The Brazilian Left in the 21st Century

The Brazilian Left in the 21st Century Synopsis

The beginning of the 21st century in Brazil witnessed contradictory historical developments. While the election of Lula da Silva in 2002 and the Workers' Party promised a real possibility for the lower classes to improve their living conditions, and the possibility of opening political institutions to a real democratization, these social transformations showed themselves to be complacent with conservative political practices. This book aims to reconstruct the role played by various left movements and organizations in Brazil from their process of renewal in the 1980s as they fought against the military dictatorship, going through the Workers' Party's governments in the 2000s, until the Party's dramatic defeat with the parliamentary coup in 2016. The essays collected in this volume try to understand the development of Brazilian Left in the light of socialist politics and especially Marxism, both in terms of political organizations and theory, representing an effort to rethink some aspects of the history of the Brazilian left and how it can reorganize itself after the conservative turn.