The crisis currently involving the Supreme Federal Court (STF), Banco Master, and the relationships among justices, business leaders, and politicians cannot be analyzed merely as a dispute between individuals or political factions. What is coming to light is something deeper: the interplay of economic, political, and legal power within Brazilian capitalism. The Banco Master case is illustrative and helps expose these dynamics. The bank operated by offering financial returns above the capital market average, thereby pressuring other institutions and intensifying competition over the mechanisms of the financial system-including the Credit Guarantee Fund (FGC). At the same time, the bank cultivated ties across various political and economic sectors.
These relationships were not limited to a single political field. There were links with sectors connected to Bolsonarism, such as Flávio Bolsonaro (PL) himself and Senator Ciro Nogueira (president of the PP), but also relationships with figures associated with the Lula government and the PT, such as Jaques Wagner and the former Minister of Finance, Guido Mantega. The problem, therefore, cannot be reduced to a simple dispute between Bolsonarists and Lula supporters. When one observes the network of relationships established around major economic interests, different sectors of the dominant classes and their political representatives emerge.
It is in this context that relations involving the Supreme Federal Court also come into play.
The Supreme Federal Court and privileged power relations
This is not about imagining an abstract Supreme Court, separate from society and the power relations that exist in capitalism. Its justices are part of an institution that concentrates enormous political and legal power and, precisely for that reason, has privileged relationships with economic, political, and legal sectors, as well as with the press.
Gilmar Mendes' example is quite significant. His Institute of Public Law has, over the years, built a space for interaction with the dominant classes. These are events, meetings, and relationships that function as a kind of anteroom to the power of the Republic.
André Mendonça, in turn, also built relationships through his own institute. The problem is not simply the existence of an institute or of academic and/or professional relationships. The issue is that when people who occupy central positions in the state apparatus establish privileged relationships with companies, governments, law firms, and economic groups, a zone of differentiated access is created.
The same problem arises when observing the professional connections of family members of judicial authorities. There are ministers whose wives, children, or other relatives practice law and have clients with interests before the State and its agencies. This model was not invented by a single person or a particular political group. It is part of a broader structure of relationships between the legal, economic, and political worlds. It is a historical characteristic of the Brazilian bureaucracy. Access to key positions in the ruling elite can mean a springboard to belonging to a fraction of the dominant class. Private law firms with connections within high courts such as the STF and STJ are this springboard, among others, such as in tax courts, for example, the federal CARF and the state and municipal TARFs. Defending the defaulter is part of the task of accumulating capital and power.
Returning to the Master case, the problem, therefore, is not simply whether a particular minister committed a crime or not. The structural issue is the existence of relationships that allow certain groups to have privileged access to decision-makers.
And this is not a uniquely Brazilian phenomenon. In different capitalist countries, we find similar mechanisms: one of the most important is the so-called "revolving door" between the State and large companies, where public officials move to the private sector in areas related to their former positions, making use of privileged relationships between public institutions and economic interests.
The problem didn't start with Bolsonaro.
It's important to make a distinction. The fact that Bolsonaro attacked the Supreme Court and that sectors of the left defended the Supreme Court against these threats does not transform it into a progressive institution or an instrument of the working class.
Bolsonaro has effectively placed the Supreme Court at the center of his political attacks. There have been demonstrations against the institution and threats to its authority. This has produced a situation in which the defense of certain bourgeois democratic institutions against Bolsonaro's authoritarianism has become a "catch-22." Anarchists must tactically analyze whether this defense is a concrete political necessity or whether it ends up being a trap that reinforces reformist sectors or Bolsonaro's own ideology.
We understand that combating a specific authoritarian threat is completely different from placing political trust in the Supreme Federal Court (STF). We must not transform the defense of rights and freedoms against the advance of authoritarianism into an abstract defense of state institutions. The STF can, under certain circumstances, confront authoritarian measures from the Executive branch and, as happens in the vast majority of cases, make decisions that affect the interests of the working class. This is the concrete case in the Brazilian Supreme Court, where political and legal differences dissolve when the intent is to attack the rights of the oppressed classes. There are very rare exceptions to this.
We also cannot forget the actions of the Supreme Federal Court (STF) itself during the Lava Jato Operation. The operation, presented as a kind of republican crusade against corruption, had political and geopolitical aims. It even had external relations and support, not only to favor the right wing domestically, but also to modify Brazil's position on the international stage. The Supreme Court validated all kinds of unconstitutional acts, positioning itself not only as a legal agent, but also as a political and economic one. We know that, subsequently, different decisions and events revealed the serious problems in these decisions, as well as in the relations between the STF and other state bodies. All of this was carried out by ministers who openly defended shady interests, and others who yielded to political and media pressures. The revelations of Vaza Jato, starting in 2019, and the country's situation under the Bolsonaro government, led the STF to annul the proceedings and, consequently, restore Lula's political rights.
This demonstrates that institutions do not operate above existing social and political contradictions. They too are permeated by power struggles and class conflict.
The class character of the State
Here we arrive at the structural issue. In any capitalist society, there is an unequal distribution of economic, legal, political, and intellectual resources. Those who possess more wealth generally have a greater capacity to hire lawyers, access institutions, establish political relationships, and influence decisions.
The very benefits of the law and its rigor are not distributed equally throughout society. One's position within the social structure profoundly influences access to resources of power. Without resources, it is simply impossible to defend oneself in higher courts.
This can be observed even in the treatment given to economic and financial crimes. Large operations involving companies, banks, investment funds, and complex interests often reveal networks of relationships that extend beyond the boundaries of a single institution.
The aforementioned "revolving door" is an expression of this dynamic. A public official may investigate a particular company and subsequently leave public service to work in the private sector or provide services to companies that benefit from their experience and contacts. Even when this occurs within the formal limits of the law, there is a broader political problem: the knowledge acquired within the state apparatus and the relationships built within it can be transformed into private capital.
This does not mean claiming that all public officials are individually corrupt or malicious. It means recognizing that state institutions are embedded in a society marked by class inequalities and power relations, and the pressures of this society lead individuals to adapt to these dynamics to maintain the privileges of their position. Often, social democrats intentionally confuse the capitalist state with public service, one of the ways to guarantee some universal right in the face of inequality. We advocate for the self-management of public services, which should serve social interests and not the profits of capitalists or other particular or corporatist interests.
The State does not stand above society. Nor does it represent society, as liberals claim. Its structures largely reproduce existing social relations. The State is an instrument necessarily linked to the dominant classes. This includes both the economically dominant classes (resulting from the ownership of economic means), which subordinate it through economic power-a point on which we agree with Marxists-and the politically dominant classes, which are produced by the State apparatus itself due to the ownership of economic means. The ministers of the Supreme Federal Court (STF) constitute part of this bureaucracy, a ruling elite that is a partner of the dominant classes, and a dominant class in itself, which structurally works against Brazilian workers.
To abandon this critique would mean, in addition to abandoning a position considered "radical," abandoning a concrete sociological analysis of how the relationships between the State, economic power, and social classes function. Obviously, there is some room for individual or collective actions to the contrary, but this is the structural direction.
An anarchist critique cannot be selective.
That is precisely why an anarchist position cannot choose which power relations should be denounced according to the political expediency of the moment.
If a minister confronts Bolsonaro, that doesn't automatically make him a representative of the workers or the oppressed classes.
If a Supreme Court decision prevents an authoritarian measure, or makes a decision that guarantees the expansion of rights, this does not mean that we should abandon criticism of the class character of the institution.
If a particular businessman has ties to sectors of Bolsonaro's political movement, this does not mean that the relationship between capital and the state disappears in sectors linked to Lula's political movement or other political groups.
The Banco Master case perfectly illustrates this dimension. It is necessary to investigate these relationships without transforming the investigation into an instrument for defending one political camp or another. It is necessary to understand the dynamics of class struggle.
Similarly, allegations involving financial operations, pension funds, companies, state governments, and large economic groups need to be understood as part of this broader capitalist-statist structure. The problem is not just identifying which party received a particular donation or which politician knew a particular businessman. It is understanding why large economic interests are able to establish such close relationships with the decision-making centers of the State.
What should the revolutionary position be?
It is precisely at this point that the difference between a socialist position and a liberal defense of institutions becomes apparent.
Revolutionary socialists cannot place abstract republican hopes in the Supreme Federal Court. Nor can they abandon criticism of power structures simply because, at a certain point, the Supreme Federal Court came into conflict with Bolsonaro.
The tactical defense of democratic freedoms against authoritarianism does not require transforming the Judiciary into a strategic ally of the working class.
A revolutionary socialist perspective needs to maintain its political independence from state institutions and different sectors of the ruling classes. It must be able to combat Bolsonaro's ideology while simultaneously criticizing the Supreme Federal Court; denounce corruption and the promiscuous relationships between businesspeople and public officials without turning this into a defense of another political group; and defend the preservation of democratic rights without replacing social organization and struggle with trust in institutions.
The fundamental question is not to discover which group of ministers is more "republican." It is to understand that, in a capitalist and statist society, access to the resources of power is profoundly unequal.
Therefore, revolutionary socialist critique cannot end in defending one institution against another. It needs to question the very social relations that allow money, property, political influence, and privileged access to coexist.
The struggle, therefore, should not be about choosing which sector of the ruling classes will best manage these institutions. It should be about the independent organization of the working class, the effective democratization of power, and the construction of forms of social organization that do not depend on the concentration of economic, political, and legal power in the hands of a minority.
Let's not forget that broad sectors of Brazilian society are clamoring for change and transformation, and that it is not up to us (the left, socialists, revolutionaries, anarchists) to defend this order and these class institutions, such as the Supreme Court, in the name of a lesser evil.
Libertarian Socialist Organization
September 2026
https://socialismolibertario.net/banco-master-stf-e-partidos-institucionais/
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Source:A-infos-en@ainfos.ca
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