, 1998. 

GRAMSCI, A. Quaderni del prison. In: GERRATANA, V. (Org.). Critical Ed. 4v. Turin: Einaudi, 1975. 

SCHUMPETER, Joseph A. Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy, 2003.