I think a lot of people here are missing important information on how Brazil works to understand what OP is talking about.

I think looking from the outside, on what types of issues that Lula sides with in international politics, it may appear that he is a left reformist like Evo Morales or Hugo Chavez. That’s not true. Lula is safely to the right of Morales, Chavez and the Kirchners in Argentina. In the so called “pink-wave” of Latin America left governments in the early 2000s, Lula was easily the more right-leaning one. On the current so-called “second pink-wave” I think only Boric in Chile is more right wing than Lula.

You might also think that his party is some kind of umbrella left-party that congregates a diversity of leftists movements from communists to socdems. That used to be more or less true in the 90s, but it’s far from true today. And although it’s been the dominant party on the brazilian left since the late 90s, PT was never a hegemonic left party. There always were and still are significant left-leaning forces that are outside its sphere of influence. I’ll talk a little bit more about that. And it needs to be said: PT slowly and repeatedly purged itself from communists and even radical reformists.

Or even worse, it might appear to you that his party has more or less free rein to establish policies in his government. That’s waaaaay farther from reality than you might think. And to get to that I need to explain the Brazilian party system.

For an US audience accustomed to a two-party system, or even to Europeans accustomed to a few-parties systems, Brazil will seem crazy. Our party system is very fragmented. And I mean VERY fragmented. As of June 2023 we have 30 political parties with adequate registration in our electoral system. Out of those 20 have elected members in parliament and 26 have elected members in any level of our federative system.

Just so you could see how weird our party system is, for lack of one we have TWO explicitly Marxist-Leninist parties registered (PCB, the oldest party in our system, who used to be the dominant force in the left in the 50s and 60s, and UP). We have two trotskyist parties (PSTU and PCO), two socialist parties that are not revolutionary although there are a few (very few) revolutionary marxists in their ranks (PCdoB and PSOL), and a bunch of center-left parties (PT, PSB, PDT, REDE, and others I’m probably forgetting about).

Out of this circumstance there’s a very important result: no party can govern Brazil without wide ranging alliances. Period. I’m not saying typical alliances you have in parliamentary regimes in Europe, where you have one dominant force allying itself with two or maybe three smaller junior partners. No. The coalition that elected Lula in 2002 had 5 parties in the first round and 14 parties in the runoff round. Last year Lula was elected by a coalition of 10 parties in the first round and 16 parties officially supporting him in the runoff.

That may look like he had ample support, right? Yeah, maybe. This also means that it’s a lot of interests to balance. So although his party is the dominant force in the coalition, the others are not small junior partners. They are crucial. Some of them have almost the same number of members of congress than the main party. That dilutes a lot how dominant the main party is when implementing policies. That actually reduced a lot the power of Bolsonaro to make our lives even more miserable to be honest. But it also shackles any real attempt at reform.

But it is worse than even that. You have to understand also that electoral coalitions are not the same as government coalitions in Brazil. Even after winning an election you might have to negotiate and coax other parties to join forces with you in government. And that leads to all kinds of aberrations.

For example. There’s a party called União Brasil. It mainly stems, through a complex history that I’m not going to bore you with, from the main situationist party in our former ultra-right civic-military dictatorship (1964 - 1985). União Brasil is a decidedly neoliberal right-leaning party, which defends the interests of the bourgeoisie, agribusiness, banks, and so on. It was a merge of two parties, one of which was the one through which Bolsonaro was first elected in 2018 (the former PSL). So, you would imagine this would be naturally an opposition party, right? Fully against Lula, right? And you would be right. But you would also be surprised to know that Lula has nominated a couple ministers indicated by this party in order to get support in crucial laws it needed to pass.

You see? There’s a concept in Brazilian politics called the “Centrão” (something like “the big center”) which is basically right-leaning forces that dominate legislative politics. It’s a amorphous “non-ideological” force (translation: right-wing, corrupt, aligned with bourgeois interests) that keep the government from deviating to much from what’s good for business for our national bourgeoisie. It holds every government hostage, even Bolsonaro’s.

So, what you truly have in Lula’s government is not even a socdem reformist government. It’s a lefty-like coalition of neoliberal interests that dress itself in red and put star badges on their suits, that need to cater to a wide base of interests that include left parties but also very right-wing parties, who WILL NOT advance even the most basic reforms that are in the interest of the working classes. Don’t expect land reforms, don’t expect anything that will hurt bank’s profits, don’t expect him to side with traditional populations or indigenous interests against companies, don’t expect him to fight against increasing the age of retirement, etc, etc.

What you may expect from him as a leftist:

• better policies on combating deforestation;
• policies that try to expand jobs and reduce cost of living for workers;
• policies to try to reduce the number of people that owe money to the banks (WITHOUT reducing banks profits);
• policies that try to reduce taxes for working class people.

That’s mainly it. Those are good things and I’ll definitely get behind them. But they are extremely limited. That’s not even reformist. That’s simply being a competent manager of the neoliberal order. That’s it. That’s Lula: a competent manager of the neoliberal order.

Let me be clear: it’s better than Bolsonaro. Of course it is.But that’s a very low bar. Hell, Boris Fucking Johnson is better than Bolsonaro. I would fucking take any Republican from the early 2000s over Bolsonaro. Give me fucking Mitt Romney, you get it? You have to dig really low to find something comparable to Bolsonaro.

I voted for Lula in the runoff rounds, so did any self-respecting marxist in Brazil. You know why? Because it’s better to live in a liberal bourgeois democracy and keep fighting than to live in a military dictatorship and risk being arrested and killed. Because it’s better to have left-leaning neoliberal minister steering our economy to a direction where people can at least eat than to see the country sink even lower into abject poverty. I’d rather have a somewhat farcical liberal in government that is sensitive enough to value that people can afford to eat and have a roof than a proto-fascist death-cult that caused hundreds of thousands of deaths in the pandemic, was leading an exponentially increasing number of Brazilians to food insecurity and openly intended to destroy even bourgeois electoral democracy.

So yeah. I voted for Lula, I celebrated his victory and I even have some sympathy for the man. But I wholeheartedly agree with OP. His government is not our ally, folks. You have to understand that. His government is the continuation of neoliberal policies, with the bare minimum concessions so that people can afford to eat. Is that better than neoliberal policies WITHOUT those concessions? OF COURSE!!! But that is not in our political field. It’s not even “oh, he is limited reformist socdem that is not going to go far enough”, you understand? It’s even less than that!!!