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

Political process and

Economic development in Brazil2

3. The role of the Class struggle

By its pioneering struggles for the basic means of survival, the emergent proletariat in the artisanal and manufacturing centres, which had been developing
since the 19th century, formed itself as a class and began to play a significant
historical role. It was thus able to take a major part in the revolutionary process
which was unleashed after the First World War. Its tradition of strike-action and
other forms of struggle, coupled with the European experience of a section of
the immigrant workers, enabled the Brazilian proletariat of Rio de Janeiro, Sao
Paulo and Porto Alegre to exercise a crucial influence on the revolutionary
movement which carried the bourgeoisie to power. For there had been a rapid
development of the organization of the Brazilian working-class in the years before 1930, with the spread of the capitalist relations of production diffused by
the industrial revolution.
50

However, there were other phenomena which also had an important

bearing on the growth of the working-class. These were all, in one way
or another, linked to changes in the agrarian sector. Massive European
immigration was beginning, caused by the expansion of coffee-culture,
the inception of factory production and the suppression of the slavetrade in the mid-19th century (under British pressure). Capital involved
in the slave-trade was being diverted into non-agricultural activities. The
first tariff walls were going up. These simultaneous and interrelated
phenomena laid the foundations of industrialization.
As a result, slavery itself was abolished in 1888, and the major obstacle
to the radical separation of the producers from the means of production
was removed. For the slave was in many respects himself a means of
production. Consequently, after a certain point slavery obstructed the
economic rationality characteristic of a fully developed capitalist mode of
production. Its abolition was a further precondition of industrialization.
Finally, the chronic crises in coffee-culture forced many labourers into
the cities and towns or back into the subsistence sector; there they provided a pool of labour which manufacturing industry could draw upon
when it needed. The availability, indeed excess supply of labour was
consequently increased with a decisive structural impact on the development of the economy. Industrialization had now become a possible
historical option, as the effects of industrial capitalism spread throughout the world. Capital, labour and technology became available with
the direct or indirect protectionism created by special legislation and
the repercussions of the First World War and other capitalist crises on
Brazil. Thus entrepreneurial openings emerged and entrepreneurs duly
appeared. In a socio-cultural context which had fostered consciousness
both of the possibility and necessity of developing the forces of production, entrepreneurial activity was in fact an inevitable outcome.
But this transformation was neither easy nor immediate. It was not
simply a matter of reordering the different factors of production. To
release the new economic forces at work, the resistance of the agrariancommercial bourgeoisie, which controlled the State apparatus and the
agencies of national economic policy, had to be overcome. Numerous
facets of the social, political, juridical and cultural order were incompatible with the needs of the nascent industrial capitalism: the electoral system, the power of the colonels (coronelismo), the lack of
democratic procedures for forming the necessary elites, the fragility of
the legislation protecting mines and natural resources, the inefficacy
of tariff barriers, the disarray in class relations, the rigidity in style of
domination which marked successive governments, and so on. The
rise of the industrial bourgeoisie thus inexorably entailed a class struggle
which created and fuelled the political movements of the time. Thus,
even before 1930, the industrial bourgeoisie had begun to use the proletariat as an instrument or an ally.
The State apparatus was controlled by representatives of the agrarian
aristocracy, which could not change it without repudiating itself. For
the necessary innovations would have involved a break with imperialism and a transformation of the levers of power and economic policy
51

which it could not effect without self-contradiction: for the agrarian

bourgeoisie was essentially an appendage of international capitalism.
As the socio-economic and legal-political orders were too rigid (the
mark of a dependent economy, the levers of power being controlled
from abroad), the upsurge of new political and economic forces
shattered the whole existing edifice. Middle-class political movements
came into being, demanding the democratization of institutions, new
electoral legislation, an educational system, an incomes policy, etc. The
proletariat repeatedly went on strike while its movements demanded
an eight-hour working day, special safeguards for women and child
workers, improvements in working conditions, the right of association, freedom to join unions and stage strikes, etc. Agrarian-colonial
civilization could neither confront nor solve these problems. It
affected to regard working-class demands as a police problem. Tension and conflict naturally became more and more frequent and bitter.
Pre-revolutionary conditions favourable to the industrial bourgeoisie
were created. The Liberal Alliance which carried out the 1930 revolution brought together members of the industrial bourgeoisie, the
financial bourgeoisie, the liberal professions, members of the middleclass, the petty-bourgeoisie, the proletariat and military groups. In
different degrees, and with different ultimate aims, they were all
committed to the democratization of the country, and the liquidation
of the rigid, externally-oriented structure which dominated it.
Thus in its formative years the working class not merely fought for its
own economic interests, it also fought against the enemies of the rising
industrial bourgeoisie, the agrarian aristocracy and its ties with
imperialismproducts of a society which had exhausted its potential.
Instead of frontally attacking its natural enemy, the bourgeoisie, the
proletariat temporarily associated itself with it. The old order had to be
destroyed, and the industrial bourgeoisie did not have the power to do
this by itself. Moreover, the proletariat was aware that the elimination
of the bourgeoisie presupposed the full growth of a capitalist mode of
production, which would realize that de facto socialization of the means
of production which is a prerequisite of socialism. Under the inspiration of some of its most important leaders, the proletariat followed a
political strategy which involved continual tactical agreements with the
industrial bourgeosie.
The bourgeoisie, for its part, sought to meet some of the proletariats
claims, while in return demanding its collaboration in or endorsement
of various political campaigns: for the protection of Brazilian natural
resources from imperialism, for the abolition of regulations permitting
uncontrolled remittance of profits abroad, for the prohibition of certain
types of financial alliance between Brazilian and foreign entrepreneurs,
for the realization of an agrarian reform, for the containment of antidemocratic groups, and so on. This situation has naturally accelerated
the political education of the working-class. However, it has also
obscured the lines of demarcation between social classes and their
respective interests. To a considerable extent, this kind of education
is conducive to the consolidation of bourgeois democracy, within which
social peace and the Welfare State are consecrated aims of society.
52

Because of the very fast rate of absorption into industry of large numbers of workers from rural areas (including women and young people
under 18), Brazilian industrial society has not yet faced critical problems
in the field of the class-struggle. The modern techniques of ideological
processing utilized by the ruling groups, and the recent proletarianization of the workers, which has abruptly raised their standard of living
above the level prevalent in the countryside, help to ease the tasks of
the industrial bourgeoisie. For they eliminate or at least attentuate the
most serious foci of tension.
In this context, it is worth drawing attention to the situation of the
Communist Party, which was outlawed when a section of the ruling
class felt that the combativity and organizational capacity of the
communists were too successful in precipitating or influencing political
events.7 Pressures from imperialism and from the more conservative
sectors of society secured the abrogation of the parliamentary mandate
of the Communist deputies and the cancellation of the partys registration. Nevertheless, the more advanced wing of the industrial bourgeoisie has not broken its links with most left-wing groups, including
the Communist Party. It has tried rather to ensure that as far as possible
these groups play a political rle favourable to its own designs, without
challenging its control of key political positions. It has been common for
politicians to secure elections with votes from communists and their
sympathizers and then to throw communist leaders in jail or harrass
their non-electoral activities. In this way they comply with the requirements of an essentially unstable power, based on the interplay of
social classes and of the political groups into which they are divided.
This situation does not stem solely from the kind of leadership prevalent on the Left. It is also a consequence of the immaturity of the
working-class, whose remarkable historical experience since the end of
the 19th century (in fruitful association with the traditions of immigrant
European workers) has been dulled and diluted by rapid and sweeping
changes in the occupational and demographic structure of the class.
The absorption of successive waves of workers from rural areas into
the industrial sector, necessitated by its swift expansion and diversification, creates or preserves in the proletariat aspirations incompatible
with its class situation. The myth of the self-made man; the ideal of
social ascent for oneself or ones children; the vigorous implementation of a policy of social peace and other techniques of the Welfare
State; the immediate material benefits of the rapid diversification of
the system of production, which has already begun to create a workingclass aristocracyall these have hindered the development of more
audacious political movements. Under these conditions, the formation
of working-class consciousness through trade-union, party and associational activity has encountered major obstacles.
7

After the abortive 1935 rising, the Communist Party was driven underground. It
re-emerged as a legal party in 1945, when Prestes and other Communist leaders were
released from prison. The partys strength thereafter grew rapidly. In the elections of
December 1945 it polled 700,000 votes, 15 per cent of the total cast, including more
votes in Sao Paulo than any other party. By 1947 it claimed 200,000 members. In
May of that year the Dutra government outlawed it, and it was driven underground
again. It has remained an illegal party in Brazil to this day.
53

It should be borne in mind, too, that the proletarian condition cannot be

defined solely in terms of income and industrial work-situation. Although these factors are important, indeed preponderant, the proletariats conditions of life and image of itself also depend on its relative
position within the total class society. In Brazil, there are classes or
groups beneath it in the social scalein particular the unemployed,
under-employed and even fully employed agricultural labourers. Hence
the proletarian situation is not necessarily perceived as bad by the
worker. Against the background of the whole society, the proletarian
sees himself as relatively privileged, compared with his previous situation in the countryside or compared with those still in the agricultural, pastoral or extractive sectors.
Because landowners continue to enjoy considerable political power in
Brazil, through their traditional techniques of control over the large
number of voters who live in rural areas, basic institutional reforms have
still not taken place in the agrarian sector. Living conditions in the
country are generally worse than in the towns. It is in the country that
there is hunger, malnutrition and chronic pauperism. A rigid pattern of
control dominates individuals and groups. Capitalist civilization has
penetrated only slowly into agrarian society, with the result that the
worst living conditions in Brazil are those of rural workers. The
political and cultural horizons of the rural populationcaboclos8
working in a wide gamut of economic conditions, ranging from wageearning through indenture to disguised slavery, which is the situation
of some Indians and mestizos in the interstices of the systemmay be
narrow. But segments of the capitalist universe have begun to impinge on them, diffusing new modes of thought and action, which
make politicization possible. They live at subsistence level, but their
leaders have been able to organize them into peasant leagues (ligas
camponesas) which are now multiplying and intensifying the tensions
rife in the emerging class society of Brazil. The integration of huge
numbers of agricultural labourers into the historical movement of a
developing class society shifts the whole equilibrium of bourgeois
democracy. While the proletarian situation becomes ever more crystallized in the countryside, with ever greater degrees of alienation of the
workers from their work, the peasants begin to take important
initiatives in the political field, which help the working-class to
broaden its own perspectives. The very rigidity of the pattern of domination in the countryside becomes a dynamic determinant of the
radicalization of political struggle. While the proletariat remains
temporarily bemused by the bourgeoisie, under the influence of its
leadership, rural conditions generate a fiercer combativity in a section
of the emergent agricultural proletariat. This is one of the reasons why
a faction of the bourgeoisie urgently desires an agrarian reform, within
the framework of private property. Relations of production in the
countryside are so anachronistic compared with the possibilities of the
developing forces of production that the more lucid section of the
bourgeoisie realizes that such conditions are pre-revolutionary. Thus
there is now a race for the peasantry in which conservatives and
liberals constantly compete with the left for the leadership in the rural
8

Caboclo is the Brazilian word for peasant or agricultural worker.

54

world. Hence, too, the bourgeoisie tries every device to divide the left
and to cloud the proletariats vision of its political and economic
interests.
4. The Party System
The bourgeois democratic rgime in Brazil has not yet successfully
permeated all major sectors of national life. Wide areas of the socioeconomic, political, legal and educational systems have not yet been
democratized at all, or have been so only incompletely or in distorted
fashion. The structure and functioning of the very foundations of
democracythe legislative, executive and judicial systemare themselves 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 of
Brazilian history of the multiple contradictions, distortions and pressures inherent in a period of structural transformation. Brazil is still in
the throes of the transition from an agrarian-commercial to an urbanindustrial civilization, and the political parties accurately mirror the
ambiguities of this phase. It is within the partiesor functionally
equivalent agenciesthat he persistent strength of old structures and
the thrusting vigour of new forces can be most clearly discerned.
Analysis of the structure and functioning of the national parties raises
two fundamental problems, around which others cluster. In the first
place, Brazilian political parties are not in fact national, although they
are formally so. In the second place, their pattern does not correspond
to the emerging class structure. An analysis of these two aspects of the
party system will provide the key to the major political problems that
arise in an epoch of development. Let us look at these two features of
the countrys political system: other important themes will emerge in
the course of the discussion.
Since 1946, the Constitution has stipulated that all political parties must
be national in scope. To prevent the proliferation of State-wide or
regional parties, one of the alleged causes of the fall of the Old Republic
(prior to 1930), the new Constitutional Charter required that all
political parties be registered as nation-wide organizations, and regard
themselves as such, whatever the local or regional densities of their
supporters or voters. This safeguard was intended to prevent excessive
interference by State governors or regional interests in federal politics.
It was also intended to promote the democratization of the electoral
system, by making nation-wide political campaigns obligatory. As the
national party is, in fact, a prerequisite of democracy, and as the
constitutionalists of 1946 were reacting strongly against the experience
of the dictatorship of the Estado Novo (193745), this regulation met
little opposition.
The new measure has not been a success. Even today, nearly 20 years
and innumerable federal, state and municipal electoral campaigns later,
Brazilian parties are not fully national. Factions linked to state or
regional interests still predominate within each organization, so that
55

political parties are much more like agglomerations of groups than

cohesive units. The population of Brazil is still dispersed in different
regions, unevenly affected by civilization, marked by unequal human
and natural resources, various levels of economic development,
distinct rhythms of productive expansion, and wide differences in
political maturity. Thus the parties have great difficulty in adapting
themselves to a national model. All are affected by this underlying
reality, which dissolves their ideological and practical unity and
diminishes their efficacity.
Moreover, the party system initiated in 1946 did not grow out of a
previous period of free political activity. The dictatorship in force
between 193745 deprived both politicians and ordinary citizens of the
experience needed to make a success of the new political system. Under
the Estado Novo, all political organizations and activities were wholly
forbidden. The continuity of the bourgeois democratic process which
had gained impetus in the 193037 period was thus interrupted.
Neither of the rival industrial or agrarian-commercial bourgeoisies were
sufficiently strong to seize power and implement their programmes. In
consequence, the political leadership of the Republic had to exercise
dictatorial power, a kind of bonapartism, which completely stifled the
political, cultural and artistic life of the country. The social sciences, for
example, could not be pursued except in strictly academic fashion or in
the impoverished guise of genteel literatureapart, of course, from
economics, which gained a new status under the rgime, because of
the increasing seriousness of the tasks which faced it.
These general conditions explain the paradox that large landowners
from the North-East and industrialists from Sao Paulo, exporters from
Rio de Janeiro and workers from Porto Alegre, can be found in the
same parties. As the state sections of the parties follow their local
leaders, one and the same party can in an extreme case defend Right,
Centre and Left positions of different kinds at the same time in different
parts of the country. For instance, the Brazilian Labour Party (PTB),
which claims to represent the industrial working class, is linked in the
North-East to groups attached to archaic forms of labour use. The
National Democratic Union (UDN), which in Sao Paulo is on the
extreme right, in Minas Gerais is a centre party which includes the
most progressive liberals in the state. The same is true of the other
bourgeois parties.
This phenomenon is exacerbated (and illuminated) by the survival of
caudilhismo and similar patterns of political leadership and organization.
Caudilhismo and its local form coronelismo, the product of patterns of
patrimonial domination characteristic of an agrarian civilization, has
been an essential element in the national political system. Bourgeois
democracy has clashed with it at one level, although at another it has
sought to use for its own benefit the organizational and imperative
techniques of the colonel in his various existing types. Of course, this
is no longer the traditional form of caudilhismo. It is a modified version
which appears within the framework of populism, an urban phenomenon
linked to the emergence of an immature middle-class and proletariat.
Since these classes are not sufficiently structured to set their own goals,
56

bourgeois groups formulate populism for them. Populism is a transitional version of politics for the propertyless masses in general. Those
bourgeois parties and politicians are populist which use an idiom comprehensible to the urban masses, the uneducated and the illiterate. But
their language is at the same time one of abstractions. They do not
defend the real interests of the people; they do not confront the real
problems of the middle and working classes. They discourse vaguely
about the helplessness of the worker or the peasant, the inadequacy of
the educational system, and social injustices; they promise to bring
succour to the dispossessed; and so on. But the abstract phraseology
never comes to grips with the concrete problems which form the lifesituation of the exploited. Once elected, the populists abandon or
reduce their contacts with the people, and busy themselves with their
own lucrative affairs.
Populism as an ideology presupposes social ascent as a universal
possibility. It is a vision of the world, formed within the ideological
ambience of a rising industrial bourgeoisie in a developing country,
which affirms as a general social fact the mobility of isolated individuals
in the pioneering phase of industrial capitalism. It assumes that the
pattern of mobility characteristic of a period of growth and diversification of capitalist relation of production are permanent. There is an
increasing diversification of the social system in the formative stage of
industrial capitalism, with the result that the exploited classes become
suffused with the mystique of general and permanent social ascent.
This is the dynamic substance of populism. The progress of the
bourgeoisie is presented as the progress of the whole society, so that
other classes become either docile or receptive to the influence of
bourgeois ideals.
The second question can now be posed: what is the degree of adaptation of the party system to the emerging class structure? The answer is
that there is an incomplete correspondence between the parties (with
their patterns of leadership, relations to economic power, electoral
practices, heterogeneous links with classes, etc.) and the vital social
forces of the nation.
The large number of political parties is not in itself an index of the
distortion of Brazilian political institutions. On the contrary, it accurately translates a social structure in which social classes are incompletely
formed, because of the uneven maturation of the different regions of
Brazil. This the reason why the legal parties are so numerous: the
Brazilian Labour Party (PTB) the National Labour Party (PTN), the
Social Labour Party (PST) , the Rural Labour Party (PRT), the Brazilian
Socialist Party (PSB), the Christian Democrat Party (PDC), the Social Progressive Party (PSP), the Popular Representation Party (PRP), the Social
Democratic Party (PSD), the National Democratic Union (UDN), the
Republican Party (PR) and the Liberal Party (PL). Parties proliferate
because social classes in Brazil are fragmented into more or less hermetic
segments, polarized round narrow interests and divided by the uneven
socio-economic development of the country. The interpenetration of
socio-economic sectors at different stages of development, via their
links with federal and imperialist interests, makes possible the forma57

tion of numerous parties led by men representing divergent pressures

or groups.
Moreover, these parties do not function strictly as such. Although they
possess statutes and programmes, they very often act simply as convenient tickets behind which random groups or candidates can represent or express their interests and mobilize their resources at election
times. They are institutions devoid of durable political significance,
which adopt programmes or leaders as a result of the contingent
interplay of real political forces in electoral periods.
At this point, the artificial and distorting character of the Brazilian
party system becomes clear. Far from expressing the real class relations
at work within the society, it functions imply in terms of combinations
of sectional interests and sets of tactical compromises, which camouflage the game of realpolitik from certain sectors of society. Only those
unaffiliated candidates with bargaining power or a coincidence of
interests with the leadersor rather the proprietorsof a party can
secure the necessary party registration. What happens therefore is that
registration is only granted when the candidates or the groups they
represent are prepared to back the deals in which the leaders of the
party are interested. This mechanism has enabled the bourgeois factions that control the majority of parties to incorporate left-wing
groups without a party organization into reformist or even conservative movements and campaigns. As the bourgeoisie always has the
greater bargaining powerfor it controls not only financial resources
but the parties themselvesgroups on the Left have allowed themselves
to become compromised with the platforms and programmes of bourgeois parties. In my view, this is an important aspect of the history of
nationalism in Brazil. It is in this sense that the party system, although
it 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 a
web of parties and processes which dislocate the fundamental realities
of Brazilian society. But this is not all.
On the one hand, there emerge illegal parties and groups, most of
them left-wing. These formations represent interests which bourgeois
democracy deprives of legal expression. The following organizations
fall into this category: Brazilian Communist Party (PCB), the Communist Party of Brazil (PCB),9 Workers Policy (POLOP), the Tiradentes
Political Movement (MRT), the Union of Communist Youth (UJC),
Popular Action (AP), the Group for Popular Action (GAP), and the
Movement of Civic Assembly (MAC). Since conservative and liberal
groups have legal outlets in the parties, he majority of these groups are
left-wing. At the same time, however, the powerful imperialist interests
in Brazil, linked to the agrarian sector, lave created or inspired certain
specially aggressive organizations (the MAC, for instance) to counterbalance democratic campaigns and victories. The structural-historical
significance of all these formations lies in the maladaptation and inco9

The Communist Party of Brazil is a break-away movement from the Brazilian

Communist Party, which it accuses of revisionism. Founded in 1961, its main
strength is in Recife.

58

herence of the existing system of political parties. As institutionalized

political life expresses effective political reality so incompletely, illegal
formations arise, especially on the left.
Still other political manifestations elude both the legal and illegal
party systems. Various public and professional organizations have come
into existence in Brazil, which continually assume political functions
and by doing so alter the whole national political process. Particularly
at moments of crisis, when the party system reveals all its limitations
and inadequacies, these organizations have been crucially important
for the outcome of political situations. The following formations are
of this kind: the National Parliamentary Front (FNP), Democratic
Parliamentary Action (APD), the National Union of Students (UNE), the
Trades Union Congress (CGT), the United Front (CGT, UNE, FNP), and
Catholic Action (AC). At times of crisis, these can even become the vanguard of mass political movements, displaying an initiative and
flexibility which the parties lack. Some of these organizations, which
represent currents both of the liberal wing of the bourgeoisie and of the
exploited classes, have of ten acted in a bold and timely way. All the
major political events of the past decade, and especially of the last few
years, have seen the active, indeed often decisive, intervention of
student organizations, trade unions and extra-party parliamentary
alliances.10
However, the political life of the country is not exhausted even then. In
an inexperienced and immature bourgeois democracy, these groups
and institutions are not in a position to deal with all political events.
The dominant industrial bourgeoisie lacks the strength either to impose
its objectives on society or to coalesce with agrarian-colonial civilization. As a result, power continually oscillates this way and that,
requiring clever, conciliatory, flexible, malicious leaders. The speciality
of some Presidents, especially Getulio Vargas (193045 and 195054)
and Joao Goulart (19611964), has been a talent for half-tones, for
nuances, 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 a
so-called military device. No ruler can attempt to carry out an original
programme without an adequately organized military apparatus behind
him. Janio Quadros fell from power, despite his talent, because he
could not maintain one. An inexperienced, provincial politician, with
a pronounced self-image as a caudilho, he either failed to see the need
for, or did not know how to create, a loyal military base. Getulio
Vargas in 1954, at the height of right-wing reaction, realized that his
military apparatus had been undermined. He fell because he had lost
the military basis of his power. Suicide was only the second act.
For the various branches of the opposition can also manoeuvre or
infiltrate the Armed Forces. Any political movement which under10
The crisis precipitated in 1961 by the resignation of Janio Quadros when his
constitutional successor, Joao Goulart, was abroad, was a particularly notable
example.

59

stands the rules of realpolitik in Brazil includes the military in its plans.
There is no effective political power in Brazil without potential firepower. Such are the rules of the game, which are, in fact. accepted by
the whole society, although the current democratic ideal defines the
armed forces as outside and above the political arena. Because of the
transitional nature of the national economy and the heterogeneity of
the political parties, the groups competing for power are not strong
enough to win and hold it by themselves. In this situation the military
establishment, and especially the army, acts as a remarkable arbitrating
power. In consequence, the armed force have become the object of the
attentions, insinuations and manoeuvres of all ambitious parties in
Brazilwhile in the same breath everyone praises the democratic
spirit of the national army.
However, when Brazilian politicians Speak of the democratic spirit of
the Army, they mean simply its receptiveness to the insinuations and
manoeuvres of civilian politicians. Since Brazilian society is undergoing
profound changes and is still highly heterogeneous in its class structure,
the army has tended to play a key rle both in the preservation of order
and in the decisions of the federal government. However, the autonomous power of the army vis-a-vis the balance of political forces is
always in correlation with dominant currents in national political life.
The singularity of the Brazilian Army lies in the fact that the forces
which 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 also
from the power represented by the Armed Forcesand the Catholic
Church. While the Church plays a crucial rle at election times, every
government in Brazil in ordinary periods tries to use it for its own ends.
Thus the cross and the sword become co-ordinates of the political
game.
The concrete events of Brazilian politic can only be understood within
this framework. In spite of all the more or less contingent institutional
crystallizations and spontaneous organizations in Brazil, the living
forces of national politics can be divided into three main currents. The
first is conservative and linked to the traditional agrarian-colonial
sector: it is reactionary. The second is liberal and committed to industrial development and capitalist expansion in the countryside: it is
reformist. The third is left-wing and is based on the urban andto a
lesser extentrural proletariat: it wants a transition to socialism. These
positions are in practice expressed in many different forms, ranging
from fascist to revolutionary tendencies. But they are the major currents
in Brazilian politics today, around which parties and movements
cluster.
5. State and development
Rupture with the agrarian and colonial world was achieved by a
revolutionary struggle in Brazil, which redistributed power among
social classes, created national political parties, and produced a codifica60

tion of labour laws, a new university system, a widespread democratization of Brazilian life, a reform of the State apparatus and many
other changes. Above all, the remoulding of the State was immediately
and absolutely necessary to the development of the bourgeois revolution. The renovated structure of the State apparatus expressed both the
new configuration of power in the country and the needs of the
developing forces of production and class relations in Brazil. Thus, in a
historical perspective, the rle of the State underwent a radical transformation.
Prior to 1930, the State had been organized on the liberal model. This
model had been adopted in 188911 as a demonstration to the world of
Brazilian political maturity. It was influenced by the intimate, imperious
contacts between the national elite and those countries which controlled the Brazilian economy. But as economic relations with other
countriesmainly Great Britain during the greater part of the 19th
century, and United States from the first decades of the 20th century
were relations of dependence, the liberal model imposed on the State
only served to create new bases for this domination. The economic and
political liberalism with which England and France, in particular, imbued the Brazilian political and literary elites, allowed these countries
and the USA to preserve the minimal institutional requirements for
colonial exploitation.
Something similar had happened in 1822, when Brazil won its independence. A bargain was struck between Great Britain and Portugal
whereby Britain began to exercise control over the young country
directly: this was the price Brazil paid for its independence. Throughout
the 19th century Great Britain played the rle of a metropolitan
country. Only at the end of the century did the USA dislodge Britain and
begin to dominate the Brazilian scene. In recent decades, since 1930 and
especially since 1955,12 the North American presence in Brazil has become more and more marked. This has, of course, resulted in one of
the main difficulties facing the national economythe heavy losses to
internal capital accumulation caused by imperialist appropriation of a
considerable part of the national surplus.
The Republican Constitution, then, did not contain so much as a
paragraph on the economy in either its 1891 or 1926 version. The
agrarian-colonial civilization in force until 1930 defined the economic
rle of the State merely as that of a tax-collecting agency. Economic
intervention by the State was repugnant to the liberal conscience of the
nations leaders. As an essentially agrarian nation, Brazil would fulfil
its natural destiny without any need for the State to interfere with this
ineluctable vocation. Arguing from the physiocratic doctrine that all
wealth is produced by the soil, the rulers of Brazil resisted the protectionist measures advocated by more enlightened politicians. Industrialization, which depended on a minimal level of protection, was
11

In 1889, military officers staged a coup which brought the Braganza Empire in
Brazil to an end. The Republic was proclaimed and a Federal Constitution was
adopted 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 interests
of international capitalism, defined the liberal model of the State.
The paramountcy of the agrarian-colonial sector in the national
economy marked the whole society, suffusing its institutions and
ideologies. Faced with new economic and political forces, the agrarian
bourgeoisie which controlled the State apparatus was unable to develop
institutions and techniques which could allow the new groups to
consolidate and expand. Its pattern of rule did not permit the constructive canalization of the claims of the incipient industrial and financial
bourgeoisie, or the emergent proletariat and urban middle class. This
rigidity was, of course, one of the causes of the revolutionary process
that was so greatly to curtail the power of the agrarian-commercial
sector. It should be noted that this rigidity did not derive solely from
the internal structure of the system, in which the export sector dominated until the beginning of this century. It also stemmed from imperialist control, which retained overseas nearly all the economic and even
political centres of decision of the system. Precisely because these were
the very conditions of existence of the colonial order, the system was
never flexible enough to stabilize itself at other levels of integration and
viability. Because it was externally-oriented (as an offshoot of imperialism), all changes had to be generated from abroad, as it was in this
direction that all the mechanisms and channels of transformation were set.
After 1930, the first evidence of the new structure of power was the
increasing pressure in national politics of the interests of the industrial
and financial bourgeoisie, the middle-class and the proletariat, side by
side with thedecreasingpressure of the interests of the agrarian
aristocracy. The State gradually became sensitive to the claims of those
social classes which controlled no wealth but were now irrevocably to
be treated as free owners of labour power. Given its new bourgeois
configuration, the State apparatus began to respond to the pressures of
wage-earners and to democratize the rgime: bourgeois democracy was
born. The 193745 dictatorship consolidated the power of the industrial
and financial bourgeoisie, which lacked the strength to rule alone and
so had to mobilize military and police power against the forces both of
the left and the extreme right. It had definitively to eliminate the
extremist tendencies which had given life and impetus to the revolutionary process that had carried the industrial bourgeoisie and finance
capital to power. This was the raison dtre of the dictatorship.
The State has thus, little by little, gravitated towards control over
national economic policy. Sometimes compromising with imperialist
pressures, sometimes resisting them, the State apparatus has been used
as an agency for accelerating or regulating economic growth. In a
piecemeal way, it has become the main locus of economic decision in
Brazil. To develop the national economy, it has used fiscal and monetary policy, and manipulated foreign exchange rates; it has proposed
institutional reforms and implemented a deliberate investment policy;
it has created and run mixed or public enterprises to improve the technical infrastructure of the economy; it has promoted sectoral and
regional planning and encouraged entrepreneurship.
62

The structural transformations which have propelled industrialization,

and the accompanying shift in economic policy towards national productive forces and away from the interests of international capitalism,
have imposed an ever greater rle on the State. A new socio-economic
structure is emerging in Brazil. There is a shortage of private capital for
the outlay required by modern industrial installations. Private enterprise demands that the activities of importers and foreign industrialists
be checked. Class relations are being defined in a wider historical framework. The agrarian sector remains decisive to industrial expansion
because of the need for foreign exchange to pay for the import of
machines, tools, and know-how. All this has meant that the State has
not only had to be remodelled, but has also had to become a key
participant in development programmes.
The growth of the forces of production and of Brazilian society itself
is not a spontaneous process, the consequence of a fortunate convergence of favourable conditions and factors. Besides its economic,
political and historical conditions, development also depends on a
conscious decision, a choice made among the different options that
history offers to men. It cannot occur without a new historical consciousness, in which the future largely negates the past and present.
Thus it was that the industrial and financial bourgeoisie, in collaboration with the middle-class and the proletariat, made the 1930 revolution
to 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 liberation
which began around 1930 is still on the march and will have to fight
many decisive battles inside and outside the country. Colonialism and
imperialism have suffused the whole of Brazilian civilization, throughout the entire history of the country. The struggle for national emancipation could not obtain all its objectives in a few decades. Because it is
closely integrated into international, social and economic systems,
Brazilian society is still profoundly pervaded by crystallizations and
processes which betray the inheritance and the presence of imperialism.
Brazil remains a dependent country. Given the way in which it is
linked to imperialism, it must still be defined, fundamentally, as a
country within the orbit of the dollar and the Organization of American
States (OAS). For this is the reason why the country remains underdeveloped, although its volume of capital per person is rising, and its
political and economic relations with the USA continually change. The
way in which the economic surplus is used, whether it is sent abroad or
retained at home, reveals a dependent country, unable to decide its own
domestic and foreign economic policy. Only a small proportion of the
economic surplus is tapped for internal capital accumulation, a typical
feature of underdevelopment. For underdevelopment is not simply a
state in-itself, it is rather a specific way of relating to oneself and to other
countries, to the total system within which the nation must live. It is
not a state in-itself, but for-others, unable to become for-itself. Underdevelopment is a mode of being produced by international relations of
dependence 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 of
production and appropriate the surplus of the nation, the people of a
dependent country can only become their own masters by deliberate
action, politically defined and realized.
Thus, to fight bourgeois exploitation, the proletariat and the middleclasses must also fight latifundists and imperialism, which in Brazil
represent the most extreme existing forms of exploitation. To liberate
themselves from the capitalist pattern of appropriation, these classes
must correctly assess the constellations of interests and forces which
determine the relationships between the industrial bourgeoisie, the
agrarian-commercial bourgeoisie, finance capital and imperialism. An
incomplete or inaccurate assessment of the equation of forces and its
possible evolution will lead the most exploited class, the proletariat, into
futile or disastrous paths, which would make it the prisoner of a
strengthened bourgeoisie. As imperialism is extremely flexible and the
bourgeois factions not unskilful, the proletariat cannot afford to make
mistakes. Imperialism, after a stage of pure and simple aggression and
exploitation, has changed its ways, becoming less visible and more
penetrating. After the phase of the big stick, it has begun to present
itself more commonly as an enlightened or understanding imperialism, lending money at interest and proposing associations with native
capital. At present it accepts new legal forms in order to preserve and
deepen its connexions. All sectors of the national economy have been
permeated in varying degrees by the new-style imperialist combinations.
As the forces of production do not develop in isolation from the wider
society, from its culture and political system, imperialism has now had
to penetrate these spheres of Brazilian civilization too. The conditions
of struggle have thus radically changed since 1930. In an epoch in
which the exploited classes become more conscious and engage in a
more open and audacious struggle, imperialism, supported by various
factions of the domestic bourgeoisie develops more sophisticated
patterns of actions, utilizing the latest techniques required by the
situation.
It follows that the dilemmacapitalism or socialism?must be stated
in its proper terms. In my view, the history of the last decades indicates
that Brazil has already been set up as a junior-partner of international
capitalism. Imperialism can no longer keep the nation in a state of total
dependence because of the continual struggle waged by the more
advanced democratic forces against it, and because of the interest of the
domestic bourgeoisie in retaining a greater proportion of the economic
surplus. Hence it has decided to turn the country into a dependent
partner. Using capital-pooling devices, the imperialist nations have
begun to transform Brazil into an area of expansion and a lever for
operations in less developed countries. The motor-car industry13
launched in 1955 clearly reveals the character and tendencies of the new
political and economic strategy of international capitalism. In these
circumstances, the choicecapitalism or socialism?assumes a distinctive
character. For in so far as capitalism now exists or expands in Brazil,
13

Ford, General Motors, Volkswagen, Mercedes, Renault, Simca, and Alfa-Romeo

now have production plants in Brazil.

64

always compounded with imperialism, socialism depends on a total

reorientation of history and the subversion of a crystallized and coherent
universe, confronted with which the proletariat must act with the only
weapons it commands, rejecting all mystifications.
To assess the objective possibilities of a socialist revolution in Brazil
several problems must be considered. We will proceed by an analysis of
two possibilities suggested by the present configuration of Brazilian
society.
One of these would have to be based on a careful examination and
adequate weighting of the different relations of production in the main
sectors of the national economy: light and heavy industry, agriculture
for export or the internal market, stock-breeding, extractive and mining
industries. In the countryside, unbearable living conditions prevail:
malnutrition, illiteracy, patrimonial despotism, underemployment and
insecurity are rife. These conditions could lead to a radicalization of the
rural workers, although the pauperism which dominates the lives of a
considerable proportion of the agrarian population seriously hinders
political work.
In the cities, the proletariat does not experience the same situation.
Quite independently of its objective life-situationand in many sectors
wages are below subsistence levelthe industrial proletariat is possessed by a transitory euphoria, a consciousness of mobility caused by the
expansion and diversification of manufacturing industry. Moreover the
large numbers of rural workers who continually flow into the cities
permeate the existing proletariat, disintegrating and fragmenting its
accumulated experience, diffusing aspirations for mobility and giving
fresh currency to the ideals of liberal democracy.
Such is one view of the present balance of forces in Brazil. It is unsatisfactory because it presupposes fully formed social classes with
definite historical objectives, which do not exist in Brazil. Some
sections of the bourgeoisie undoubtedly do have mature class characteristics and a coherent vision of the world. These act as the vanguard of
their class. The proletariat, potentially the most powerful class in
Brazil, lacks this maturity Thus it is not yet ready to launch a revolutionary movement. As a class that negates the bourgeois order the
proletariat has not developed to the point where it can change the
course of history. The class structure still lacks fully manifest and
visible relations of thesis and antithesis.
There is, however, another way of envisaging the conditions and
possibilities of a socialist revolution in Brazil. This emerges if we
integrate and develop previous reflections in this essay. The immaturity of capitalism and the consequent lack of fully formed social
classes then becomes our starting-point. The agrarian-colonial sector in
Brazil is by no means finished; it continues to show considerable
tenacity and powers of resistance. The size of the electorate in the
countryside, and the persistence of the political practices embodied in
coronelismo, ensure that the colonial sector of Brazilian society has a
greater political weight than its economic importance warrants.
65

Naturally this distorts the political process. The political imbalance

between the agrarian sector and the much more economically important
industrial sector enables the masters of agrarian civilization to retain
sufficient power to distort the whole direction of national development.
As a result, the most profound contradiction in Brazilian society today
is that which divides the two sections of the bourgeoisie: one launched
on industrialization, the other rooted in an agrarian and colonial export
economy. The clash between their interests, their patterns of appropriation and accumulation, and their modes of productive organization, is
so sharp that it could even escalate into armed conflict. Thus the emergent capitalist society of Brazil is fragile and precarious. Industry
cannot achieve its potential rate of growth so long as the traditional
utilization of labour and capital in the agrarian sector continues. Hence
the two forces diverge and conflict. This gives the proletariat an opportunity to capture the revolutionary process, changing the balance of
forces by confusing the rival bourgeois factions, and ultimately even
winning power. Depending on the adroitness of working-class leadership and the indecisions and retreats of warring bourgeois groups, such
a situation could open the way to socialism.
Obviously, this interpretation relegates the contradiction between the
national bourgeoisie and imperialism to a secondary level. It remains,
however, important and relevant. Imperialism is present in every
moment of the life of the agrarian and industrial bourgeoisies; in
different degrees it is intricately involved with both. The conflicts of
interest between the so-called national bourgeoisie and imperialism are
thus never absolute. As we have seen, imperialism has altered its
techniques of penetration and has infiltrated deeply into Brazilian
society, even in areas abstractly deemed to be national. There always
exist new levels of integration open to the bourgeoisie and to imperialism, as well as to the agrarian and industrial factions of the bourgeoisie.
In both cases there is no dialectical contradiction in which one term
must necessarily suppress the other. The relations between the national
bourgeoisie and imperialism, and between the agrarian and industrial
factions of the bourgeosie, are not relations of negativity. Historically,
the existence of one does not entail the suppression of the other: it can
lead instead to an incorporation or integration in which the capitalist
system defines and organizes both. Nevertheless, a major conflict between various bourgeois factions (including imperialism) could occur
through miscalculation, rigidity, blindness, or reckless impetuosity.
But such a conflict would always tend to resolve itself in a recombination of the same ingredients. However if the proletariat were ready for
insurrection, it could exploit the situation to seize power and initiate
socialism.
This view needs some further elucidation. But it does pose the relation
between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie in the right way. Although
the capitalist system is still in gestation and although an initially
bourgeois process has been historically necessary in Brazil, this does
not mean that the contradictions between the bourgeoisie and the
proletariat are not acute, deep and determinant. What happens is that
these contradictions, although in fact fundamental in a society like
66

Brazil, are disguised and submerged beneath the disputes of rival

bourgeois factions contending to appropriate larger shares of the
economic surplus, political power and administrative control (economic
policy, reform or preservation of institutions, etc).
This interpretation is also grounded on two orders of fact which
validate 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 in
the countryside, institutional crises), the conflicts between the workingclass and the bourgeoisie cannot explode in depth. The class system
remains relatively unformed because both the conditions of existence
and the consciousness of social classes have not yet matured. The
consciousness of the exploited has not yet reached that stage of political
awareness which marks the full emergence of the proletariat as a class.
As a result, their leaders have not fully understood their rles. As they
misinterpret the present historical configuration, their organization and
sense of leadership have been diverted into sterile and ambiguous paths.
To politicize the masses also means supplying them with the ideological
and organizational weapons of insurrection, in preparation for the
march towards socialism.
In the second place, another order of data broadens the basis of this
interpretation. For the fact are that the socialist revolutions in Russia,
China and Cuba were at the beginning bourgeois revolutions seeking
to modernize the economy and to liberalize the relations of production,
so as to unfetter the forces of production. It has been in this context
that proletarian vanguards lave seized power. They have exploited the
internal weaknesses and contradictions of the bourgeoisie from the
strength of the political organization and consciousness of the proletariat.
But this interpretation is not validated solely by positive instances. Its
cogency is increased if we consider the bourgeois revolutions which
did not develop into socialist revolutions. In Egypt when British rule
was overthrown, and in Brazil in 1930 when the agrarian bourgeoisie
was defeated, socialist revolutions did not take place because the working-class in both countries lacked sufficient organization, owing to their
small size, recent origin and limited power. Hence, in spite of its preparation and historical understanding of the situation, the proletariat
of these countries could not effect a reorientation of the revolutionary
process. In Brazil, despite the political education and experience
accumulated since the end of the 19th century, the proletariat could not
capture control and change the course of the revolution because the
bourgeoisie was lucid and capable enough to react in time, and prevent
the radicalization desired by some of the groups involved in the revolution. In my view, it is this light that the 1935 rising, in which the
Communists planned to seize power, must be understood. Over-estimating the weaknesses and limitations of the bourgeoisie, and optimistically misjudging the political situation, the National Liberation Front
(ANL) embarked on an insurrection based on a historical analysis
different from that sketched in this essay. The leaders of the Front did
not correctly assess the ideological and political preparation of the
67

proletariat, of part of the middle-class and of the incipient rural proletariat; they launched an untimely insurrection just when the bourgeoisie was consolidating its power. In 1935, the worst internal conflicts of
the bourgeoisie were over (they were settled between 1930 and 1933),
and it was already entrenching itself in the State apparatus and manipulating the levers of political command with increasing flexibility and
wider horizons than before. Its military system of support was already in
force.
At that period, the bourgeoisie always had the initiative in its dialogue
with the working-class and succeeded in imposing its rules and conditions. It is only in recent years, following radical transformations of
both the industrial and the rural working-class, that the terms of the
dialogue have begun to be dictated by the proletariat and the peasantry.
If the leaders of the Left can now analyse Brazilian society accurately and
frame a strategy consistent with the possibility of clashes between the
different sections of the bourgeoisie, the agrarian and industrial proletariat will be able to impose its will and inaugurate socialism. If they
fail, capitalism will continue in its course until historical and structural
conditions give rise to new antagonisms, posed in new terms, in Brazil.

68