Brazil’s June Days of 2013: Mass Protest,Class,and the Left

Left Neoliberalism And Lulismo

Most of the millions of Brazilians who danced in the streets to celebrate the 2002 election of the founder and longtime leader of the PT, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (Lula), to the presidency of Brazil were not to be disappointed during his two widely popular terms. Social programs were extended, the minimum wage was significantly increased, and many desperately poor people marginalized by decades of harsh neoliberal policies would be lifted out of abject poverty (Souza, 2012). The centerpiece of these politics was the Bolsa Família (Family Grant), a small but significant cash transfer to the very poorest families, frequently headed by women, with the condition that their children regularly attend school. By 2010, the program attended 12.7 million families, approximately 25 percent of the entire Brazilian population (Coutinho, 2013; Pinzani and Rego, 2013; Soares, 2012; and, for a more critical analysis, Coggiola, 2008). The concomitant expansion of consumer credit allowed many Brazilians to visit shopping centers regularly, buy a car, or travel by plane for the first time. Between 2001 and 2012, the number of automobiles and motorcycles in the country increased, respectively, by 138 percent and 339 percent while population increase was merely 11.8 percent (Observatório das Metrópoles, 2013). Boosted by a favorable world climate for exports, Brazil also created, annually, more than 2.1 million jobs between 2003 and 2010 (Pochmann, 2012: 32). Government-subsidized higher education increased the proportion of Brazilian adults enrolled in universities between 2002 and 2012 from 16.6 percent to 28.7 percent (Ministério da Educação, 2013). While some of these policies were “macroeconomically destabilizing and environmentally unsustainable . . . [and] promoted by the government in order to support large capital” (Boito, 2012; Saad-Filho, 2013: 661), the result was that deep poverty was substantially reduced, jobs were created, and new consumer opportunities were opened up for wide sectors of the population, easily guaranteeing the reelection of the Lula government in the 2006 election and his massive popularity, which reached 90 percent by the end of his second term in 2010.

Yet, as the historian of the PT Lincoln Secco (2011: 202) argues, the PT ceded hegemony to the “ideologues of the financial markets.” Alfredo Saad-Filho has exhaustively shown in a series of studies that the PT maintained “the neoliberal macroeconomic ‘Policy Tripod’ imposed by the preceding administration, including inflation targeting and central bank independence, free capital movements and floating exchange rates, and tight fiscal policies” (Saad-Filho, 2015; see also 2010; 2013; 2014; and Morais and Saad-Filho, 2005). Interest rates are among the highest in the world, and almost half of government receipts is used to pay off the national debt (Auditória Cidadã da Dívida, 2014; Fattorelli, 2012). According to statistics from the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the profits of Brazil’s four largest banks in 2013 were larger than the gross domestic products of 83 countries (Cury, 2014; Horch, 2015).

The apparent economic success of the PT governments also camouflaged certain important structural weaknesses. While it retains a moderate light- and heavy-industrial base, Brazil is still largely reliant on the export of agricultural products and minerals that subject it to the whims of international markets (Saad-Filho, 2010). Furthermore, as Ruy Braga (2014a: 40) has shown, the period between 2003 and 2010 was “marked by economic growth and the formalization of employment, [yet] the current rate of informality in employment in Brazil is still 44 percent.” Even in formal employment, it is highly relevant that the two single largest occupational categories in Brazil are domestic workers (7.2 million) and telemarketing workers in call centers (1.4 million) (45). While the government widely trumpeted that it brought tens of millions of Brazilians into the “middle class,” the economist Marcio Pochmann, himself affiliated with the PT, has decisively demonstrated that this is a myth: the weakening of basic industry that traditionally provided relatively high salaries and benefits and the massive expansion of contracting out have actually reduced the middle class. He stresses that there has been no fundamental change in class structure in the twenty-first century (Pochmann, 2014; see also Antunes and Druck, 2014; Singer, 2012; Souza, 2010). The singular focus on developing agro-industry, the creation of precarious low-wage jobs, and reliance on orthodox financial policies would make Brazil particularly vulnerable to the downturn in the world economy after 2008.

There were modest reforms and some improvements in public services in the areas of education, health care, and housing, but they have fallen far short of the expectations of the majority of Brazilians. Spending on health care and education is woefully inadequate compared with that of most developed nations and even many developing nations among the BRICS (Almeida, 2014; Gragnolati, Lindelow, and Couttolenc, 2013). A new social housing program providing for home ownership, Minha Casa, Minha Vida (My House, My Life), launched by the Lula government in 2009 has made only a small dent in the severe housing deficit, leaving a continuing lack of affordable housing and basic water and sanitation services. Furthermore, this housing program proved to be a colossal boon for private developers, who retain control over the siting and design of housing projects (Rolnik, 2014: 223–290). A collateral effect of this policy, along with the high-interest-rate policies of the central bank, has been the creation of a considerable speculative bubble in urban housing markets, with housing prices rising significantly more than increases in income and construction costs (Rolnik, 2014: 245–248).

While 18 new federal universities were created, modestly boosting local economic development and offering more options for postsecondary education (albeit many fewer opportunities than in the profitable state-subsidized private universities), they suffer from a severe lack of infrastructure and facilities, including laboratories, libraries, and other essential equipment as well as professors (Cassol, 2012). Moreover, the partial privatization of university hospitals has furthered the subordination of public services to the logic of capital (March, 2012). Government-subsidized loans to pay exclusively for private postsecondary education have created huge fortunes for education companies (now publicly traded on the São Paulo stock market) that “pasteurize” the content of classes, offering what every specialist agrees are poor-quality courses (Almeida, 2014).

Perhaps most important in relation to the 2013 protests were the continuing discrepancies in urban mobility—not only the formal availability of transit to move about the city but its quality and affordability. As Saad-Filho (2013: 661) argues, “rapidly rising incomes at the bottom of the pyramid and rising auto sales have not been accompanied by improvements in infrastructure, leading to an overall deterioration in the quality of urban life.” Long journeys on overcrowded, uncomfortable, and relatively expensive vans, buses, trains, and subways are daily facts of life for many Brazilians (Castelar, 2014). From 2000 to 2012, bus fares increased more than 67 percent above the cost of inflation (IPEA, 2013). Taking into account average salaries, the public transit systems of São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro figure among the most expensive in the world (Dana and Siqueira, 2013). It is not surprising, therefore, that the “right to the city” became one of the underlying motifs of the 2013 protests, attracting widespread support from workers who live in the far-flung peripheral areas of the large cities.

In the political realm, since the 1990s the PT at all levels of government has successfully knit together alliances with centrist parties not only to guarantee its electoral viability at executive levels but also to obtain majority support for legislation in the federal, state, and municipal legislatures (Secco, 2011: 199–250). Key ministerial and bureaucratic positions in the state were filled through negotiations by either PT militants, many of them ex-union leaders, or members of allied political parties, creating a veritable bureaucratic machine organically linked to the party. Former political enemies, politicians closely associated to the brutal military dictatorship such as Delphim Netto, Jader Barbalho, Fernando Collor, and José Sarney, were courted by the government as political allies, power brokers, and consultants. While guaranteeing electoral viability, such alliances have alienated many party members and handcuffed the government in advancing its overall program.

These fragile “deals with the devil” have meant that there have been no significant challenges to the ideological dominance of neoliberalism and traditional economic structures or attempts to reform the distorted political system that allows disproportionate power to corrupt clientelist politicians (Saad-Filho, 2015). The incorporation of conservative politicians in political alliances has also severely hampered the PT’s declared support for advances in social rights. Allied parties include a significant number of evangelical Christians and former police officers who have effectively vetoed many initiatives in LGBT, black, and children’s rights and attempts to rein in the brutal actions of Brazilian security forces that regularly kill poor people with impunity (Willis, 2015).

In sum, the modest advances in employment, income, and social programs in the context of a booming world economy significantly raised expectations among Brazilians: the “emerging poor want to consume more, larger masses of people want social inclusion, and both want better public services” (Saad-Filho, 2013: 662). These social pressures were to be aggravated by the delayed effects of the 2008 world economic crisis. It is true that the Lula government maintained the PT’s Keynesian spending programs rather than the outright “slash-and-burn” policies of other governments around the world faced with the crisis. Nevertheless, economic performance began to slow down in the first Dilma Rousseff administration: growth in the gross domestic product dropped from 7.6 percent in 2010 to 1.8 percent in 2012 (World Bank, 2015). While the Lula government created more than 2 million jobs per year between 2002 and 2012, 94 percent of these jobs paid salaries of only up to US$430 per month. Moreover, between 2009 and 2012 the average time in employment fell from 18 to 16 months, showing an increase in the deterioration of working conditions (Pochmann, 2012). Indeed, employment turnover has been extremely high in Brazil compared with that in other developing countries: in 2012 alone, 45 percent of formal workers left their jobs within six months of beginning them (Redação RBA, 2015). Finally, since 2010, formal job creation has declined precipitously, complicating the search of young people for their first formal employment position.

It was no accident, then, that after a decade of decidedly uneven growth, strike levels began to substantially increase in 2008, reaching a peak in 2013 with more strikes (2,050) than in any other year since at least 1978 (DIEESE, 2015b: 2). The main reasons for the low level of strikes throughout the 2000s were the precariousness of labor relations in the context of neoliberal productive relations and what Marcel Badaró Mattos (2015: 487) calls the “progressive pacification” of many of the combative union leaderships in the country and their incorporation into the PT government. The largest trade union central, the Central Única de Trabalhadores (the Unified Workers’ Central— CUT) effectively became the tamed union wing of the PT government (Galvão, 2009; 2014).

Since 2010, therefore, Brazil has witnessed not only rising expectations but economic slowdown, increasing numbers of strikes, and the gradual erosion of the economic and political development model of Lulismo. The June Days of 2013 thus did not arise from nowhere, and neither did the MPL.

Mpl And The June Days

The MPL officially arose in 2005, but there were many historical precedents in Brazil for protests over the costs and quality of public transportation stretching back to the nineteenth century and punctuated by numerous revolts throughout the twentieth (Fernandes, 2009; Pomar, 2013). The most immediate influences on the young people who launched the MPL were enormous revolts against transit fare increases in the cities of Salvador in 2003 and Florianopolis in 2004 and 2005. In Salvador a spontaneous and horizontally organized movement largely composed of working-class high school and university students blockaded the main thoroughfares of the city and transit hubs for four days in protest against a 20-cent increase in fares (Manolo, 2003–2011). ⁵ The action became known as the Bus Revolt. It did not succeed in revoking the fare increase but won a promise that fares would be frozen for a year and half-price for students on weekends and holidays. In Florianopolis a similarly militant movement known as the Turnstile Revolt took to the streets for two weeks in June 2004, regularly blocking traffic and rallying thousands in demonstrations. City council soon yielded to the demands. A new mayor attempted to raise fares the following year, and a month-long series of struggles once again defeated the increase (Vinicius, 2004; 2005).

Activists on the question of public transit around the country learned two crucial lessons in these struggles. The first was that militant direct actions—blockades of key streets and transit terminals and marches and demonstrations with prominent banners, street theater, etc.—were essential for victory. The second was to maintain the independence of the movement from political parties, nongovernmental organizations, and state bureaucracies. In Salvador a lack of independence meant that the União Nacional de Estudantes (National Union of Students—UNE), linked to the PT and the formerly Maoist Partido Comunista do Brasil (Communist Party of Brazil—PCdoB), co-opted the negotiations with the city authorities, making key concessions and eventually putting an end to the mobilizations. In Florianopolis, however, independence from other political parties and established organizations was maintained, and negotiations with municipal authorities resulted in a partial but important victory.

On the basis of these experiences, 250 militants from around the country gathered in 2005 at the World Social Forum in Porto Alegre to officially form the MPL. A further national meeting in 2006, hosted at a school of the Movimento dos Trabalhadores Sem Terra (Landless Workers’ Movement—MST), established a federative structure on the national level with complete autonomy for the city-based branches. Generally influenced by the anticapitalist globalization movement (Hardt and Negri, 2012), the guiding principles of the movement were autonomy, independence, horizontalism, and nonpartisanship. The principal objective was the conquest of free bus, train, and subway passes for students; secondary objectives included mobilizations against fare increases and poor-quality public transit that affected poor working-class neighborhoods in urban areas. It explicitly opposed capitalism and discrimination on the basis of gender, race, and class (Tarifazero, 2013b). MPL activists were specifically influenced by the ideas of Lucio Gregori, the secretary of transportation in the PT municipal government of São Paulo from 1988 to 1992, who proposed a free fare scheme for urban public transit exclusively financed by public funds. In 2006, at the second national meeting of the MPL, the objective of free fares was extended as a demand for all public transit users (Pomar, 2013).

In contrast to the traditional model of political parties and even many social movements, the MPL did not have a delegated representative structure but made consensual decisions at the local level. The process of the movement and its objectives and results were highly emphasized, prefiguring ideas about the development of an egalitarian and democratic society through the functioning of an antihierarchical direct democracy that sought to eliminate the inequities of representative democracy under capitalism (Ortellado, 2013). It gradually created a national network of articulation (with biannual national “encounters”) that debated the experiences of the local branches and the wider context of international anticapitalist movements. MPL militants were particularly effective in using the Internet to publicize events and debate tactics and strategy. ⁶ Moreover, the process of political formation highlighted study groups and debates on the crisis of public transportation in Brazil and abroad as well as discussions of effective strategy and practice, including lessons from great mass protests in the Middle East and North Africa and the Occupy movements in the United States (Passa Palavra, 2015; Zibechi, 2013). In a particularly important shift in the late 2000s, MPL activists in various cities, including São Paulo, launched important initiatives in the poor urban peripheries, organizing political formation sessions and local mobilizations. This widened their network of activists to include many young workers.

By 2013, MPL movements around the country had mobilized tens of thousands in campaigns against fare increases, temporarily stopping them in several smaller cities and sharpening their tactics and strategies. Moreover, the movement brought to a much wider audience the question of public transportation, including the concept of free fares, earning the respect of the broader left. Thus, on June 2, 2013, when São Paulo’s PT mayor, Fernando Haddad, and state governor, Geraldo Alckmin of the conservative Partido da Social Democracia Brasileira (Party of Brazilian Social Democracy—PSDB), announced a 20-cent fare increase for buses, trains, and subways in the city, the MPL had never been more ready.

MPL São Paulo called a demonstration on its site and Facebook page for Thursday, June 6, to begin at the Municipal Theater in the center of the city. In the preceding weeks it had organized several local demonstrations in working-class neighborhoods. Its declaration (Judensnaider et al., 2013: 28) stated:

Despite the argument [of the politicians] that the increase is below inflation and the promise of a monthly pass, we argue that any fare increase is unjust and increases social exclusion. In Brazil there are 37 million people who cannot use public transit because of the high costs of fares. MPL struggles together with the population for quality public transportation.

The bulk of the 2,000–3,000 demonstrators was composed of young high school and university students and MPL activists from around the city, but there were visible contingents of the left Partido Socialista dos Trabalhadores Unificado (Unified Socialist Workers’; Party—PSTU), Partido Socialismo e Liberdade (Socialism and Freedom Party—PSOL), the Subway Workers’ Union, and the Movimento dos Trabalhadores Sem-Teto (Homeless Workers’ Movement—MTST). Leaving the Municipal Theater at 6 p.m., MPL led the march on a predetermined route directly to Avenida 23 de Maio, an expressway that links the downtown to the vast southern zone of the city that is home to millions of working-class transit riders. Stopping traffic, a core group of MPL activists occupied the expressway, burning allegorical turnstiles and tires and mounting barricades. The police, taken by surprise, soon attacked, dispersing the marchers to distinct points in the city center, including bus terminals, where turnstiles were destroyed, allowing the population free access to buses. A series of running battles with police using rubber bullets and tear gas ensued in various areas of the downtown, with 15 people arrested and 8 wounded and minor damage to the facilities of some subway stations and bus terminals (Judensnaider et al., 2013: 30–31). The mainstream media and politicians immediately condemned the “violent actions” of the demonstrators. The headlines of the two main São Paulo newspapers, Folha de S. Paulo and Estado de S. Paulo, were, respectively, “Vandalism Marks Action for Cheaper Transport in São Paulo” and “Protest against Fare Increase Ends in Depredation and Chaos.” On his Twitter account, the state governor condemned the vandalism and defended the police response (Judensnaider et al., 2013: 32–38; see also Solano, Manso, and Novaes, 2014).

This scenario of militant demonstrations, police repression, and subsequent media and political condemnation would be repeated in the second and third MPL demonstrations on Friday, June 7, and Tuesday, June 11, with a few crucial differences. The main newspapers and television network hardened their stance against the demonstrations, calling for a more sustained police intervention, and several key PT and allied politicians, including city council members and federal ministers, entered the fray with denunciations of the MPL (Zanchetta, 2013). The state governor promised that the police would step up their vigilance.

Yet the second and third demonstrations doubled and tripled in numbers, respectively, and won the adherence of the official PT youth group and more active participation by left parties, militant unions, and other social movements such as the MST and the MTST. Amnesty International and Reporters Without Borders weighed in with trenchant criticisms of police actions. Similar movements against transit fare increases began to sprout up in other Brazilian state capital cities. In Goiânia, a similar anti-fare-increase movement that had actually begun before the actions in São Paulo forced the city government to suspend fare increases on June 10. The cities of Natal and Porto Alegre also announced the suspension of fare hikes. MPL in Rio de Janeiro and Brasilia organized demonstrations explicitly showing their solidarity with the São Paulo movement (Judensnaider et al., 2013: 65–82).

The numerous media outlets that urged more police intervention for the fourth demonstration on June 13 would get more than they wished for. As the 20,000 peaceful demonstrators marched toward their final destination on Avenida Paulista, the city’s main tourist, entertainment, and business area, a police barrier was mounted to stop the march. While MPL leaders awaited contact from the police commander who had earlier agreed to allow the march to Avenida Paulista, the police shock troops suddenly attacked the demonstrators in a show of aggression not seen since the military dictatorship. With no concern for protecting the democratic right to assemble and peacefully express oneself, the military police launched dozens of concussion bombs and tear gas canisters, fired hundreds of rubber bullets, and brutally struck marchers with truncheons. News anchors and reporters on all the main networks futilely attempted to blame “vandals” for the violence, yet viewers saw scenes of protesters seated peacefully and pleading for an end to the attack receiving more tear gas, rubber bullets, and blows from truncheons (Judensnaider et al., 2013: 83–103). Several amateur videos showed similar scenes in various downtown locations. ⁷ As this veritable battle scene was played out, José Luiz Datena, the host of the popular police reality show Cidade Alerta, decided to conduct a poll of viewers on support for the protests, hoping to show that the majority of the population was against the movement. Much to his surprise, viewers overwhelmingly supported it (Knust, 2013).

Over 200 people were detained and more than a hundred injured, including 7 journalists from Folha de S. Paulo, 2 of whom were struck with rubber bullets in the face, requiring surgery. The photographer Sérgio Silvio from the Futuro Press Agency lost vision in one eye (ABRAJI, 2013). Firsthand reports of the police violence widely circulated in social media networks and in the mainstream media with shocking accounts of brutality and even sexual violence against demonstrators. In one case, police officers invaded a hospital where several demonstrators were receiving treatment for the effects of tear gas and violently arrested them. Despite efforts to blame protesters equally, the main national media outlets were forced to condemn police violence, as did several human rights groups, and for the first time even politicians from the PT and other parties joined in the chorus. The international press also widely denounced the police violence (Judensnaider et al., 2013: 110–116).

A widely accepted analysis of the June Days cites police violence on this day as the sole reason for the generalization of the free-fare movement on a national scale and the eventual revocation of fare increases (Prata, 2013). Yet an important poll buried in the inner pages of Folha de S. Paulo on June 14 belies this argument. The most extensive poll on the protests, conducted the day before the June 13 demonstration, showed that 55 percent of the city’s population supported the protests, 67 percent considered the fare increase unjust, and 40 percent had already denounced police violence in the first three demonstrations. A second poll, conducted the day after the June 13 demonstration, revealed that 75 percent of the population considered fares unjustly high, 67 percent opposed the 20-cent increase, and 55 percent argued that public transportation in the city was woefully deficient and of poor quality (Datafolha, 2013). A study by the online activist magazine Forum showed that on June 13, 62 percent of public comments on Facebook supported the MPL rallies (Judensnaider et al., 2013: 161).

Over the weekend of June 15–16, the media suddenly changed their tune, ostensibly embracing the movement and attempting to redirect it into a generic “anticorruption” movement of youth, playing down the specific objective to revoke fare increases and linking the revolt to widespread dissatisfaction with poor government, particularly with the PT federal government. Various new groups sprouted up on Facebook inviting people to join the MPL-called demonstration for June 17 not only in São Paulo but in dozens of other large Brazilian cities and 27 cities abroad with significant Brazilian populations (Judensnaider et al., 2013: 138–145).

No doubt the cynical about-face of the conventional media and politicians boosted the massive nationwide demonstrations on June 17, which involved more than 2 million people, largely young (IBOPE, 2013). Yet while the focus of the demonstrators expanded from a specific battle against fare increases to an ampler agenda, it was nevertheless, in great part, a progressive, class-based set of demands. Placards, slogans, and interviews with demonstrators highlighted demands for the democratic right to assembly, for an end to police violence and oppression in poor neighborhoods, and for improvements in public services such as health care and education, frequently rebuking the government for the enormous resources it dedicated to mega-events such as the World Cup and the Olympics. There were also pungent critiques of the corporate monopoly of the media, controlled by a few superrich families tied to the dominant structures of economic and political power (Chalk, 2013; Gaffney, 2014; Romero and Neuman, 2013).

The class character of the participants on a national scale in the demonstrations from June 17 to June 20 was also quite clear: while 70–80 percent of the demonstrators had either graduated from postsecondary school or were currently attending, 50 percent of demonstrators earned working-class incomes, 25 percent lower-middle-class wages, and only slightly more than 20 percent had upper-middle-class salaries (Singer, 2015: 9–10; see also Singer, 2013). The majority of demonstrators belonged to what many critical researchers call the “new proletariat” or “precariat,” characterized by relatively high educational levels after more than a decade of the expansion of higher education opportunities but working in low-wage, precarious jobs in telemarketing and services, among other occupations (Braga, 2013; 2015). The June Days were thus characterized by a massive working-class revolt against precariousness not only in public transit but in public services in general.

Already on June 18, seven city councils in state capitals revoked the fare increases. On the same day, President Dilma Rousseff released a long statement recognizing the legitimacy of the movement’s demands and a few days later flew representatives of MPL São Paulo to the capital city Brasília, where they launched a polite but nevertheless blistering critique not only of poor public transportation but of class inequality more generally, the woeful state of public services, and the racist treatment of indigenous peoples and blacks in the country (Tarifazero, 2013a). On June 19 the PT mayor of São Paulo and the state governor buckled under the pressure, announcing the abandonment of the fare increases.

Demonstrations would continue for a few weeks after this victory, focusing on a diverse range of demands related to public services. In the nationwide victory demonstrations on June 20 there were concerted efforts by right-wing sectors to co-opt the movements with physical attacks on the left parties, especially the PT. The MPL condemned such antiparty actions and decided to stop officially organizing demonstrations, concerned over the loss of control of the movement. On June 24, President Dilma met with 27 state governors and 26 mayors of capital cities, proposing “social pacts” on health care, education, public transit, political reform, and fiscal responsibility. As the demonstrations subsided throughout 2013, however, all but the last of the social pacts, fiscal responsibility, were shelved.

Belatedly on July 11 the main trade union federations and social movements such as the MST and MTST called a national day of action with partial strikes in some sectors. In areas where there was strong left-wing influence, the strikes were partially successful for one day, for example, blocking a total of 80 highways in 18 states (Agência Brasil, 2013) and partially shutting down ports and civil construction. Yet it is highly instructive that a relatively small, autonomist movement such as MPL was able to spark a massive national revolt from below with concrete victories while the organized labor movement and established social movements that had millions of members could muster only a 10,000-strong demonstration in São Paulo and partial strikes. The June Days of 2013, therefore, marked a clear turning point in social struggles in Brazil that would have lasting effects.

Bringing Capitalism And Class Back In: The June Days And Social Movement Theory

It is abundantly evident that social movement researchers need to describe and analyze new and innovative aspects of the mass social movements and protests that have exploded around the world in the last decades. In the case of Brazil’s June Days, the autonomist character of the MPL and its horizontalism as a reaction against vertically organized and centralist political parties, the eventual diffusiveness of the demands, and the widespread use of the Internet and social media were all important factors. So were the local and national activist networks created by MPL branches around the country. Yet none of these developments obviate the crucial necessity to place the June Days in the context of recent shifts in Brazilian capitalism, the composition of the working class, the decade-long dominance of the PT in the federal government, and the compliance of the official union movement and to recognize the explicit class character of the MPL-led movements.

Much recent social movement theory completely neglects class and capitalism. As Gabriel Hetland and Jeff Goodwin (2013) demonstrate, the very term “capitalism” has largely been excised from contemporary social movement theory, in large part because of the influence of postmodernism, the decline of Marxism in the academy, and the relatively diminished role of traditional class-based movements such as unions and left political parties. New social movement theory has forced Marxists to deal with questions such as “the constitution of actors, the making of class, and the role of language and symbolic action in ‘experience’” as well as “critical issues concerning consciousness, organisation, and strategy” (Barker et al., 2013: 28, 29). This is to be welcomed. However, this theory has also clearly ignored or inadequately analyzed the central importance of class and capitalism in the recent explosion of social movements.

New social movement theory and postmodernist theories in general that neglect capitalist productive and social relations have had somewhat less effect in Latin America than in North America and Europe. A Marxist or critical tradition of political economy and social movement analysis influenced by and in dialogue with Marxism has survived both in the academy and among activists (Braga, 2014b; Gohn, 2014). Nevertheless, the main arguments of the theory, such as the generalized adoption of the notion of “social networks” to describe social movements, has taken firm root in Latin America (e.g., Alonso, 2009). ⁸ As Charmain Levy (2010: 36–37) notes, many analyses of Latin American social movements

tend to use either a cultural discourse approach or the political process model to explain social movement mobilization and contention. . . . [They] focus on the cultural nature of social movements and the conflicts over the production of meaning and the creation of new collective identities. Collective action is explained mainly by ideological and cultural processes.

She adds that “although agency, subjectivity, and action are central to understanding the mobilization of social movements, the latter cannot be understood without examining the objective conditions and context of this mobilization.” The neglect of class analysis in much new social movement theory has been particularly harmful for those interested in “movement-relevant” research that “addresses the knowledge interests of activists, as opposed to merely scholastic dissections of the character and dynamics of collective action” (Barker et al., 2013: 2). To better understand Brazil’s June Days of 2013, I thus adopt David McNally’s general argument, borrowing from E. P. Thompson, that class processes “are intrinsic to the modes of conflict, resistance, opposition and struggle that define the terrain on which popular movements operate” (McNally, 2013: 423).

The first and most obvious point is that the 2013 movements arose in the context of the waning of the neo-developmentalist and increasingly neoliberal economic model of the PT. While it succeeded in reducing extreme poverty, temporarily boosting salaries, and expanding access to higher education, it did not transform in any way the social formation in Brazil. Instead, it generated expectations for improvements in social services and urban mobility that it was unable to meet, in large part because of its pact with the neoliberal politics of both financial and agro-industrial capital and its ruling alliances with centrist and conservative political parties. When Brazil finally experienced the consequences of the 2008 world economic crisis starting in 2012, a political space opened up for criticisms of and mobilizations against the lack of sufficient improvement in and the high cost of social services such as public transit.

A second and also obvious point is that MPL identified itself as an anticapitalist organization, explicitly using the language of class and class struggle in all its documents, pronouncements, and demands before, during, and after the June Days. For several years before 2013, MPL branches around the country had organized and recruited young working-class militants from the periphery of the large cities. Given that it was partially composed of and for the working class, it was no surprise that in the context of economic slowdown and unmet expectations the MPL appealed to a segment of highly educated young workers dissatisfied with their precarious jobs and poor urban and social services.

The mobilizations in June 2013 also arose in an atmosphere of heightened class conflict. In 2012 strike levels (877) were at their highest in almost two decades, with wage gains, on average, more than 2 percent above the inflation rate. According to Ruy Braga (2012: 96), many of those who went on strike in 2010–2012 were “unskilled and semiskilled workers who rapidly entered and left the labor market, young people in search of their first jobs, workers who have recently left the informal sector, and underpaid workers.” Moreover, in 2013 there was a historic explosion of job actions (2,050), more than double the 2012 levels, the most since statistics had begun to be collected on the subject in 1978 (DIEESE, 2015b: 2). As Braga (2016) has underlined, there was a marked increase in work stoppages by low-paid precarious workers in both the public and the private sector who had little tradition of strike actions.

The original protests against public transit fare increases were not new, and neither was the plethora of demands for improvements in social services. The MTST had already begun to mobilize occupations of empty buildings and large street demonstrations, employing many of the tactics historically used by the MST and redeployed by the MPL in 2013. Furthermore, one of the key leaders of the MTST explicitly acknowledged the inspiration of the June Days for the group’s escalating campaign of occupations and street demonstrations in late 2013 and 2014 (Boulos, 2014). Moreover, in many strikes and mobilizations throughout the 2000s, public sector workers had raised similar banners as the protesters in June 2013 over the necessity to preserve and expand social programs. It would also be negligent to ignore the influences of mass protests on an international scale such as the Arab Spring and the Gezi Park mobilizations in Turkey that occurred at roughly the same time as the June Days. ⁹

It might also be useful to place the June Days of 2013 within a wider cycle of protest and strikes that continued until the middle of 2014. Indeed, the June Days boosted the profile of the comitês populares da Copa (people’s Cup committees) in cities hosting games in the 2014 World Cup, raising awareness about the profligate spending and corruption involved in preparing for the mega-events (Comitê Popular da Copa, 2014; Gaffney, 2014). The MPL-led movements in June were also particularly influential in the late-2013 strikes by education workers, especially in Rio de Janeiro, where teachers and their supporters (certainly many of the same people on the streets as in June) mobilized a spectacular struggle of occupations and resistance in the face of police repression that on several occasions brought out tens of thousands (Cocco, 2013; Mattos, 2015). And in March 2014 street cleaners in Rio de Janeiro paralyzed work in support of better salaries and working conditions in the middle of the popular Carnaval holiday against the wishes of their own union leaders. The largely black workers won the sympathy of the majority of the city’s population and eventually achieved their principal demands through massive street rallies and the blocking of major urban arteries (Barros, 2014). Wage gains in 2014 even surpassed 2013 levels, averaging 1.4 percent above inflation (DIEESE, 2015a: 2).

There were certainly new elements involved in the MPL’s forms of protest, organization, and mobilization, especially related to their horizontal structure of leadership and consensual decision making. Yet it would be a mistake to ignore the continuities with previous social movements and the larger left, including political parties and unions. According to Marcelo Pomar (2013) and personal observations as a participant in the 2011 and 2013 MPL mobilizations, nonpartisanship, one of the key pillars of the MPL’s philosophy, did not mean antiparty politics. Indeed, the founding members of MPL came from two currents among the young middle-class left: dissidents from various Trotskyist organizations dissatisfied with the particular democratic centralism of their parties and anarchist-influenced activists in the antiglobalization movement, many of whom were associated with the Centro da Mídia Independente (Centre of Independent Media—CMI). While there were clear disagreements and sometimes frictions between the anarchists and dissident Trotskyists, on the one hand, and organized parties of the left, on the other, there were often fraternal political and personal relations between the two groupings. As the MPL faithfully followed its guiding principles of autonomy, independence, horizontalism, and nonpartisanship in all its actions, militants from the leftist parties, including the PSOL, the PSTU, the Partido Comunista Brasileiro (Brazilian Communist Party—PCB), and to a lesser extent the PT and the PCdoB, were active participants in many of the key mobilizations of the free-fare movement from 2005 on, helping to publicize and mobilize larger numbers. Indeed, all these actors considered themselves part of a broader left movement against the pernicious effects of capitalist transportation policies on the working class. The same holds true for the wider demands for improved public services and an end to police violence and critiques of the dominance of the corporate media that arose during the June mobilizations. As Marcus Green (2015: 22) similarly argues in relation to the Occupy movement in the United States, the combination of prefigurative and strategic politics was actually very much in sync with Marxist (Gramscian) “thinking, though perhaps not in name.”

Finally, it is worth briefly commenting on the exaggerated importance given to social media networks in the protests. As former president Lula simplistically expressed it, “With nimble fingers on their cell phones, youth have taken to the streets all around the world to protest, connected by social networks” (Da Silva, 2013). The social scientist Luiz Werneck Vianna (2013: 9) bluntly stated: “Beyond social media, the people are unorganized.” Undoubtedly, the deft use of the Internet and social media networks such as Facebook and Twitter to debate tactics and strategy and publicize events by the MPL was important and should continue to be analyzed (Silveira, Braga, and Penteado, 2014). Yet it is technological determinism in the extreme to suggest that millions were mobilized in June 2013 merely because of widespread participation in social media networks. This was reflected in the sloppy journalism of the Guardian (Watts, 2013) and the Economist (2013) and repeated by at least one social movement theorist (Mische, 2013), for example, who reported that demonstrators carried placards declaring “Saímos de Facebook,” which was translated as “We came from Facebook.” The accurate translation, however, would be “We left Facebook”—in other words, demonstrators left the realm of digital activism to participate in the street demonstrations. While a relatively small example, it echoes the ignorance and/or distortion of material issues in social movement analysis.

Conclusions

New forms of organizing matter. New tactics and strategies matter. New technologies matter. But capitalism and class also matter. The June Days of 2013 provoked heated debates and discussions over such questions among left-wing militants, parties, intellectuals, and social movements in Brazil. MPL itself has initiated controversy on organizational questions and the lessons of 2013. Indeed, it is worth noting that public transit fares started to dramatically increase soon after these 2013 protests, and MPL’s efforts to win similar struggles against fare hikes in 2015 and 2016 were unsuccessful (Lucas, 2015). It is surely time for scholars of social movements to continue describing and analyzing new forms of collective action, language, and culture in dialogue with the insights of materialist analyses of political economy and social struggles.

Brazil’s June Days of 2013 also underlined (once again) the absolute necessity for trade unions to widen their mobilizations to involve the most precarious and less organized workers who took to the streets en masse around the question of urban mobility and social services. In the Brazilian case, this means going beyond the mere organization of workers (according to Brazilian law almost all formal workers are organized) to build combative unions that link up with the militant social movements. As Mattos (2015: 499) accentuates, for example, there is a clear affinity of interests in building united fronts between unionists/strikers and many of the urban and rural social movements that could relaunch street mobilizations and land and building occupations and generalize a new class consciousness. Such an analysis (McNally, 2013: 423) would need to

cut against the grain of the many tendencies toward fragmentation, competition and atomism that run through the lives of oppressed peoples, forging bonds of solidarity, an appreciation of shared interests, and common social objectives that fit with the experiences of people whose conditions of work and life are broadly similar.

Yet this would also depend, as the young MPL activists, among others, have taught us, on autonomy from governments who have adopted neoliberalism, even those supposedly representing workers and the poor, and from the ossified union and social movement bureaucracies that have thrown their lot in with their political patrons rather than their members. ¹⁰ Organizational forms may be debated and revised (Farber, 2014), but what is most important is bringing the currently disparate movements into a “unity of the diverse” against what is clearly a common enemy. Indeed, the highly contradictory record of the PT government led to clear divisions among the left in the wake of the impeachment crisis of 2016, with important groups such as the MPL refusing to join the anti-impeachment movement. Unity is thus especially urgent in the current context of world economic crisis, austerity, rising inequality, state violence, withdrawal of rights, and the huge democratic deficit most clearly exemplified in Brazil by the illegitimate federal government that assumed office in May 2016. We owe it to the MPL activists who sparked the June Days to continue this intellectual and political project.