Democracy and the Organization of Class Struggle in Brazil

In Brazil it is still appropriate to talk in terms of a workers' movement. Alone in the states of Southern America, the trade unions in Brazil still have a capacity to organize workers and to exert a powerful influence upon workplace activities. The main trade union federation is linked to a new political party-the Workers' Party (PT-Partido dos Trabalhadores)-that retains a commitment to a socialist programme. And, more generally, the fact that land reform has emerged as a major political issue (as a consequence of an innovative and radical social movement of the landless) indicates that class struggle-in the fullest sense of the term-is very much alive in Brazil. Brazil is a country of many economic and social contrasts which makes it difficult to talk of a working class with a uniform profile. In a real sense the situation in Brazil can best be understood as a process of combined and uneven development within which the working class is in the process of 'making' and being made. Given the characteristics of the Brazilian social formation, any consideration of class and politics needs to focus on class formation, a process with a spatial and temporal dynamic which is very different from the advanced capitalist countries