Zander Navarro

Macbeth - What is’t you do?

Witches - A deed without a name.

As the spokesman of the Movement of Landless Rural Workers (MST), Horácio Martins Carvalho wrote a text that is at once auspicious and melancholic in its counterarguments, as well as, perhaps, somber in its auguries. The document must be welcomed, in the first place, for representing a very rare decision by the organization, in its almost twenty years, of responding to a critique. Throughout its history, the Movement has usually chosen to answer with silence to the analysts and observers who have discussed its decisions and choices. Therefore, Carvalho’s reply is a hopeful sign that the MST might still be able to rethink its relationship with other popular organizations, support and advisory bodies, representative social bodies, progressive intellectuals, and different institutions, thus becoming more open to dialogue and free from preconceptions about the future of agrarian development and its possibilities for socioeconomic change, particularly in what concerns the real chances of political emancipation of subaltern groups in the vast Brazilian rural world.

Contrary to what Carvalho suggests, the MST’s ban on political dialogue with the so-called "popular and democratic field" is far from demonstrating some imaginary "ideological solidity." Rather, it indicates an obvious weakness, since it has forced its leaders and militants to juggle rhetoric, to praise the organization itself, as well as to lose analytical breadth. The replication of forms of collective action and "worldviews" embraced by its leaders—with a surprising ready-made sameness in all the states of a rather diverse country—reflects indeed ideological insecurity and uncertainty regarding the paths to follow. Basing the education of its young militants on limited frameworks of reference, the organization resorts to an instrumental view of politics, which uses militants who should command their own will and freedom of interpretation as a means of reaching, not the reality in which they act, but above all other goals not always made clear to all the Movement’s members (as pointed out in my original text). In addition, virtually none of the agreements between the Movement and public universities, cited by Carvalho, really broaden the knowledge of participant landless militants, but, as a rule, only sanction the Movement’s own political view on the rural world. Unfortunately, in the name of discipline and countless behavioral recipes, its militants do not even acquire any kind of individual political awareness, compelled as they are to repeat the monophonic discourse of the main leaders. This reduces significantly their field of action and expression, and restricts their interpretation of the forms of struggle that are adequate for the country’s regional diversity, thus restraining organizational talent and the genuine and free development of new leaders.

Yet, as a result of the MST’s significant social visibility, correctly stressed by Carvalho, there are already many studies on partial aspects of its political action, organizational features, and several facets of social life related to the Movement, although, as I also pointed out, there are very few studies that address the whole of the social process it represents. Excluding propanganda literature, newspaper articles, and merely partisan texts, we could probably divide the studies made into two types. First, including most of the academic references produced so far, there are the studies guided by "naïve enchantment," not necessarily the result of the authors’ lack of social research skills, but of an analysis based on false premises, that is, an idealization of the object of their study and an a priori "positivity" which sanctifies the organizations representing subaltern classes, even before knowing them. These are usually studies conducted in a hasty manner, when they include fieldwork and data collection, thus remaining on the surface of social processes and phenomena. Their authors are as a rule members of urban middle classes, and such an enchantment can often become ludicrous, generating surprising anthropological aberrations. For instance, some authors are amazed by the "speeches" of the landless or of members of poorer rural families, which may be consistent but are sometimes simple opinions about everyday life, and they ceremoniously quote them in their studies as evidence of "popular knowledge," as if these people, however humble and marginalized they may be, lived in another world and not in a society which underwent deep changes in the last fifty years. During this period, information levels were raised, social relationships were deepened, and transportation means were improved, especially for individuals who (even though marginalized) are part of a broader process of commodification of social life typical of Brazil. Such a far-reaching process of change, also often ignored, has destroyed the "world of the past," where great isolation was the rule and the latifundium was the uncontested sovereign in agrarian environments, determining all the social processes within such spheres of social life.

The second set of studies about rural social struggles includes what could be called "past-revering dogmatism." These are made by a different type of interpreters, who normally follow orthodox Marxist traditions and are not predisposed towards analytical openness. They stress the (illusory) economic strength of farming and give social and political importance to social classes and actors who are nowadays very weakened. Their unconditional, exclusively ideological, support of the MST, which mythicizes the organization and its potentialities, is not actually based on a deep knowledge of the rural environment and its populations and even less of the Brazilian agrarian economy. Rather, it is based on a religious reading of social change, introducing categories (such as "latifundium") whose current political importance is minimal, but taken as "crucial" for social transformation in Brazil. Unfortunately, many religious mediators are also active in spreading this perspective, adopting these bygone dogmas in an often puerile manner, perhaps because they work in the most remote and isolated areas where such properties still exist, as an echo of the past.

Although the studies and analyses of this second group include recent themes and even modern jargon, they are not free from the anchors that immobilize them in the swamp of mainstream Marxism, displaying a conceptually reifying orientation. Carvalho’s text is certainly among this group, and his reply presents the same orientation that identifies the Movement’s principal leaders, notably the few texts occasionally published by its main leader.

The idealization of social life and political struggle, typical of the latter group, is clearly expressed in Carvalho’s reply, when the author implies that the MST organizes "revolutionary processes" or when, in the final paragraph, he suggests that "socialism and the values that it intrinsically presupposes no longer frighten or demobilize broad sections of the subaltern classes in the countryside, today socially identified as the landless." Reinforced by the reference to the ritualistic and doctrinaire use of icons of socialist thought in the activities and events organized by the Movement (framed by the magic word "mystique," drawn from the religious discourse that originated it), this assertion is surprising in face of the reality experienced by rural families living in the vast majority of Brazilian agrarian regions. What we see here, in fact, is a fundamentalist perspective of political action, entirely unrelated to the Brazilian agrarian reality, reflecting the strategic orientation of the organization. Carvalho has already explained, in an even more straightforward manner, in another text, the broader meaning of the proposed changes, as he sees them:

In light of these statements, it is lamentable that Carvalho’s reply has not benefited from his professional experience, but is instead a mere piece of propaganda. It is problematic, for instance, to discuss the statement that "Direct actions by mass movements do not require that different interests be represented in formal mediation," when Carvalho compares land occupations to "direct actions." Although social struggles always require a vast repertoire of mediation and cannot be limited to conventional representation, especially in political systems with a strong authoritarian heritage, and direct actions (almost always non-institutional) certainly play a central role in the Movement’s success, Carvalho’s proposition is, at the very least, poorly formulated. The core problem, often repeated in this debate, is related, at the internal level, to the fact that its militants and its social base are unaware of the choices made about forms of social struggle, which have never been transparent (that is, there is no legitimate internal mechanism of accountability); and, at the external level, to the opposition between the ideological disparagement of "politics" in general (which includes existing forms of representation) and the tireless search for the occupation of institutional spaces, which generates an inevitable sense of overt political opportunism. Therefore, we may ask: in the specific case of the MST, what is the role played by the Associação Nacional de Cooperação Agrícola-ANCA (National Association for Agricultual Cooperation), which has existed since the Movement’s inception, precisely to be a "representative of its interests"? Or yet, to carry the argument to the limit it suggests, would Carvalho believe in the possibility of a society organized only on "direct actions," without any form of representation? The figures presented by him and taken from MST pamphlets will not be discussed here, although most of them are at least controversial; nonetheless, even on a smaller scale, they represent initiatives of great social merit (as stressed in my original text).

At this point in Brazilian history, what is indeed crucial is to debate core differences, in spite of the stand-offish and evasive tone of the arguments presented. Thus, in short, I would say there are at least six main topics in this controversy, the first three of a more general nature and the remainder related to the internal characteristics of the organization itself.

First, the proposition that the so-called "political project" of rural families is, according to Carvalho (and the MST), identified with "socialism" (never stating its form and nature), borders on flagrant ideological delirium, and can be immediately refuted. In fact, no visible social group (including the settlements), in any Brazilian region, adheres to an even vague idea of socialism, unless it is defined as a set of shared values based on solidarity (therefore no longer being a "project of society"). This does not imply that it may not happen sometime in the future, if social groups sharing socialist ideas are created. But the truth is that, at present, nothing could be more alien to the social and political imaginary of rural families, including the poorest ones. There is here an obvious confusion between desire and reality, and it is somewhat surprising that the Movement’s leaders and intellectuals prefer to see the rural world through mystifying glasses and not from lived experience. This dissonance of reality and verbal illusionism is also evident in the proposal submitted to the MST by Carvalho, of making the rural settlements under its influence into "land resistance communities." According to him, in these communities, poor families would resign themselves to their poverty, because "the possibilities of accumulation would be deferred, because the current economic model is already annulling the conditions for such an accumulation, and because the priority becomes resistance, in order to change society in general and not the particular situation of each individual: a political option" (Carvalho, 2000: 3).

After rejecting such change and sociopolitical rupture due to its objective impossibility in a foreseeable future, I will address a second aspect, equally structural and macrosocial, informed by the logic of the capitalist society we live in. How should the recent agrarian development be interpreted, putting aside the jargon used in Carvalho’s text? Although clearly a controversial subject, it may be possible to discern, in recent years, some marked changes that point to the constitution of a possible space for actions directed towards rural development in Brazil. The following section presents such changes in broad strokes.

The 1990s opened a new chapter in Brazilian economic history and social development, one whose general determinants are still the object of intense debate. However, they are certainly related to the macroeconomic, technological, and political re-orientations currently happening in the world (usually under the label, whether correct or not, of "globalization"). What about the Brazilian rural areas, under the impact of these changes? It might be possible to summarize some of the main changes that have been observed lately and to outline some of the current challenges and impasses, especially in what concerns the agrarian regions that developed as a result of the deep modernization process mentioned above, and that are more strictly subordinated to economic and financial circuits. From a technological point of view, for instance, what is relevant nowadays is the level of farming production reached, which seems to be entirely "satisfactory" in terms of internal demand, since the intense urbanization processes of the 1960s and 1970s, although subsiding in recent years, appear to have stabilized the demand for foodstuffs and raw materials. Thus, the aggregate demand for agricultural production seems today to be totally determined by demographic growth and by an income distribution pattern which is not likely to be significantly altered in the short term. If we relate this factor, for example, with the growing number of rural settlements in Brazil and the settled rural families’ need to sell their occasional surplus, we can immediately see the increasing limits to the economic viability of these new areas, in a context of agricultural impoverishment and falling prices.

As a result, the deepest changes are happening at the economic-commercial level, bringing about significant impacts on farming activity. Commercial opening (and the establishment of Mercosul) has been strongly changing productive areas, especially in southern Brazil, affecting particularly the poorest family farmers. By and large unprepared to confront more competitive commercial environments, farmers have had increasing difficulties in keeping their activities and ensuring incomes that allow them to continue in business. The intensification of commercial exchanges has brought down general prices of agricultural products, decreasing rural income and creating a critical situation which affects the economic dynamics of municipalities and areas dependent on rural activities. From 1994 on, with the establishment of the so-called "Real Plan," which overvalued exchange rates (at least until the beginning of 1999), agricultural exporting sectors were even more badly hit.

As for rural occupations—another important change, especially from the 1990s on—there are two types of recent changes. First, as a result of the aforementioned processes, agricultural labor demand seems to have reached a ceiling, which represents a relatively new situation. This ceiling is only higher when statistics present national aggregates, since new production areas (in the Midwest and the North) are slowly incorporated into the national agricultural system. However, in consolidated and traditional agrarian regions (such as most of the Northeast or the South), the agricultural employment pattern is clearly on the wane. In several areas of the interior, the decrease in forms of rural occupation has certainly encouraged people to join the MST, since they have become a "surplus population" that no longer seems to be able to resort either to the cities (where job opportunities have also decreased) or to northern free border areas, where private appropriation has largely prevented easy access to land.

The second important element to be highlighted regarding the new labor structure in rural areas is not yet sufficiently known, since its investigation is recent. It is the sizable growth of non-agricultural employment in these areas in recent times. In this sense, as several scholars have stressed, Brazilian rural areas are no longer exclusively agricultural, and neither is the rural labor market only connected to the agricultural calender, since there is a growing number of non-agricultural activities that seems to increasingly determine the dynamics of labor in these areas.

As for political changes in the same decade, there have been three main determinants. First, also as a result of changes in production in the last thirty years, the relative weakening of more traditional rural organizations, both those representing big landowners and small farmers, generally members of rural unions. The result has been the proliferation of new forms of organization, from social movements which eventually became institutionalized as organizations (such as the MST) to a multitude of small organizations at local and/or regional level, and certainly also including the revamped representations of big landowners and rural entrepreneurs. As for the latter, the employers’ organization that once played the role of opposition to the emerging MST has virtually disappeared. The União Democrática Ruralista - UDR (Ruralist Democratic Union), established in 1986, was short-lived; at present, after its revival at the end of the 1990s, it is only a pale image of the landowners’ organization which, in its early years, confronted the agrarian reform program proposed by the first civilian government after the military regime and carried out a number of confrontational actions aimed at wiping out the MST and popular rural organizations. The virtual disappearance of the UDR is also a clear sign of the general weakening of traditional commercial agriculture and the end of its numerous financial benefits earlier formalized through public policies. Current analyses as a rule have ignored this unprecedented fact in our agrarian history, that is, the weakening of a social class that used to hold a virtually absolute sway over rural Brazil, often taking over the public sphere and, as a result, replacing the State itself.

The second relevant aspect is the political decentralization inaugurated by the promulgation of the 1988 Federal Constitution, which has given increasing responsibilities to municipalities in several fields, although often without corresponding budget provisions. If this process of redistribution of formal responsibilities continues and becomes consolidated, as seems to be the general trend, the municipality will increasingly become the environment par excellence for the action of the different social actors connected to the rural world. This is one of the main reasons for the (re)appearance of the social demand for "rural development" in so many agrarian regions, a demand readily incorporated into the agenda of rural workers and small farmers’ organizations (therefore bypassing the almost inaccessible federal sphere and introducing new forms of action and social disputes into an environment where their leverage is potentially higher). By prioritizing national actions and, especially, homogeneous agendas throughout the country, some rural organizations (such as the MST) face situations of obvious political dissonance and thus undermine their actions. Because of the huge structural-economic and social diversity in Brazilian rural areas (deepened by the selective modernization process of the 1970s), differentiated policies, including those related to agrarian reform, are fairly obvious, although they are ignored by most rural organizations. It is fair to say, though, as Carvalho correctly points out, that the Movement has been trying to encourage different forms of management in its settlements, no longer focusing only on the original proposal of collective cooperatives, but recognizing other possibilities.

Thus, the third political factor to be mentioned is the recent governmental acceptance of the idea of a "differentiated policy" for the rural world. The phrase "family farming" has acquired a new political-institutional status in the last decade. Regardless of the theoretical-conceptual problems associated with it, the fact is that, for the first time in Brazilian history, the rural world is seen in a segmented way and rural social actors are no longer universalized under the general category of "producers." The introduction of the notion of family farming, indicating a social set of specific concerns, distinct patterns of sociability, and a particular modus operandi in the rural world, is probably the most extraordinary political-institutional change in recent years, providing new and promising possibilities of political action and intervention in Brazilian rural areas, including new room for social demand and the structuring of innovative organizational forms.

The third central theme of the debate on the future of the rural world, and an even more general one, is the State. In the context of change described above, a new relationship between rural social movements (including, of course, the MST) and the State becomes crucial. However, the Movement has, surprisingly, maintained its rhetorical delegitimation of the State, notwithstanding the easy and rapid systemic integration of its practices in all the states and regions where it operates. According to Carvalho, undaunted in his argument, there is no contradiction here: the MST has chosen not to "wait around for the State to undertake agrarian reform in Brazil. Thus, it emancipated itself from the State" in choosing land occupation as its main pressure tool. However, he adds, "the MST did not give up fighting for resources and public services." Considering this as a serious argument, we might ask: who legitimates such "resources and public services"? Would it be different forms of State, harbored in supra-national normative structures? If land occupations (an effective tool of social struggle used by the MST) really accelerated the formation of new settlements, is there any rural settlement that has not been legally authorized by the State? Therefore, to go back to the central issue, what is the operating logic of an organization that ideologizes and restricts its political practices, its militants’ education, its discursive agenda, and its forms of social struggle, at the same time that it swiftly reaches for systemic integration, sheltered by the same State? We are forced to admit that, without a coherence between its discourse and the results of its collective actions, the MST runs the logical risk of having its political practices described as a hoax, or even more seriously, as a mystifying manipulation of poor rural families.

In the light of the changes and political miscalculations mentioned above, the remaining essential aspects, completing the six core topics that address the MST’s current opposition to the goal of rural development, agrarian reform, and the development of relations with other rural organizations, concern the organization itself and its strategic choices, the primary object of my original text. For this reason, in his reply, Carvalho did not satisfactorily address these issues, and, in fact, chose not to discuss them. The fourth topic, then, refers to the social (and political) control over the settlers in areas under the MST’s influence and hegemony. In view of the arguments presented above, I will only repeat that its strong presence in the settlements has been used, in particular, to recruit cadres, usually young settlers, for training activities and later for external actions. But a more general question remains unanswered: when will the organization allow the settlers in "its" settlements to decide on their forms of cooperation (in case they do not choose the family occupation of their specific lots) as they see fit, that is, respecting their autonomy? Moreover, when will it stop using public funds to exercise different forms of social control over the families established in new areas? Or, as some see it, would it be unacceptable to pose such a question to the Movement, when it acts within the public space of politics and, in addition, is also mostly supported by public funds?

Considering the recent changes mentioned above, it is curious that the Movement sees itself as having enough political force to counter current macrosocial changes. This also seems to be another situation that will puzzle future analysts of this period. They will see that, comparatively, this was perhaps the most favorable moment for the implementation of significant changes in the situation of the rural poor. First, because big landowners have been weakened as never before in our agrarian history, victims of a steady fall in agricultural prices (and in land value) as well as cornered by the growing competition in the different markets where they operate. Concurrently, rural organizations representing the poorer social sectors (including the MST) have grown more powerful, and finally, there has been an unprecedented opening-up of channels and real spaces for implementing public policies at the federal government level. Why has this perhaps unique historical moment not been seized? The answer lies not only in the organization’s internal characteristics and its political and organizational choices, but also in the permanent refusal to establish any kind of alliance (contrary to the claims made by Carvalho, who believes, contradicting all known facts, that the Movement "has joined in solidarity with other social movements and organizations"). The notion of alliance preached by the MST throughout the years is a synonym of domination and not of sharing and respect for other organizations’ choices. Since the mid-1980s, within the second stage mentioned in my original text, the MST has refused any political alliance as such with other popular rural organizations, choosing to oppose them and, if possible, to dominate them (creating for this purpose its labor department, the Movimento dos Pequenos Agricultores [Small Farmers Movement], in addition to engulfing other rural social movements). As a result, the core question remains: in increasingly complex and heterogeneous agrarian environments, does the MST believe it will be able to build processes of rural development and political emancipation for the rural poor based on organizational monopoly?

This is really the fundamental and decisive issue. It might even extend to the other popular organizations and political parties and movements searching for societal alternatives, in the face of the great changes affecting humanity as we enter the new millennium. Unfortunately, it seems that what is being built here, as in Manuel Bandeira’s poem, is a false skyline to inspire many, although social practice continues to be limited to the disturbing darkness of narrow and somber alleys. Because they continually dismiss the idea of democracy and its correlatives, such as the permanent materialization of public spheres, regarded as a "bourgeois heritage" of modernity, some socialist thinkers (particularly in the Marxist tradition) have not realized that this notion has been incessantly reformulated, both by the theoretical thrust of more progressive thinkers and (especially) by the force of recent historical circumstances. Not opening itself up to political debate and clinging to mainstream Marxism, the organization seems indeed to ignore the theoretical efforts made, particularly by the so-called "western Marxism," in order to rebuild the democratic basis of socialism. The "crisis in politics" and its institutions has encouraged precisely the rebuilding of the very meaning of democracy and its transforming potential, but this has not always been perceived by most popular organizations and some socialist intellectuals. The notion of democracy in this new century will likely suffer other significant and rapid changes, mainly through the virtuous action of different social practices and forms of political struggle of popular organizations. One of its characteristics, which breaks away from the normative and procedural notion of democracy inherited from modernity, refers exactly to the assimilation of conflict as an integral element of politics, and not an anomaly to be fought against. Within this new democratic conception, land occupations, for instance, even though eventually illegal, would be seen as legitimate forms of pressure by groups unequally situated in the social structure. In other words, in unequal societies, the weapons of social struggle would be incorporated, from a revised perspective of democracy, as legitimate forms of pressure used to fight social inequality and political exclusion. This is only a short illustration of the huge and complex task faced by so many modern social actors (such as the MST), echoing what Boaventura de Sousa Santos (2001) has called the formulation of "a democratic theory of non-violent illegality." If the challenge of rebuilding the democratic format of the normative framework currently being designed is ignored, subaltern classes, like mistaken secondary actors repeating previous crucial historical moments, will run the risk of only seeing the new clothes of the old social order, or the spectacle of "non-changing change," as a well-known quotation says. The new societal paths opened up in the last three or four decades by globalization, creating so many challenges and dilemmas to social emancipation (in its broad sense), cannot be tr aversed by going back to the past, as the landless organization in Brazil so often seems to do. Democracy, not as a sociopolitical structure derived only from a procedural recipe as preached by liberal political science, but reconceptualized, made into a transforming political form with a real emancipatory meaning, seems to be the stake of a new world, where the highest values of human life will prevail.

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