Razão na penumbra: Liberalismo e democracia no pensamento político brasileiro

Abstract

The present work investigates within the scope of Brazilian Political Thought of a liberal matrix, from the perspectives of Raymundo Faoro, Simon Schwartzman, and José Guilherme Merquior, to understand the theoretical operationalization carried out by these authors around the theme of democracy, given the national traits. It starts from the theoretical assumptions of the perenniality of the issues in the scope of political ideas and ways of thinking of a type of Brazilian liberal lineage. It follows, then, the understanding of the cleavages between the authors' statements on aspects of the national historical formation, the constitution of the State, the inconsistencies of Brazilian democracy, articulated to the conceptual framework mobilized by them. Each conceived a particular way of liberalism critical of the State in its institutional configuration but recognizing the possible means for the instrumentalization of democracy. From an interpretation that conceptualizes the national State as patrimonial and traditional, Faoro highlighted the way in which Brazilian liberalism did not succeed in the struggle against statism and constituted itself as a democratically emptied deformation. His understanding of liberalism advocated expanding political rights to the detriment of the totality of liberal doctrine. Unlike Faoro, Schwartzman saw neopatrimonialism in the Brazilian political phenomenon as a key to explaining the type of state configuration existing in Brazil, of incomplete modernization. His analysis pointed to an institutional trajectory of persistent authoritarianism, characterized by a simulacrum of modern democratic and capitalist institutions, and his institutional focus sought to delineate these differences. Merquior's liberal perception conceived liberalism in its theoretical dimension as a unity of political and economic aspects, a liberal-democratic synthesis in which the expansion of social achievements is incorporated into the doctrinal label of liberalism, based on democratic conduct. It is concluded that the analyzes of these authors about democracy do not offer identical diagnoses but suggest paradigms for reflection on the impact of Brazilian liberalism on national political thought.