Moraes vs. Mendonça: The degeneration of the Supreme Court and the Brazilian state.

Fernando Leal 20 September 2026

In recent weeks, the Banco Master scandal has returned to the headlines with intensity after Supreme Court Justice André Mendonça lifted the secrecy surrounding the Federal Police report analyzing Daniel Vorcaro's communications. The Federal Police recovered messages from Vorcaro's cell phone and revealed a vast exchange of messages between Alexandre de Moraes and the former banker. Evidence of meetings, dinners, and a shared agenda was found.

The report also makes public details of two contracts between Banco Master and the law firm of Viviane Barci de Moraes, wife of Alexandre de Moraes, one worth R$ 131 million and a second contract worth R$ 50 million.

We have already conducted an extensive analysis of the significance of the Banco Master fraud and its relationship to the Brazilian bourgeois state. The depth and degree of degeneration of this scandal are directly linked to the crisis of the capitalist system and further deepen the demoralization of bourgeois institutions.

The new revelations come to light amidst the presidential election campaign and appear to be a desperate move by Bolsonaro's supporters to try and narrow the gap between Flávio Bolsonaro and Lula in the polls. Desperate, because André Mendonça himself seems to have done favors for Daniel Vorcaro, and as is already public knowledge, the Bolsonaro family received tens of millions of dollars from Vorcaro, supposedly for the production of a biographical film about Bolsonaro.

On the other hand, André Mendonça's actions had an immediate result, which is beginning to be reflected in the analyses of the main bourgeois newspapers and in the opinion polls conducted after Alexandre de Moraes's statement. The new polls show a technical tie between Lula and Flávio Bolsonaro in the second round and rule out any possibility of Lula winning in the first round. In fact, some polls show Flávio ahead of Lula in the second round.

Beyond the impact observed in opinion polls, Mendonça's actions influenced the mobilization of Bolsonaro's base, which turned out in greater numbers for Flávio Bolsonaro's rally on Avenida Paulista this September 7th holiday. It was much larger than the Bolsonaro rally in Copacabana at the beginning of the election campaign.

The role of the Supreme Federal Court in bourgeois democracy.
For a long time, the Supreme Federal Court (STF) played a discreet role in maintaining the bourgeois order in Brazil. It maintained an appearance of sobriety and impartiality when deciding on important political issues. Eleven men and women who were not elected by the people hold the power to decide on fundamental issues for the working class.

In the last two decades, this has changed drastically. The bourgeoisie has used various maneuvers, including employing the Supreme Federal Court as its instrument, to weaken the PT government, first with the Mensalão scandal (2005), then Lava Jato (2014), and other legal proceedings with the same objective.

The Supreme Federal Court (STF) also found itself compelled to act during the Bolsonaro administration, which proved incapable of confronting the Covid-19 pandemic and never missed an opportunity to escalate class struggle.

The participation of the judiciary in Brazilian politics has been immense over the last 20 years. However, with this exposure has also come demoralization. It is becoming increasingly evident that the Supreme Court justices have their individual interests linked to their obligations as representatives of this bourgeois institution. Nine Supreme Court justices and 12 direct relatives are partners in at least 31 companies. Thirteen are law firms or legal institutes, and six are involved in the management, purchase, sale, and rental of their own real estate.

Without lobbying from influential businessmen and politicians, they would never become Supreme Court justices. The process of nominating and approving new justices is a rigged game, where the bourgeoisie holds all the cards. The judiciary is a fundamental cog in the machine of the bourgeois state.

The hero of incorrigible reformers.
Alexandre de Moraes became a hero to many reformists by leading the investigations and convictions related to the attempted coup d'état on January 8, 2023, including holding Jair Bolsonaro accountable and convicting him. After a period in Papudinha (a luxury prison), Bolsonaro is now under house arrest. Bolsonaro has become ineligible to run for office and is not participating in the 2026 elections.

Alexandre de Moraes is a faithful representative of the bourgeoisie. He represents a wing of the bourgeoisie that understands the Bolsonaro family as a danger to the bourgeois order itself. Bolsonaro's truculent and provocative way of governing could cause a social explosion at any moment.

That is why Alexandre de Moraes acted against Jair Bolsonaro's illegal actions and the use of the state apparatus during the 2022 electoral process, and later led the Supreme Court's conviction of the former president. Due to the acclaim from sectors of the reformist left, who considered Moraes trustworthy and who was working to convict Bolsonaro for his crimes against the working class, the false impression was created that he was aligned with the interests of the PT leadership and that he acted to ensure Lula's return to the Planalto Palace in the 2022 elections.

Alexandre de Moraes did not conduct the process out of any appreciation for democracy or any sympathy for the working class. He was following the interests of his class, and if it hadn't been Alexandre de Moraes conducting the process, it would have been another Supreme Court justice on duty. This is because the Bolsonaro government caused even more damage to bourgeois institutions than the bourgeoisie itself would have liked, which threatened political stability.

Alexandre de Moraes tries to intimidate André Mendonça.
Alexandre de Moraes will not resign, contrary to what Estadão , Folha de São Paulo , and O Globo requested in their editorials . Moraes reacted by taking the case to the full Supreme Court, so that all ministers can decide together on the progress of the process investigating his relationship with Daniel Vorcaro. Whether this session will be open or closed will be in the hands of the current president of the Court, Edson Fachin.

On September 1st, Moraes and Mendonça had a heated discussion behind the scenes at the Supreme Court. Moraes argued that a Supreme Court justice can only be investigated with the approval of all the justices of the Supreme Court and that he shouldn't have done what he did. In other words, the corporatism among the magistrates is explicit; there are eleven men and women above the law. Mendonça only acted as he did due to pressure from Bolsonaro's supporters, and it's unclear whether he will take the case to its ultimate consequences. Probably, Alexandre de Moraes's future will be decided after the elections.

Alexandre de Moraes doesn't seem too worried; he expects to be shielded by his friends on the Supreme Court. On September 2nd, Moraes was caught on camera laughing heartily with other Supreme Court justices during a coffee break. The photo was taken by photographer Brenno Carvalho of O Globo. The image circulated in all major media outlets.

The demagogic way in which the far right attacks the Supreme Federal Court (STF) reflects the degeneration of this bourgeois institution. The far right often accuses the STF of acquitting or significantly reducing the sentences of defendants in corruption cases, and of releasing criminals arrested by the police. Obviously, for Bolsonaro's supporters, this only applies to enemies; allies will be protected.

The reformist left, which in the past was labeled by the bourgeois press as "anti-system," today are the most selfless defenders of this bourgeois institution. They even appeal to the ministers of the Supreme Court when a case of interest to the working class is being judged. They are never heard, yet they return to plead when another demand is before the court, diverting all the struggles of the working class from street demonstrations to the institutions of the bourgeois state.

What interests revolutionary communists is explaining the process of demoralization of bourgeois institutions. An AtlasIntel/Estadão survey released on March 20 of this year reveals that 60% of the population does not trust the Supreme Federal Court (STF). This distrust has increased significantly after the Banco Master scandal broke.

Another point we must emphasize is that Banco Master is a small bank compared to giants like Itaú, Bradesco, and Santander. If a second-rate figure like Daniel Vorcaro has such close relationships with federal deputies, governors, and Supreme Court justices, imagine the political power that the main shareholders and CEOs of major Brazilian banks wield in Brazilian politics.

The dispute between these two individuals, Moraes and Mendonça, further exposes the inner workings of the bourgeois regime in Brazil. What we can foresee is that an ever-increasing degeneration of bourgeois institutions is underway and deepening. Each day it will become clearer to the working class that it will have to develop its own methods of struggle to overcome the bourgeois state.
https://brasilcomunista.org/moraes-x-mendonca-a-degeneracao-do-stf-e-o-estado-burgues/

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How Modi Govt Stole a Right of the People
Prabhat Patnaik (NewsClick) 24 August 2026

The substitution of MGNREGS by VBGRAMG has resulted in a massive winding down of employment generation-- a 50% drop jobs generated in July 2025 and July 2026. Kerala Nrega workers

Perhaps the most consequential legislation in post-Independence India was passed by Parliament on August 23, 2005 and came into force on February 2, 2006. It was the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act, later to be renamed Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) that was enacted by the United Progressive Alliance-I (UPA-1) government under Left pressure (since the government depended on Left support). It differed from all similar legislation in the past, such as the Food-for-Work programme, in one crucial respect: it made the provision of employment by the government mandatory in rural India whenever there was demand for it, failing which a compensation had to be paid to the job-applicants. It conferred, in short, a right to employment.

True, only one member of the household could ask for employment and that too for a maximum of 100 days per year, but even this limited right meant a fundamental departure. The Indian Constitution had not provided any economic rights to the citizens on a par with the civil and political rights it had guaranteed, and the MGNREGA entailed a partial rectification of this lacuna. Not only did it boost rural incomes, but, precisely because the provision of employment was not left to the discretion of the government, it conferred on the people a right to employment and hence the dignity of citizenship.

Not surprisingly, the MGNREG Scheme, as the programme came to be called, aroused the ire of all the vested interests. The custodians of the feudal order were incensed not only by the increased incomes of the rural poor, but also because many of the rural poor happen to be Dalits who escaped from a “beck-and-call” relationship.

The custodians of the capitalist order were incensed by the fact that the diminution in the relative size of the labour reserves brought about by the MGNREGS increased the bargaining strength of the workers; they commandeered their “lapdog economists” to advance the argument that government expenditure on MGNREGS was simply money down the drain.

They got their chance to roll back the scheme when an arch-reactionary government got elected in 2014 and Narendra Modi became the Prime Minister. Since keeping the communal-fascist cauldron boiling was the top priority of the new government, it was immediately pre-occupied by that “task” and came to “tackle” the MGNREGS a little late; but it eventually did for sure.

The Modi government brought in legislation in 2025, which provided that, from July 1, 2026, a new programme would replace the MGNREGS, whose primary characteristic would be that it was not a rights-based programme. It pretended that instead of the 100 days of employment that the MGNREGS had provided, the new programme VBGRAMG would provide up to 125 days of employment. The new programme was thus touted as providing larger employment than the earlier one, but it was not a demand-driven programme.

Earlier, up to 100 days of employment had to be provided wherever and whenever people demanded work; now up to 125 days of employment could be provided wherever and whenever the Central government chose to provide such employment. This meant that employment did not have to be provided in areas where people were grossly unemployed and in dire need of work; it would be provided only where the Central government was implementing some project that needed labour.

While taking away a right conferred on the people, the Central government also, completely unilaterally, decided to change the pattern of financing of the new employment programme. Earlier, the Central government bore the entire burden of the wage-bill under MGNREGS; the state governments would meet only a part, 25%, of the material costs bill, so that the division of spending between the Centre and the states came roughly to 90:10. Now, under VBGRAMG, the division became 60: 40, and this change was effected without a single word of consultation with state governments.

It is well-known that in India the finances of state governments are more stretched than those of the Central government (otherwise there would be no need for a Finance Commission every five years to decide on the devolution of resources from the Centre to the states). By simply off-loading a substantial part of the expenditure on rural employment to the state governments, the VBGRAMG Act effectively provided for a reduction in the scale of the programme; and what is more, for such a reduction the state governments could then be conveniently blamed.

Looking at the matter another way, employment henceforth would be provided not necessarily where the people were in dire need of it; it would be provided where the Centre chose to provide it, that is on Central government projects, and since the state governments were expected to bear 40% of the costs of the project, the Centre was in effect getting the state governments now to bear the financial burden of some of its own projects.

Thus, the VBGRAMG scheme was a Central government conspiracy to take away a right from the people, to wind down the overall employment spending, and to offload the burden of financing some of its own projects on to the shoulders of state governments.

The Central government, of course, strenuously denied that the employment programme was being reduced in scale, though it was obvious to everyone that it was. In fact, an immediate reason for taking away employment as a right was precisely to curtail the scope and coverage of the programme.

We now have the figures for employment generated for the first month after the introduction of VBGRAMG, that is, for July 2026. There has been as much as a 50% drop between the employment generated in July 2025 and July 2026; the drop is from 153.3 million person-days in July 2025 to 76.7 million person-days in July 2026. Between these two dates the number of households accessing work fell by even more, by 51.45% to 6.894 million in July 2026.

Since we are comparing July with July, no amount of sophistry on the part of the government can possibly explain this drop, other than the simple fact that the programme is being wound down in large numbers of districts in the country. Explanations like the demand for employment being lower this year for some special reasons simply would not stand scrutiny.

The substitution of the MGNREGS by VBGRAMG has not only taken away a right from the people; it has simply resulted in a massive winding down of employment generation. At a time when unemployment has become rampant, when anger over educated unemployment has boiled over to mass protests as in Delhi’s Jantar Mantar, even the provision of unskilled employment in rural India has been under an extraordinarily severe attack.

Such however is the economic logic of neo-liberalism that even this acute social crisis becomes an occasion for making large transfers to crony capitalists. The argument is advanced that to alleviate unemployment, there has to be larger investment for setting up factories and such like, for which the capitalists have got to be incentivised through all sorts of transfers. In the process, government resources are frittered away through such transfers to capitalists, and measures for directly increasing employment in the economy, such as through filling up vacant government posts, especially of school and college teachers, are shunned on the grounds that there are no resources with the government! This charade has been going on for quite some time, accentuating the overall problem of unemployment.

Approximately 1.1 million unfilled teaching posts exist today in government and government-aided schools across India. The filling up of these posts (for which, of course, the cash-strapped state governments have to be financially aided by the Centre) would not only immediately create a million jobs, but several times more when the multiplier effects of such expenditure are taken into account. Filling up such posts on the one hand and extending, not curtailing, the rights-based employment programme on the other, through for instance, extending its coverage from rural to urban India, from 100 days per annum to throughout the year, and from one member per family to whoever demands work, are the obvious solution to the intense crisis of unemployment facing the country.

The question would be immediately raised: where are the resources for it? Such resources can be found precisely by reversing the absurd policy of making transfers to capitalists and instead by imposing on them, and on the rich in general, a combination of a wealth tax and an inheritance tax. To be sure, the arch-reactionary National Democratic Alliance or NDA government cannot be expected to do this; but those who seriously wish to overcome unemployment need above all to shake off the hegemony of neo-liberal ideas.
https://www.newsclick.in/how-modi-govt-stole-right-people

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