From strong institutionalism to the June of 2013, and back to strong institutionalism: on the conservative legacy of the June movements and the challenge for theoretical-political left

Abstract

In the paper, we argue that the June 2013 cannot be comprehended as a homogeneous movement of civil society against State, public institutions and political parties, the same as the phenomena of pemedebismo and lulismo cannot be understood just as pure partisan-institutional movements, without linking with and hegemony in terms of civil society. By using the concept of conservative modernization as defining the current republican Brazil, we will argue that, in the case of the Brazilian post-redemocratization period, and, here, with the phenomena of pemedebismo and lulismo, there is a direct connection of these partisan-institutional actors and the social-political classes own to civil society, in a common dynamic and mutual hegemony. So, regarding to the June 2013, one of its more central tendencies consisted in the contraposition between, on the one side, pemedebismo, conservative modernization and white meritocracy, and, on the other, lulismo, conservative modernization mitigated with social-developtamentalism and black meritocracy. From here, we will defend that the very challenge for the theoretical-political left is correlatively to rethink its political-partisan praxis in relation to conservative modernization (which was accepted and legitimized by lulismo) and to work in a much imbricated way with black meritocracy in terms of an organic cooperation between party and social class.