Artículo



Dados vol. 24 n. 2 Rio de Janeiro 1981

Fábrica e Sistema Político: Anotações Teóricas para uma Investigação Empírica

Vianna, Luiz Werneck

Resumen

This paper seeks to determine a theoretical context for the inclusion of the factory as a proper subject for Political Science studies, with reference to the Brazilian literature on working class and union movements. It departs from the idea that the relationship between coercion and consensus which obtains in the political system is directly related to the prevailing forms of control over the industrial labor force. For example, the corporatist institutionalization of labor unions does not coincide with a liberal democratic political organization, nor do factory committees freely elected by workers subsist under autocratic and dictatorial forms of political power. It also suggest that different forms of administration of coercion and consensus are strongly associated to the ways in which capitalism developed in a given social-economic formation: the Prussian, or the liberal democratic in its British, French, or American modalities. By the same token, the form of control over the industrial labor force is determined by social processes which affect the composition of the population its culture, political system, and dominant ethos. Conversely, it is indicated that the organization of workers in unions and at the plant level particularly when supported by working class parties, may redefine the prevailing mode of allocation of coercion or consensus, democratizing the labor market and work conditions. Under these circumstances, entrepreneurial ideologies tend to stress the need to valorize work and workers and to move away from the work rationalization practices of Taylorism. Finally, the paper advances some hypotheses concerning the cultural and technical "backwardness" of Brazilian entrepreneurs with respect to the control of the labor force. That "backward" outlook derives from the entrepreneurs' traditional dependence on coercion over the labor market administered by the State, and is becoming more visible under the process of policial liberalization of the country.

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Fábrica e Sistema Político: Anotações Teóricas para uma Investigação Empírica