ABSTRACT
This chapter describes the major trends in the substance and terms of theoretical discourse about Brazilian politics since 1964. It seeks to demonstrate that a major shift in the intellectual culture has occurred during this twenty-year period—from the Marxist hegemony of the first decade to a more pluralistic discourse in the second decade. The chapter discusses Clearly Brazil’s gradual political transformation during the last decade helped to make possible the new political discourse among intellectuals. If any capitalist state, even a “formally” democratic one, is disparaged as merely a device by which elites dominate and exploit popular classes, then the new Brazilian political regime will have even greater problems of legitimacy than it already has. The concepts, categories, and theoretical perspectives of intellectuals are, of course, only one influence on Brazilian politics, and far from the most important one. Brazil faces awesome economic, social, political, and international problems.
