Echoes of Slavery in the Brazilian Work Ethics
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| Adalberto Cardoso |
The differences between the worldviews of those living in Rio and in São Paulo were the starting point of sociologist Adalberto Cardoso’s talk on Multiple Modernities and the Metamorphoses of the Work Ethics in Brazil, the subject of the third meeting of the conference cycle Rio Afternoons: The University of São Paulo Listens to Rio de Janeiro. Organized by the IEA and coordinated by philosopher Renato Janine Ribeiro, professor at USP’s School of Philosophy, Letters and Human Sciences (fflch) and coordinator of the Research Group The Future Questions Us, the lecture cycle aims to galvanize a discussion on social issues and social relations between scholars from the cities of Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo.
Recalling his experience as a researcher in São Paulo, where he earned his bachelor’s, master’s and doctor’s degrees from the University of São Paulo, and in Rio de Janeiro, where he is a professor at the Institute of Social and Political Studies (iesp) of the Rio de Janeiro State University (uerj), Cardoso began his talk by exploring the links between the proposal of the lecture cycle and the theme of the conference, held on August 4.
According to him, the distinctions between the viewpoints of scholars from Rio and São Paulo – which probably underlie the sparse exchange of ideas between them – resonate in the choice of study objects and research problems investigated in Brazil’s two major cities. Whereas Rio de Janeiro is more interested in understanding the country’s cultural dynamics and transforming the city’s social reality, São Paulo focuses more on major social movements related to the socioeconomic framework, with no implied political engagement.
Throughout his academic career, Cardoso – who is also an associate researcher at the Brazilian Center for Analysis and Planning (cebrap) and the Warwick Institute for Employment Research – observed how these different outlooks reverberate in the development of the work ethics.
At the onset of his research in São Paulo, he devoted himself to studying the working class – “a formal and stable object” that might reflect the labor relations in an industry-driven city founded upon a rigid social hierarchy. When he moved to Rio de Janeiro, he was faced with a very different scholarly tradition, driven more by informality and the universe of poverty and the shantytowns. From that moment on, the focus of his investigations switched from standard industrial labor, with roots in the Vargas Era, to the informal labor and social stratification seen as a legacy of slavery.
THE LEGACY OF SLAVERY
According to Cardoso, the main element in the development of a work ethics in Brazil was slavery – a practice that organized Brazilian society for centuries, whose structural traits remained ingrained in the national mindset long after Abolition. For him, slavery left deep scars in Brazil’s social relations, which are strongly influenced by race issues, and “determined the country’s ethos of labor relations.”
This legacy, characterized by a disparaging image of black people and, indeed, of any worker, crystallized an ethics that devalues manual labor, deeming it unworthy, unclean and derogatory. Cardoso stressed that one of the echoes of this elitist, prejudiced view is the exclusion of former slaves from the productive activities that sprouted in the early capitalist order in Brazil.
Considered inferior, unfit and incapable of evolving, the newly-freed blacks were left out of Brazil’s modernization process in the transition from the 19th to the 20th century. As Cardoso pointed out, this was due to the prevailing idea that slaves only labored under the yoke of the whip and, once free, would cease to work. “Hence the importance given to the foreign labor force,” he said.
IMMIGRANT LABOR
“In São Paulo, I learned that a labor shortage derived from the end of slavery; slavery, however, had been ending for a long time,” Cardoso explained, stating that the process of abolition was slow and had actually begun in 1830. According to him, when the Lei Áurea [the “Golden Law” that abolished slavery] was enacted in 1888, several states had already eliminated the bondage regime. It remained in force only in São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, Minas Gerais and southern Bahia. Furthermore, the population of freedmen was very large, so that the workforce was no longer composed predominantly by slaves.
For Cardoso, the shortage of manpower caused by the Abolition was just a pretext by São Paulo’s elite – or, more specifically, by the large coffee growers – to justify importing foreign laborers. “The people of São Paulo believed that Brazilians – former slaves and sons of slaves – were not suited for work and that the solution was to bring people from outside the country,” he said.
This being so, resorting to European immigrant labor was not an injunction, but rather a choice of the people of São Paulo, one that revealed a highly biased view of Brazil and of the Brazilian people. According to Cardoso, this group – whose wealth came from export-oriented manufacturing, focused on foreign consumers – had no commitment to their homeland and “desired to civilize, enrich and whiten Brazil, establishing in this fashion their own little Europe in a wild milieu.”
“The ideas of capitalist labor relations and of modernization were developed in São Paulo. The former slaves were concurrently absorbed into, and excluded from, the process,” he added, noting that the option for immigrants to purify the workforce had a great impact on the construction of modern Brazil.
THE VARGAS ERA
A new work ethic began to emerge in the 1930s, when Getúlio Vargas took office, created the Ministry of Labor, Industry and Commerce, and initiated his project of giving full value to the Brazilian worker, which culminated in the Consolidation of Labor Laws (clt). According to Cardoso, the goal was to make wholesome, civilize and educate the people, because it was believed that providing good living conditions – job security, welfare and home financing – would enhance the Brazilians’ ability to build a nation.
Based on the expansion of labor rights and on corporate capitalism, Vargas’ project included the expansion of formal employment and the development of a model worker: a skilled professional, married, with children, devoted to his family and to his job, with all the proper documents – including work cards. It also determined that at least two thirds of workers in industrial establishments should be Brazilian, “in order to counter the bias of São Paulo’s elite for foreign workers,” explained Cardoso.
To make this project viable, the Vargas administration established a partnership with industry leaders and enacted a series of measures, including the creation of senai (National Service for Industrial Training) – an institution devoted to preparing a skilled workforce.
“Vargas found that, contrary to what São Paulo’s elite thought, Brazilians were able and willing to work. Many who lacked proper documents, had a work card in the hope of getting a formal job,” mused Cardoso, stressing that Vargas’ partisans believed that, for the first time, someone was standing up to the legacy of slavery in Brazil.
THE ETHICS OF PROTECTION
Anchored in the idea of protecting workers, the work ethics that was forged during the Vargas administration sought to redeem, value and purify manual labor through State mediation and regulation. It should, therefore, be distinguished from the Protestant work ethics – more attuned to the capitalist spirit and grounded on the idea of personal vocation and predestination in the name of God –, which advocates meritocracy, individualism and entrepreneurship. “Vargas replaced God with the State, understood as a national project and as the mirror of the people, something that also fit well with the development of capitalism,” said Cardoso.
He added that, likewise, Vargas’s work ethics differed from socialism’s, since the latter is based on equality achieved through solidarity and is inspired by the maxim, “From each according to his ability, to each according to his need.” This ethics, which required that labor organize itself in mutual support societies and, later, in trade unions and political parties, aimed to build a collective class identity.
Despite these differences, Vargas sought to align his words with the ideals of the trade unionists, “because without labor unions, labor rights could not be enforced and Vargas’ project would not go forward,” explained Cardoso, remembering that, when speaking to workers in 1943, the president had said: “The unions are your fortress and no government can govern without you.”
Cardoso also noted that Vargas’ project encompassed other promises related to the inclusion of workers, e.g., promoting agricultural reform, settling people in the land to stem rural flight, and creating a domestic market for consumption.
| Renato Janine Ribeiro |
LULA VS. VARGAS
For Cardoso, former president Lula is the consummate expression of Vargas’ ideals. “When he emerged as a leader, he fought for free trade unions to ensure the rights of workers,” he said, adding that – driven by the dream of social inclusion – Lula was able to extend his policies to the masses of people that worked in the informal labor market and had been left out of Vargas’ project.
“Lula managed to do something that Vargas had planned, but didn’t achieve, namely, developing a domestic market, creating a dynamics of inclusion through consumption: providing housing, clothing and well-being through the marketplace, and ultimately empowering people to buy,” he concluded.
In the discussion that followed the lecture, Janine recalled to the similarities between the two former presidents by drawing a parallel between the rejections of both in São Paulo. According to Janine, the aversion to Lula – and to the Workers’ Party as a whole – in the state of São Paulo recasts the 1930s rebuff of a government that defended the inclusion of all workers. “What is the explanation for this aversion? Why is São Paulo’s middle class against the Workers’ Party?” he asked.
For Cardoso, this derives from society’s reluctance to accept the leading role of the State – i.e., the vision shared by both Lula and Vargas. “São Paulo has always been a stronghold of resistance against Vargas’ ideals and today is also a hub of resistance against Lula’s ideals, which are a reincarnation of Vargas’,” he stressed. “The world structured by Vargas was based on industry, on the middle class of São Paulo, which was anti-Vargas at the time and is anti-Lula today. Ironically, the middle class structured by Vargas turned against this very same structure,” he added.
Cardoso noted that the state of São Paulo was the cradle of the Workers’ Party and of the PSDB [Brazilian Social Democratic Party] – two great Brazilian political forces, which ought to represent, respectively, the labor class and the middle class intelligentsia. “The PSBD always expressed well the aspirations and the ideology of a large part of the country; the Workers’ Party, on the other hand, has secured support from approximately 30% of the voters,” he said, emphasizing that the so-called new middle class continues with the Workers’ Party and feels rewarded by the social policies implemented over the last 12 years.
“Today, however, the rejection of the Workers’ Party is not only ideological, but moral,” warned Cardoso, for whom the opposition has managed to build, through political dynamics, the idea that the party is “the only corrupt, the most corrupt, the inventor of corruption.”
English revision by Carlos Malferrari