Ted Talk

We feel instinctively that societies with huge income gaps are somehow going wrong. Richard Wilkinson charts the hard data on economic inequality, and shows what gets worse when rich and poor are too far apart: real effects on health, lifespan, even such basic values as trust.

http://www.ted.com/talks/richard_wilkinson?language=en

Other

http://ideas.ted.com/the-data-shows-we-want-to-end-inequality-heres-how-to-start/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=slTF_XXoKAQ

Thomas Jefferson

(1743-1826) American Founding Father, the principal author of the Declaration of Independence (1776), and the third President of the United States (1801–1809).

Information is the currency of democracy.

Aldous Huxley

(1894-1963)

Good biography: http://www.egs.edu/library/aldous-huxley/biography/

While Aldous Huxley's early works would clearly be focused on defending a kind of humanism, he would become more and more interested in spiritual questions. He would particularly become interested in parapsychology and mysticism.

A democracy which makes or even effectively prepares for modern,
scientific war must necessarily cease to be democratic.
No country can be really well prepared for modern war unless
it is governed by a tyrant, at the head of a highly trained
and perfectly obedient bureaucracy. (1937)

Brave New World (1932) and Brave New World Revisited (1958).

The perfect dictatorship would have the appearance of democracy,
a prison without walls in which the prisoners would not dream of escape.
A system of slavery where, through consumption and entertainment,
slaves would love their servitude. (1932)

Henry David Thoreau

(1817-1862)

Unjust laws exist; shall we be content to obey them, or shall we endeavor to
amend them, and obey them until we have succeeded, or shall we transgress them
at once? Men generally, under such a government as this, think that they ought
to wait until they have persuaded the majority to alter them. They think that,
if they should resist, the remedy would be worse than the evil. But it is the
fault of the government itself that the remedy is worse than the evil. It makes
it worse. Why is it not more apt to anticipate and provide for reform? Why does
it not cherish its wise minority? Why does it cry and resist before it is hurt?
Why does it not encourage its citizens to be on the alert to point out its
faults, and do better than it would have them?

Civil Disobedience and Other Essays (1849)

Movie - Um Golpe contra o Brasil

By Alípio Freire.

http://www.nucleomemoria.org.br/noticias/internas/id/453

Refs

• http://cartamaior.com.br/?/Editoria/Direitos-Humanos/Morte-e-ressurreicao-de-um-fantasma/5/33703
• Por que pobre vota em direita?
• Os 0,05% do Brasil
• Privatizações: a Distopia do Capital (2014)

Luís Gama

(1830-1882) Brazilian Romantic poet, journalist, lawyer and a prominent abolitionist.

O escravo que mata o senhor, seja em que circunstância for, mata sempre em legítima defesa.

Castro Alves

(1847-1871) Poet and playwright, famous for his abolitionist and republican poems. He won the epithet of "O Poeta dos Escravos" ("The Poet of the Slaves"). He wrote "O Navio Negreiro" (1880).

Milton Santos

(1926-2001) Geographer, who became known for pioneer works in various fields in geography, notably urban development in developing countries.

[Portuguese] A obra de Milton Santos é inovadora e grandiosa ao abordar o conceito de espaço. De território onde todos se encontram, o espaço, com as novas tecnologias, adquiriu novas características para se tornar um "conjunto indissociável de sistemas de objetos e sistemas de ações".

Gilberto Freyre

(1900-1987) Sociologist, anthropologist, historian, writer, painter, journalist and congressman. He is commonly associated with other great Brazilian cultural interpreters of the first half of the 20th century, such as Sérgio Buarque de Holanda and Caio Prado Júnior. His best-known work is a sociological treatise named Casa-Grande & Senzala. Two sequels followed, The Mansions and the Shanties: the making of modern Brazil and Order and Progress: Brazil from monarchy to republic. The trilogy is generally considered a classic of modern cultural anthropology and social history.

Sérgio Buarque de Holanda

(1902-1982) Writer, journalist and historian.

[Portuguese] A partir de 1960, passou a coordenar o projeto da "História Geral da Civilização Brasileira".

Caio Prado Júnior

(1907-1990) Historian. His works inaugurated a Brazilian historiographic tradition identified with Marxism, aiming at explaining the Brazilian colonial society.

Florestan Fernandes

(1920-1995) Sociologist and politician.

[Portuguese] A obra "A revolução burguesa no Brasil" (1975) renova radicalmente concepções tradicionais e contemporâneas da burguesia e do desenvolvimento do capitalismo no país, com interpretações alinhadas à dialética marxista.

Darcy Ribeiro

(1922-1997) Anthropologist, author and politician. His ideas of Latin American identity have influenced several later studies. He is known for his studies focusing Indians and education in the country.

Luís Carlos Prestes

(1898-1990) was one of the organizers of the 1920s tenente revolts and the Communist opposition to the dictatorship of Getúlio Vargas in Brazil. Member of the PCB and partner of Olga Benário.

Lionel Brizola

(1922-2004) Launched in politics by Getúlio Vargas, Brizola was the only politician to serve as governor of two different states in Brazil. He was vice-president of the Socialist International, as well as Honorary President of that organization from October 2003 until his death in June 2004.

Getúlio Vargas

(1882-1954) [1930-1945] as "dictator" and [1951-1954] democratically elected.

João Goulart

(1918-1976) [1961-1964]. He is considered as the last left-wing President of the country until Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva took office in 2003.

Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva

(1945-) [2003-2010]. Founding member of the Workers' Party (PT – Partido dos Trabalhadores). He is often regarded as one of the most popular politicians in the history of Brazil and, at the time of his mandate, one of the most popular in the world. Social programs like Bolsa Família and Fome Zero are hallmarks of his time in office. Lula played a prominent role in recent international relations developments, including the nuclear program of Iran and global warming, and was described as "a man with audacious ambitions to alter the balance of power among nations." He was featured in Time‍ '​s The 100 Most Influential People in the World for 2010,[8] and has been called "the most successful politician of his time."

Dilma Rousseff

(1947-) [2011-2018]. She is the first woman to be president. She became a socialist during her youth, and following the 1964 coup d'état joined various left-wing and Marxist urban guerrilla groups that fought against the military dictatorship. Rousseff was eventually captured and was jailed between 1970 and 1972, where she was reportedly tortured.

After her release, Rousseff rebuilt her life in Porto Alegre with Carlos Araújo, who would be her partner for 30 years. Both helped found the Democratic Labour Party (PDT) in Rio Grande do Sul, participating in several of the party's electoral campaigns. She is involved in politics since then.

Simón Bolívar

(1783-1830) Venezuelan military and political leader who played an instrumental role in the establishment of Venezuela, Ecuador, Bolivia, Peru and Colombia as sovereign states independent of Spanish rule.

José de San Martín

(1778-1850) Argentine general and the prime leader of the southern part of South America's successful struggle for independence from the Spanish Empire.

Definitions

• peninsulares: white people, (full European) born in Europe, living in Latin America.
• creoles: white people (full European descendant), born in Latin America.
• mestizos: Mixture of Native American and white people. Same as caboclo.
• mulattos: Mixture of African (black people) and
• caboclos:
• pardos:

Mandeville

[...] numa nação livre em que não sejam permitidos escravos, a riqueza mais segura consiste numa porção de pobres laboriosos. Para fazer a sociedade (que, obviamente consiste de não trabalhadores) feliz, e o povo contente, mesmo nas piores circunstâncias, é necessário que a grande maioria permaneça tanto ignorante quanto pobre. (MANDEVILLE, 1728)

Em atividade

• Leonardo Boff, teólogo
• Ruy Braga, sociólogo
• Jessé de Souza, sociólogo
• Ladislau Dowbor, economista
• Alysson Mascaro, jurista
• Luís Carlos Valois, jurista
• Eugênio Aragão, jurista
• Pedro Estevam Serrano, jurista

Jornalistas

• Fernando Brito
• Miguel do Rosário
• Eduardo Guimarães

Figuras

• Mikhail Bakunin (1814-1876): Russian revolutionary anarchist. He is one of the principal founders of the social anarchist tradition.
• Pierre-Joseph Proudhon (1809-1865): French politician and the founder of mutualist philosophy. He was the first person to declare himself an anarchist.

Ideias

• Socialist anarchism is a non-state form of socialism and is considered to be the branch of anarchism which sees individual freedom as being dependent upon mutual aid. Social anarchist thought emphasizes community and social equality as complementary to autonomy and personal freedom.
• Mutualism is an economic theory and anarchist school of thought that advocates a society where each person might possess a means of production, either individually or collectively, with trade representing equivalent amounts of labor in the free market. Integral to the scheme is the establishment of a mutual-credit bank that would lend to producers at a minimal interest rate, just high enough to cover administration.

Figuras

• Leon Trotski: revolucionário bolchevique, rival de Stálin após o golpe e morte de Lenin. Desempenhou um importante papel político no início da URSS. Assasinado no exílio, suas ideias deram origem ao trotskismo, corrente ainda hoje importante.
• Vladimir Lenin: revolucionário bolchevique, participou dos primeiros anos do governo da URSS, sendo depois perseguido e morto por Stálin. Suas ideias deram origem ao leninismo.
• Karl Johann Kautsky: filósofo tcheco-austríaco, um dos fundadores da ideologia social-democrata e que teve papel importante na Segunda Internacional.
• Antonio Gramsci (1891-1937): was an Italian neo-Marxist theorist and politician. Gramsci is best known for his theory of cultural hegemony, which describes how states use cultural institutions to maintain power in capitalist societies.

Ideias

• Lei do desenvolvimento desigual e combinado: é a teoria atribuída a León Trotsky que contempla a ocorrência simultânea de aspectos avançados e atrasados no processo de desenvolvimento econômico dos países. Isso se revela especialmente nos países periféricos do sistema mundial, nos quais um setor extremamente moderno da economia pode existir de forma combinada com o mais atrasado, resultando numa formação social sem grandes contradições entre as classes dominantes (isto é, sem contradições entre burguesia e aristocracia) [ver Teoria da revolução permanente].
• Teoria da revolução permanente: Marx utiliza o termo para descrever a estratégia da classe revolucionária para continuar a buscar os interesses da classe de forma independente e sem o comprometer, apesar das aberturas para alianças políticas, e dos interesses políticos das camadas opostas da sociedade. Trotsky extendeu sua concepção para as particularidades de como o socialismo poderia ocorrer em sociedades que não tinham conseguido atingir o capitalismo avançado. A teoria contempla a impossibilidade do "socialismo em um só país" [ver Lei do desenvolvimento desigual e combinado].
• Teoria da dependência: análise dos processos de reprodução do subdesenvolvimento na periferia do capitalismo mundial, em contraposição às posições marxistas convencionais dos partidos comunistas e à visão estabelecida pela Comissão Econômica para a América Latina e o Caribe (CEPAL). A caracterização dos países como "atrasados" decorre da relação do capitalismo mundial de dependência entre países "centrais" e países "periféricos", sendo que os atrasados sempre continuarão em condições de dependência ("subdesenvolvimento").
• Ideias de Lenin: Nas concepções iniciais do século XIX, acreditava-se que a revolução socialista só ocorreria em países capitalistas avançados, onde existiria uma grande massa proletária. Para Lenin, essa linha não se aplicaria aos países de industrialização tardia, onde apenas o proletariado poderia cumprir as tarefas antes designadas como da revolução burguesa (como a reforma agrária, independência colonial, as condições básicas de educação, saúde, etc). Da mesma forma, Lenin combatia a visão da social democracia, na qual a rotina da classe operária em suas lutas econômicas poderia determinar uma consciência revolucionária de maneira objetiva. Para ele, adquirir essa consciência revolucionária dependia de um fator subjetivo, a intervenção do partido revolucionário nas massas. Para isso, defendia um partido que interviesse de maneira centralizada em todos os espaços de discussão e militância do proletariado (o centralismo democrático).
• Social-democracia: pensamento no qual a contínua luta da classe trabalhadora por melhores salários e condições de trabalho levá-los-ia a uma consciência revolucionária. Para os países atrasados, o kautskismo defendia o "etapismo", no qual uma revolução liderada pela burguesia nacional, estabeleceria a condição prévia para uma revolução proletária num futuro incerto.
• Hegemonia cultural: In Marxist philosophy, cultural hegemony is the domination of a culturally diverse society, by the ruling class who manipulate the culture of that society - the beliefs, explanations, perceptions, values, and mores - so that their imposed, ruling-class worldview becomes the accepted cultural norm; the universally valid dominant ideology, which justifies the social, political, and economic status quo as natural and inevitable, perpetual and beneficial for everyone, rather than as artificial social constructs that benefit only the ruling class.

História

Karl Marx, e pensamento presente na Primeira Internacional, defendia a revolução do proletariado contra a burguesia, a tomada do poder e a construção de uma sociedade socialista. Marx dizia que isto só seria possível em um país onde o capitalismo já estivesse em um estágio avançado e onde o operariado, trabalhadores da indústria, tivesse uma mentalidade revolucionária. Essas concepções vinham do fato de que apenas num país onde o proletariado adquirisse uma consciência revolucionária, poderia-se concretizar o levante que criaria a ditadura do proletariado. A Segunda Internacional, organização herdeira do marxismo e liderada por Karl Kautsky, defendia uma linha economicista [ver "social-democracia"].