ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that the contemporary political crisis in Brazil represents a distributive conflict involving four classes or strata, defined using not only socio-economic indicators but a multiplicity of vectors of social inequality. For analyzing the current crisis in Brazil, it is necessary to first assess changes observed in the Brazilian social structure, since the Workers' Party took power in 2003. The movements observed in the Brazilian social structure correspond to shifts in the force field among state, capital, and labor that, in turn, reflect relations of dependency and interdependency with the global context. Approaches based on M. Weber share the Marxist claim that social classes are a shaping principle of the social structure of modern societies. The chapter concludes the contemporary Brazilian political crisis as a distributive conflict involving four classes or strata (the poor, outsiders, established, millionaires), defined using five determinant vectors of social inequality: wealth, position, knowledge, selective association, and existential rights.
