By JULIAN RODRIGUES*

Considerations about the article by Rosa Rosa Gomes

I believe that any comment on Rosa Rosa Gomes' reflection should begin with a greeting – acknowledgment. It is no small thing nowadays to choose to deal with classic, complex, controversial themes that are dear to the best Marxist tradition – so vilified in these last three or four decades of history. neoliberopostmodernex.

And since it's to cause, Rosa Rosa caused. The assistant historian of conservation and restoration, a doctoral student at USP, puts her spoon in nothing less than the thorny [canonical] polemic Rosa Luxemburgo x Vladimir Lenin about the theory of imperialism.

The initiates are aware of the vigorous critical fortune on the life and work of the Spartacist. Apparently, a kind of tacit agreement prevails that separates the extraordinary biography of the political leader from her theoretical work (or at least from her economic writings).

It is somewhat established to recognize that Rosa Luxemburgo was wrong in attributing the problems of capitalism to the lack of consumers, ignoring the question of production – in the sphere of circulation, therefore.

Gomes disagrees with the idea that Rosa (his famous namesake) was good at politics but bad at economics – he proposes a unified approach.

In order to establish a context, the author makes a synthetic overview of German history between the end of the XNUMXth and the beginning of the XNUMXth century. We learned that the original edition of the Accumulation, in 1913, was 2.000 copies – note that the work has 600 pages [the average print run of books in Brazil today is the same].

Particularly instigating is the call that our Rosa makes to Caio Prado Júnior proposing a dance of approximation with Brazilian history; it is when he articulates everything with the vision of imperialism present in the work of the other Rosa – the Polish one.

Also up-to-date is the record of the clashes that took place in the German Social Democratic Party at the beginning of the last century, in particular (in addition to the well-known controversy over World War I), the debates related to the Party's position on the relationship between capitalism, colonialism, imperialism and militarism .

the end of paper It's the weakness of the work, in my opinion. Enthused by the temptation to draw parallels between the SPD and the PT, Gomes, despite recognizing that “Brazil and Germany are very different countries”, comes out to pronounce summary judgments, and, honestly: very superficial – rough, really. By the way, totally detached from what was written before – an acrobatic leap.

When the insightful author starts to handle clichés like “conciliation” and blame the bureaucracy for the loss of the pure and revolutionary spirit of the SPD and the PT (which had not entered history!) I was overcome by feelings of sadness, disappointment and indignation.

I was breathing, relativizing. After all, anti-PTism is a force that is constituted on the right and on the left. There's a whole generation of good people who don't even know the PT properly, or actually militate somewhere. And he gives in to common sense –whether that of Globe be the leftist.

But I couldn't finish reading in peace. I had to read the following: “in a country with a past permeated by slavery and in a subdued position in the world, the PT improvements achieved for the poorest were enough to make the middle and upper-middle classes lose their temper when facing budget shortages . When the time came, PT did not choose the side of the workers, but rather chose the side of order”.

Did the PT not choose the side of the workers?? Rosa should say that to Lula who spent 580 days in jail. And to Dilma who was torn from the presidency. That little ending could be cut out of the article. If I were Rosa, I would write another article just about the PT and try to better support, theoretically and practically, such peremptory, sectarian and superficial judgments.

* Julian Rodrigues, professor and journalist, he is an activist of the LGBTI and human rights movement; Militant in the PT since 1989.

Reference

Rosa Rosa Gomez. Rosa Luxemburg's Accumulation Theory and the SPD A Peripheral Perspective [Rosa Luxemburg's theory of accumulation and the SPD: a peripheral perspective].