By FLORESTAN FERNANDES*
It is not only the remote past and the recent past that link race and class in the social revolution
Those who reflect on “Brazilian problems” pulverize realities and groups. Hence, we have themes and archive drawers. Not living history, critical historical consciousness and revolutionary political movement.[I]
Marxism ignored the “racial question” in Brazil.[ii] In fact, Marxism ignored everything that is specific to the formation of capitalism in Brazil; what is general in the process of transformation of the former colonial societies in Latin America (in particular: decolonization as a historical reality). In other words, one should not confuse the outbreak and progress of “social struggles”, of parties or movements (anarchists, communists, socialists, etc.) with the constitution of Marxism.
This evil is outlined in the essays and books that serve as a point of reference for the periodization of historiography.[iii] There was an outline of a qualitative leap at the end of the 1960s; but it was stifled or flourished without continuity, inside and outside the country.
Without any intention of simplification: the lack of clarity in the social and racial consciousness of the possessing classes and the dominant race corresponds to the weakness of the social and racial consciousness of the dispossessed classes and the black “race”. By restricting the use of conflict to the privileged condition of the ruling elites of the possessing classes, the dominant “race” condemned itself to the permanent mystification of the “racial question” and limited (through the corresponding dialectical movement: see Marx and Engels, The Communist Manifesto) the historical arena of “black protest” (in terms of autonomous consciousness and also of political-social practice).
This has already done a lot in denying the existing mystification, even within the limits of the ideology of the champion of the legal order and of bourgeois radicalism that did not materialize (the counter-ideology elaborated by the black protest movements marks the highest historical level of unmasking the racial situation and of taking a political position on the “racial question”).
Sociological analyses were not “neutral”: behind the university researcher there was a break with traditional forms of explaining (and defending) the world. Empirical research and sociological interpretation broke the monolithic unity of conservative thought as much as they refused to fit into the framework of traditional domination (with its ideology of self-defense of the prevailing racial order).
As a result, these analyses and interpretations corroborated the “black protest” and deepened it (in theoretical terms). They remain as landmarks of a critical and militant stance in the proposition of the “racial question” in Brazil – although it cannot be said that they portray a reworking of Marxism with a view to the revolutionary theory or practice inherent to Marxism-Leninism.
From the here and now: we must simultaneously overcome the perspective of the radical black protest movement and the limits of the science of protest. We must give a new dimension to the connection between class struggles and racial conflicts (which cannot be separated from each other in capitalism) and insert both the racial movement and scientific research into the dynamics of this revolutionary transformation.
In this respect, what was done within Marxism in Europe cannot serve as a reference point for us (although the analysis of the incorporation of the colonial world and the Jewish question have indicated how far Marx and Engels could go on these issues).
In fact, it was only very recently that European Marxists found themselves faced with the themes of “race”, “monopoly capitalism” and “imperialist domination”; unfortunately, the emergence of these themes coincides with explicit or camouflaged tendencies towards a “revision of Marxism” and a distorted understanding of the moral and political implications of “proletarian internationalism” has fueled a complacent vision of what lies behind the “division of the world” when the proletarians at the center benefit from an inexorable racial stratification.[iv] Now, we cannot take a “moderate” or “revisionist” position. It is not only the remote past and the recent past that link race and class in the social revolution. Without understanding what results from a decolonization that does not go all the way and to the end, we run the risk of not taking from the black protest – organized and conscious or not – all the momentum that it can bring to the revolutionary struggle of the proletariat for the conquest of power.
*Florestan Fernandes (1920-1995) was a professor of sociology at USP and a federal deputy for the PT. Author of, among other books, The bourgeois revolution in Brazil (countercurrent).
Notes
[I] Research, editing and notes by Diogo Valença de Azevedo Costa (UFRB) and Paulo Fernandes Silveira (FEUSP and GPDH-IEA/USP). This document is located in the Florestan Fernandes Fund Special Collection, at the UFSCar Community Library; reference for location: UFSCar/SiBi/COLESP/Fundo Florestan Fernandes/document title.
[ii] These notes were written for Florestan's conference at the seminar: “Marxism and the Racial Question”, organized by the Center for the Exchange of Economic and Social Research and Studies (CIPES) and the Brazilian Institute of Africanist Studies (IBEA), held at Sedes Sapientiae, in the city of São Paulo, in 1979. According to the seminar's schedule, Florestan would present the conference “The Problem of the Negro and Marxism in Brazil”, on 12/11, Celso Prudente would present the conference “Marxism and the Problems of the Third World”, on 19/11, Jacob Gorender would present the conference “Marxism and the Problems of Oppressed Nationalities”, on 23/11, Romeu Sabará would present the conference “A Case of Concrete Application of the Marxist Method”, on 30/11, and Clóvis Moura would present the conference “Imperialism and the Polyethnic Classes of Dependent Capitalist Countries”, on 7/12. One of the several SNI reports on the black movement indicates that the seminar was monitored by police officers, available at: http://imagem.sian.an.gov.br/acervo/derivadas/br_dfanbsb_v8/mic/gnc/rrr/80000864/br_dfanbsb_v8_mic_gnc_rrr_80000864_d0001de0002.pdf
[iii] In 1978, citing a newspaper article Last Minute, a DEOPS dossier on Florestan ends by stating that he “is one of the few scientists who studies and fights for the black race, and speaks about the problems of black people today” (DEOPS Information Division Report. Subject: Florestan Fernandes. Dossier 50-Z-0-14616. São Paulo: Arquivo do Estado de São Paulo). In the text “From a science to and not so much about black people”, the sociologist and activist of the black movement Eduardo de Oliveira e Oliveira assumes a perspective similar to Florestan’s, available at: https://dpp.cce.myftpupload.com/de-uma-ciencia-para-e-nao-tanto-sobre-o-negro/
[iv] Among the academic disputes of this period, some authors questioned the lack of theoretical rigor of revolutionary Marxist currents. In the book about the violence, published in 1969, Hannah Arendt questioned the appropriations of Marx's texts by Fanon and the Black Panther militants. In Authoritarianism and democratization, published in 1975, FHC criticized the mistakes of the intellectuals of the Marxist Dependency Theory, especially Ruy Mauro, Gunder Frank and Régis Debray. Interestingly, the SNI censors suggested banning the book, as they understood that FHC defended revolutionary counter-violence, available at: http://imagem.sian.an.gov.br/acervo/derivadas/br_rjanrio_tt/0/mcp/pro/0448/br_rjanrio_tt_0_mcp_pro_0448_d0001de0001.pdf
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