“O sertão vai virar mar e o mar vai virar sertão”: trabalho e direitos no Brasil contemporâneo

Abstract

This thesis analyzes the relation between labor and rights in contemporary Brazil, particularly aiming the identification of human rights in time and space concerning the capital historically as well as the current stage of capitalism development. We find ourselves in a structural crisis without precedent, under the auspices of its inherent contradictions between barbarism and civilization. However, it is essential to analyze deeply the contemporary capitalism, from the relation between what is universal and unique, in sociohistorical, political, economic and cultural connections which allow us to identify those basic issues in the field of mediation that shape some particular details concerning the Brazilian social formation. We can find here a typical movement of an uneven, combined and late capitalism that was responsible for specific features in the process of political emancipation. This work does not deny the importance of this emancipation but it remarks that the performative Brazilian bourgeoisie has paradoxically strengthened the relation between old and modern aspects as an implicit development mechanism of our capitalism, through conservative modernization, restricting the possibilities of accomplishing a bourgeois revolution based on formal principles of democracy and citizenship, since we do not really have a democratic state of law. Such dynamic spread out over the relation between labor and rights, just as we could see in the case of Montes Claros, in a textile industry that represents our empirical basis. The analysis of this basis provides a careful consideration about the tense relation between labor and rights in Brazil, in the contemporary landmark of the capitalism crisis and from particular details of Brazilian society formation.