3. The role of the Class struggle

By its pioneering struggles for the basic means of survival, the emergent prole-tariat in the artisanal and manufacturing centres, which had been developingsince the 19th century, formed itself as a class and began to play a significanthistorical role. It was thus able to take a major part in the revolutionary processwhich was unleashed after the First World War. Its tradition of strike-action andother forms of struggle, coupled with the European experience of a section ofthe immigrant workers, enabled the Brazilian proletariat of Rio de Janeiro, SaoPaulo and Porto Alegre to exercise a crucial influence on the revolutionarymovement which carried the bourgeoisie to power. For there had been a rapiddevelopment of the organization of the Brazilian working-class in the years be-fore 1930, with the spread of the capitalist relations of production diffused bythe industrial revolution.

Octavio Ianni (the first part of this essay was published in NLR 25)

Political process andEconomic development in Brazil2

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However, there were other phenomena which also had an importantbearing on the growth of the working-class. These were all, in one wayor another, linked to changes in the agrarian sector. Massive Europeanimmigration was beginning, caused by the expansion of coffee-culture,the inception of factory production and the suppression of the slave-trade in the mid-19th century (under British pressure). Capital involvedin the slave-trade was being diverted into non-agricultural activities. Thefirst tariff walls were going up. These simultaneous and interrelatedphenomena laid the foundations of industrialization.

As a result, slavery itself was abolished in 1888, and the major obstacleto the radical separation of the producers from the means of productionwas removed. For the slave was in many respects himself a means ofproduction. Consequently, after a certain point slavery obstructed theeconomic rationality characteristic of a fully developed capitalist mode ofproduction. Its abolition was a further precondition of industrialization.

Finally, the chronic crises in coffee-culture forced many labourers intothe cities and towns or back into the subsistence sector; there they pro-vided a pool of labour which manufacturing industry could draw uponwhen it needed. The availability, indeed excess supply of labour wasconsequently increased with a decisive structural impact on the develop-ment of the economy. Industrialization had now become a possiblehistorical option, as the effects of industrial capitalism spread through-out the world. Capital, labour and technology became available withthe direct or indirect protectionism created by special legislation andthe repercussions of the First World War and other capitalist crises onBrazil. Thus entrepreneurial openings emerged and entrepreneurs dulyappeared. In a socio-cultural context which had fostered consciousnessboth of the possibility and necessity of developing the forces of pro-duction, entrepreneurial activity was in fact an inevitable outcome.

But this transformation was neither easy nor immediate. It was notsimply a matter of reordering the different factors of production. Torelease the new economic forces at work, the resistance of the agrarian-commercial bourgeoisie, which controlled the State apparatus and theagencies of national economic policy, had to be overcome. Numerousfacets of the social, political, juridical and cultural order were incom-patible with the needs of the nascent industrial capitalism: the elec-toral system, the power of the colonels (coronelismo), the lack ofdemocratic procedures for forming the necessary elites, the fragility ofthe legislation protecting mines and natural resources, the inefficacyof tariff barriers, the disarray in class relations, the rigidity in style ofdomination which marked successive governments, and so on. Therise of the industrial bourgeoisie thus inexorably entailed a class strugglewhich created and fuelled the political movements of the time. Thus,even before 1930, the industrial bourgeoisie had begun to use the pro-letariat as an instrument or an ally.

The State apparatus was controlled by representatives of the agrarianaristocracy, which could not change it without repudiating itself. Forthe necessary innovations would have involved a break with imperial-ism and a transformation of the levers of power and economic policy

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which it could not effect without self-contradiction: for the agrarianbourgeoisie was essentially an appendage of international capitalism.

As the socio-economic and legal-political orders were too rigid (themark of a dependent economy, the levers of power being controlledfrom abroad), the upsurge of new political and economic forcesshattered the whole existing edifice. Middle-class political movementscame into being, demanding the democratization of institutions, newelectoral legislation, an educational system, an incomes policy, etc. Theproletariat repeatedly went on strike while its movements demandedan eight-hour working day, special safeguards for women and childworkers, improvements in working conditions, the right of associa-tion, freedom to join unions and stage strikes, etc. Agrarian-colonialcivilization could neither confront nor solve these problems. Itaffected to regard working-class demands as a police problem. Ten-sion and conflict naturally became more and more frequent and bitter.Pre-revolutionary conditions favourable to the industrial bourgeoisiewere created. The Liberal Alliance which carried out the 1930 revolu-tion brought together members of the industrial bourgeoisie, thefinancial bourgeoisie, the liberal professions, members of the middle-class, the petty-bourgeoisie, the proletariat and military groups. Indifferent degrees, and with different ultimate aims, they were allcommitted to the democratization of the country, and the liquidationof the rigid, externally-oriented structure which dominated it.

Thus in its formative years the working class not merely fought for itsown economic interests, it also fought against the enemies of the risingindustrial bourgeoisie, the agrarian aristocracy and its ties withimperialismproducts of a society which had exhausted its potential.Instead of frontally attacking its natural enemy, the bourgeoisie, theproletariat temporarily associated itself with it. The old order had to bedestroyed, and the industrial bourgeoisie did not have the power to dothis by itself. Moreover, the proletariat was aware that the eliminationof the bourgeoisie presupposed the full growth of a capitalist mode ofproduction, which would realize that de facto socialization of the meansof production which is a prerequisite of socialism. Under the inspira-tion of some of its most important leaders, the proletariat followed apolitical strategy which involved continual tactical agreements with theindustrial bourgeosie.

The bourgeoisie, for its part, sought to meet some of the proletariatsclaims, while in return demanding its collaboration in or endorsementof various political campaigns: for the protection of Brazilian naturalresources from imperialism, for the abolition of regulations permittinguncontrolled remittance of profits abroad, for the prohibition of certaintypes of financial alliance between Brazilian and foreign entrepreneurs,for the realization of an agrarian reform, for the containment of anti-democratic groups, and so on. This situation has naturally acceleratedthe political education of the working-class. However, it has alsoobscured the lines of demarcation between social classes and theirrespective interests. To a considerable extent, this kind of educationis conducive to the consolidation of bourgeois democracy, within whichsocial peace and the Welfare State are consecrated aims of society.

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Because of the very fast rate of absorption into industry of large num-bers of workers from rural areas (including women and young peopleunder 18), Brazilian industrial society has not yet faced critical problemsin the field of the class-struggle. The modern techniques of ideologicalprocessing utilized by the ruling groups, and the recent proletarianiza-tion of the workers, which has abruptly raised their standard of livingabove the level prevalent in the countryside, help to ease the tasks ofthe industrial bourgeoisie. For they eliminate or at least attentuate themost serious foci of tension.

In this context, it is worth drawing attention to the situation of theCommunist Party, which was outlawed when a section of the rulingclass felt that the combativity and organizational capacity of thecommunists were too successful in precipitating or influencing politicalevents.7 Pressures from imperialism and from the more conservativesectors of society secured the abrogation of the parliamentary mandateof the Communist deputies and the cancellation of the partys registra-tion. Nevertheless, the more advanced wing of the industrial bour-geoisie has not broken its links with most left-wing groups, includingthe Communist Party. It has tried rather to ensure that as far as possiblethese groups play a political rle favourable to its own designs, withoutchallenging its control of key political positions. It has been common forpoliticians to secure elections with votes from communists and theirsympathizers and then to throw communist leaders in jail or harrasstheir non-electoral activities. In this way they comply with the require-ments of an essentially unstable power, based on the interplay ofsocial classes and of the political groups into which they are divided.

This situation does not stem solely from the kind of leadership preva-lent on the Left. It is also a consequence of the immaturity of theworking-class, whose remarkable historical experience since the end ofthe 19th century (in fruitful association with the traditions of immigrantEuropean workers) has been dulled and diluted by rapid and sweepingchanges in the occupational and demographic structure of the class.The absorption of successive waves of workers from rural areas intothe industrial sector, necessitated by its swift expansion and diversifica-tion, creates or preserves in the proletariat aspirations incompatiblewith its class situation. The myth of the self-made man; the ideal ofsocial ascent for oneself or ones children; the vigorous implementa-tion of a policy of social peace and other techniques of the WelfareState; the immediate material benefits of the rapid diversification ofthe system of production, which has already begun to create a working-class aristocracyall these have hindered the development of moreaudacious political movements. Under these conditions, the formationof working-class consciousness through trade-union, party and as-sociational activity has encountered major obstacles.

7 After the abortive 1935 rising, the Communist Party was driven underground. Itre-emerged as a legal party in 1945, when Prestes and other Communist leaders werereleased from prison. The partys strength thereafter grew rapidly. In the elections ofDecember 1945 it polled 700,000 votes, 15 per cent of the total cast, including morevotes in Sao Paulo than any other party. By 1947 it claimed 200,000 members. InMay of that year the Dutra government outlawed it, and it was driven undergroundagain. It has remained an illegal party in Brazil to this day.

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It should be borne in mind, too, that the proletarian condition cannot bedefined solely in terms of income and industrial work-situation. Al-though these factors are important, indeed preponderant, the prole-tariats conditions of life and image of itself also depend on its relativeposition within the total class society. In Brazil, there are classes orgroups beneath it in the social scalein particular the unemployed,under-employed and even fully employed agricultural labourers. Hencethe proletarian situation is not necessarily perceived as bad by theworker. Against the background of the whole society, the proletariansees himself as relatively privileged, compared with his previous situ-ation in the countryside or compared with those still in the agricul-tural, pastoral or extractive sectors.

Because landowners continue to enjoy considerable political power inBrazil, through their traditional techniques of control over the largenumber of voters who live in rural areas, basic institutional reforms havestill not taken place in the agrarian sector. Living conditions in thecountry are generally worse than in the towns. It is in the country thatthere is hunger, malnutrition and chronic pauperism. A rigid pattern ofcontrol dominates individuals and groups. Capitalist civilization haspenetrated only slowly into agrarian society, with the result that theworst living conditions in Brazil are those of rural workers. Thepolitical and cultural horizons of the rural populationcaboclos8

working in a wide gamut of economic conditions, ranging from wage-earning through indenture to disguised slavery, which is the situationof some Indians and mestizos in the interstices of the systemmay benarrow. But segments of the capitalist universe have begun to im-pinge on them, diffusing new modes of thought and action, whichmake politicization possible. They live at subsistence level, but theirleaders have been able to organize them into peasant leagues (ligascamponesas) which are now multiplying and intensifying the tensionsrife in the emerging class society of Brazil. The integration of hugenumbers of agricultural labourers into the historical movement of adeveloping class society shifts the whole equilibrium of bourgeoisdemocracy. While the proletarian situation becomes ever more crystal-lized in the countryside, with ever greater degrees of alienation of theworkers from their work, the peasants begin to take importantinitiatives in the political field, which help the working-class tobroaden its own perspectives. The very rigidity of the pattern of dom-ination in the countryside becomes a dynamic determinant of theradicalization of political struggle. While the proletariat remainstemporarily bemused by the bourgeoisie, under the influence of itsleadership, rural conditions generate a fiercer combativity in a sectionof the emergent agricultural proletariat. This is one of the reasons whya faction of the bourgeoisie urgently desires an agrarian reform, withinthe framework of private property. Relations of production in thecountryside are so anachronistic compared with the possibilities of thedeveloping forces of production that the more lucid section of thebourgeoisie realizes that such conditions are pre-revolutionary. Thusthere is now a race for the peasantry in which conservatives andliberals constantly compete with the left for the leadership in the rural

8 Caboclo is the Brazilian word for peasant or agricultural worker.

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world. Hence, too, the bourgeoisie tries every device to divide the leftand to cloud the proletariats vision of its political and economicinterests.

4. The Party System

The bourgeois democratic rgime in Brazil has not yet successfullypermeated all major sectors of national life. Wide areas of the socio-economic, political, legal and educational systems have not yet beendemocratized at all, or have been so only incompletely or in distortedfashion. The structure and functioning of the very foundations ofdemocracythe legislative, executive and judicial systemare them-selves by no means fully democratic in Brazil.

Brazilian political parties are striking illustrations of this basic situation.They are probably the clearest expressions in the present phase ofBrazilian history of the multiple contradictions, distortions and pres-sures inherent in a period of structural transformation. Brazil is still inthe throes of the transition from an agrarian-commercial to an urban-industrial civilization, and the political parties accurately mirror theambiguities of this phase. It is within the partiesor functionallyequivalent agenciesthat he persistent strength of old structures andthe thrusting vigour of new forces can be most clearly discerned.

Analysis of the structure and functioning of the national parties raisestwo fundamental problems, around which others cluster. In the firstplace, Brazilian political parties are not in fact national, although theyare formally so. In the second place, their pattern does not correspondto the emerging class structure. An analysis of these two aspects of theparty system will provide the key to the major political problems thatarise in an epoch of development. Let us look at these two features ofthe countrys political system: other important themes will emerge inthe course of the discussion.

Since 1946, the Constitution has stipulated that all political parties mustbe national in scope. To prevent the proliferation of State-wide orregional parties, one of the alleged causes of the fall of the Old Republic(prior to 1930), the new Constitutional Charter required that allpolitical parties be registered as nation-wide organizations, and regardthemselves as such, whatever the local or regional densities of theirsupporters or voters. This safeguard was intended to prevent excessiveinterference by State governors or regional interests in federal politics.It was also intended to promote the democratization of the electoralsystem, by making nation-wide political campaigns obligatory. As thenational party is, in fact, a prerequisite of democracy, and as theconstitutionalists of 1946 were reacting strongly against the experienceof the dictatorship of the Estado Novo (193745), this regulation metlittle opposition.

The new measure has not been a success. Even today, nearly 20 yearsand innumerable federal, state and municipal electoral campaigns later,Brazilian parties are not fully national. Factions linked to state orregional interests still predominate within each organization, so that

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lucaspatHighlight

political parties are much more like agglomerations of groups thancohesive units. The population of Brazil is still dispersed in differentregions, unevenly affected by civilization, marked by unequal humanand natural resources, various levels of economic development,distinct rhythms of productive expansion, and wide differences inpolitical maturity. Thus the parties have great difficulty in adaptingthemselves to a national model. All are affected by this underlyingreality, which dissolves their ideological and practical unity anddiminishes their efficacity.

Moreover, the party system initiated in 1946 did not grow out of aprevious period of free political activity. The dictatorship in forcebetween 193745 deprived both politicians and ordinary citizens of theexperience needed to make a success of the new political system. Underthe Estado Novo, all political organizations and activities were whollyforbidden. The continuity of the bourgeois democratic process whichhad gained impetus in the 193037 period was thus interrupted.Neither of the rival industrial or agrarian-commercial bourgeoisies weresufficiently strong to seize power and implement their programmes. Inconsequence, the political leadership of the Republic had to exercisedictatorial power, a kind of bonapartism, which completely stifled thepolitical, cultural and artistic life of the country. The social sciences, forexample, could not be pursued except in strictly academic fashion or inthe impoverished guise of genteel literatureapart, of course, fromeconomics, which gained a new status under the rgime, because ofthe increasing seriousness of the tasks which faced it.

These general conditions explain the paradox that large landownersfrom the North-East and industrialists from Sao Paulo, exporters fromRio de Janeiro and workers from Porto Alegre, can be found in thesame parties. As the state sections of the parties follow their localleaders, one and the same party can in an extreme case defend Right,Centre and Left positions of different kinds at the same time in differentparts of the country. For instance, the Brazilian Labour Party (PTB),which claims to represent the industrial working class, is linked in theNorth-East to groups attached to archaic forms of labour use. TheNational Democratic Union (UDN), which in Sao Paulo is on theextreme right, in Minas Gerais is a centre party which includes themost progressive liberals in the state. The same is true of the otherbourgeois parties.

This phenomenon is exacerbated (and illuminated) by the survival ofcaudilhismo and similar patterns of political leadership and organization.Caudilhismo and its local form coronelismo, the product of patterns ofpatrimonial domination characteristic of an agrarian civilization, hasbeen an essential element in the national political system. Bourgeoisdemocracy has clashed with it at one level, although at another it hassought to use for its own benefit the organizational and imperativetechniques of the colonel in his various existing types. Of course, thisis no longer the traditional form of caudilhismo. It is a modified versionwhich appears within the framework of populism, an urban phenomenonlinked to the emergence of an immature middle-class and proletariat.Since these classes are not sufficiently structured to set their own goals,

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bourgeois groups formulate populism for them. Populism is a tran-sitional version of politics for the propertyless masses in general. Thosebourgeois parties and politicians are populist which use an idiom com-prehensible to the urban masses, the uneducated and the illiterate. Buttheir language is at the same time one of abstractions. They do notdefend the real interests of the people; they do not confront the realproblems of the middle and working classes. They discourse vaguelyabout the helplessness of the worker or the peasant, the inadequacy ofthe educational system, and social injustices; they promise to bringsuccour to the dispossessed; and so on. But the abstract phraseologynever comes to grips with the concrete problems which form the life-situation of the exploited. Once elected, the populists abandon orreduce their contacts with the people, and busy themselves with theirown lucrative affairs.

Populism as an ideology presupposes social ascent as a universalpossibility. It is a vision of the world, formed within the ideologicalambience of a rising industrial bourgeoisie in a developing country,which affirms as a general social fact the mobility of isolated individualsin the pioneering phase of industrial capitalism. It assumes that thepattern of mobility characteristic of a period of growth and diversifica-tion of capitalist relation of production are permanent. There is anincreasing diversification of the social system in the formative stage ofindustrial capitalism, with the result that the exploited classes becomesuffused with the mystique of general and permanent social ascent.This is the dynamic substance of populism. The progress of thebourgeoisie is presented as the progress of the whole society, so thatother classes become either docile or receptive to the influence ofbourgeois ideals.

The second question can now be posed: what is the degree of adapta-tion of the party system to the emerging class structure? The answer isthat there is an incomplete correspondence between the parties (withtheir patterns of leadership, relations to economic power, electoralpractices, heterogeneous links with classes, etc.) and the vital socialforces of the nation.

The large number of political parties is not in itself an index of thedistortion of Brazilian political institutions. On the contrary, it accur-ately translates a social structure in which social classes are incompletelyformed, because of the uneven maturation of the different regions ofBrazil. This the reason why the legal parties are so numerous: theBrazilian Labour Party (PTB) the National Labour Party (PTN), theSocial Labour Party (PST) , the Rural Labour Party (PRT), the BrazilianSocialist Party (PSB), the Christian Democrat Party (PDC), the Social Pro-gressive Party (PSP), the Popular Representation Party (PRP), the SocialDemocratic Party (PSD), the National Democratic Union (UDN), theRepublican Party (PR) and the Liberal Party (PL). Parties proliferatebecause social classes in Brazil are fragmented into more or less hermeticsegments, polarized round narrow interests and divided by the unevensocio-economic development of the country. The interpenetration ofsocio-economic sectors at different stages of development, via theirlinks with federal and imperialist interests, makes possible the forma-

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tion of numerous parties led by men representing divergent pressuresor groups.

Moreover, these parties do not function strictly as such. Although theypossess statutes and programmes, they very often act simply as con-venient tickets behind which random groups or candidates can repre-sent or express their interests and mobilize their resources at electiontimes. They are institutions devoid of durable political significance,which adopt programmes or leaders as a result of the contingentinterplay of real political forces in electoral periods.

At this point, the artificial and distorting character of the Brazilianparty system becomes clear. Far from expressing the real class relationsat work within the society, it functions imply in terms of combinationsof sectional interests and sets of tactical compromises, which camou-flage the game of realpolitik from certain sectors of society. Only thoseunaffiliated candidates with bargaining power or a coincidence ofinterests with the leadersor rather the proprietorsof a party cansecure the necessary party registration. What happens therefore is thatregistration is only granted when the candidates or the groups theyrepresent are prepared to back the deals in which the leaders of theparty are interested. This mechanism has enabled the bourgeois fac-tions that control the majority of parties to incorporate left-winggroups without a party organization into reformist or even conserva-tive movements and campaigns. As the bourgeoisie always has thegreater bargaining powerfor it controls not only financial resourcesbut the parties themselvesgroups on the Left have allowed themselvesto become compromised with the platforms and programmes of bour-geois parties. In my view, this is an important aspect of the history ofnationalism in Brazil. It is in this sense that the party system, althoughit continually adjusts itself flexibly to social conditions in the country,represents a remarkable distortion of the real political forces in Brazil.These forces can only express themselves through the mediation of aweb of parties and processes which dislocate the fundamental realitiesof Brazilian society. But this is not all.

On the one hand, there emerge illegal parties and groups, most ofthem left-wing. These formations represent interests which bourgeoisdemocracy deprives of legal expression. The following organizationsfall into this category: Brazilian Communist Party (PCB), the Com-munist Party of Brazil (PCB),9 Workers Policy (POLOP), the TiradentesPolitical Movement (MRT), the Union of Communist Youth (UJC),Popular Action (AP), the Group for Popular Action (GAP), and theMovement of Civic Assembly (MAC). Since conservative and liberalgroups have legal outlets in the parties, he majority of these groups areleft-wing. At the same time, however, the powerful imperialist interestsin Brazil, linked to the agrarian sector, lave created or inspired certainspecially aggressive organizations (the MAC, for instance) to counter-balance democratic campaigns and victories. The structural-historicalsignificance of all these formations lies in the maladaptation and inco-

9 The Communist Party of Brazil is a break-away movement from the BrazilianCommunist Party, which it accuses of revisionism. Founded in 1961, its mainstrength is in Recife.

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herence of the existing system of political parties. As institutionalizedpolitical life expresses effective political reality so incompletely, illegalformations arise, especially on the left.

Still other political manifestations elude both the legal and illegalparty systems. Various public and professional organizations have comeinto existence in Brazil, which continually assume political functionsand by doing so alter the whole national political process. Particularlyat moments of crisis, when the party system reveals all its limitationsand inadequacies, these organizations have been crucially importantfor the outcome of political situations. The following formations areof this kind: the National Parliamentary Front (FNP), DemocraticParliamentary Action (APD), the National Union of Students (UNE), theTrades Union Congress (CGT), the United Front (CGT, UNE, FNP), andCatholic Action (AC). At times of crisis, these can even become the van-guard of mass political movements, displaying an initiative andflexibility which the parties lack. Some of these organizations, whichrepresent currents both of the liberal wing of the bourgeoisie and of theexploited classes, have of ten acted in a bold and timely way. All themajor political events of the past decade, and especially of the last fewyears, have seen the active, indeed often decisive, intervention ofstudent organizations, trade unions and extra-party parliamentaryalliances.10

However, the political life of the country is not exhausted even then. Inan inexperienced and immature bourgeois democracy, these groupsand institutions are not in a position to deal with all political events.The dominant industrial bourgeoisie lacks the strength either to imposeits objectives on society or to coalesce with agrarian-colonial civiliza-tion. As a result, power continually oscillates this way and that,requiring clever, conciliatory, flexible, malicious leaders. The specialityof some Presidents, especially Getulio Vargas (193045 and 195054)and Joao Goulart (19611964), has been a talent for half-tones, fornuances, for duplicity, for continual manoeuvring of parties, factions,and classes. It has been a singular Prince who has ruled in Brazil.

The manoeuvres of the President always involve the mounting of aso-called military device. No ruler can attempt to carry out an originalprogramme without an adequately organized military apparatus behindhim. Janio Quadros fell from power, despite his talent, because hecould not maintain one. An inexperienced, provincial politician, witha pronounced self-image as a caudilho, he either failed to see the needfor, or did not know how to create, a loyal military base. GetulioVargas in 1954, at the height of right-wing reaction, realized that hismilitary apparatus had been undermined. He fell because he had lostthe military basis of his power. Suicide was only the second act.

For the various branches of the opposition can also manoeuvre orinfiltrate the Armed Forces. Any political movement which under-

10 The crisis precipitated in 1961 by the resignation of Janio Quadros when hisconstitutional successor, Joao Goulart, was abroad, was a particularly notableexample.

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stands the rules of realpolitik in Brazil includes the military in its plans.There is no effective political power in Brazil without potential fire-power. Such are the rules of the game, which are, in fact. accepted bythe whole society, although the current democratic ideal defines thearmed forces as outside and above the political arena. Because of thetransitional nature of the national economy and the heterogeneity ofthe political parties, the groups competing for power are not strongenough to win and hold it by themselves. In this situation the militaryestablishment, and especially the army, acts as a remarkable arbitratingpower. In consequence, the armed force have become the object of theattentions, insinuations and manoeuvres of all ambitious parties inBrazilwhile in the same breath everyone praises the democraticspirit of the national army.

However, when Brazilian politicians Speak of the democratic spirit ofthe Army, they mean simply its receptiveness to the insinuations andmanoeuvres of civilian politicians. Since Brazilian society is undergoingprofound changes and is still highly heterogeneous in its class structure,the army has tended to play a key rle both in the preservation of orderand in the decisions of the federal government. However, the autono-mous power of the army vis-a-vis the balance of political forces isalways in correlation with dominant currents in national political life.The singularity of the Brazilian Army lies in the fact that the forceswhich do not prevail in the civilian arena do not prevail in the army.For the army as an institution is integrated into the wider society.

Such, in broad outline, is the structure of the national political system.In it political power derives not only from economic power, but alsofrom the power represented by the Armed Forcesand the CatholicChurch. While the Church plays a crucial rle at election times, everygovernment in Brazil in ordinary periods tries to use it for its own ends.Thus the cross and the sword become co-ordinates of the politicalgame.

The concrete events of Brazilian politic can only be understood withinthis framework. In spite of all the more or less contingent institutionalcrystallizations and spontaneous organizations in Brazil, the livingforces of national politics can be divided into three main currents. Thefirst is conservative and linked to the traditional agrarian-colonialsector: it is reactionary. The second is liberal and committed to in-dustrial development and capitalist expansion in the countryside: it isreformist. The third is left-wing and is based on the urban andto alesser extentrural proletariat: it wants a transition to socialism. Thesepositions are in practice expressed in many different forms, rangingfrom fascist to revolutionary tendencies. But they are the major currentsin Brazilian politics today, around which parties and movementscluster.

5. State and development

Rupture with the agrarian and colonial world was achieved by arevolutionary struggle in Brazil, which redistributed power amongsocial classes, created national political parties, and produced a codifica-

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tion of labour laws, a new university system, a widespread demo-cratization of Brazilian life, a reform of the State apparatus and manyother changes. Above all, the remoulding of the State was immediatelyand absolutely necessary to the development of the bourgeois revolu-tion. The renovated structure of the State apparatus expressed both thenew configuration of power in the country and the needs of thedeveloping forces of production and class relations in Brazil. Thus, in ahistorical perspective, the rle of the State underwent a radical trans-formation.

Prior to 1930, the State had been organized on the liberal model. Thismodel had been adopted in 188911 as a demonstration to the world ofBrazilian political maturity. It was influenced by the intimate, imperiouscontacts between the national elite and those countries which con-trolled the Brazilian economy. But as economic relations with othercountriesmainly Great Britain during the greater part of the 19thcentury, and United States from the first decades of the 20th centurywere relations of dependence, the liberal model imposed on the Stateonly served to create new bases for this domination. The economic andpolitical liberalism with which England and France, in particular, im-bued the Brazilian political and literary elites, allowed these countriesand the USA to preserve the minimal institutional requirements forcolonial exploitation.

Something similar had happened in 1822, when Brazil won its indepen-dence. A bargain was struck between Great Britain and Portugalwhereby Britain began to exercise control over the young countrydirectly: this was the price Brazil paid for its independence. Throughoutthe 19th century Great Britain played the rle of a metropolitancountry. Only at the end of the century did the USA dislodge Britain andbegin to dominate the Brazilian scene. In recent decades, since 1930 andespecially since 1955,12 the North American presence in Brazil has be-come more and more marked. This has, of course, resulted in one ofthe main difficulties facing the national economythe heavy losses tointernal capital accumulation caused by imperialist appropriation of aconsiderable part of the national surplus.

The Republican Constitution, then, did not contain so much as aparagraph on the economy in either its 1891 or 1926 version. Theagrarian-colonial civilization in force until 1930 defined the economicrle of the State merely as that of a tax-collecting agency. Economicintervention by the State was repugnant to the liberal conscience of thenations leaders. As an essentially agrarian nation, Brazil would fulfilits natural destiny without any need for the State to interfere with thisineluctable vocation. Arguing from the physiocratic doctrine that allwealth is produced by the soil, the rulers of Brazil resisted the pro-tectionist measures advocated by more enlightened politicians. Indus-trialization, which depended on a minimal level of protection, was

11 In 1889, military officers staged a coup which brought the Braganza Empire inBrazil to an end. The Republic was proclaimed and a Federal Constitution wasadopted in 1891.12 Date of the accession to the Presidency of Juscelino Kubitschek.

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fought as an exogenous phenomenon alien to the national destiny.Thus it was that the agrarian aristocracy, in harmony with the interestsof international capitalism, defined the liberal model of the State.

The paramountcy of the agrarian-colonial sector in the nationaleconomy marked the whole society, suffusing its institutions andideologies. Faced with new economic and political forces, the agrarianbourgeoisie which controlled the State apparatus was unable to developinstitutions and techniques which could allow the new groups toconsolidate and expand. Its pattern of rule did not permit the construc-tive canalization of the claims of the incipient industrial and financialbourgeoisie, or the emergent proletariat and urban middle class. Thisrigidity was, of course, one of the causes of the revolutionary processthat was so greatly to curtail the power of the agrarian-commercialsector. It should be noted that this rigidity did not derive solely fromthe internal structure of the system, in which the export sector domin-ated until the beginning of this century. It also stemmed from imperial-ist control, which retained overseas nearly all the economic and evenpolitical centres of decision of the system. Precisely because these werethe very conditions of existence of the colonial order, the system wasnever flexible enough to stabilize itself at other levels of integration andviability. Because it was externally-oriented (as an offshoot of imperial-ism), all changes had to be generated from abroad, as it was in thisdirection that all the mechanisms and channels of transformation were set.

After 1930, the first evidence of the new structure of power was theincreasing pressure in national politics of the interests of the industrialand financial bourgeoisie, the middle-class and the proletariat, side byside with thedecreasingpressure of the interests of the agrarianaristocracy. The State gradually became sensitive to the claims of thosesocial classes which controlled no wealth but were now irrevocably tobe treated as free owners of labour power. Given its new bourgeoisconfiguration, the State apparatus began to respond to the pressures ofwage-earners and to democratize the rgime: bourgeois democracy wasborn. The 193745 dictatorship consolidated the power of the industrialand financial bourgeoisie, which lacked the strength to rule alone andso had to mobilize military and police power against the forces both ofthe left and the extreme right. It had definitively to eliminate theextremist tendencies which had given life and impetus to the revolu-tionary process that had carried the industrial bourgeoisie and financecapital to power. This was the raison dtre of the dictatorship.

The State has thus, little by little, gravitated towards control overnational economic policy. Sometimes compromising with imperialistpressures, sometimes resisting them, the State apparatus has been usedas an agency for accelerating or regulating economic growth. In apiecemeal way, it has become the main locus of economic decision inBrazil. To develop the national economy, it has used fiscal and mone-tary policy, and manipulated foreign exchange rates; it has proposedinstitutional reforms and implemented a deliberate investment policy;it has created and run mixed or public enterprises to improve the tech-nical infrastructure of the economy; it has promoted sectoral andregional planning and encouraged entrepreneurship.

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The structural transformations which have propelled industrialization,and the accompanying shift in economic policy towards national pro-ductive forces and away from the interests of international capitalism,have imposed an ever greater rle on the State. A new socio-economicstructure is emerging in Brazil. There is a shortage of private capital forthe outlay required by modern industrial installations. Private enter-prise demands that the activities of importers and foreign industrialistsbe checked. Class relations are being defined in a wider historical frame-work. The agrarian sector remains decisive to industrial expansionbecause of the need for foreign exchange to pay for the import ofmachines, tools, and know-how. All this has meant that the State hasnot only had to be remodelled, but has also had to become a keyparticipant in development programmes.

The growth of the forces of production and of Brazilian society itselfis not a spontaneous process, the consequence of a fortunate con-vergence of favourable conditions and factors. Besides its economic,political and historical conditions, development also depends on aconscious decision, a choice made among the different options thathistory offers to men. It cannot occur without a new historical con-sciousness, in which the future largely negates the past and present.Thus it was that the industrial and financial bourgeoisie, in collabora-tion with the middle-class and the proletariat, made the 1930 revolutionto quicken the growth of capitalist civilization in Brazil.

6. Capitalism or Socialism?

In its struggle for econonmic emancipation, Brazil has come a long way.But the goal has not yet been reached. The movement for liberationwhich began around 1930 is still on the march and will have to fightmany decisive battles inside and outside the country. Colonialism andimperialism have suffused the whole of Brazilian civilization, through-out the entire history of the country. The struggle for national emanci-pation could not obtain all its objectives in a few decades. Because it isclosely integrated into international, social and economic systems,Brazilian society is still profoundly pervaded by crystallizations andprocesses which betray the inheritance and the presence of imperialism.Brazil remains a dependent country. Given the way in which it islinked to imperialism, it must still be defined, fundamentally, as acountry within the orbit of the dollar and the Organization of AmericanStates (OAS). For this is the reason why the country remains under-developed, although its volume of capital per person is rising, and itspolitical and economic relations with the USA continually change. Theway in which the economic surplus is used, whether it is sent abroad orretained at home, reveals a dependent country, unable to decide its owndomestic and foreign economic policy. Only a small proportion of theeconomic surplus is tapped for internal capital accumulation, a typicalfeature of underdevelopment. For underdevelopment is not simply astate in-itself, it is rather a specific way of relating to oneself and to othercountries, to the total system within which the nation must live. It isnot a state in-itself, but for-others, unable to become for-itself. Under-development is a mode of being produced by international relations ofdependence and submission. Its liquidation can only be a political act.

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Since countries are linked through the men who control the means ofproduction and appropriate the surplus of the nation, the people of adependent country can only become their own masters by deliberateaction, politically defined and realized.

Thus, to fight bourgeois exploitation, the proletariat and the middle-classes must also fight latifundists and imperialism, which in Brazilrepresent the most extreme existing forms of exploitation. To liberatethemselves from the capitalist pattern of appropriation, these classesmust correctly assess the constellations of interests and forces whichdetermine the relationships between the industrial bourgeoisie, theagrarian-commercial bourgeoisie, finance capital and imperialism. Anincomplete or inaccurate assessment of the equation of forces and itspossible evolution will lead the most exploited class, the proletariat, intofutile or disastrous paths, which would make it the prisoner of astrengthened bourgeoisie. As imperialism is extremely flexible and thebourgeois factions not unskilful, the proletariat cannot afford to makemistakes. Imperialism, after a stage of pure and simple aggression andexploitation, has changed its ways, becoming less visible and morepenetrating. After the phase of the big stick, it has begun to presentitself more commonly as an enlightened or understanding imperial-ism, lending money at interest and proposing associations with nativecapital. At present it accepts new legal forms in order to preserve anddeepen its connexions. All sectors of the national economy have beenpermeated in varying degrees by the new-style imperialist combinations.As the forces of production do not develop in isolation from the widersociety, from its culture and political system, imperialism has now hadto penetrate these spheres of Brazilian civilization too. The conditionsof struggle have thus radically changed since 1930. In an epoch inwhich the exploited classes become more conscious and engage in amore open and audacious struggle, imperialism, supported by variousfactions of the domestic bourgeoisie develops more sophisticatedpatterns of actions, utilizing the latest techniques required by thesituation.

It follows that the dilemmacapitalism or socialism?must be statedin its proper terms. In my view, the history of the last decades indicatesthat Brazil has already been set up as a junior-partner of internationalcapitalism. Imperialism can no longer keep the nation in a state of totaldependence because of the continual struggle waged by the moreadvanced democratic forces against it, and because of the interest of thedomestic bourgeoisie in retaining a greater proportion of the economicsurplus. Hence it has decided to turn the country into a dependentpartner. Using capital-pooling devices, the imperialist nations havebegun to transform Brazil into an area of expansion and a lever foroperations in less developed countries. The motor-car industry13

launched in 1955 clearly reveals the character and tendencies of the newpolitical and economic strategy of international capitalism. In thesecircumstances, the choicecapitalism or socialism?assumes a distinctivecharacter. For in so far as capitalism now exists or expands in Brazil,

13 Ford, General Motors, Volkswagen, Mercedes, Renault, Simca, and Alfa-Romeonow have production plants in Brazil.

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always compounded with imperialism, socialism depends on a totalreorientation of history and the subversion of a crystallized and coherentuniverse, confronted with which the proletariat must act with the onlyweapons it commands, rejecting all mystifications.

To assess the objective possibilities of a socialist revolution in Brazilseveral problems must be considered. We will proceed by an analysis oftwo possibilities suggested by the present configuration of Braziliansociety.

One of these would have to be based on a careful examination andadequate weighting of the different relations of production in the mainsectors of the national economy: light and heavy industry, agriculturefor export or the internal market, stock-breeding, extractive and miningindustries. In the countryside, unbearable living conditions prevail:malnutrition, illiteracy, patrimonial despotism, underemployment andinsecurity are rife. These conditions could lead to a radicalization of therural workers, although the pauperism which dominates the lives of aconsiderable proportion of the agrarian population seriously hinderspolitical work.

In the cities, the proletariat does not experience the same situation.Quite independently of its objective life-situationand in many sectorswages are below subsistence levelthe industrial proletariat is posses-sed by a transitory euphoria, a consciousness of mobility caused by theexpansion and diversification of manufacturing industry. Moreover thelarge numbers of rural workers who continually flow into the citiespermeate the existing proletariat, disintegrating and fragmenting itsaccumulated experience, diffusing aspirations for mobility and givingfresh currency to the ideals of liberal democracy.

Such is one view of the present balance of forces in Brazil. It is un-satisfactory because it presupposes fully formed social classes withdefinite historical objectives, which do not exist in Brazil. Somesections of the bourgeoisie undoubtedly do have mature class character-istics and a coherent vision of the world. These act as the vanguard oftheir class. The proletariat, potentially the most powerful class inBrazil, lacks this maturity Thus it is not yet ready to launch a revolu-tionary movement. As a class that negates the bourgeois order theproletariat has not developed to the point where it can change thecourse of history. The class structure still lacks fully manifest andvisible relations of thesis and antithesis.

There is, however, another way of envisaging the conditions andpossibilities of a socialist revolution in Brazil. This emerges if weintegrate and develop previous reflections in this essay. The im-maturity of capitalism and the consequent lack of fully formed socialclasses then becomes our starting-point. The agrarian-colonial sector inBrazil is by no means finished; it continues to show considerabletenacity and powers of resistance. The size of the electorate in thecountryside, and the persistence of the political practices embodied incoronelismo, ensure that the colonial sector of Brazilian society has agreater political weight than its economic importance warrants.

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Naturally this distorts the political process. The political imbalancebetween the agrarian sector and the much more economically importantindustrial sector enables the masters of agrarian civilization to retainsufficient power to distort the whole direction of national development.

As a result, the most profound contradiction in Brazilian society todayis that which divides the two sections of the bourgeoisie: one launchedon industrialization, the other rooted in an agrarian and colonial exporteconomy. The clash between their interests, their patterns of appropri-ation and accumulation, and their modes of productive organization, isso sharp that it could even escalate into armed conflict. Thus the emer-gent capitalist society of Brazil is fragile and precarious. Industrycannot achieve its potential rate of growth so long as the traditionalutilization of labour and capital in the agrarian sector continues. Hencethe two forces diverge and conflict. This gives the proletariat an oppor-tunity to capture the revolutionary process, changing the balance offorces by confusing the rival bourgeois factions, and ultimately evenwinning power. Depending on the adroitness of working-class leader-ship and the indecisions and retreats of warring bourgeois groups, sucha situation could open the way to socialism.

Obviously, this interpretation relegates the contradiction between thenational bourgeoisie and imperialism to a secondary level. It remains,however, important and relevant. Imperialism is present in everymoment of the life of the agrarian and industrial bourgeoisies; indifferent degrees it is intricately involved with both. The conflicts ofinterest between the so-called national bourgeoisie and imperialism arethus never absolute. As we have seen, imperialism has altered itstechniques of penetration and has infiltrated deeply into Braziliansociety, even in areas abstractly deemed to be national. There alwaysexist new levels of integration open to the bourgeoisie and to imperial-ism, as well as to the agrarian and industrial factions of the bourgeoisie.In both cases there is no dialectical contradiction in which one termmust necessarily suppress the other. The relations between the nationalbourgeoisie and imperialism, and between the agrarian and industrialfactions of the bourgeosie, are not relations of negativity. Historically,the existence of one does not entail the suppression of the other: it canlead instead to an incorporation or integration in which the capitalistsystem defines and organizes both. Nevertheless, a major conflict be-tween various bourgeois factions (including imperialism) could occurthrough miscalculation, rigidity, blindness, or reckless impetuosity.But such a conflict would always tend to resolve itself in a recombina-tion of the same ingredients. However if the proletariat were ready forinsurrection, it could exploit the situation to seize power and initiatesocialism.

This view needs some further elucidation. But it does pose the relationbetween the proletariat and the bourgeoisie in the right way. Althoughthe capitalist system is still in gestation and although an initiallybourgeois process has been historically necessary in Brazil, this doesnot mean that the contradictions between the bourgeoisie and theproletariat are not acute, deep and determinant. What happens is thatthese contradictions, although in fact fundamental in a society like

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Brazil, are disguised and submerged beneath the disputes of rivalbourgeois factions contending to appropriate larger shares of theeconomic surplus, political power and administrative control (economicpolicy, reform or preservation of institutions, etc).

This interpretation is also grounded on two orders of fact whichvalidate it historically and therefore theoretically. In the first place,given the present state of the forces of production (export agriculture,nascent industry) and of the relations of production (social tensions inthe countryside, institutional crises), the conflicts between the working-class and the bourgeoisie cannot explode in depth. The class systemremains relatively unformed because both the conditions of existenceand the consciousness of social classes have not yet matured. Theconsciousness of the exploited has not yet reached that stage of politicalawareness which marks the full emergence of the proletariat as a class.As a result, their leaders have not fully understood their rles. As theymisinterpret the present historical configuration, their organization andsense of leadership have been diverted into sterile and ambiguous paths.To politicize the masses also means supplying them with the ideologicaland organizational weapons of insurrection, in preparation for themarch towards socialism.

In the second place, another order of data broadens the basis of thisinterpretation. For the fact are that the socialist revolutions in Russia,China and Cuba were at the beginning bourgeois revolutions seekingto modernize the economy and to liberalize the relations of production,so as to unfetter the forces of production. It has been in this contextthat proletarian vanguards lave seized power. They have exploited theinternal weaknesses and contradictions of the bourgeoisie from thestrength of the political organization and consciousness of the pro-letariat.

But this interpretation is not validated solely by positive instances. Itscogency is increased if we consider the bourgeois revolutions whichdid not develop into socialist revolutions. In Egypt when British rulewas overthrown, and in Brazil in 1930 when the agrarian bourgeoisiewas defeated, socialist revolutions did not take place because the work-ing-class in both countries lacked sufficient organization, owing to theirsmall size, recent origin and limited power. Hence, in spite of its pre-paration and historical understanding of the situation, the proletariatof these countries could not effect a reorientation of the revolutionaryprocess. In Brazil, despite the political education and experienceaccumulated since the end of the 19th century, the proletariat could notcapture control and change the course of the revolution because thebourgeoisie was lucid and capable enough to react in time, and preventthe radicalization desired by some of the groups involved in the revolu-tion. In my view, it is this light that the 1935 rising, in which theCommunists planned to seize power, must be understood. Over-esti-mating the weaknesses and limitations of the bourgeoisie, and optimis-tically misjudging the political situation, the National Liberation Front(ANL) embarked on an insurrection based on a historical analysisdifferent from that sketched in this essay. The leaders of the Front didnot correctly assess the ideological and political preparation of the

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proletariat, of part of the middle-class and of the incipient rural pro-letariat; they launched an untimely insurrection just when the bourgeoi-sie was consolidating its power. In 1935, the worst internal conflicts ofthe bourgeoisie were over (they were settled between 1930 and 1933),and it was already entrenching itself in the State apparatus and manipu-lating the levers of political command with increasing flexibility andwider horizons than before. Its military system of support was already inforce.

At that period, the bourgeoisie always had the initiative in its dialoguewith the working-class and succeeded in imposing its rules and con-ditions. It is only in recent years, following radical transformations ofboth the industrial and the rural working-class, that the terms of thedialogue have begun to be dictated by the proletariat and the peasantry.

If the leaders of the Left can now analyse Brazilian society accurately andframe a strategy consistent with the possibility of clashes between thedifferent sections of the bourgeoisie, the agrarian and industrial pro-letariat will be able to impose its will and inaugurate socialism. If theyfail, capitalism will continue in its course until historical and structuralconditions give rise to new antagonisms, posed in new terms, in Brazil.

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