Article

Dados vol. 39 n. 3 Rio de Janeiro 1996

Caminhos e Descaminhos da Revolução Passiva à Brasileira

Vianna, Luiz Werneck

Abstract

This essay addresses the process of Brazil's passive revolution, an ongoing 'revolution without revolution' that has dominated the movement of Brazilian society from the founding days of the nation-state through contemporary times, where the predominant topic has become the universalization of citizenship. Against a backdrop of emerging democracy, institutionalized through Brazil's 1988 Constitution, the essay asks about the chances of seeing a reversal in the direction of the binomial characteristic of passive revolutions - conservation change - towards a movement that places more emphasis on change rather than on conservation. Such a reversal would call for an actor identified with the expression of the antithesis, an actor who must in particular be capable of dealing with the relations between political democracy expressed within an institutional arena, on the one hand, and the process of social democratization, on the other - as has been the case of today's Landless Workers Movement. Although within the social arena social movements have managed to trigger molecular ruptures in the forms of domination to which they have traditionally been exposed, if they are to turn this process of transformismo to their favor, they must move into the realm of the state, something that will inevitably require these actors to enter into alliances and to endeavor to gain recognition as general interpreters of their society

Keywords: Passive revolution, citizenship, landless workers movements, social movements

DOI: 10.1590/S0011-52581996000300004

Full text