Integralism—the Brazilian particularity | V. S. Conttren

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The purpose of this article is to showcase the particular case and occurrence of Integralism within the context of contemporary Brazilian society, taking into account its nature and “hyper-lateness.” The apparent similarity between Integralism and Fascism, in its contemporaneity, is used as example of a “Brazilian Fascism” sui generis without taking any prospect into the essence, movement and processes of differentiation that are imbued within this very own “similarity.” As such, it becomes paramount to dissect that which was historically vested as fertile ground for the proliferation of a mass movement accompanied by its own characteristics and objectives, falling at many times in opposition to the dominant aspects of Fascism itself. What is at the core of the Integralist movement is precisely a longing for the specific past that was particular to the Brazilian experience: its agrarian roots in contraposition to the industrializing drive promoted by Fascism itself.

Article published originally on the blog Left of Wreckage, April 2017. Revised and republished December 2022.  DOI 10.17605/OSF.IO/27Z4Q. Available as a pdf here.

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Integralism—the Brazilian particularity

V. S. Conttren

Sufficiently, the time of the world utters itself in slower strides than our own particular and conceivable time. Time heretofore has the distinctively capacity of gauging itself over immense strides, consolidating changes of centuries into merely decades, erst less. Ideologies and mass movements are never the same; Integralism of yesterday has little to do with that of today: procedural undertaking and destruction. Of today, only a shadow remains—one that is emboldened by a congregation of what once had been rejected in the theoretical praxis of its foundation. To speak in plain terms, it has copied the theories and practices of international modern neo-Nazi movements, especially North-American ones. A mixture of racialist theorization covered by a pseudo Catholic religiosity, which resembles much more a Protestant ethic hidden under a collective farce, and a poorly drawn prospect under a dis-formed agrarianism. As the article attempts to show, the latter continues as a strong component of Integralist ideology, although the first was vehemently rejected—especially by Plínio Salgado.

Much discussion about Fascism has been had lately. “What is Fascism’s definition?” “Is [X] representative of it?” Discussions like those are appreciated, but there is a lack on a grasp of social, political and economical processes. Processes which are meant to derestrict from simple to more complex historical forms and realities; processes which denominate turns and re-turns, in the ever devolving uncanonical pre-historical times of social-beings. Definitions are discussed; interpretations are made; individuals are judged and sentenced to their ideological commitment. But that is not enough: to interpose as interpreter of a specificity is to pose oneself as an ever-evolving knower, whose task remains to intent themselves over the essences and appearances of their non-compliant object of study. All ideologies, politically and socially determined, are not dependent on an individual’s whim: a concept can only be reflective of society if and only if it is derived from society itself—for the inverse relies on a method that abstracts the concept into the concrete. The history of Brazil¹ is one of violence: indigenous submission, conquest, extraction of natural resources; the introduction of slavery, torture, servitude; destruction, enslavement, and blood. From colonial times, when the Portuguese followed a policy of exploration—unlike the British and theirs of occupation—to the Empire, where the introduction of a mass contingent of slaves happened under the watchful eyes of the central capitalist powers. As such, it ensured the country would be engineered itself into a machine capable of producing, en masse, enormous quantities of primary commodities (sugar cane, coffee, etcetera) that secured, too, the continuous and profitable exploitation of wage labour being developed inside the central powers; coffee would enable the 12 hours working days that tailed a surging working class from the heart of the industrialization process under the guidance of the personifications of Capital in its entirety—of a social metabolism actuated under over recurrent structures of civil society, as a whole, and its congruities.

Spontaneity of the Masses, Activity of the Party | Georg Lukács

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First appeared in Die Internationale, III/6, 1921 (Editor’s note). FROM: LUKÁCS, Georg. Tactics and Ethics, 1919-1929. London: Verso, 2014. Transcribed by V. S. Conttren, December 2022. Available as a pdf here.

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Spontaneity of the Masses, Activity of the Party

Georg Lukács

There is no difficulty in making a distinction between on the one hand, the discussion about the correctness or incorrectness of the new ‘open’ tactics of the United German Communist Party (VKPD)¹ and, on the other, the discussion as to whether or not the March Action² was correctly led. This was clearly demonstrated at the meeting of the Central Committee on 7 and 8 April, where Comrade Paul Franken put forward an amendment to Paragraph 12 of the guiding principles³ of the Central Bureau. The proposal was that, from the sentence, ‘the Central Committee therefore approves the political and tactical position of the Bureau’, the words ‘and tactical’ should be deleted. Although the amendment was rejected by the great majority of the Central Committee, paragraph 6 of the guiding principles nevertheless shows, as does Comrade Paul Frölich’s essay entitled ‘Offensive’ in the recent issue of Internationale (3, no. 3, 1921), that the March Action was in no sense a classic example of the new tactical line, but rather a defensive struggle forced on the party in the midst of its preparations for the intellectual and organizational re-orientation demanded by the new tactics. Which in no way means that the lessons of the March Action are not pertinent to the efforts within the party to develop the new tactical approach and do not have to be made full use of. It means simply that the problem of offensive tactics can be discussed – to some extent at least – independently of the concrete results and concrete criticisms of the March Action.

Those who oppose the new tactics – and they do so for overtly or unconsciously opportunistic reasons – base their arguments essentially on three points. First, they argue that, as long as it is ‘correctly’ understood, the revolutionary offensive in no respect signifies a new departure for the United German Communist Party; they even set out to prove that the tactic of the ‘Open Letter’⁴ was itself already an offensive tactic. Secondly, they claim to have exposed the March Action as a putsch launched in the spirit of Bakunin or Blanqui. And thirdly, they are concerned to demonstrate that the theoretical conflict which has now become acute in the United German Communist Party is nothing more than the old conflict between Rosa Luxemburg and Lenin, which first came to light as far back as 1904 in Rosa Luxemburg’s articles dealing with the organizational questions of the Russian party.⁵

We have no intention of entering into a semantic slanging-match armed with quotations from Marx and Rosa Luxemburg. To produce passages from Marx ‘for’ or ‘against’ the putschist nature of the March Action would be futile, just as any attempt to protect the reputation of Rosa Luxemburg against charges of opportunistic leanings would be undignified.

Interview: Jean-Paul Sartre on Maoism

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“Originally published in Number 28 of Actuel and reprinted in Tout Va Bien, Number 4, February 20-March 20, 1973, pp. 30-35. It was conducted by Michel-Antoine Burnier. English translation is by Robert D’Amico”

FROM: Telos, Summer 1973, vol. 1973, no. 16, pp. 92-101. Transcribed by V. S. Conttren, December 2022. Available as a pdf here.

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On Maoism—interview with Jean-Paul Sartre

For more than two years you have been director of La Cause du Peuple. You have sold the paper on the streets, you write militant articles, you work on the new daily Liberation, and you have participated in many of the Maoists’ meetings and actions. You seem much closer to them and more engaged with them than you were previously with the Communist Party and with liberation movements such as the Algerian FLN. How do you explain this, and did you make this decision at the outset?

Sartre: I accepted the directorship of La Cause du Peuple after the arrest of the two preceding directors in the spring of 1970. The Maoists did not think they had a base of support broad enough to carry out the clandestine operation which the government tried to force them into. To meet both this process and repression, they came and asked me to help them. That represented, moreover, a new attitude on their part of interest in intellectuals and in finding out how intellectuals could be of service to them. They mistrusted “super-stars” but, at the same time, they appealed to well-known intellectuals who could avert Marcellin’s attacks. They turned to the notion of “celebrity” back against the bourgeoisie—and they were right. I feel that the well-known writer has a double role: he is himself, and also the public thing called a celebrity over which he has no control unless he recovers it to serve in a completely different ways. That is what I did with La Cause du Peuple.

At the beginning, it was clear that I was not in agreement with the Maoists, nor were they with me. I took a legal and not a political responsibility. I simply gave my name so the paper could continue and the militants could act and write as they intended to. In the same way, I accepted the directorship of Tout Va Bien; and under the same conditions I was a witness at the trial of militants from Vive la Revolution and of Roland Castro. Through a series of actions and struggles since then, I have been drawn progressively closer to the conceptions of La Cause du Peuple.

Abstractions: between ideology and science | João Quartim de Moraes

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“João Quartim de Moraes is a collaborating professor at UNICAMP and a researcher at CNPq focusing on history of political thought, Brazilian institutions, ancient and modern materialism, and Marxism.” Taken from here.

From: MORAES, João Quartim de. As abstrações, entre a ideologia e a ciência. In: Crítica Marxista, n.44, p. 43-56, 2017. Translated by V. S. Conttren, November 2022. DOI 10.17605/OSF.IO/YP23S. Available as a pdf here.

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Abstractions: between ideology and science

João Quartim de Moraes

Chaotic representations

Few of Marx’s texts occupy such a singular position in his work as “The Method of Political Economy,” the third of four subjects in the “Introduction to the Critique of Political Economy” (Einleitung zur Kritik der Politischen Ökonomie), more simply known as the 1857 Introduction, the most remarkable (alongside the study on “Forms which preceded capitalist production”) of the writings included in the Grundrisse der Kritik der Politischen Ökonomie, a collection of economic manuscripts written by Marx in London during the two-year period 1857-1858 and published for the first time in Moscow in 1939.

Since it was a draft, the author’s preoccupation was to record ideas, to schematize arguments, to comment on and criticize doctrines in preparation for the larger work on the critique of political economy. The literary composition stricto sensu and rhetoric (positively understood as the art of argumentation) were kept on the sidelines: a draft is a draft. Perhaps this helps explain the somewhat paradoxical character of the argument which opens the text:

When considering a given country from the standpoint of political economy, we begin with its population, the division of the population into classes, town and country, sea, the different branches of production, export and import, annual production and consumption, commodity prices, etc. It would seem right to start with the real and concrete, with the actual presupposition, e.g., in political economy to start with the population, which forms the basis and the subject of the whole social act of production [“die Grundlage und das Subjekt des ganzen gesellschaftlichen Produktionsakts”]. Closer consideration shows, however, that this is wrong. Population is an abstraction if, for instance, one disregards the classes of which it is composed.¹

For the attentive reader, such a statement that it is false to begin with the real and the concrete provokes a certain perplexity. Should we begin with the ideal and the abstract? That is not exactly what Marx says, rather that “if we begin with the population, there would be at first a chaotic representation of the whole.” The population of a given country is a real and concrete fact, but as a representation it is a chaotic notion.

Lukács and Sociology | José Paulo Netto

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This was first translated and published as an appendix within the book translation of Netto’s “Lukács and the Critique of Bourgeois Philosophy,” September 2021, by V. S. Conttren.

Original: NETTO, José Paulo. “Lukács e a sociologia.” In: Contexto, number 1, 1996, p. 61-89. Translated by V. S. Conttren, September 2021. DOI 10.17605/OSF.IO/3BW9G. Available as a pdf here.

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Lukács and Sociology

José Paulo Netto

 

The specificities between Marxism and sociology seem to constitute, even inside a dual process of crisis (the crisis of the international communist movement and the crisis of the particular social sciences), the nucleus of a thematisation whose implications transcend the purely theoretical parameters and whose relevance can develop a most effective socio-political significance.

The problem posed by these specific relations—which are, on the socio-cultural level of reality, incontestable—proposes a debate at the instance of methodology and from the perspective of historical efficacy, necessarily involving the scientific status of analytical operations. Hence, the posture of official science becomes anthologically laughable, for viewing the sociological contribution of Marx as a simple “economic determinism”¹ and, progressively, commitments such as the Cerisy Colloquium assert themselves as more objective ways of forwarding the question.²

And yet, the truth is that the systematic investigation of those relations demands a critical effort capable to learn not only the models of social gnosis developed by Marxist theory (in its alternative strands) and by sociological reflection (in its various modalities), as well as the social function they perform and their possible mutual interferences. More than that, there is the urgency of researching, concretely, the socio-cultural complex from which they derive—Marxism and sociology—as answers to the macroscopic problematic posed by capitalist society.

Introdução à Dialética | Antonio Wolf

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Original publicado por Antonio Wolf em https://empyreantrail.wordpress.com/2016/09/12/dialectics-an-introduction/, 12 de Setembro de 2016 (acessado Novembro 2021). Traduzido por V. S. Conttren, Novembro 2021. DOI: 10.17605/OSF.IO/7CB3D. Disponível em pdf aqui.

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Introdução à Dialética

Antonio Wolf

Hegel é um filósofo conhecido por sua dificuldade e profundidade especulativa, entretanto, encontrar um ponto de entrada para a possibilidade de aprender seu sistema é, em si, um esforço demasiado, já que o aspecto fundamental de seu sistema, o método, é obscuro. Espero que este artigo realize o objetivo de clarificar a dialética, de um modo que poucos artigos puderam fazer. Alguns autores escreveram sobre tal tópico com clareza. No entanto, eles não são nem conhecidos pelo discurso popular, e seus trabalhos não são, também, os primeiros resultados de pesquisas eletrônicas. Deste modo, coloco como minha tarefa como uma exposição condensada da dialética aos outros, na esperança de poupá-los do que não deveria ser um árduo caminho até uma simples porta. Crédito, primeiramente, deve ser dado ao próprio Hegel, que apesar de todas as afirmações contrárias, não é misterioso ou reservado sobre seu “método”.

O assim chamado “método”

Verdadeiramente, não há dialética enquanto método, no sentido que as pessoas entendem a palavra comumente. Crítica imanente (interna) é crítica imanente e, enquanto Marx e Hegel se engajam nesta atividade, não se nota qualquer diferença; não há método dialético “idealista” ou “materialista”. Claro, não se pode afirmar que não há uma diferença fundamental entre Marxistas e Hegelianos, mas esta certamente não se refere à dialética; não se Marx faz uso de tal método como assim Hegel o faz. Esta questão será retomada mais tarde, por hora foquemos na questão da dialética.

O que, por muitas vezes, é chamado de “método dialético”, repito, é um método que não existe nem em Marx ou em Hegel, de mesmo modo como o também mistificado método científico de hipótese-experimento-conclusão não existe para a ciência, em geral. Não há uma fórmula para esta “lógica”—nenhum conjunto de regras a serem constantemente aplicadas. Não há, também, {tese-antítese}-síntese, nem {abstrato-negativo}-concreto. O que há de errado nestas fórmulas não é que elas estejam simplesmente erradas, mas que servem para confundir o assunto para aqueles que ainda não conhecem a lógica da crítica imanente. Como descrição do processo, o primeiro é passível de compreensão, e o segundo se faz correto, em certa medida, já que descreve uma relação padrão entre os resultados produzidos. O problema, no entanto, é que as pessoas geralmente não entendem que estas são meras descrições e não o processo em si. Confundem um resultado processado com o processo que cria tais resultados e, ao pensar a dialética a partir disto, equivocam-se em compreender a forma como o método em si.

The Meaning of Colonization | Caio Prado Junior

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Original: PRADO JR., Caio. “Sentido da Colonização”. Formação do Brasil Contemporâneo. 1942.

Translated by V. S. Conttren, November 2022. DOI 10.17605/OSF.IO/B3PA8. Available as a pdf here.

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The Meaning of Colonization

Caio Prado Junior

 All peoples have a certain “meaning” in their evolution, when seen from a distance. One perceives it not in the details of its history, but rather in the whole of the essential facts and events that constitute it over a long period. Whoever observes this whole, and removes it from the mass of secondary incidents that always accompany it and often render it confused and incomprehensible, will not fail to perceive that it is formed from a masterly and uninterrupted line of events succeeding each other in strict order, always directed towards a determined direction. This must be sought first when approaching the analysis of the history of a people, whichever moment or aspect of it is of interest, for all moments and aspects are but parts, incomplete in themselves, of a whole which must always be the ultimate aim of the historian, however particularistic he may be. Such an investigation is all the more important and essential because it is by it that the individuality of that portion of humanity which interests the researcher is defined, both in time and space: people, country, nation, society, or any other appropriate designation. It is only there that he will find that unity which allows him to single out such a human parcel to study it separately.

The direction of a people’s evolution may vary; extraneous events, profound internal transformations in its equilibrium or structure, or even both circumstances together, may intervene, diverting it to other hitherto unknown paths. Portugal provides a striking example almost domestic to us. Until the end of the 14th century, and since the establishment of the monarchy, Portuguese history is characterized by the formation of a new European nation and is articulated in the general evolution of the civilization of the West, to which it belongs, as part of the struggle it had to sustain, in order to establish itself, against the Arab invasion that threatened, at a certain moment, the whole continent and its civilization. At the dawn of the 15th century, Portuguese history changed course. Having settled within the natural geographical borders which would definitively be its own, and having territorially constituted the Kingdom, Portugal was to become a maritime country; it detached itself, so to speak, from the continent and turned towards the Ocean which was then opening up to the other side; it would not be long before, with its overseas ventures and conquests, it became a great colonial power.

Seen from this more general and wider angle, the evolution of a people becomes explainable. The more or less complex details and incidents that make up the fabric of its history, and which sometimes threaten to cloud what truly forms the master line that defines it, pass into the background; and only then is it given to us to reach the meaning of that evolution, to understand and explain it. We must begin to do this regarding Brazil. We are not interested here, it is true, in all of Brazilian history, since we are starting from a precise moment—already very advanced in its development—which is the end of the colonial period. But this moment, though we may be able to circumscribe it with relative precision, is but a link in the same chain which takes us back to our most remote past. We have suffered no discontinuity throughout the history of the colony. And if I have chosen a moment in it, only its last page, it is only because, as I explained in the Introduction, that moment presents itself as a final term and the result of all our previous evolution. It is its synthesis. Therefore, if we entirely disregard that evolution, we cannot understand what was fundamental and permanent in it. That is, in a word, its meaning.

Marx—ontological critique of capitalist society: the critique of labour | Mario Duayer

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Original: DUAYER, Mario. Marx e a Crítica Ontológica da Sociedade. In: EM PAUTA, Rio de Janeiro, 2012, n. 29, v. 10, p. 35-47. Translated by V. S. Conttren, October 2022. DOI 10.17605/OSF.IO/Z8CTP. Available as a pdf here.

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Marx—ontological critique of capitalist society: the critique of labour

Mario Duayer

Introduction

To begin with, I would say that, today, the referent of all criticism of capitalism, of the social order duly universalized by capital, does not exist, except, of course, only as increasingly vague ideas about socialism. There are, so to speak, almost protocol-like mentions of a socialism that nobody can say what it is any more, nor even believes to be possible or even desirable. Of course, those who fight at all levels and for their rights, against the iniquities, the miseries, the infamies of capitalism, inside, outside, on the margins, deserve respect and solidarity. However, with all due respect to these struggles, to the “limited struggles of everyday life,” experience has shown that they are largely innocuous, ineffective. There is no doubt that they will continue to be fought, because they emerge spontaneously from the infamies and perversities of our society, yet truthfully their fate has been retail dissolution, whether in defeat or in consented (acceptable, assimilable) conquests. They are not nor have been capable of converging on something that could shake the structures of modern capitalist society.

It seems urgent, therefore, to ask about the reasons for this inability. First, because it is obvious that revolts and struggles against violence, misery, oppression, infamy, etc. cannot by themselves put an end to violence, misery, oppression, infamy, otherwise they would never have existed. The first violence, misery or oppression would have generated the struggle which would have immediately abolished it.

It may be suggested that the question is explained insofar as all discourses, speeches, analyses, slogans that inspire and, many times, vicariously incite struggles in healthcare, education, trade unions, ecology, etc., have a black hole as their (critical) backdrop. They criticize capitalism, healthcare as a commodity, but they do not and cannot deny capitalism, nobody can deny it today. Do we want a better capitalism, with quality universal public healthcare, but still, outside this sphere, can continue to preside over all the other dimensions of social life? What if the struggle is ecological? Do we want a clean capitalism, which respects nature, but which, respectfully, continues to command an infinite process of accumulation? What if the struggle is an educational one? Would quality public education for all be the reason for the struggle? However, if the demand is met, could capitalism continue to educate subjects capable of reproducing its social relations held intact elsewhere? Conclusion: if nothing but capitalism is credible and, above all, desirable, capable of seducing people, what exactly do we want when we criticize and fight against the modus operandi of capitalism? Therefore, we can understand why the practical actions of dissensus are extinguished in the indifference of the same continued itself.

Marx and the Neue Rheinische Zeitung (1848-49) | Frederick Engels

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MARX, Karl; ENGELS, Frederick. Marx & Engels: Collected Works, vol. 26, pp. 120-128, 2010. Transcribed by V. S. Conttren, with minor stylistic corrections, November 2019. Available as a pdf here.

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Marx and the Neue Rheinische Zeitung (1848-49)

Frederick Engels

On the outbreak of the February Revolution, the German “Communist Party,” as we called it, consisted only of a small core, the Communist League, which was organized as a secret propaganda society. The League was secret only because at that time no freedom of association or assembly existed in Germany. Besides the workers’ associations abroad, from which it obtained recruits, it had about thirty communities, or sections, in the country itself and, in addition, individual members in many places. This inconsiderable fighting force, however, possessed a leader, Marx, to whom all willingly subordinated themselves, a leader of the first rank, and, thanks to him, a programme of principles and tactics that still has full validity today: the Communist Manifesto.

It is the tactical part of the programme that concerns us here in the first instance. This part stated in general:

“The Communists do not form a separate party opposed to other working-class parties.”

“They have no interests separate and apart from those of the proletariat as a whole.”

“They do not set up any sectarian principles of their own, by which to shape and mould the proletarian movement.”

“The Communists are distinguished from the other working-class parties by this only: 1. In the national struggles of the proletarians of the different countries, they point out and bring to the front the common interests of the entire proletariat, independently of all nationality. 2. In the various stages of development which the struggle of the working class against the bourgeoisie has to pass through, they always and everywhere represent the interests of the movement as a whole.”

“The Communists, therefore, are on the one hand, practically, the most resolute section of the working-class parties of every country, that section which pushes forward all others; on the other hand, theoretically, they have over the great mass of the proletariat the advantage of clearly understanding the line of march, the conditions, and the ultimate general results of the proletarian movement.”¹

Lukács’ Later Works and the Drawbacks of his Intellectual Itinerary | Ester Vaisman

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Original: VAISMAN, Ester. A Obra Tardia de Lukács e os Revezes de seu Itinerário Intelectual. Trans/Form/Ação, São Paulo, 30(2): 247-259, 2007.

Translated by V. S. Conttren, September 2022. Available as a pdf here. DOI: 10.17605/OSF.IO/H9FA4.

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Lukács’ Later Works and the Drawbacks of his Intellectual Itinerary¹

Ester Vaisman

According to Tertulian (1971, p.15), Lukács has become the most outstanding personality of contemporary Marxist culture. In fact, in the introduction to the essay “What is Orthodox Marxism” (1919), published in History and Class Consciousness (1923), again following Tertulian, Lukács formulated a thesis that revealed his basic theoretical orientation from his transition years to Marxism. Therein he referred to the discussions that animated the contemporary intellectual circles around the authentic definition of ‘orthodox Marxism’. He argued that a serious Marxist could accept, in principle, by way of hypothesis, the inaccuracy of all the particular statements of Marx and recognize the need to replace them by new research findings without for a moment ceasing to be an orthodox Marxist. A paradoxical affirmation which represented a polemical attitude towards a ‘dogmatic’ conception of Marxism. Authentic Marxism could not be identified with an automatic adherence and fidelity to the results of Marx’s research, with ‘faith’ in one thesis or another, with the exegesis of a ‘sacred’ creation. When it came to Marxism, orthodoxy had to do exclusively with the problem of method. The distinction could appear very subtle or simply unfounded. But the statement was intended to underline the philosophical dimension of Marxism. Finally, Lukács rejected the infallibility of all certainties of a scholastic or dogmatic kind. Thus, in principle, every particular result of research is susceptible of being completed, modified or enriched. The or-thodoxy in Marxism meant to affirm that Marx had found an adequate research method, a method that could be developed, perfected or deepened. It thus aimed at underlining the philosophical nature of this method and its fundamental non-dogmatism.

And, again according to Tertulian, yet, the mere “possession” of a superior instrument is not in itself a guarantee of cultural superiority and, in this sense, on a certain occasion Lukács stated that Montaigne would be more interesting than a mediocre Marxist.

But one question remains since his posthumously published works: Why does Lukács insist on dealing with such an unusual theme in his mature work, the possible existence of an ontology in Marx? For a question that was fatally received with great strangeness, even by his most beloved disciples? A question that has aroused and is still arousing immediate disapproval from all sides, the disapproval in limini of those who claim to be interested parties in such matters, who would regard it as inadmissible, why insist on this ‘exotic’ problem?

Fenomenologia do Espírito: Substancia como Sujeito | Antonio Wolf

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Original: https://empyreantrail.wordpress.com/2016/11/18/phenomenology-of-spirit-substance-as-subject/.

Antonio Wolf é um amigo que produz continuamente ensaios, introduções e análises profundas sobre o trabalho teórico de Hegel.

Traduzido por V. S. Conttren, Julho 2022. Disponível em pdf aqui. DOI 10.17605/OSF.IO/MXT56.

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Fenomenologia do Espírito: Substancia como Sujeito

Antonio Wolf

 

No “Prefácio” da Fenomenologia, Hegel faz algumas equações rápidas, densas e aparentemente ininteligíveis de certos termos. Nos parágrafos 22, 37 e 54 da tradução de Miller, Hegel faz um resumo espantoso de equivalências conceituais que, para os não iniciados, devem aparecer como totalmente incompreensíveis.

Hegel basicamente acaba compondo esta espantosa cadeia de equivalências:

Razão = Propósito = Auto-movimento
= Sujeito = Negatividade = Ser para si mesmo
= Eu = Imediaticidade = Vir a ser = Conceito = Realidade = Substância = Ser-em-si

No parágrafo 22, Hegel diz que a razão é uma atividade proposital, e esse propósito é o imóvel e auto–móvel, e isso é Subjetividade. Não apenas isso, mas esse poder de auto-movimento é negatividade, e essa negatividade é o eu. Na verdade, isto não é tão incompreensível se apenas nos desaceleramos.

Que a razão é propósito não é uma ideia louca; de fato, quando se pergunta a razão de algo, geralmente se pergunta o propósito para o qual é. O propósito de se deslocar por conta própria também não é estranho, pois o propósito, de certa forma, parece autorrealizar-se, já que algo proposital começa com seu propósito em potencial e termina com seu propósito atualizado. Que Hegel chama esta subjetividade de auto-movimento, entretanto, é definitivamente algo que não encontrará muita tração na seção. Somos informados sobre isso e Hegel avança rapidamente, mas não é uma noção absurda quando pensamos nisso em um sentido muito amplo: nossa subjetividade como a entendemos na vida cotidiana está fundamentalmente ligada ao nosso próprio auto-movimento como agentes livres para fazermos o que quisermos; assim, que o auto-movimento é subjetividade em algum sentido básico é compreensível. Afinal, pense assim: quando faço coisas como sujeito, faço coisas por minha causa. A subjetividade se move por si mesma, se não fosse assim, seria o objeto movido por outra coisa que era a fonte da atividade. Podemos observar aqui que também vemos uma forte ligação imanente entre a subjetividade e o propósito, ou seja, que ser um sujeito é ter um propósito próprio.

Reproduction and Ontology in Lukács | Sergio Lessa

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Original: LESSA, Sergio. Reprodução e Ontologia em Lukács. In: Trans/Form/Acão, São Paulo, 17: 63-79, 1994. Translated by V. S. Conttren, September 2022. DOI 10.17605/OSF.IO/NEU4J. Available as a pdf here.

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Reproduction and Ontology in Lukács

Sergio Lessa

… an attempt to effectively redirect thinking towards being, in our present-day world, could only take place with the development of a Marxist ontology. (Lukács, 1979b, p.33).

At a time when most thinkers dismiss ontology as an outdated metaphysics, when almost all specialists elevate epistemology and positivism to “quasi official doctrines,” Lukács occupied the last years of his life writing Towards an Ontology of Social Being (1976-1981). What are the reasons that led Lukács, at a time when ontology was so neglected, to research into social reproduction as an ontological category?

The answers are not simple, as usually happens with fundamental questions. To Lukács, the complexity of the answer increases even more. Lukácsian thought is so closely articulated with his epoch that a satisfactory answer would involve a whole network of references and connections whose roots are located, with greater or lesser mediations, in the main problems, dilemmas and questions posed by the evolution of humanity over this century. However, in a synthetic and preliminary way, it may be possible to go to the heart of the matter by affirming that, for Lukács, the ontological perspective is the only one capable of recovering the radically historical and human character of social being, so as to, ultimately and essentially, reaffirm the Marxian assertion that history is the exclusive result of human action and that, therefore, it is within the reach of humanity to take history into its own hands. The ethical resonances evident here are not coincidental; in fact, Lukács conceived his Ontology as preparation for an Ethics which, however, he did not live long enough to write.

This sketch of an answer already indicates two of the basic categories of the Lukácsian ontology of social being. Firstly, as the central category of the world of men.¹ Secondly, the radically human character of this historicity: the global trajectory of the human race, its history, is the concrete result of social reproduction, a peculiar synthesis which converts into totality and individuality the countless and distinct actions of singular individuals (Lukács, 1976-1981, v. II, p. 253-CLVI).²

O Objeto do Autoconhecimento | Richard Hunsinger

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(O Objeto do Autoconhecimento: notas à crítica da consciência reificada e formação racial de classe através da Tradição Radical Negra.) Richard Hunsinger é um amigo de longa data que vem desenvolvendo estudos sociais e literários quanto à formação social do capital. Seus escritos desvendam pedaços deste tracejo histórico com extrema riqueza.

Original disponível aqui, acessado 01/08/2022. Traduzido por V. S. Conttren, Agosto 2022. DOI 10.17605/OSF.IO/5R2WV. Disponível em pdf aqui.

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O Objeto do Autoconhecimento

Richard Hunsinger

Aqui está o verdadeiro problema do trabalho moderno. Cá está o cerne do problema da Religião e da Democracia, da Humanidade. Palavras e gestos fúteis não valem nada. Da exploração do proletariado sombrio vem o Valor Excedente filtrado de animais humanos que, em terras cultivadas, a Máquina e o poder aproveitado encobrem e ocultam. A emancipação do homem é a emancipação do trabalho e a emancipação do trabalho é a libertação daquela maioria básica de trabalhadores que são amarelos, marrons e negros.
W.E.B. Du Bois, Reconstrução Negra na América 1860-1880

Du Bois nos oferece uma formulação do modo de operação global da produção capitalista que une habilmente o abstrato e o concreto. O que é ainda mais notável nesta passagem é a brevidade com que ela atravessa o processo de formação social do valor e a necessidade objetiva de sua superação, aquele momento a partir do qual se origina a emancipação universal como o duplo movimento provocado pelas particularidades dos graus diferenciados de exploração. A continuação de nosso discurso sobre a reificação encontra aqui uma expressão na ocultação desta função diferenciadora da racialização, a Máquina e o Poder aproveitado, para a qual Du Bois chama nossa atenção. Esta teorização do Valor Excedente é a síntese da tese que abre a Reconstrução Negra na América: 1860-1880, a do caráter essencial do trabalhador negro à formação do capitalismo como sistema econômico mundial, onde, como Cedric J. Robinson esclarece, não foi como escravos que o trabalhador negro entrou neste sistema, mas como mão de obra. É nesta “mudança dos nomes das coisas” que Du Bois reconstrói as suposições de autonomia da industrialização em relação às necessidades de exploração das plantações, além do imediato aparecimento do trabalho assalariado nas complexas mediações raciais de classe que formam a materialização da supremacia branca e da superioridade racial, a partir da qual se desenvolveria o “tecido da nação, codificado por seu passado escravo.”¹

Ocorre uma operação de des-fetichização que ocorre nesta linguagem, ao mesmo tempo em que constrói uma materialização da raça no desenvolvimento histórico do modo de produção capitalista. Onde Lukács atribui o fenômeno da reificação não apenas à presença ou inicialmente ao efeito desintegrador da troca de mercadorias nas formas pré-modernas de sociedade, mas ao estabelecimento de uma estrutura de mercadorias que agora “penetra na sociedade em todos os seus aspectos e a [remodela] à sua própria imagem,” podemos encontrar nas intervenções historiográficas da tradição radical negra uma concretização da atualidade histórica desta subsunção da vida social na forma de mercadoria.² A formulação de Robinson da composição orgânica do capital nesta época, aquele movimento e processo pelo qual “os trabalhadores africanos haviam sido transmutados pelos cânones perversos do capitalismo mercantilista em propriedade” e assim “a força de trabalho africana como mão de obra escrava foi integrada na composição orgânica do capitalismo manufatureiro e industrial do século XIX,” sustentando assim o surgimento de um mercado mundial extraeuropeu dentro do qual o acúmulo de capital foi conquistado para o desenvolvimento futuro da produção industrial, “traça esta subsunção de um elemento particular do corpo social globalizado em sua mediação como mercadoria.”³ Esta formação social de trabalho criador de valor é a violência concreta da abstração, pela qual o trabalho humano é substanciado por esta alienação do trabalho de suas capacidades; o Comércio Transatlântico de Escravos marca o projeto mais intencional na formação histórica mundial de um proletariado global.

Theology of the “Laity”? (Reality or Mystification) | Enrique Dussel

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From: DUSSEL, Enrique. “Teologia do ‘Laicado’? (realidade ou mistificação).” In: Revista Ecliesiástica Brasileira (“Medicina da Reprodução e Bioética”), vol. 47, fasc. 186, June 1987. Petrópolis: Editora Vozes, 1987, pp. 379-385. Translated by V. S. Conttren, July 2022. Available as pdf here. DOI 10.17605/OSF.IO/T5K84.

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Theology of the “Laity”?
(Reality or Mystification)

Enrique Dussel

I have been asked, as a “lay” theologian of liberation, to write an article about the “theology of the laity.” I must say, from the onset, that when someone asks me: — “How can you, a layman, possibly be a theologian?,” I respond to them: — “Look! First, do not insult me, because I am not any layman. I am a Christian. And as a Christian I can be a prophet, pastor, doctor… In short, I can exercise whichever one of the Christian charisms enumerated by Paul of Tarsus in his letters.” However, since I’ve affirmed that being a layman is an insult, I will now better explain myself in the following brief lines.

I have a vast experience in being that which has been designated as a “layman.” As a layman, I believe myself to have even more experience than any bishop of the Roman Catholic Church, and even more than the Pope himself, since, I believe, none of them have been “laymen” for 52 years — since much longer before that, they entered a seminary, were ordained priests and were promoted to the episcopate or elevated to the pontifical throne.

I was born in the evening of December 24^th, 1934, in La Paz (what a beautiful name!), in the middle of the desert of Mendoza, Argentina. My father was a doctor who served peasants and the poor; my mother, catholic militant. That is why when I became 8 years old, after having received my first communion and had memorized the Catechism, I joined the Catholic Action in the city of Mendoza. Later, at 10 years of age, I became a candidate for the Catholic Action; at 15 years old, Youth of the same CA; as a 17-year-old, I became a diocesan Delegate of the Candidates and founded the Guides’ Movement. In Mendoza, we have the Açoncábua Mount, well seven thousand meters high; I was an Andeanist (not an alpinist), but one who faces actual mountains, climbing summits with more than five thousand meters since I was 12 years old. I was President of my JUC (Catholic University Youth) Center, at the University. At 20 years of age, in 1954, I was a Founder of the Argentine Christian Democracy. Ultimately, all things which make up the curriculum of a good conservative and anti-communist during the “Cold War” era. Graduated in Philosophy at age 23 as a Thomist, I departed for Francoist Spain while being anti-Francoist. My doctoral thesis in Philosophy was both Maritainian and against Charles de Koninck (Canada’s Thomist of the right). Always “lay;” a whole Latin American “history of the laity,” from the 1930s to the 1950s.

Thoughts on “methodology” | V. S. Conttren

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The following article was written to be part of a long essay on the question of the “Colonial” Way in contraposition to other well studied “ways of objectification of capitalism” (Classical, Prussian, etc.). Though the final essay was never completed—perhaps one day—the first introductory chapter was. It is published here as an archival of sorts, and who knows, the necessary impetus for the revision of the whole essay and its definitive publication.

June, 2022. DOI 10.17605/OSF.IO/X9BYT.

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Thoughts on “methodology”

V. S. Conttren

What started as elucidation of an article concerning Integralism was extended into a critical overview. Besides realizing the presentation of its historical ground, posited by such article, everything else had to be sought at their roots, too. The continuous attempt to make explicit the difference between Integralism and Fascism, required throwing away the built pillars to fall, yet again, on the ground of history. “He must, so to speak, throw away the ladder after he has climbed up it.”¹ Our incursion is not posed in this manner. The problem is, in first and last instance, precisely to go back down², as to include theory inwardly to both concrete and abstract plausibility. The question, then, is not to arrive at a certain point, conclusion or merely an objective—the teleology of knowledge must be brought from the knowing incursion which unveils it, not from without. Foregoing epistemological or gnosiological presuppositions, one arrives precisely at the prior organization of a subjectivity, implied as being both “necessary” and “conditional.” Methodology, then, not only becomes the form of excursion, but also its content. To approach the question from an oblique angle: the determination of a theoretical project as “…an interpretive endeavour because it can offer causal explanations of social action only to the degree to which such analyses are simultaneously adequate on the level of meaning,”³ symbolizes no ground. Interpretation is a step that accompanies research and by no means subsumes abstraction or theory as its own. Constituting the problem is the inversion of comprehension in assuming interpretation as being a finalist exposition of the apposite subject.

The method of rising from the abstract to the concrete is only the way in which thought appropriates the concrete, reproduces it as the concrete in the mind. But this is by no means the process by which the concrete itself comes into being.⁴

From “Great Realism” to Realism | Istvan Szerdahelyi

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From: ILLÉS, László; JÓZSEF, Farkas; SZABOLCSI, Miklós; SZERDAHELYI, István (eds.). Hungarian Studies on Georg Lukács. Vol. 1. Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó, 1993, pp. 300-328. Translated by Iván Sellei. Transcribed by V. S. Conttren, April 2022. Available as a pdf here.

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From “Great Realism” to Realism

Istvan Szerdahelyi

 

I. How did Realism become “Great?”

1. The problem of “Great Realism”

Among the terms that Georg Lukács used in his aesthetic, the most controversial one has been “great realism.”

According to a commonly held view, the essence of Lukács’ conception of realism did not change between the 1930s and his death: “Eventful as Lukács’ external life was, his works show unbroken development from the early 1930s. He did not renounce any tenet, neither did he come up with remarkable new one.”¹ Yet sponsor of this view are divided into two groups. The members of the first group content that, for Lukács, the term “great realism” never functioned as a category, and that the adjective is unimportant. This view is expressed, for example, in monographs by Helga Gallas and István Hermann,² which confine themselves to discussion of realism and do not mention the term “great realism.” In a similar manner, Miklós Lackó states that “in the early 1930s, Lukács plunged into Berlin literary polemics almost in full and complete possession of his conception of realism in art.”³ Hermann declared that

Lukács never used the concept “great realism” in that form. He did write of great realist writers, but the word great operated as an adjective. Once I asked him what he meant by greatrealism. He said he did not know, for, if such a concept existed, there should be little, middle, and intermediate realism as well.⁴

To be sure, the term “greatrealism” is written this way, that is, in one word, only by some of his pupils and—recently—translators, while Lukács himself always wrote it in two words. Yet the controversial issue is not the term as it appears in written form, but the concept. And Lukács’ above statement cannot be considered as the final word in the debate, as it is widely known that, although he did not use such terms as “little, middle, and intermediate realism,” he did use such terms as “pedestrian,” “superficial,” and “limited” realism.