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This paper estimates the Brazilian economy's rate of surplus value as well as its underlying determinants, i.e., wage rate and labor productivity between 1996 and 2016. In addition, it builds a theoretical narrative of the Brazilian economy that integrates its political successions, highlighting the governments of Fernando Henrique Cardoso (1995–2002), Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (2003–2010), Dilma Rousseff (2011–August 2016), and the parliamentary coup d'état (December 2015–August 2016). The findings are presented based on the classical political economy tradition, which sees capital-labor struggle as a key, albeit nonexclusive, condition that frames the economic, political, and ideological disputes of society. JEL Classification : B51, E25, N16 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present paper argues that the recent Brazilian crisis was related to a cyclical profit squeeze that took place between 2009 and 2014, following the long expansion that started in 2003. To do so, the cyclical trajectories of the output and the profit rate in the Brazilian economy for the period between 1996 and 2016 are examined by resorting to the framework established by Weisskopf (1979). The results indicate that profit squeezes are rare in the Brazilian economy, possibly due to the truncated character of the business cycles' expansions. However, a profit squeeze did take place in the last cycle, partly as a result of the commodities boom, which attenuated the foreign vulnerability of the economy and allowed for a longer than usual expansion. JEL classification: B50, B51,E32 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]