O, 52, begins his new book, “the left that does not fear to say its name”, with an anecdote: in 2017, the Brazilian progressive middle class was mobilized to accompany the final as the same week that approved it, in Congress, its labor reform. Known for his left posture, Safatle understood the episode as a symptom of the progress of progressive sectors in the face of setbacks for the working class.
Professor at USP, the author has said that it is necessary to recognize the death of the left. Therefore, his work aims to rescue two basic concepts of Marxist ideology, namely radical equality and popular sovereignty, to resurrect political struggle. At the moment, says Safatle, the political scenario does not offer a perspective of socioeconomic transformation in the country.
The constitution of, in 2022, prevented the rescue of an agenda to reverse the rights that were lost. In the author’s words, the petista, in his third term, betrayed the most important aspirations of the working class.
“Every wide front policy has immediate, not long -term action. What were the agenda the Lula 3 government brought to deepening equality at work? I would say none,” says Safatle. “When was the last time you heard of working class self -management? We need to create a society where people are released from work. In a rich society, you can work less.”
In parallel, the writer saw the pockets become the country’s main political movement, with a majority in the legislature. The judgment of NA will represent, according to Safatle, a point of inflection in the conjuncture before the electoral race.
“It would be the first time in the history of Brazil that someone would be condemned for attempted coup. This is a milestone for history, not only to the left,” he says. A larger space within the electoral system, but it is necessary for the progressive field to understand that the population expects it to be defended, not the broad front speech. “
“The left that is not afraid to say its name” is the reissue of a book of the same name, published by the philosopher in 2012. The work led to examine what, after all, was to be leftist, punctuating challenges for social movements. The discussion, however, would soon be consumed by the political turmoil of the decade, with the, and the rise of pockets.
Ultimately, Safatle acknowledged that his analysis did not age well. He then decided to rewrite the story, changing almost everything to correspond to the new times. The philosopher dedicated two chapters of his book to the concepts of radical equality and popular sovereignty, thus articulating the zero degree of Marxism.
For the implementation of his ideas, the author predicts some emergencies, including facing the discourse of entrepreneurship. On another front, safety and at first problematized the term, showing that class struggle has an identity risk: a resident of the less degraded area of the periphery may not be seen as the same class as someone who lives in the favela.
The current movements, he says, are universal demands, with whom he never integrated with society. At the same time, it recognizes that the creation of diversity committees is a comfortable task for companies.
“It’s part of, and we see activists who convey the image of a possible integration into the world of consumption. It is up to the left to insist that these struggles show the fragility of this system, because in the first crisis the committees are dismantled.”
In another front, the philosopher exposes the historical relations between national sovereignty and. According to the author, it is important not to lose sight of the theological matrix, which gives popular cohesion and subjective Renaissance, that is, a certain enthusiasm, to the masses.
Linked to critical theory, Safatle does not shy away from dialogue with French contemporary philosophy and anthropology, to update basic notions of Marxism. Not by chance, his thinking wants to go beyond the more immediate politics., Safatle, who also studies philosophy of music and psychoanalysis, resizes aesthetics as the center of the political problem.
“There is a collapse of cultural criticism, that is, the idea that we should not nourish a laudatory vision about what is popular, but tensioning the popular field, asking who produces the popular,” he says.
“It is clear that country music is an advanced sector of ideological reconstitution, within a conservative horizon. This has nothing to do with elitism. What is this popular, which today appears to us as popular, is so easily adaptable to the extreme monetization logic of capital?
Such a crisis occurs in some who say that art is a 20th century subject. Safatle, however, disagrees. “Art is a subject of the 22nd century. Art is a way of thematizing an unsubmissive time to the present. Imagining that it dies means imagining a society in which the refusal of the process of human alienation has no place.”
