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9 - The Partido dos Trabalhadores in Brazil

from Social Democratic Routes in Australia, the Americas, and Asia

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 November 2022

By
Marcelo Badaró Mattos
Edited by
Marcel van der Linden
Marcel van der Linden
Affiliation:
International Institute of Social History, Amsterdam
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Summary

In his autobiographical book, English historian Eric Hobsbawm refers to the ‘Workers’ Party’ (a usual translation of Partido dos Trabalhadores, PT) as an exception:

None of the political experiments I have watched from near or far since the Cuban Revolution has made much lasting difference. Only two have looked as though they might, but both are too recent for judgement. The first, which must warm the cockles of all old red hearts, is the national rise, since its foundation in 1980, of the Workers’ Party (Partido dos Trabalhadores or PT) in Brazil … It is a late example of a classic mass socialist Labour Party and movement, such as emerged in Europe before 1914.1

In the post-war period the PT can, indeed, be seen as an exception to the times: a party that emerged from mass movements of the working class in the 1980s when, in Europe, the labour and social democrat parties, founded in the times of the Second International, were experiencing a period of decline in their political weight and/or of their original social bases. In the years following its creation, one way or another, the PT managed to keep itself connected to trade unions and to grassroots social movements, achieving influence among the masses and eventually attaining the government of the country by means of a leadership formed in the factory shop-floor struggles.

Type
Chapter
Information
The Cambridge History of Socialism , pp. 215 - 235
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2022

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References

Further Reading

Anderson, Perry, Brazil Apart 1964–2019 (London: Verso, 2019).Google Scholar
Arcary, Valério, Um reformismo quase sem reformas. Uma crítica marxista do Governo Lula em defesa da Revolução Brasileira (São Paulo: Sundermann, 2011).Google Scholar
Bianchi, Alvaro and Braga, Ruy, ‘Brazil: the Lula government and financial globalization’, Social Forces 83, 4 (2005), pp. 1745–62.Google Scholar
Coelho, Eurelino, Uma esquerda para o capital. O transformismo dos grupos dirigentes do PT (1979–1998) (São Paulo: Xamã, 2012).Google Scholar
French, John D., The Brazilian Workers’ ABC: Class Conflict and Alliances in Modern São Paulo (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1992).Google Scholar
Garcia, Cyro, PT. De oposição à sustentação da ordem (Rio de Janeiro: Achiamé, 2011).Google Scholar
Iasi, Mauro L., As metamorfoses da consciência de classe. O PT entre a negação e o consentimento (São Paulo: Editora Expressão Popular, 2006).Google Scholar
Keck, Margaret E., The Workers’ Party and Democratization in Brazil (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995).Google Scholar
Meneguello, Rachel, PT. A formação de um partido, 1979–1982 (Rio de Janeiro: Paz e Terra, 1989).Google Scholar
Secco, Lincoln, História do PT, 1978–2010 (Cotia: Ateliê Editorial, 2011).Google Scholar

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