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 To the many critics in both the ivory tower and the political realm who fail to understand how it is possible that the same President who privatized Brazilian companies like Companhia Vale do Rio Doce and instituted a host of other market-based reforms in Brazil during the decade of the 90's, is also one of the leading Marxist scholars of the 20th century, I offer the following explanation.
As soon as Fernando Henrique Cardoso applied the basic conclusion of his anthropological research on slavery - that the Brazilian slave was both a hidden and excluded social actor - to the Marxist debate over class struggle in Brazil, it became apparent to him that the Marxist theory of revolution popular during the late 1950s and early 1960s was clearly untenable.
Cardoso's research raised the question of how to politicize Marxist class relations in a slave society that is not of classes, but of castes (1).
Moreover, the caste society that developed in Brazil is historically unique. A fact, which for Cardoso, required an interpretative approach unique to its Latin American context be employed for accurate sociological analysis.
The Brazilian Negro, although alienated, remained trapped in an underground social caste even after Brazil transformed into a class-based society.
The Brazilian Legacy of Subservience
At the same time, Negroes demonstrated a corresponding lack of class-consciousness necessary for active membership in the proletariat, or universal class, as described by Marx.
These factors explain the legacy of subservience carried by Brazilian Negroes to this present day, and are the key facts by which Cardoso and his colleagues proved to UNICEF that its conception of Brazil as a model melting pot society was impossible.
Contrary to Communist political doctrine, the participation of Negroes in Brazil could not, therefore, be expected in any worldwide proletarian revolution.
Cardoso was also keen to observe that the Brazilian working class was much less organized and had a different relationship to the capitalist class than did the working class in Europe, who managed to successfully organize into groups such as labor unions.
Cardoso drew two principle conclusions from his study.
Against Economic Determinism and Modernization Theory
Classical economic determinism assumes that development will progress naturally in much the same way around the world as it did in Europe.
Due to slavery, however, Cardoso's first conclusion was that the developmental path of capitalism could never follow a similar course in Brazil as it had in Europe, where societies were not based on slavery, but on feudalism.
Second, and with regard to the intense spirit of revolutionary communism that prevailed, Cardoso concluded that not everywhere would the masses alienated under capitalism be prepared to participate simultaneously in any worldwide communist revolution.
Also, in contradistinction to the accepted theory of modernization, Cardoso showed that the course of change in Brazil would clearly be different than that which took place in Europe, even though Brazil's developmental process is derived from, subordinate to, and dependent upon European influence.
Brazil's legacy of slavery, the colonial and imperial context of forced labor and its relationship to the broader development of mercantile capitalism are also important to note because this history explains why the United States and Brazil are such different countries today.
The Primary Reason Why Brazil Will Never Be Like the USA
Both Brazil and the U.S. are nations of immigrants from around the world.
Whereas, however, American settlers aimed to use her resources to create a new, democratic country free from European domination, those who settled in Brazil did so under the yoke of imperialism with the aim of exporting Brazil's wealth back to Europe.
And, it must be added, with no regard whatsoever for her future.
The United States is a country Europeans came to develop; Brazil is a country Europeans came to exploit and destroy.
The Origins of Brazilian Nationalism
This simple historical fact helps explain the origins of Nationalism as an overriding theme in Brazilian politics.
For many Brazilians, foreign capital is conceived of as a harbinger of exploitation and external domination. This is understandable since it's been this way since the Portuguese discovered Brazil in 1500.
The Cardosian Method
By the time he published his dissertation on slavery, Cardoso's sociological method was firmly established - an interpretation of contemporary phenomena using ethnography, combined with a historical-structural observation of history and class struggle.
Thus, as many fail to realize, at the level of practice Cardoso departed from an orthodox Marxist interpretation of society at an early age, yet retained the method Marx used to interpret history to this very day.
The Rewards of Scholarship
The tremendous quality and impact of Fernando Henrique Cardoso's sociological work led the University of São Paulo to grant him the degree of livre docência in 1964, the requirement for moving up to a status roughly equivalent to that of an associate professor in an American university (2:28).
Whereas the potent lure of a steady paycheck and comfortable retirement is enough to effectively make many social scientists residing in the ivory tower complacent about the political milieu in which they live, this was not the case for Cardoso.
For all his success as a student, however, Fernando Henrique Cardoso's early academic life was similar to that of many of his colleagues - one of student radicalism and disillusionment (2:6). Considering the times this is understandable.
As we shall see, unlike many of his colleagues, Cardoso would never become satisfied with the transition from being part of the solution (a student) to part of the problem (faculty/staff).
Footnotes
[1] At issue here is the Portuguese word desvão, which is not commonly used and has no direct dictionary translation to English. I believe my translation of the word to mean "hidden" is accurate. See the word spoken by Cardoso in its context:
"Como é que você iria explicar o problema da relação "de classes" numa sociedade que não é de classes, que era escravocrata? Como o escravo vai negar a ordem escravocrata (atuar para superá-la)?
"O escravo não é classe universal (como o proletariado). Ele é um desvão da história. Essa idéia sempre foi muito presente na minha cabeça. Em certos momentos, certas categorias sociais viram desvão da história.
"Os excluídos não são necessariamente portadores do futuro, como pensa a esquerda vulgar. O escravo era excluído e não portador do futuro. O que ele poderia aspirar era a mesma condição do senhor - ser livre, formalmente. Isto é, não ter a mesma posição estrutural, mas ser livre.
"A escravidão não poderia ser explicada sem referência à expansão do grande capitalismo. Mas a história do Brasil não é uma cópia do que está acontecendo lá. Há uma singularidade. Por outro lado, ela não tem leis próprias: é derivada, subordinada e dependente.
"Do ponto de vista teórico era o mesmo mecanismo que usei depois para discutir a dependência."
("How does one suppose to explain the problem of 'class' relations in a society that is not class-based, but slavery based? How does the slave negate the order of slavery; how does he act to overcome it? Slaves are not a universal class, like the proletariat. Slaves are hidden in history.
"This idea has always been present in my head. At certain moments, certain social categories become hidden in history. Those excluded are not necessarily the carriers of the future, as the vulgar Left would argue. The slave was not only excluded, he was no carrier of the future either.
"Slavery cannot be explained without reference to the expansion of greater capitalism. But the history of Brazil is not a copy of what is happening there [in Europe]. There is singularity.
"On the other hand, Brazil's history does not have its own laws either: it is derived, subordinate and dependent. From a theoretical point of view this was the same mechanism I later used to discuss dependency.")
REFERENCES
(1) Freire, V.T. 1996. "Para lembrar o que ele escreveu: FHC explica a formação de suas idéias sobre a história brasileira e por que elas não mudaram" (Remembering what he wrote: FHC explains the formation of his ideas about Brazilian history and why they haven't changed). Folha de S. Paulo, October 13, 1996.
(2) Goertzel, Ted. 1999. Fernando Henrique Cardoso: Reinventing Democracy in Brazil. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner.
This is the sixth part of a multi-part series on former Brazilian President Fernando Henrique Cardoso.
Richard F. Kane, from the Department of Sociology and Anthropology of Illinois State University, can be reached at rfkane@ilstu.edu.
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