Translating passive revolution in Brazil

Introduction

At the turn of the 20th century, there was quite a heated theoretical debate on the nature of the Russian social formation. Narodism defended the uniqueness of Russia and the Slavs, understanding that the people/nation, formed basically in the agrarian commune, had its own historical path and was impermeable to capitalism but very sensitive to agrarian socialism. The Marxist party was separated into two currents, the first of which, known as Menshevik, understood that Russia would follow the Occidental path and especially that of Germany in its historical development towards capitalism and in turn, when the conditions were ripe, towards socialism.

This universalist vision was contested by the Bolshevik faction, namely by Lenin, who pursued the particularity of social and state formation in Russian. For him, capitalism developed in Russia and fulfilled a progressive role; however, it had a particular constitution that did not identify with the Occidental path. Without an acknowledgment of the particularity of the Russian situation, it would not be possible to develop revolutionary political action. This Russian particularity indicated that the bourgeois revolution in Russia – in other words, the final abatement of feudalism and the absolutist state and the restoration of the fullest democracy – occurred through the victory of the working class backed by the peasants, precisely so that Russia would avoid following a road similar to that of Germany, where the bourgeoisie articulated with the feudal nobility and the Prussian state in order to lead to a non-revolutionary capitalist transformation (Lenin, 1980). Later, in the 1950s, Lukács suggested that the Prussian road concept should be extended to the cultural and political world as a way of enlarging the explanatory power of this theoretical category (Lukács, 1959).

In the 1920s, using a linguistic expression, Gramsci wondered if it were possible to translate the Leninian reading to the conditions of Italy. Actually, Gramsci recognised the need to carefully examine the particularity of bourgeois revolution and capitalism in Italy, so that it would be possible to seal the worker–peasant alliance and undertake revolutionary action. In his theoretical elaboration, advanced mainly in his writings from prison, Gramsci suggested that bourgeois revolution in Italy would have taken place in the form of a passive revolution, referring to the reaction of Italy’s ruling classes to bourgeois revolution in France and to the pressure from subordinate layers for deep social changes in their own peninsula. In order to activate a revolutionary movement in Italy in the 20th century, where the nucleus was the working class backed by the rural population, it was necessary to know the reasons for passive revolution as well as how fascism gave it new life. The nucleus of Gramsci’s research focused on the existing relationship between intellectuals and masses, the constitution of collective subjectivities, the permanent adaptation of power to time, especially the power of the Church, the continued proposal of the meridional question, and the characteristic mark of the intellectuals who are seduced by power (Gramsci, 1975).

These observations have a clear methodological character and may propose the eventual possibility of translating the particular problem of bourgeois revolution, under the form of passive revolution, to the reality of some regions in Latin America, such as Mexico, Cuba, Argentina, Chile and Brazil (Morton, 2010a). One may note, then, that passive revolution becomes a theoretical category that demands further research of the particularity, of the concrete analysis of the concrete situation, rather than being an explanatory category in and of itself, or else there would be a relapse into an abstract universalism of little theoretical and practical usefulness. The same could be said of Lenin’s formulation about the ‘Prussian road’, which emerges out of an analysis of the feudal latifundium transformation on large capitalist property in the process of bourgeois revolution in Germany. This road to capitalism took place in several places, but took different forms.

Gramsci’s analysis of passive revolution which, in the 19th century, led Italy to the construction of the national bourgeois state and also of the passive revolution that tried to solve the crisis of the same state in the 1920s, by way of fascism, suggests that both occurred due to two concomitant phenomena: the external impact of a popular-based revolution, and the internal pressure of the subordinate classes. In that the use of this category is useful in understanding the reality of some areas in Latin America, it may be said that the external impact in this case would have been the imperialism of the USA united with the pressure of the subordinate classes, which was tangible in some places in which there was a working class in formation or an insurgent rural population. One may note that in other regions of the continent, such as Andean America, even the bourgeois revolution as a passive revolution was blocked by the persistent restoring action and close ties of imperialism.

In the case of Mexico, as a working hypothesis, for example, one may say that passive revolution broke loose after the Mexican Revolution and particularly following the formation of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) as a state party in 1929. Passive revolution in Mexico would then be the combined product of geopolitical pressure from the USA in particular, and the failure/limits of the democratic bourgeois revolution of the 1910s, in an uneven and dialectical development process (Morton, 2010b).

Besides the problem of translation, there is further difficulty in understanding the historical reality of Latin America because the scientific and conceptual apparatus of Marxism and social science was forged, in general, in historical and cultural contexts specific and appropriate to other conditions. Therefore, there is a great heterogeneity of interpretations on the reality of Latin American countries. To delimit just the Brazilian reality within the readings provided by Marxism, it could be said, in a very simplified manner, that there are three great classic explanatory factions. The first of them, universalist, perceives Brazil as having emerged in the context of the formation of the world market and the capitalist development to which it would be inextricably subsumed in the form of the colony. The second interpretation searches the Brazilian reality for the development of a unique way of colonial slaveholding production with its own laws of development. The last version, which is also the oldest, understands Brazilian reality as a gathering of pre-capitalist social forms, like slavery and feudalism, reinvented by the colonial condition, and on which a capitalism dependent on imperialist centres developed.

The universalist reading, whose most outstanding author is Caio Prado Jr., dilutes the issue of bourgeois revolution and the construction of the nation-state, given that the Brazilian social form is a continuous development of capitalism under different forms, but imposed by the world market (Prado Jr., 1972; 1978). The second faction as mentioned above, whose main exponent is Jacob Gorender, needs amongst other things to explain the move from colonial slavery to capitalism, a unique bourgeois revolution made on the ruins of slavery (Gorender, 1978; Saes, 1985). In the opinion of the author, the third faction, whose major reference is Nelson Werneck Sodré, is the one that makes a more accurate methodological translation of Lenin and Gramsci in the appropriation of the historical particularity of capitalism and the national state in Brazil possible (Sodré, 1962; 1990). In the 1970s, the faction inspired by Caio Prado Jr. began to impose itself, with prominence given to the essay by Francisco de Oliveira (1972) and the book by Fernando Novaes (1973). Sodré’s faction was buried and gave way, in the debate, to the theory of colonial slavery contrary to that suggested by Caio Prado Jr. in which, since the beginning, Brazilian history has confused itself with the process of capitalist development. In that historical moment of intense debate, there was much emphasis on the so-called theories of dependence (Marin, 1973; 200). However, I believe that in relation to the translation to the Brazilian or Latin American reality, the notions of dependent-association development are of little help (Munck, 1979).

The passive revolution category itself penetrated the theoretical debate in Brazil in the 1970s, in the context of resistance to the military dictatorship and the search for a better reading of the historic reality of Brazil. It was thanks to the defeat of the armed resistance, on one hand, and on the other hand to a greater reception of the work of Gramsci, with prevalence of the said Eurocommunist reading, that the passive revolution category, as well as those of hegemony, civil society and others, penetrated the political and scientific lexicon in Brazil.

It is worth highlighting that the incorporation of Gramsci into the interpretation of Brazilian reality was accomplished, in the beginning, also through the use of the Prussian road category arising from Lenin and Lukács. Luiz Werneck Vianna’s (1976) book about liberalism and the labour union in Brazil uses the Prussian road, passive revolution and conservative modernisation categories, as well as the essay by Carlos Nelson Coutinho (1979) about the problem of democracy, almost interchangeably. A theoretical displacement for the conceptions advanced by Caio Prado Jr. in detriment to those by Sodré is also notable in these authors.

The fact is that the Gramscist category of passive revolution began to take shape in Brazil (and in Latin America) starting in the 1980s, almost always articulated within the general formulation of Caio Prado Jr. Today, there are dozens of scholars using the notion of passive revolution, but within a plurality of conceptions and interpretations, not all of which are effectively profitable. And there are even some who assimilate the notion of passive revolution as a political programme and not as an interpretative key of social processes (Vianna, 1998). It is also worth, as a last observation, reaffirming two risks present in the use of passive revolution as a category: those of creating a programme, and of diluting it in such a way that it can explain everything (Callinicos, 2010). So much so that the subsequent text is just a synthetic attempt at interpretation of Brazilian historical particularity and the construction of capitalism through a bourgeois revolution, which could be considered a passive revolution; a reading inspired by the writings of Nelson Werneck Sodré – a translation of Gramsci through the ‘national’ lenses of Sodré.

The dominant oligarchy

Portugal was one of the great warehouses that organised and divided trade during the feudal period from which the modern Occident originated, and its situation was strengthened precisely by the crisis that affected the spine of feudalism in the 14th century, with the eruption of armed conflicts, epidemics and climate change. Thus in the 15th century, and more precisely, between 1415 and 1498, Portugal built a marine commercial empire (similar to the Venetian empire) of great proportions. In this context, the South American coast, reached at the end of the 15th century, was nothing more than a place for shelter and passage. The siege of the Portuguese empire by the Dutch, who constituted another fundamental trade nucleus during feudal times, led to the Portuguese giving more attention to the new territory, which had been granted to the Portuguese king by the Pope.

The form of territorial occupation was an attempt to transplant the feudal order, nucleated in trade and similar to that of Portugal. The experience of land distribution as captaincies, composed by sesmarias (hereditary land grants), betrayed a feudal intent that soon failed, since they were not able to produce for trade. The solution the Portuguese found was to import slaves and implant slavery as a social form. Slavery developed in the North East of South America, but its situation was very specific because the trade took place with a Europe still predominantly feudal, while at the same time it generated in its periphery, in the interior, a peripheral and border feudalism with which it also maintained exchange relationships. Slavery and feudal relationships went together and complemented each other in the colonial condition, which destroyed the tribal communality of the natives.

The relative decline of slavery in the North East, generated by competition in the world market, optimised the regressive feudalism in the North East and, due to the discovery and exploitation of gold mines, the new slaveholding focus in the Central South. The relatively quick exhaustion of the auriferous veins generated regressive feudal conditions also in this region.

The appearance of bourgeois revolutions in Europe and North America made it possible to transfer imperial political power to the colonial oligarchies that had been formed over the centuries. Thus the Brazilian case was very particular, in the continental context. The socioeconomic scene in Brazil at the dawn of the 19th century was in open stagnation with regressive feudalisation, and with Portugal itself in a very difficult situation. The internalisation of political power by transferring part of the Portuguese feudal nobility to Rio de Janeiro did not change the situation, nor valorise the effort to create an organic imperial unit between Brazil and Portugal. On the contrary, this project initiated forty years of regional struggles in search of autonomy for Lisbon and Rio de Janeiro. These were struggles of different character and fundamentals that oscillated between the search for autonomy for the regional oligarchies and popular revolts aimed at the same time against the oligarchy and the colonial power.

The power established in Rio de Janeiro sought to submit to the regional oligarchies, particularly with the commitment to suppress popular rebellions and guarantee slavery at any cost, with the Brazilian Imperial Constitution of 1824 supporting this commitment. The discovery of coffee as a trade product in the world market engendered a new focus of slavery in the Central South, which transformed the feudal regression zones in Minas Gerais into a peripheral zone. The legal abolition of the slave trade, starting in 1850, coincided with the cessation of the regional resistances to the centralised political power of Rio de Janeiro.

The oligarchy’s dominance of a social formation, and at the same time of slaveholding and feudal relations, found its political expression in a slaveholding state that tried to reproduce characteristics of feudal absolutism (including the formation of a nobility and clerical power), but was obligated to paint itself in liberal colours. But it was under this consolidated oligarchy domain, starting in the middle of the 19th century, that the mercantile accumulation of capital developed. Thus it can be said that there was now a Brazilian state, albeit materially very fragile, and still not a nation. Actually, it was an empire, a very vast territorial domain capable of keeping itself united and imposing a single language.

The terminal crisis of slavery happened together with the generalisation of feudal conditions, with the origin of the industrial fraction of capital and world capitalism entering its imperialist phase. This synchronism made feudalism once again appear as a social form subsumed first to slavery and now to capitalism, which developed under the guidance of English financial capital. This synchronism lay below the oligarchy’s domination under the slaveholding state format centralised in an absolutist monarchy with a liberal disguise.

Between 1888 and 1894, the oligarchy’s domination faced a strong crisis that culminated in its reorganisation and modernisation. In this phase, both slavery and monarchy were abolished and a federal liberal republic was established. Inspired by positivism, a part of the urban middle class that found refuge for its demands in the army projected a centralised republic that would express a bourgeois revolution, which did not happen. ¹

The liberal republic assumed the form of a bourgeois state, though not its essence and socioeconomic fundamentals. Actually, the federation served as an institutional involucre so that a hierarchy of feudal-based regional powers would succeed the monarchial power. At the apex of said hierarchy was a coffee-producing region that had close ties with imperialist financial capital, and where an agro-mercantile accumulation of capital developed. The social relationships of work oscillated between feudal conditions, desired by the landlords, and salaried work, for which the workers fought. The struggle of the workers, a great majority of whom had migrated from Europe, was to resist servanthood and establish itself as a proletariat free to sell its labour, since the means of production were already free. The other states of the federation, following this hierarchical order, relied on shadows of capitalism, but feudal conditions of work exploitation prevailed in the wide rural zone.

The crisis of the dominant oligarchy and bourgeois revolution

The concrete conditions for bourgeois revolution came only in the 1920s. The unavoidable crisis of the accumulation of capital driven by the agro-mercantile fraction, the differentiation of the industrial fraction, the emergence of the proletariat, the feudal crisis (banditry, migration, the oligarchy’s alliance crisis), and the state liberal crisis (political representation and military crisis) made the bourgeois revolution within a context of a serious general capitalist crisis the order of the day. The issue was between a now generalised new feudal regression and bourgeois revolution.

The prevalence of the peripheral agrarian oligarchies would have stagnation as an implication. São Paulo’s industrial bourgeoisie saw itself strengthened in the countryside of the liberal state, and sought hegemony in the bourgeois civil society that was growing, mainly by the diffusion of industry. The industrial proletariat, in part, sought a democratic revolution as a form of the bourgeois revolution. However, each class could only succeed if it confronted the feudal latifundium and obtained the support of the rural population; and for different reasons, each of them failed. The bourgeoisie would not be able to industrialise the country without commercialising the land and without a more diffused original accumulation. The proletariat would not be able to lead a democratic revolution without first becoming united and compelling the rural population to rebel and opt to join the city workers. Thus, it seemed the bourgeois revolution was truncated.

The situation was resolved when a correlation of forces favorable to bourgeois revolution formed against those more deeply involved in the social relationships of properly capitalist production. An oligarchy was formed in Rio Grande do Sul that was connected to cattle production and the internal market. At the same time in that state, a positivist ideology favorable to the industrialisation and strengthening of the state prevailed (although it was against intervention in the job market), which was in opposition to the liberalism that guided the whole institutional order and the republican federation culture. This oligarchy formed an alliance with the urban middle class, which numerically diversified and thickened, and had its political expression in the rebellion of the military youth. Several peripheral regional oligarchies agreed to a commitment not to touch the feudal latifundium, and absorbed the social tension in the country by having the industry import a surplus workforce. The industrial bourgeoisie of São Paulo, the prodigal daughter of the coffee-growing oligarchy, showed itself to be reticent, while the state was really only waiting for the guarantee of private property, the defense of the market and police control of the proletariat (Vianna, 1976).

The separation of the oligarchy’s domination coincided with the critical phase of the bourgeois revolution (1928-1935), when the path to be followed was defined. The traditional oligarchies as well as the bourgeoisie had their flags planted in defense of the federation and liberalism (free hiring, and division of power). Through the Communist Party, the proletariat, with its organisational and ideological weakness, continued fighting for the democratic revolution, labour protection, the end of feudal latifundium and against imperialism, ultimately for the construction of a national democratic, but not liberal state. The difficulty in sealing a worker–peasant alliance forced the bringing together of portions of the urban middle class with parts of the military.

The defeat of bourgeois liberalism and democracy consolidated the bourgeois revolution in Brazil as a specific form of the Prussian road (Lenin) or the passive revolution (Gramsci). The manoeuvres that sought liberal restoration had wide coverage in the civil war of 1932, launched by the leading classes of São Paulo, and in the Constituent Assembly of 1933-34. But the ascension of the labour and popular movement starting in 1933, culminating in the formation of the National Liberation Alliance, made the bourgeoisie give up on the liberal restoration project and, finally, join the new ‘feudal bourgeois block’ that had consolidated. After the definitive defeat of the popular democratic labour movement, at the end of 1935, only portions of the oligarchies resisted the passive revolution process that was imposed (Del Roio, 1990)

The oligarchy of Rio Grande do Sul, interested in the internal market and guided by positivism, and the urban middle class, which felt represented by the young military rebels, partially guided also by positivism – which, at the same time, expressed a state institution in crisis that sought reorganisation – were the main actors in the bourgeois revolution the bourgeoisie joined only later, and to which the regional oligarchies were harnessed. The passive revolution project was a condensation of social and cultural forces guided by positivism and by an authoritarian, conservative and corporativist concept that opposed democracy (and socialism) and liberalism. This conservative authoritarian vision developed due to the sharpening of the international conflict and economic instability, besides the effective emergence of the labour class on the political scene. Whether from fascist or Catholic inspiration, corporativism seemed to be a lasting solution in facing the capitalist crisis as well as in conducting a bourgeois revolution in the form of a passive revolution.

Without a doubt, Catholic corporativism prevailed in Brazil, even though in the process of the political fight against democracy and liberalism two lines of activity were configured: integralism, more Catholic and outwardly similar to fascism, and ‘tenentism/varguism’, closer to positivism. The opposition of this project to democracy was radical, since it would implicate the unacceptable protagonist of the popular masses, while with liberalism the composition was unavoidable, given that this was the ideology that guided the agrarian oligarchies, middle class fractions, and even the bourgeoisie. It was a liberalism, however, that always referred to the state with the aim of avoiding democracy and which was, therefore, conservative. ²

The corporative authoritarian project has tried to impose itself since the end of the institutional order in 1930, but one cannot forget that the first signs of corporativism had already appeared in the 1920s with the creation of the National Labour Council. The corporative legislation about the unions sought to suffocate the independent labourer, depoliticise its movement, and create conditions for a larger industrial discipline that optimised the accumulation of capital. The labour resistance led by anarcho-unionists and communists was iron-like, and defended union autonomy and job protection.

The popular democratic revolution project that had developed as BOC – the Labor and Peasant Bloc – in 1928-1929 materialised again in 1934-1935 as the ANL – the National Liberation Alliance. Its failure, due to the inadequacy of the antagonistic forces, made democratic revolution unfeasible and let the dispute over the way and form of the bourgeois revolution become just a subject for the ruling classes in their reorganisation.

The civil war unleashed by the dominant class of São Paulo in 1932 carried the mark of liberal restoration, and the situation of unstable balance that emerged came to be made redundant, in the 1934 Constitution, in a liberal-corporative hybrid form. Actually, here one finds the key to interpreting the particularity of the bourgeois revolution in Brazil, the translation of the passive revolution. Brazilian liberalism was already an aid to the oligarchy’s domination, to protecting slavery and to feudal oppression, but it also made the birth of capitalism possible. It did so in such a way that liberalism valued the protection of social positions, the defence of authority and properties and, therefore, always had close ties with the state as last defender of its principles.

Resistance to corporativism ceased in the face of the danger represented by the relative ascension of the subordinate classes, once it had noticed that the nationalisation of the union and the creation of a politically determined job market could cause accumulation to advance. On the other hand, there was also the advantage of preserving relationships between the dominant class fractions and the state, as ruled by liberalism.

But even the corporative project was not univocal. While there was a need to confront the democratic alternative and the liberal restoration, the corporative factions already fortified in the state, specifically in the armed forces, acted in consonance with the integralism that was strong in civil society. When resistances were beaten, the corporativism represented by Vargas broke from integralism, given that this would have had greater difficulty in sealing the unity of the dominant class fractions and proceeding in the industrialisation process and the international political strengthening of the state (Vianna, 1976; Araujo, 1998).

Liberal-corporate hybridism

Liberal-corporate hybridism presided over the whole period of the bourgeois revolution in Brazil, with prevalence over one or the other side of the equation. It is important to note that the bourgeois revolution is a long-term process as accumulation through the extraction of the more relative value begins to prevail, and the bourgeoisie emerges as the dominant/ruling class. In Brazil, it can thus be said that the bourgeois revolution began around 1928 when the industrial bourgeoisie presented itself as an autonomous fraction of capital by means of its own subjectivity, and continued until about 1980, when the bourgeoisie proposed itself as a hegemonic force in civil society and assisted the emergence of the workers’ movement as a protagonist that put the dictatorial form of the bourgeois state in crisis.

This half-century gave the bourgeois revolution in Brazil political and institutional instability, as a mark in the dispute between liberalism and corporativism – Siamese twins in defence of the interests of the dominant classes. Liberal-corporative hybridism was an expression of an accumulation strategy and social relationships between the classes and the class fractions. However, throughout this period, the military, guided by the corporative and geopolitical interests of the state, played a crucial role that contributed greatly to the industrialisation of the country and to the emergence of the bourgeoisie as the dominant class. The bourgeois revolution, through the enlarging of bureaucracy and state policies, helped in the construction of a bourgeois state and of nationality.

When the democratic alternative was beaten with the defeat of the National Liberation Alliance in 1935, liberalism still breathed, and tried to fight on until 1937. The coup d’état of November of that year tried to impose the prevalence of corporativism once and for all, but had to face the persistent material weakness of the state, the worker’s passive resistance, and the resistance of the dominant fractions. Intense legislative activity and propaganda tried to cure these weaknesses, but the fact is that there was a larger project for the accumulation of capital than for hegemony, especially as the corporative authoritarian concept fed the civil and military intellectuals allocated in the state more than those present in the construction of civil society, since the latter preferred liberalism or even Marxism. In fact, the Brazilian passive revolution was referenced by the idea that the state is the constructor of the people/nation, and authors like Oliveira Viana and Gilberto Freire were some of the most outstanding ideologists in the formation of this specific passive revolution.

From 1929 to 1941, state violence prevailed against the subordinate classes in order to neutralise the working class, prevent the peasant rebellion, and unify the fractions of the dominant classes. The objective of corporativism, besides its aim of defeating antagonistic worker autonomy, was to construct a certain social consensus among industrial workers in exchange for the concession of some rights, as well as to hinder the possible worker–peasant alliance. Without a doubt, as a backdrop there was also the objective of forging the nation, starting from the action of the state. The corporative project, amidst much resistance, smoothed its way in this phase and was ready to develop its capitalist accumulation plan within a world of ignited conflict. The approximation to other states that had opted for corporativism of diverse origin and implantation guaranteed relative autonomy on the international scene.

The explosion of the military confrontation between liberal imperialist states and corporative fascist states significantly increased the pressure on Brazil and forced a more courageous search for a social support base and a renegotiation of its international insertion, bringing it closer to the USA. The bourgeoisie had been able to reach an agreement in which it was organised autonomously in the heart of the corporate state, from which it gained the energy to strengthen itself socially, but with which, at the same time, it did not identify. Thus it remained for the bourgeois state-in-construction to appeal to the workers and intensify the discourse of social rights, and for the nation to surpass the mere project of accumulation. But this discourse carried the mark of its Catholic origin: the organicist and ‘community’ vision (Gomes, 1988).

The decline phase of the New State was thus marked by a redefinition of its position on the international scene; by the effort to achieve popular support through social rights and the state labour union; by the revived liberal opposition; and even by the recovery of the democratic alternative. In fact, between May and October 1945, the democratic alternative, fed by the democratic and anti-fascist wave that was sweeping the world, began to bloom through the popular worker unity around the formation of industrial councils, the fight for autonomous union organisation and for a sovereign Constituent Assembly separate from the presidential election – a movement expressed in the speedy strengthening of the Brazilian Communist Party (PCB).

The coup d’état against Vargas, in October 1945, sealed the reversion of the democratisation process and anticipated the new phase of passive revolution and the liberal-corporative hybridism that gave it its institutional padding. The Constitution of 1946 guaranteed untouchable landholding property to the agrarian oligarchies, and strong political representation in the Federal Senate. Freedom of movement in the market was guaranteed for the bourgeoisie and at the same time, so was continuity of discipline in the working class via state union corporativism and the labour court. The urban middle class was able to manifest itself through political party representation and cultural expressions. In summary, political liberalism contemplated the demands of the agrarian oligarchies, the bourgeoisie and the middle class, but kept control of the working class through corporativism and exclusion from the constitutional field of the communist party (illegal since 1947), keeping the peasants marginalised through violence and the deprivation of social and civil rights, in addition to the right to vote, since illiterates were not allowed to vote.

Clearly, it would require much effort to qualify the political regime of 1946 as democratic. Indeed, the Constitution of 1946, under the heel of a president general elect together with a Constituent Assembly made up of a liberal-conservative majority of representatives, maintained liberal-corporative hybridism and civic protection.

The variants of passive revolution

The end of the thirty-year war (1914-1945), which inflamed the imperialistic centres and the subsequent political and diplomatic confrontation between the USA and the USSR, and greatly hindered democratic revolutions with a socialist horizon, generated conditions so that passive revolution in Brazil would unfold into two possible variants within the forms of hybridism indicated. On one hand, the agrarian oligarchies, part of the bourgeoisie and urban middle class, and the military conceived the strategy of accumulation directed toward the imperial space of the USA, with a political and military alliance and an open market which would involve a slower and subordinate industrialisation. In this conception, liberalism, understood as an expression of landowners in the market, should be totally imposed in such a way that social rights be restricted and the subordinate classes, in case of insubordination, be treated with the force of the state. It can be observed that there is no hegemony or national project in this liberal conservative vision.

The other variant emerged in the declining phase of the New State and indicated the nuclear position of the state in the industrial takeoff, where there was a need to nationalise the natural mineral and energy reserves. The creation of state companies and public investment in the infrastructure characterised the ‘state capitalism’ that would offer capital goods that the bourgeoisie was not able to forge itself due to the limited degree of accumulation it had reached. The objective was to create a regional capitalist pole that was relatively autonomous within the imperial space of the USA, grouping together the Southern Cone countries of the continent. In this position, the bond between the state and the people/nation was stronger, but it did not constitute a solid hegemonic project, given that it continued to be the state, the civil and military bureaucracy, that conducted the bourgeois revolution process, albeit with the support of part of the bourgeoisie and the middle class. It also happens that this variant was reticent in agrarian transformation, and maintained the corporate design of including working-class organisation as a figure of public law and a partly subordinate constituent of the bourgeois state, in the form of civic protection.

The contention between these variants of passive revolution marked the whole liberal-corporative period involving the military, political parties, trade unions, the press and cultural associations. The frequent political intervention of the military in the political institutional process also stands out, almost always in favor of the liberal variant. This variant, in fact, prevailed between 1946 and 1950, in 1954-1955, and in 1961. The ‘state capitalism’ variant prevailed between 1951 and 1954, and between 1962 and 1964. It is important to note that the accumulation strategy adopted since the 1930s was exhausted by the middle of the 1950s, due to imperialistic pressures and the struggle of the classes with the liberal obstacles.

The period from 1956 to 1960 was an attempt to implant and deepen the liberal variant, without, however, rejecting the role of the state. Indeed, at this moment there was a great diffusion of the social/capitalist relationship, and in two different directions. On one hand, there was the internationalisation of the economy movement, with the entrance of imperialist capital and the implantation of automobile factories. On the other hand, there was the internalisation of capitalism with the expansion and capitalisation of the latifundium benefited by the change of the federal capital to Brasília. Parts of the bourgeoisie began associations and negotiations with imperialist capital in the form of establishing complementary relationships (Almeida, 2007).

The working class had suffered a serious defeat in 1947, when the Cold War began and the General Confederation of Trade Unions of Brazil (CGTB) and the Brazilian Communist Party (PCB) – its syndical and political representative – were placed outside the law. A slow and continuous ascension phase began in 1953 with the 300,000-strong strike in São Paulo. In the following years, inter-union articulations were formed in contrast with corporative legislation, and promoted the autonomous worker. The labour party’s change of political orientation was very important, and made it possible to form a single trade union front between the communists and workers. Both groups – the Brazilian Worker’s Party (PTB) and the Brazilian Communist Party (PCB) – had a tendency to grow, in spite of the very serious crisis the PCB faced in absorbing the impact of the changes in the communist movement, especially those in the USSR. Starting in 1958, the proposal made by the PCB for a national and democratic front tended to diffuse, which guaranteed a democratic outcome for the bourgeois revolution, addressing the question of land and imperialism. The labour union organisation tended to grow, especially in the state companies, but also in private ones. The peak of labour organisation was the formation of the General Confederation of Workers (CGT) in 1962, amid mass political strikes.

Violence and migration had lessened the agrarian crisis in the North East, yet the social conflict had moved, for a moment, to the agricultural border zones in Paraná, São Paulo, and Goiás. At the end of the 1950s, finally, after almost thirty years of attempts, rural syndicalism began to form and developed with the foundation of the Farmers and Agricultural Workers’ Union of Brazil (ULTAB) (1954) and the National Confederation of Agricultural Workers (CONTAG), in 1963. Other outstanding examples of field workers organisations were the Peasant Leagues, which started in Pernambuco. The difficulties persisted and the organic weakness in the organisation of the subordinate classes also continued; but at the beginning of the 1960s, it was no longer merely an abstraction to speak of a worker–peasant alliance (Cunha, 2008).

In addition, the growth of the state through the formation of an administrative bureaucracy and social policies, which demanded additional personnel, increased and diversified the urban middle class. These social classes, with much intercession, expressed their demands through the military; but the university student movement also now became the spokesperson for some of these social groups. The educational objectives, from literacy to access to university, were problems that served to ensure that the bourgeois revolution would continue. The cultural expressions reached prominence and also presented signs of progress, but also of the risk of stagnation of the country. It was a moment of diffuse nationalist ideology.

Since August 1961, conviviality between the two variants of passive revolution had terminated thanks to so much conflict after the Second World War. Not only did the stage of the passive revolution press for a new accumulation strategy but also, impacted by the Cuban revolution and a series of anti-colonist revolts, it changed the continental and world scene. The ‘state capitalism’ variant would need to enlarge state investments in infrastructure in order to guarantee a qualitative jump in the industrial takeoff, and to count on the solid support of the industrial bourgeoisie, besides its significant popular support. The moment at which it was no longer possible to elide the agrarian problem and the people/nation protagonism problem finally arrived. It meant that it was no longer possible to maintain the rural population tied to the latifundium and the working class contained by corporativism – this way, the passive revolution variant could only take place if it was converted to a democratic revolution, if the question of hegemony was effectively postulated.

The organisation of the subordinate classes – the working class, the rural population and parts of the middle class – was not enough to impose the democratic rupture, but pressed enough to enable deep social transformations. To transform the passive revolution into a democratic revolution from within itself was the prevailing determination specifically of the politically organised forces around the Brazilian Communist Party (PCB) and the Brazilian Labour Party (PTB), given an insufficiency of forces that demanded the war of position as a form of political battle. The role of the bourgeoisie seemed decisive in these circumstances, because if it opted for the liberal-corporative ‘state capitalism’ variant, it could be neutralised or called on to dispute hegemony in the democratic revolution, being included in the popular/national field.

It appears that the growing mobilisation of the subordinate classes and the risk of the democratic revolution, associated with the unfolding of the Cuban revolution in the imperialist policy of the USA, contributed to the aggregation of the social forces that were ruled by the liberal strategy and associated with imperialism. The agrarian oligarchies, fearing the breakdown of the latifundium, a large part of the industrial and bank bourgeoisie, and part of the middle class trapped by the powerful bonds of conservative ideologies, joined together in open support of imperialism.

The role of the military was crucial to the outcome of the drama. The open or hidden presence of the military on the political scene had been known since the destruction of the liberal institutions in 1930. The ideological and political disputes ran through the military corporation during the whole bourgeois revolution and construction of the national state. The military reflected the divisions present in the state and were defenders, in a variety of tones, of one or another variant of the passive revolution.

The liberal military that was favorable to the strategic union with the USA was always predisposed to the show of strength. The military left was fundamentally favorable to ‘state capitalism’, considering that the communists in the armed forces were confused in this tendency. But the majority could be simply identified as being favorable to an army policy within legality. Starting in 1961, fearing a democratic rupture begun by popular protagonism, the liberal activists began approximating themselves to the legalists. The so-called ‘national security doctrine’ that had been developing since the 1950s, now mature with institutional influence, started to prevail. This doctrine said that the army should get ready to face the ‘subversive war’ that would be unleashed by the internal enemy – in other words, by the subordinate classes rebelling against the social order. This conception was superimposed very well to the old conservative authoritarian ideology that enclosed liberalism in Brazil.

Thus, at the beginning of 1964, most of the army, backed by the group of landowners and all of the fractions of capital, supported by a large group of the middle class, proposed a coup d’état against the risk of democratic revolution, against the variant of passive revolution via ‘state capitalism’, even though they called their anti-popular movement a ‘democratic revolution’. With the defeat of the democratic alternative, the state capitalism and liberal-corporativism variants returned through another door, since what the majority didn’t understand was that the liberal-associated variant, like the one that had been defended in the 1950s, was also no longer able to impose itself due to regressive aspects that implicated the state and the bourgeois domain.

The military dictatorship and the deepening of passive revolution

The military dictatorship established in April 1964 would deepen and reorder the bourgeois revolution under the form of passive revolution. Once again, it was necessary to handle the democratic pressure of the subordinate classes as well as imperialist pressure, intervening, projecting a new accumulation strategy and recomposing the state institutions. However, the victorious authoritarian conservative coalition was not unambiguous in its project, and oscillated between conservative liberalism and corporativism. The result could be nothing less than a re-composition of the liberal-corporative hybridism that had been developing since 1930 (at least).

First and foremost, the new regime destroyed the organisation of subordinate classes that leaned toward autonomy and antagonism. Urban and rural syndicalism was destroyed, as were the Peasant Leagues; the military left was punished and cast out of the armed forces; cultural and sciencific institutes were persecuted and closed; and parliamentary and supporting fringes of national-democratic character were deprived of their rights.

The economic policy desired for decades by the liberals was implanted again. Liberal-orientated reforms were also forged in the legislation, as in the case of the abolition of job security and the creation of the FGTS – the Employee’s Severance Guarantee Fund. Purged of the left, political party representation would tend to present only the nuances of liberal coloration in parliament. If everything went well, Marechal Castelo Branco would conclude the mandate initiated by Jânio Quadros, and would pass the power over to his successor.

What many liberal forces that supported the military intervention in 1964 did not notice was that finally the military had emerged at the centre of the scene. Its appearance was due to a coalition of heterogeneous tendencies within the armed forces, united against the military left and the risk of democratic irruption of the subordinate classes. Thus its permanence at the centre of power would be lasting and endowed with autonomy due to the dominant class fractions, since its mission was to carry out the bourgeois revolution in Brazil. For that reason, the internal contentions of the armed forces gained extraordinary importance in the course of the process (Martins, 1995).

The perception that there was resistance to the regime, even in the field of the dominant classes, unleashed a new repressive wave and reform of the political party representation at the end of 1965, when an act of strength forged the bi-partisan system composed of the National Renovation Alliance (ARENA) and the Brazilian Democratic Movement (MDB). It was decided that the elections would take place through an indirect process, and the presidential mandate of Marechal Castelo Branco was extended.

One year later, in October 1966, Congress was closed for a new purging and, in reaction, the Broad Front political movement was formed, an organisation composed of the liberal opposition. The measure of strength sought to smooth the way for a new liberal-corporative institutionalism that would contemplate the national security doctrine. The creation of the National Security Council as an innovation of the 1967 Constitution would complete the task, finally, of institutionalising the military dictatorship.

A new accumulation strategy was the basis for this pledge to recompose the state and its institutions, which overcame the past variants of passive revolution on another level, outlining its final phase. The liberal variant would leave Brazil facing the strong risk of stagnation and agrarian regression. The ‘state capitalism’ variant as the route to empowerment within the imperial context had become unviable, since the industrial bourgeoisies had definitely and hopelessly opted for subordinate association with imperialist financial capital.

Indeed, the strategy of inserting itself into the economic and political context centred in the USA’s empire demanded an open market policy, but the state could not give up the retaking of the industrialisation process, especially since it was an essential condition of ‘national security’. Thus the opening of the market, which would import capital goods, would be compensated for by the search for foreign finance (which also meant foreign debt) for industrialisation through a new variant of ‘state capitalism’. This strategy benefited mainly banking capital, the direct middleman with imperialist financial capital, leaving the interests of industrial and agrarian capital in second place.

The starting point was an accumulation crisis situation and the indispensable increase of the labour exploitation tax, which was achieved by means of economic policy and political repression and, one cannot forget, persuasive determination. Hence there was a need for corporativist reinforcement (also disappointing the liberals). Corporativism should recover its original function as a means of control and discipline of the working class, and as an agent of social cohesion and the construction of the nation. The trade union should accomplish an economic function and take part in increasing labour productivity and salary contention. On behalf of the corporative principle, the legal strike would be of categorical economical character, with political and solidarity strikes banned. At the same time, there was stimulation of urban and rural syndicalisation due to the opening up of access to social rights. The flattening of salaries also implied a thickening of the industrial reserve army of labour, with the admission of youths and women (Erickson, 1978)

Labour resistance, facing state repression, took place most of the time in a passive way, and even more so considering the risks of unemployment, which was added to the flattening of wages. Dissatisfaction with the course of the regime came from groups representing the dominant fractions or, due to the persistence of the economic crisis and the limitations of liberal freedoms, through expressions of the dissatisfaction of the middle class. Thus, the most confusing expression of opposition to the dictatorship came from the student movement and the cultural world. Magazines, newspapers, theatre and music were all means of intellectual and cultural organisation in opposition to the regime. The more the political and cultural ties with the working class became restricted, the more the student movement, also an expression of the urban middle class, moved to the left.

The defeat of 1964 dispersed the social forces that had invested in the democratic alternative: the bourgeoisie and a great part of the middle class supported the coup d’état. The working class, the rural population and part of the middle class, including the military left, suffered under the repression. The prevailing evaluation of the Brazilian Communist Party (PCB) was that the pressure for social reforms or even for the democratic rupture outside that which contributed to the democratic alternative support base would narrow. In fact, part of the forces that backed the passive revolution via ‘state capitalism’ did not desire democratic conversion. Recognising the tough defeat, the Brazilian Communist Party (PCB) began to propose the slow construction of a political front in favour of establishing democratic freedoms, which eventually included those forces reticent to any democratic rupture, but also opposed to state exception.

However, the diversification of the left, a process that had been taking place since 1961, transformed into a pulverisation. The middle class, which expressed itself politically and culturally in the student movement, separated itself almost entirely from the working class, while intending to speak in its name. The international scene suggested that a clearly revolutionary policy marked by confrontational tactics would bring results, with the Cuban revolution, the Algerian revolution, the Chinese cultural revolution, the Vietnamese resistance and the youth rebellion all being ingredients for this formula. The view that capitalist accumulation in Brazil tended toward a lingering stagnation, if deep economic and social transformations did not occur, reinforced this tendency. The Marxist and Catholic leftist organisations – the Communist Party of Brazil (PCdoB) and the Workers’ Political Party (POLOP), and Popular Action (AP), respectively – that appeared to the left of the Brazilian Communist Party (PCB) at the beginning of the 1960s were all directed to a strategy of armed resistance, but were all victims of divisions, as was the Brazilian Communist Party itself, which lost almost half its organised strength in favour of new organisations that agreed that armed conflict would be unavoidable (Gorender, 1985; Ridenti, 1993).

The objection and reaffirmation of the military dictatorship

General Costa e Silva’s government had had a relatively calm beginning since March 1967, but had to face a serious political crisis in 1968. In March, the assassination of a student by the police unleashed a noisy mobilisation against military supremacy. The students had the support and sympathy of the intellectuals, the middle class and even the bourgeois opposition, which cost the Broad Front its legal life. However, the strategic perspective of the student movement was already resigned to armed fighting, as opposed to alliances with the liberal bourgeois opposition, so much so that it multiplied its attacks against military targets and bank robberies.

Reacting to the hard conditions of life, the working class began strikes in Contagem (in April) and Osasco (in July), and tried to organise in an autonomous way, outside the corporative structure. These actions, however, were not able to articulate with the student rebellion, which contributed to the defeat of both.

The military, in the name of ‘national security’, manifested in unison in defence of the regime. Only in the second semester did most of the military understand that the repression of any movement of objection, as well as the deepening of militarisation (and corporativism), was unavoidable. It was a heterogeneous majority, however, with objective and disparate visions, to which were opposed, without much success, the liberal Prussian faction and Marechal Castelo Branco institutionalism, which vocalised the interests of the conservative liberal ruling classes in the National Congress.

The dynamics of the process led the student movement to illegality, driving it underground to take up guerilla warfare, and sharpened the militarisation and corporativisation of the dictatorship, to the detriment of its liberal and representative aspects. The closing of Congress in December 1968, which accompanied the promulgation of new repressive legislation, the Ato Institucional Número Cinco (Institutional Act Number 5) or ‘AI-5’, started to concentrate power in the high cupola of the army and to isolate the presidency of the Republic, occupied by General Costa e Silva. Hindered by serious health problems, General Costa e Silva, instead of being replaced by the vice-president (Pedro Aleixo, a liberal conservative), left his place to a military council made up of commanders from the three armed forces. The presidential succession was decided by consulting the 240 existing generals and they, in the end, consecrated General Emilio Medici as the new president. The National Congress was reopened to swear in the new General President and add a constitutional amendment that accentuated ‘national security’ elements to the detriment of liberalism.

The state and parastatal repressive apparatus gained strength and complete freedom of action, along with widespread arbitrary arrests, tortures and assassinations of those who opposed. The urban guerrilla was crushed with relative ease, not only through repressive brutality, but also because it effectively represented only a small part of the intellectual middle class, and its ties with the subordinate classes were too tenuous. The order, however, was to remove the Marxist inspired organisations from the life of the country in order to elevate ‘national security’ to the maximum.

The permanent repressive action was part of a programme that was completed by intense propaganda and social policies directed toward the consolidation of the consensus, such as professional training, literacy education and the creation of a federal public university system. Political representation was reduced to a role of mere endorsement, and corporative powers of every kind gained strength. Only between 1938 and 1941 had corporativism prevailed in such an outstanding way, previously. The retaking of accumulation, sensitive since 1968, unified all the bourgeois fractions and was able to induce the middle class to support the dictatorial state. The great number of state companies created in the period and the monopolist growth of national and imperialist companies gave Brazil a corporative state capitalism profile that had similarities with fascism.

The economical weight of the state and the impact of the international capitalist crisis generated splits in the block of the dominant classes, and some groups started to denounce ‘statism’. Frictions between sections of the dominant classes, amongst themselves, and with the political regime began to manifest themselves, and the visible way out was to bring back political representation and other channels for the expression of dissent.

General Ernesto Geisel, who assumed the presidency in 1974, took upon himself the mission of institutionalising the regime, recomposing the balance between liberalism (political representation of the dominant classes) and corporativism (the disciplining and control of the mass workers). In order to do this, it was necessary to strengthen the National Congress and political parties, soften censorship of the press and cultural production, and end the political persecution and physical elimination of the opposition. There were two orders of challenge: on the one hand, to defeat the resistance of military groups and the repressive machine; and on the other hand, not to allow them to create demands containing some embryo of a democratic project.

The tough labour resistance manifested itself in the sabotaging of the productive process and demands for salary adjustment and syndical autonomy. With the Marxist organisations destroyed, the masses began to organise around the political and pastoral action of the Catholic Church, which was then living under the influence of so-called ‘liberation theology’. Victimised by the crisis, the middle class – including through the university student movement, which organised itself again with a wide prevalence of groups from the left – returned to express its dissatisfaction, strengthening the Brazilian Democratic Movement (MDB). The pressure from the students for the end of the dictatorship and for the restoration of democracy, which was also the demand of the Catholic organisations, stimulated the protagonism of civil society associations linked to justice, the press, the university, and the intellectuals in general, diffusing a more democratic liberalism.

The bourgeoisie, especially the industrial fraction, took advantage of the occasion and projected itself as a class capable of hegemony without the need for an open dictatorship. Finally, Brazil was now a fully capitalist, industrialised country with a significant domestic market, large metropolises, strong capital concentration and workforces in large companies. With latifundium capitalisation, the appearance of agro-industries and the large agricultural proletariat, the rural capitalist transformation was complete. The crisis through which the USA’s supremacy was passing enlarged the margins of Brazilian manoeuvres in the international context, and qualified it as an emerging power.

Perhaps, according to bourgeois subjectivity, Brazil could conclude its bourgeois revolution, accomplished under the form of passive revolution, with the restoration of a liberal democracy, going from Prussianism to Americanism and outlining the democratic conversion and the autonomous protagonism of the masses. The emergence of a working class with a Fordist profile between 1978 and 1981, promoting general strikes against the flattening of salaries, against repressive laws and in favour of syndical autonomy, would meet this bourgeois conception, even though it would enhance the democratic alternative (Atunes, 1988; Vianna, 1983).

The conclusion of bourgeois revolution and the permanence of passive revolution

From the viewpoint of the development of productive forces, the bourgeois revolution in Brazil concluded at the end of the 1970s with the proposal of making the industrial bourgeoisie the ruling class also in civil society, and with the emergence of a working class demanding freedom for labour power sale contracts, in addition to a significant agricultural proletariat. The bourgeoisie had configured a political and intellectual group leading the Brazilian Democratic Movement, specifically in São Paulo, and the working class made the Worker’s Party (PT) its party, constructed by syndicalists and popular Catholic associations, including several Marxist minorities, originating from the guerrilla organisations. The Brazilian Communist Party (PCB) and the Communist Party of Brazil (PCdoB) passed through serious internal crises that tended to accentuate the displacement of the working class.

However, the industrial fraction was not able to unify the ruling classes around its hegemonic project. The aim of the army in preserving its role in the life of the country and the distrust of other bourgeois fractions drove the process to a conservative outcome. The leading group of the industrial bourgeoisie gained popular support, as in the political campaign for direct presidential elections in 1984, but in the end was defeated by the agrarian and bank fraction alliance, which had prevailed since the restoration of the dictatorship. In fact, the industrial fraction was only able to delay and mitigate the installation of the neoliberal regime in Brazil and the return of the bank fraction supremacy.

The invigoration of syndicalism and associationism during the 1980s was also possible due to the split amongst the bourgeoisie fractions, and made a democratic outcome to the bourgeois revolution possible, although this did not become a reality mainly due to the wide prevalence of the syndical-corporative ideologies at the heart of the labour and popular movements, in addition to the international scene having already presented itself as unfavourable. At no moment was it able to put the problem of worker hegemony on the agenda in the democratic restoration and the emergence of the people/nation.

In the end, the Federal Constitution of 1988 consecrated a bourgeois state in a liberal-democratic form, with limited social rights. However, military protection was maintained in the body of the law, as was the recycled syndical corporativism, so that the method and programme of the passive revolution in permanence (see Morton 2011) were imposed as means of bourgeois hegemony in Brazil. The weak hegemony, with Bonapartist tendencies, was imposed by state violence and by the allure of the ruling intellectuals and compensatory policies, but was also capable of co-opting the corporative worker’s conscience by means of technological and managerial innovation to create the conditions for relative peace, even amid the extreme violence of civil society.

Since the promulgation of the 1988 Constitution, the bourgeois block has been subsiding under the lead of the bank fraction. The latter is associated with imperialist financial capital, which defined an accumulation strategy with low growth rates that implicated a neoliberal regime under the formal liberal-democratic mantle, capable of raising the support of the syndical bureaucracy, the support or tolerance of the middle class, and the diffused sympathy of disorganised popular sections. The insertion of Brazil into the new imperial context occurred thanks to the publicised incorporation of the neoliberal globalist subjectivity. It was not able to configure a clear neoliberal regime, but without a doubt it greatly regressed the subjectivities that revolved around the construction of the people/nation or even worker hegemony, while on the other hand, the social movements were not able to define the antagonism to neoliberal subjectivity.