By WESLEY SOUSA & GUSTAVO TEIXEIRA

Commentary on the book by Fábio Mascaro Querido

1.

The book is the result of a thesis for a post-doctorate in sociology defended at Unicamp. Equipped with a rich bibliographical survey, the author, in general terms, reconstructs the genesis and desired of the political-intellectual formation around the famous “Marx Seminar”, once composed of young professors and students from the University of São Paulo (USP) in the 1950s.

One of the book’s strengths, we would like to highlight, is its ability to cross disciplinary boundaries of social theory; Mascaro, as is well known, didactically covers discussions on philosophy, sociology, political economy and literature. The guiding thread of the book’s intellectual insights, however, comes from the thinking of Roberto Schwarz – in reference to the title of his thesis, “To the Winner the Potatoes”, the author removes the title of the book. But let us now move on to the skeleton of the book. It consists of five chapters, an introduction and final considerations.

The introduction has two central elements. On the one hand, Fábio Mascaro Querido reconstructs the intellectual genesis linked to the historical-political context of the members of the Marx Seminar (Mascaro, 2024, p. 21). On the other, the sociologist announces the limits and contradictions of its historical development, stating that the intellectual-political sediment of its members consolidated, at most, a “progressive” version of neoliberalism among us (Mascaro, 2024, p. 263).

The first chapter, entitled “An intellectual genealogy from São Paulo”, contextualizes the historical background before the Seminar. The chapter also presents the preliminary intellectual biography of Roberto Schwarz. Divided into three sections, Fábio Mascaro Querido begins the chapter by reviewing the political and intellectual motivations that led to the creation of USP and, more specifically, the Department of Social Sciences.

Here, the figure of Florestan Fernandes is fundamental, after all, he brought together institutional conditions to structure sociology as a supposedly modern and universalist academic knowledge to which USP was devoted and which, at the same time, opposed the aristocratic-court essayism of Brazilian social and political thought (Mascaro, 2024, p. 16).

The second section, therefore, addresses the relationship between a structural reading of Marxist philosophy and the sociological point of view of modernization, that is, a sociological analysis of capitalism. It is worth highlighting that philosophy, here, plays a central role as an epistemological mediation that made it possible to operate the reciprocal translation between both theoretical perspectives (Mascaro, 2024, p. 27). In other words, through the epistemological operation of dialectics, philosophy makes viable a Marxist interpretation focused on society and the (non)realization of its concept. In short, the social depends on the philosophical to be known; this is the movement of theoretical viability.

2.

The third section is dedicated to Roberto Schwarz. Advised by Antonio Candido to do a postgraduate degree in literary theory, Roberto Schwarz, who had already published in the newspaper's literary section State St. Paul After studying some literary criticism, he went to study abroad at Yale. When he returned to São Paulo, Roberto Schwarz solidified his bond with Antonio Candido: the latter's work as a professor of literary theory, which advocated the construction of an immanent critique of society through the analysis of literary texts, opened up space for the former to conduct studies in sociology and literature, especially that of Machado de Assis.

Roberto Schwarz, going further, came to build, after the experience of the Seminar, an academic career somewhat in line with the USP academic model: critical sociological knowledge, it is noted, could be interdisciplinary and not empirical. The author, therefore, states that the exception of Roberto Schwarz “redefined the fields of institutional and academic possibilities within which he would be situated in the context of USP at the time, and especially sociology, which was then experiencing the height of its professional consolidation process” (Mascaro, 2024, p. 42).  

The second chapter, entitled “The Revenge of the Paulistas,” addresses characters introduced in the first chapter and others, previously hidden, who also participated in the Seminar. Divided into seven sections, the chapter begins with a brief historical-biographical review that justifies what the revenge of the Paulistas is.

The central event in this context is the military coup of 1964 and the deepening of a backward socioeconomic and political regime. According to Fábio Mascaro Querido, the coup demonstrated, in practice, what USP intellectuals had already theoretically defended: the non-existence of a national bourgeoisie with any commitment to autonomous and socially integrative development (Mascaro, 2024, p. 43).

With this historical conclusion as an intellectual backdrop, the author begins a theoretical and biographical reconstruction of six intellectuals who orbited the activity of the Seminar. Furthermore, in this chapter, Fábio Mascaro Querido returns to the context of the birth of the Brazilian Center for Analysis and Planning (CEBRAP).

The first intellectual is FHC and his “leap” from the theory of subcapitalism to the theory of dependency. If the first social theory sought to carry out a sociological analysis of industrialization through the study of its main social agent, the industrial entrepreneurship, the second theory, in turn, highlights the historical background of Latin American dependency to reach the stage of social development along the lines of modernity (Mascaro, 2024, p. 50).

The second section, however, covers the historical trajectory of a research center, CEBRAP. Created in 1969, the center was conceived as a “settling of accounts [of] how this recent past of the political thought of the nationalist left was seen, by the members of CEBRAP, as a necessary step towards a good understanding of the dilemmas of the present dictatorship.” (Mascaro, 2024, p. 52).

From this point on, CEBRAP, over the years immersed in the dictatorship, established itself as the epicenter of a new national intellectual life. The center, so to speak, achieved hegemony in a scientific practice unencumbered by ideological motivations or immediate personal interests, since it absorbed, financed and put into discussion a set of interdisciplinary studies on Brazilian social reality.^[I]

The third section presents who was CEBRAP's adversary, namely, the Marxist theory of dependency. Referencing the social theory of Ruy Mauro Marini, Mascaro points out the theoretical vectors of this intellectual – (i) the resumption of the theory of value in Marx and (ii) the theory of imperialism in Lenin – in the sense that the theory of dependency would be a way of complementing both perspectives, since it analyzes the way in which the general/global determinations of capitalism are translated into the particularities of dependent countries (Mascaro, 2024, p. 56).

By mentioning, in a critical tone to FHC, that the reproduction of dependency (a) depends on the transfer of value as an unequal exchange and (b) on the super-exploitation of labor as compensation for the transfer of value to central countries, Ruy Mauro Marini, in general, points out that Fernando Henrique Cardoso's “bourgeois socialism” project lacks a critical reading of the functioning of the capitalist mode of production that generates a dependent social formation between peripheral countries colonized by central countries.

The fourth section focuses on the intellectual work of Chico de Oliveira and his “dualistic reason”. According to Fábio Mascaro Querido, the presence of the sociologist from Pernambuco at CEBRAP broadened the provincial horizon of São Paulo’s cosmopolitanism. His work at SUDENE and Cepal, in a certain sense, brought another perspective on how to conduct an academic study on Brazilian social formation anchored in a Marxist theoretical basis.

The dualistic reason, in this context, when structuring a thesis whose critique of populism articulated the intricacies of the relationship between modern and archaic regarding the process of accumulation of Brazilian capital, highlighted that “In the expansion of capitalism in Brazil, the “new” [must] not be realized, therefore, without the refunctionalization of archaic relations, and vice versa, in a dialectical intertwining that escapes dualistic reasoning” (Mascaro, 2024, p. 61).

Dualist reason, in other words, postulated that there is, in Brazilian society under the military dictatorship, a perverse relationship between the “new” and the “archaic” to the point that this fusion culminates in a counterrevolutionary social movement.

3.

Francisco Weffort, a character in the fifth section, like Chico de Oliveira, also presented a critique of pre-military dictatorship populism. Returning to the study of the social bases of Brazilian politics in the late 60s, Fábio Mascaro Querido highlights that Francisco Weffort opposed the reductionist reading regarding the structural determinations linked to the impasses of Brazilian social formation (Mascaro, 2024, p. 64).

The central object of his study, the popular classes, in effect, began to be seen as a new character, constructed historically, that makes up the Brazilian political pact: the coup of 64, in this context, was nothing more than a coup by the dominant classes against this pact.

Although brief, in the sixth section, Fábio Mascaro Querido addresses Florestan Fernandes' intellectual metamorphosis. If, initially, his trajectory was marked by a neutral scientific academic formation supported by universal principles, some time later, Florestan changed his stance – the historical consequences of the 64 coup, such as AI-5, were fundamental in this process. Now, the sociologist had radicalized the action of his critical spirit: Florestan Fernandes, in other words, had become a militant intellectual engaged with the political concerns of his time.

In the last session, the author revisits the work of historian Fernando Novais, which basically dealt with the connection between Brazil, as a colony of Portugal, and the international capitalist order.

The primacy of this connection, which inserts Brazilian society into the global process of capitalism, would be in the “world-system” constituted by the colonial system. Novais, being more specific, saw that “[…] in the colony a specific unfolding of a system that goes beyond it and that, therefore, needs to be at the center of analysis [to] explain this relationship in the context of a totality that is both systemic and historical” (Mascaro, 2024, pp. 70-71).

The degree of concreteness extracted from the totality, therefore, concludes at least that (i) there is a deep connection between the original accumulation of capital and the colonial offensive whose (ii) basic economic practice was that of the slave trade: the profit of capital, in other words, is obtained through colonial African slavery.

The third chapter, entitled “In Search of Brazil: Coup and Exile in Roberto Schwarz”, is dedicated to Roberto Schwarz. Composed of six sections, the chapter seeks to delve deeper into the considerations of what came to be the first moment of Schwarzian social theory. The first section presents a biographical reconstruction of Schwarz, showing his first steps in literary criticism, as well as the theoretical influence of Theodor Adorno and György Lukács on the expository-stylistic form of his social theory.

The second section focuses on his stay in Paris and the redefinition of his theoretical perspectives, opening up new and unexpected possibilities for theoretical formation and self-understanding of his own identity. It was in the French capital, so to speak, that Schwarz “Brazilianized” himself.

The third section presents an intellectual path that is perhaps little discussed in Roberto Schwarz, which is his artistic creation followed by his work as a cultural critic. Before and after his stay in Europe, Roberto Schwarz had written poems that were even published in books. In addition, while he was in Paris, the literary critic began his experience as a cultural critic. This is where the text “Culture and Politics: 1964–1969” comes from. Finally, it is worth noting that Fábio Mascaro Querido, by concatenating Schwarz’s first critical formulations on Machado de Assis’ literature, illustrates the literary-theoretical influences and historical events that structure the plot of his play. The dustbin of history (1977)

The fourth and fifth sections highlight the behind-the-scenes of his condition as an exiled doctoral student until the defense of his thesis, carried out in 1976. In general terms, the author explains, the thesis is “[…] about the pitfalls of the dialectic between “literary form” and “social process” in a country on the periphery of capitalism like Brazil, [which] represented Schwarz’s first major step in the constitution of his intellectual work” (Mascaro, 2024, p. 116).

Fabio Mascaro Querido, in view of this, provides a general overview of the chapters of the thesis, addressing, above all, the mediation between sociological criticism of Brazilian social life and fictional narratives of some literary works by Machado de Assis and José de Alencar. The last section of the chapter presents a critique of Schwarz's theory, notably that linked to the text “Ideas out of place”, which is the first chapter of his thesis. Fabio Mascaro Querido, with this, exposes the critique that Maria Sylvia de Carvalho makes of this text, highlighting the dialogue, the theoretical convergences and divergences of both authors.

4.

The fourth chapter, entitled “The 1980s: The Decade That Was Not Lost,” is the longest in the book. This chapter unfolds in the 80s, a historical moment in which the members of the Seminar, amid the decline of the dictatorial regime, projected themselves as active intellectual agents in Brazilian political life. Filled with seven sections, the chapter begins by returning to the historical context of the “lost decade.”

The first section, therefore, which revisits this context, highlights that the collapse of the dictatorship's economic miracle both gave space for the implementation of the neoliberal prescription, deepened in the following decade, and engendered the expansion of the horizon of expectations for Brazil to become a democratic society that aims to overcome the structural problems of its social formation.

The second and third sections then historically examine the moment when USP intellectuals began to participate, once and for all, in national politics. Given the accumulation of the first political actions carried out in the 1970s, CEBRAP, especially through the figure of FHC, became closer to the MDB. And in view of the political force in opposition to the dictatorship, the center was the target of an attempted attack by the dictatorship in 1976.

However, with the process of opening up, political amnesty and the end of bipartisanship, members of this and other research centers began to join and organize themselves into political parties, such as the PT and the PSDB. In other words, it is considered that the intellectuals who came from the Seminar were becoming central agents in a moment of reorientation of Brazilian society.

The fourth section deals with Marilena Chauí and the creation of the Desvios collective. First, the author reconstructs the philosopher’s central ideas about Brazilian society, which are epitomized, on both the right and the left, in a subordination to authoritarian discourse. The sociopolitical manifestation of this would be in the ideology of the State as the only real historical agent, that is, in this “rational” agent capable of inventing a concept of nation far removed from the concrete values ​​of a class society.

Marilena Chauí formulates, in view of this, a critique of organized ideology as a “counter-discourse” that captures the movement of social classes under the veil of ideological notions such as national interest (Mascaro, 2024, p. 147). The critique of ideology would therefore be a critique against the grain of the past and present of Brazilian society.

Francisco de Oliveira is the character of the fifth section. After a two-year stay in France, the sociologist will argue that, with the presence of a democratic life, Brazilian society could be transformed at a political-economic level. Through the debate on the distribution of public funds based on the interests of social classes in negotiation in the political sphere, he will argue that, through a cohesive and autonomous organizational process, it was possible for the working class to create a new political pact of a hegemonic nature capable of giving way to the interests of the working classes (Mascaro, 2024, p. 154).

The sixth section focuses on Argentina and the historical developments of its military dictatorship. Here, there is a similarity between Argentine and São Paulo intellectuals: the urgency of historical times forced them to reconfigure the intellectual space on the national political plane.

It is also worth noting that the intellectual from the neighboring country, such as Beatriz Sarlo, was moving towards a critique of Peronism; this would be her step towards modernity: “[…] “de-Peronization” should promote new forms of integration of the masses, in the sense of democracy and freedom, in opposition, therefore, to “totalitarianism” (Mascaro, 2024, pp. 159 – 160).

The last section of the chapter, once again, revisits Roberto Schwarz. It begins by highlighting his role in the creation of the New Studies CEBRAP, in 1981, and ends with reflections on his Schwarzian social theory. In the meantime, Fábio Mascaro Querido analyzes Roberto Schwarz's work as a cultural critic, pointing out, on the one hand, the critic's discomfort with the country's democratization and, on the other, his political articulation with the PT. Furthermore, the author will (i) unravel his Gramscian considerations on the link between class and nation and (ii) address the dependent relationship between economy and culture.

The fifth and final chapter covers the 1990s, when neoliberalism was definitively established in Brazil and when one of the members of the Seminar was elected President of the Republic. Entitled “The Neoliberal Spectrum: Adaptors and Resistants”, the chapter is divided into five sections. The first section deals with the existence of the journal plague, whose participants conceived it with the aim of (a) renewing the Marxist debate, undermined by neoliberal globalization, and (b) making a diagnosis of the present time.

The second section is dedicated to Chico de Oliveira's academic life after leaving CEBRAP. A founding member of the Center for the Study of Citizenship Rights (Cenedic), the sociologist wrote critical texts during this decade about the privatization process orchestrated by FHC's neoliberal government: the rhetoric of improving Brazilian democracy defended by the government was ultimately liquidated by the neoliberal practice of interrupting dissent and privatizing public space through collective bargaining among social agents. This was, so to speak, Brazil's suffering.

In the third section, Fábio Mascaro Querido analyzes Roberto Schwarz's critique of neoliberalism, the genesis of his essayistic expository form, his intellectual point of view and his thinking between culture and politics via the avant-garde. Taking as an intellectual-literary orientation Robert Kurz's sociological critique of capitalism and the plot of the novel hindrance, by Chico Buarque, the author will highlight that, regarding Brazil's position in the neoliberal globalized world, Schwarz “[…] completed Kurz's diagnosis of contemporary Brazil, reviewing the country's recent past in order to demarcate the illusions that were left behind […] the country of the future was already present, and that was exactly what was revealed without complexes, that is, a society divided by abysmal levels of inequality” (Mascaro, 2024, p. 226).

Fábio Mascaro Querido then addresses the intellectual trait for which Roberto Schwarz is known: essayism. Influenced by Adorno and Benjaminian writing, the essay behaves as an expository style that combines sociology with literary criticism, even more so in Brazil, a country where literature was, for a long time, the main instrument for revealing the national experience (Mascaro, 2024, p. 232). Furthermore, essayism is aligned with the way of being of the critical intellectual. In short, this would value autonomy and independence in the face of the immediate situation of the political struggle.

The fourth section deals with Paulo Arantes. First, a brief biography of the philosopher is presented. Second, the author reconstructs his philosophical theory, examining the notion of the “Brazilianization of the world” and, especially, unraveling his interpretation of the situation, whose hypothesis signaled a shortening of the intellectual spirit of academics who would now decide the country’s destiny. There is, in this, a formative problem of intelligentsia national that unfolds into political consequences.

Finally, the sixth section reflects on how the critical formulations of Schwarz, Oliveira and Arantes are intertwined, as well as differentiated, regarding the interpretative horizon of Brazilian social formation. This trio of academics, it can be said, represented the negative unfolding of the intellectual tradition initiated in the Marx Seminar.

More than that, these three authors show that the current social problems in Brazil are inherently present: they are flawed in their origins and are far from being overcome by the progressive camp. It is because of this, then, that Mascaro writes: “[…] and given the country’s position in the global concert of nations, Brazil then becomes a locus par excellence of a kind of negative dialectic in action” (Mascaro, 2024, p. 256).

In the final considerations, the author presents two central observations. The first observation is in the two-faced characteristic of the intellectuals addressed in the research who, on the one hand, cultivated a place in the national academic scene and, on the other, did not hesitate to intervene in the formatting of the Brazilian political scene of the last five decades (Mascaro, 2024, p. 261).

The second observation consists of a succinct critical assessment of the political-academic legacy of this intellectual tradition so present in recent Brazilian historical life. Supported by the position of the negative development of Schwarz, Oliveira and Arantes, the author points out that the golden age of Brazilian democracy (1995-2013), in which some of the intellectuals presented in the work actively participated, was always conditioned by the equation that the destiny of this nation is catastrophe and collapse – and this has been evident, according to him, since 2016 (Mascaro, 2024, p. 264).

Finally, the book has a didactic-reconstructive quality that makes it accessible to both the academic community and a wider audience interested in “specifically” Brazilian issues (Arantes, 1992) – after all, there is nothing more earthly today than the murderous, delinquent and criminal social spirit of the national ruling class. In this tropical corner, therefore, it is credible to say to intellectuals: all that is left is the potatoes, which are very well served.

*Wesley Sousa is a doctoral student in philosophy at the Federal University of Minas Gerais (UFMG).

*Gustavo Teixeira He is a PhD candidate in philosophy at the Federal University of Santa Catarina (UFSC).

Reference

Fabio Mascaro Dear. Peripheral place, modern ideas – potatoes for São Paulo intellectuals. São Paulo, Boitempo, 2024, 288 pages. [https://amzn.to/4kdlGFC]

Note

[I] Fábio Mascaro, cites some relevant studies at the time, such as Beyond Stagnation: A Discussion on Brazil’s Recent Development Style (1971), by Jose Serra and Maria da Conceição Tavares, Criticism of dualistic reason (1972), by Chico de Oliveira and The contradictions of the miracle (1973), by Paul Singer.

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