a marxist intellectual: interview with michael löwy

A Marxist intellectual: Interview with Michael Löwy*1

* From: Tempo. Rio de Janeiro, vol. 1, n. 2, 1996, pp. 166-183. Translated by V. S. Conttren, February 2020. DOI 10.17605/OSF.IO/FPQ7W.

1 Michael Löwy is a researcher at the Centre National des Recherches Scientifiques (CNRS) in Paris. He gave this interview to professors Ângela de Castro Gomes and Daniel Aarão Reis on September 11, 1996, at the Fluminense Federal University, in Niterói.

huebunkers.wordpress.com V. S. Conttren

Your name is very well known throughout the academic circles of Brazil, the country where you were born, but we do not quite know your intellectual trajectory. Where did you graduate, where did you begin to structure your own conceptions?

Let's start from the beginning. I was born in São Paulo on May 6,

1938, into a family of Jews emigrated to Brazil in the 1930s. My family came

here essentially because my father was unemployed, facing a crisis, and

here there was opportunity for work. I suspect that there was also some

connection with the near civil war that took place in Austria in 1934, with

social democracy being crushed, but fundamentally for economic reasons.

My father had contacts in São Paulo, mainly with his family, and he settled

there. I did my gymnasium and my scientific studies in a public school, and

then joined a social science course at the Faculty of Philosophy, Sciences

and Letters of the University of São Paulo, on Maria Antônia Street, in 1956.

Some of my classmates were Roberto Schwarz, Francisco Weffort and

several others.

Why the Social Sciences?

I already had a socialist militancy, and for me the social sciences were

what had more to do with my concerns: the workers' movement, Marxism,

and socialist ideas. Weffort came first in the admission exam. I came

second, together with a girl named Evelyn. In our class I think we had

between 25 and 30 students.

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A Marxist intellectual: interview with Michael Löwy

Who were the teachers?

Fernando Henrique Cardoso and Otávio Ianni, who at the time were

very close to each other; Florestan Fernandes, who at the time did not

appear to be the most politically advanced, was perhaps one of the most

eclectic, so to speak; Azis Simão, to whom I felt closest. Azis Simão was the

only one who was most directly interested in the workers' movement,

especially the sociology of the workers' movement. I had a very strong

connection with him. My first works were more or less inspired by Azis

Simão.

And what were those first works?

My first study was about class consciousness among metallurgical

workers in the state of São Paulo. I did this research with the help of

DIEESE,2 where I worked as a volunteer. DIEESE did a survey on the cost of

living by distributing consumer notebooks to working families, and I

collaborated with them. With their help I elaborated a questionnaire that I

distributed in a congress of the Metallurgical Union of São Paulo. There

were several questions that tried to assess levels of class consciousness,

besides questions about where the syndicalists came from. There was also

a more direct political question, about which were the best union leaders:

the trabalhistas,3 socialists, anarchists or communists? The answers were

2 T.N.: Inter-Union Department of Statistics and Socio-Economic Studies.

3 T.N.: Trabalhistas were those who followed the theoretical and practical tendencies aligned with Getúlio Varga’s governance—predicated on a sort of national developmentalism, corporatist state structures, and “populism,” regarding the ‘modernization’ process of Brazil.

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anonymous and many answered on the DIEESE official letterhead. Cross-

checking the data, I started the work. Another question was about the

Union: is the Union intended to provide dental and hospital care, or is it an

organ of workers' struggle in defence of their own interests? If the union

delegate answered that the union served to give assistance, I no longer

qualified him. It was a first attempt at sociological research on the subject.

And to my great satisfaction and eternal glory, I received the first prize

from the Social Science Students' Research Center, or something like that.

Then I made a slightly more sophisticated version of the same material,

which was published in France at the Cahier International de Sociologie. The

Brazilian version was published in the Revista de Estudos Políticos in the

early 1960s.

Did the results of this research, besides pleasing your colleagues, please your militant conscience at the time? Did the working class emerge as a promising class from a political point of view?

Yes, one could see that there were several levels of consciousness, and

that there was also a political consciousness. Political conscience, for me,

had all those who identified with either communists or socialists or

anarchists. These had class consciousness. Those who said they were in

favour of the trabalhistas, no. That was the opinion I had, inspired a little by

Azis Simão.

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Was Azis Simão a good professor?

He was a very good professor, very friendly, pedagogical. The teachers

we got along with best were him, Fernando Henrique, Otávio Ianni and

Antonio Cândido, these four. Florestan too, although already further away.

It was a question of generation. And curiously, he seemed to be the least

politically committed to Marxism. I say curiously because afterwards he

would be the opposite, but at the time that was how we saw him.

The climate in the Social Sciences course was very politicized— people participated in social movements?

No. Few of them participated. And those were seen as curiosities by

the other students. There was political interest, there was interest in

Marxist theory, but political militancy, no, it was very limited.

Who were the political participants?

Weffort and another one or two who were also communists, I can't

remember their names now. And I think that' s all. In the next group came

the Sader brothers, Eder and Emir.

Wasn't Leôncio Martins Rodrigues in the class?

Leôncio was a few years older, he was a few classes above. When we

joined, he was still a Trotskyist militant. I remember he was distributing the

Fourth International magazine in French.

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Did your classmates meet outside the university?

Yes, but not all of them. We were three friends: Roberto Schwarz,

Gabriel Bolaffi and me. We saw each other often and we were always

together. They called us “The Three Musketeers.” Some participated in a

course given by Anatol Rosenfeld on the history of philosophy, if I am not

mistaken, at Roberto Schwarz's house. I attended a few times.

Did you have any magazines at school?

No. There was a magazine, I don't remember the name, of students

who I don't think were even from the Social Sciences. It was a small

magazine, which had a vocation for politics and aesthetics. I remember I

wrote an article there about FIARI: International Federation of Independent

Revolutionary Artists. In 1938, when Trotsky, Diego Rivera and Breton met

in Mexico, the surrealists decided to create a federation of revolutionary

artists, independent from the Third International. Trotsky and Breton wrote

the text, which was signed by Diego Rivera. This document is interesting

because it seeks to analyze the revolutionary role of the artist.

You told us that when you entered college you were already a socialist militant. What kind of militancy was that?

Before entering university I participated, for a short time, in the

Socialist Party and after in the famous Independent Socialist League. It was

a very small group—minuscule, microscopic—inspired by Rosa Luxemburg,

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of which Paul Singer, Rocha Barros, Sachetta, Sader were part at the

beginning. In fact, I considered myself a disciple of Paul Singer. It was he

who initiated me in the work of Rosa Luxemburg. I remember that around

1953-54 he was in the Socialist Party and distributed a pamphlet protesting

against the invasion of Guatemala. But after a year he was disappointed

with the Party, and there discussions began to form a new group, the

Independent Socialist League. I have the impression that in conversations

and discussions with Paul Singer I learned as much as at the university.

From the point of view of an intellectual and political Marxist formation, he

was something of a private university to me.

How would you define Paul Singer in intellectual terms at the time?

Someone who at the same time had a solid Marxist economic

background, knew Marx perfectly well, Rosa Luxemburg too, and had a

very strong union, worker, and political commitment. He was concerned

with maintaining a link with the Union and the trade unionists, with the

workers' struggles and with the left, seeking a Marxist political alternative

outside the cadres of the Communist Party and of Social Democracy, as it

was exotically represented by the Socialist Party.

What ties did Paul Singer maintain with the unions and trade unionists?

He was mainly in contact with the Metallurgical Union, with an

opposition tendency towards the leadership. There was a small tendency

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that aimed to reform the union structure, to unbind the union from the

State, to put an end to the union tax. Nevertheless, my relationship with

the Union went through the student's movement, through the State

Students Union (UEE). I integrated there a kind of syndicalist secretary and I

attended union meetings as a student representative. I remember going to

several assemblies of striking workers, bringing the students' word of

solidarity.

It was during your time as a university student that this group, which has a certain importance in the intellectual trajectory of several Brazilian professors and politicians, was formed, the so-called "Capital Group"?

The “Capital Group” appeared at that time. When we were finishing

college, in 1959 or 1960, those responsible for the group, Fernando

Henrique and Paul Singer, invited us. We were considered to be sufficiently

mature to participate. However, we caught the trolley moving already.

When we joined, I think they were already at the end of the first volume or

at the beginning of the second. I attended the meetings for a year or so.

There were teachers from various disciplines, it was an interdisciplinary

group: philosophers, economists, historians, sociologists. Fernando Novais,

Giannotti, Rui Fausto, Otávio Ianni, Fernando Henrique…

Where did your meetings take place?

At Giannotti's house, if I'm not mistaken. Every week a chapter of

Capital was read. Those who knew German read it in German, the others

read the Spanish translation. One person made the summary and

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commentary of the chapter, and then it was discussed. I started in the

middle, as I said, and left for France before finishing. But I was able to

catch a decent piece.

Regarding the theoretical references, you spoke about Marx and Rosa Luxemburg. Lenin and Trotsky were not common currency between yourselves?

No. Lenin was seen as an authoritarian character, who had been

criticized by Rosa Luxemburg for the authoritarian bias he had brought to

the revolutionary movement, and as the one responsible, to some extent,

for what happened afterwards in the Soviet Union. Within my strictly

Luxemburgist political background, Leninism was seen as something at

least ambivalent and objectionable. And Trotsky was criticized for being a

Leninist. Although several of our companions were of Trotskyist origin,

such as Sachetta, we had reached a critical assessment regarding Trotsky.

Outside the Marxist camp, was there any other theoretical references for the “Capital Group”?

There was. To most of my colleagues there was a very wide openness

to sociology and all forms of thinking. In fact, the most dogmatic was me.

The idea that a non-Marxist thinker could bring something interesting, for

me, was hard to accept. I remember some very violent discussions with

Roberto Shwartz because he would say that Huizinga was right in saying

that, deep down, what determined human beings was more a game than

an economic infrastructure. That was totally absurd to me. I also remember

another episode with a political science teacher of ours named Paula

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Beiguelman. She had given us a text from Mannheim about conservative

thinking, which she herself translated, mimeographed and distributed. At

first, I resisted, but she told me: "You don't have to stop being a Marxist.

You read Mannheim and then you go back to reading Marx. No problem.

But see if there are other things outside of Marxism too." I was very

sceptical, but I ended up reading Mannheim and even found it interesting.

My state of mind was a bit like that: there's still so much to read in Marx,

Engels and other Marxists, for me to waste my time reading Durkheim,

Mannheim... I thought it was a waste of time. I read because I was obliged

to, but with the controversial intention of deconstructing these authors, to

prove them all wrong from the Marxist point of view.

Did your non-Marxists colleagues become enamoured with these other references?

They were interested. They were more open, more eclectic. They didn't

have this concern, this animosity against bourgeois thought. Their attitude

was different. It generated a certain tension between me and even my

closest friends.

Still on the “Capital Group:” was the objective to study Marx only for academic development, or was there the intention to form an intellectual advisory group or to participate in some political project?

It was not an academic spectacle, nobody was there because of their

thesis or their academic career, but neither was it something with a

common political objective, advisory or whatever. It was neither one nor

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the other. There was a desire for self-illustration of each person according

to their own objectives. Some were more academic, others more

theoretical in the broad sense, and others with proper political objectives.

There was a great diversity, but everyone there agreed that it was

important to return to the source and read The Capital.

Did the friendship between the participants remain beyond the “Capital Group”?

I think so. There were already friendship ties between us before,

Fernando Henrique, Otávio Ianni, Paul Singer, Giannotti. Those who were

invited already had ties of friendship that naturally were strengthened later

in the group. And they remained. For me maybe less, because I walked

away, I went away, but for those who stayed I think so. Although naturally

there were ruptures, like that of Fernando Henrique with Otávio. Even then,

somehow a kind of intellectual community was created.

You graduated in 1959 and then went to France. Before that did you have any professional experience in Brazil?

Yes. When I was still finishing university, during the last year, I was

invited by Wilson Cantoni, a sociology professor, whom I met through the

Socialist League, to be his assistant at the Faculty of Philosophy, Sciences

and Letters of São José do Rio Preto. It was a very interesting experience. I

met a very friendly group and, among others, I encountered my former

philosophy professor, I don't remember his name now, who had been a

Trotskyist and was teaching there. But what struck me the most at the time

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was the relationship with the peasant movement. A Peasant League was

being organized in the region of Santa Fe do Sul, whose leader was called

Jofre Correia Neto. This man was constantly being persecuted, in and out of

prison. Me, Wilson Cantoni and other colleagues were very interested in

this movement. We went to Santa Fé do Sul to support it and brought a

delegation of several hundred peasants to São José do Rio Preto to

participate in an act in defence of public schools. There was a very strong

relationship between us and this movement in Santa Fé do Sul.

Why did you go to France?

My idea of going to France first arose from a fascination with French

culture from my teenage years. Surrealism had always been a strong

influence on me. I also had a certain mythical image of Paris as the city of

revolutions. But, more concretely, for me it was a capital discovery to read

the work of Lucien Goldmann, something I owe to Gabriel Bolaffi. Indeed, I

will never forget this scene: one day, I think we were in the second or third

year of college, Gabriel Bolaffi said to me like this: “I'm reading an

interesting book and I won't tell you which one, because you're already

annoying, but if you read this book you'll become an intelligent annoyance,

it'll be unbearable.” Bolaffi and I were arguing because I was a nagging

Marxist, and he was much more eclectic, more open, uncompromising. He

ended up confessing that the book was Lucien Goldmann's La Ciencia

humana y la filosofia. Naturally, I hurried over the book to see if it made me

an intelligent annoyance, and I was dazzled. I was dazzled because it was a

very different style of Marxism than the one I had seen hitherto. There was

a strong criticism of bourgeois sociology, but at the same time a rather

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non-dogmatic, open Marxism. To me it was enlightening. From then on I

began to read other things by Lucien Goldmann and decided: I am going to

France to do my doctoral thesis with Lucien Goldmann. I asked for a French

scholarship and when I was already working in San José from Rio Preto

came the positive response. So I went to Paris. I went in 1961, shortly after

Jango took over.

What was the moment of Jânio's resignation and João Goulart's inauguration like for you, a political militant?

I remember that we were very sympathetic to Brizola. We went out in

the street shouting: ”Brizola, get them!” At that time I was already in

another political organization, because in 1960 a part of the staff that was

in the Independent Socialist League united together with other little

groups and created an organization called Polop4—this one is more well-

known. I think the Independent Socialist League was only known by our

friends... I participated in the foundation of Polop together with Paul

Singer, the Sader brothers, Juarez Brito, Teotônio dos Santos and Rui Mauro

Marini.

Was going to France an aspiration that you shared with other people or was it something unusual in your group?

I think France was an interest for many in the group. Some had

already studied there. Philosophy students were more interested than

sociologists. Those who studied philosophy automatically would continue

4 T. N.: Revolutionary Marxist Political Labour Organization.

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their studies in France, the relationship was very strong. In sociology, it

wasn't that strong. I think it was just me and Rui Fausto.

When you left for France to do your doctoral thesis with Lucien Goldmann, did you also have the idea of fulfilling a political mission? How was it defined in your head?

I had the idea of doing a thesis on Marx and going back to Brazil. I

had already started working on Marx in Brazil. I even wrote three articles

for Revista Brasiliense, one on the agrarian question, “Notes on the agrarian

question in Brazil”—which was not lacking in pretension—another on the

young Marx and the other on the Marxist Party theory. A classic discussion

between Rosa Luxemburg and Lenin. Going to Paris to do a doctorate on

Marx was a task both political and intellectual.

How was your intellectual trajectory in France?

I wrote my thesis with Goldmann. At the time I remember Althusser

was starting to emerge, and the students split up. Rui Fausto, for example,

was more attracted to Althusser; I, to Goldmann. At Goldmann's seminar

there were figures like Herbert Marcuse. He spent a year by Goldmann's

invitation giving seminars at the School of High Studies. Other times

Goldmann invited Henri Lefebvre to give some lectures. Anyway, it was a

place where interesting things happened. Aside from Goldmann's

seminars, I attended other courses, such as Touraine's. I attended both

philosophy and sociology courses. I went to the courses, for example, of

Hippolyte on Hegel and Raymond Aron and Gurvitch, who taught sociology

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at the Sorbonne. I followed their courses with great reserve. They were two

teachers who were insufficiently Marxist for my taste, but, anyway, I

learned things, especially with Aron, who was a very intelligent guy, who

taught Marx very well. There was another interesting seminar, that of

Georges Haupt, historian, on international socialism.

While you were there, did you follow the events in Brazil?

Yes, I followed very closely and had a correspondence with my friends

in Brazil, Paul Singer and the Sader brothers. I followed the internal

discussions at Polop. I considered myself a Polop militant in Paris and took

part in the activities of the French left, particularly the Unified Socialist

Party, in the Sorbonne cell.

Was there the idea of establishing a link between the PSU and Polop? There was an analogy between them, from the point of view of questioning Party orthodoxies, wasn't there?

If there was any idea, nothing ever materialized. Anyhow, I read the rest of

Goldmann's work that I didn't know yet and developed my thesis on the theory

of revolution in Marx's work, methodologically inspired in Goldmann. But

Goldmann did not agree. To summarize the thesis: I related Marx's work to the

workers' movement at the time, trying to show that the theory of revolution in

the young Marx was a formulation based on the concrete experiences of the

workers' movement, of which Marx considered himself to be somewhat of a

spokesperson. To my understanding, there was a relationship between the class

and its intellectual, whilst Goldmann was very sceptical about this. For him,

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there is no working class in the 19th century, there were artisans, and Marx

represented indeed the left-wing of the bourgeoisie. Then, I would joke that I

considered myself a left-wing neo-Goldmannian. On the day of my thesis defence,

Goldmann criticized me a lot. In one of his articles he wrote that a student tried

to demonstrate Marx as the class expression of the proletariat, and that he was

not very convinced. But finally, methodologically my thesis was strictly

Goldmannian, in the sense of trying to articulate social classes, ideology and

culture: it was a kind of sociology of culture.

When did you defend your thesis?

In March 1964. I finished my thesis and at this moment a rather

strange parenthesis opens up in my itinerary: I end up in Israel due to

circumstances neither political nor intellectual, but strictly family related.

My father had passed away, my brother already lived in Israel and my

mother moved there. So I decided to try the future in Israel. After finishing

my doctorate, I spent a year studying Hebrew in a kibbutz and working half

the day. After a year of study, I was invited to teach History of Political

Ideas, first at the University of Jerusalem, then at Tel-Aviv University. I spent

four years in Israel, one year as a student and three as a professor. I also

had some contact with Brazil, especially with the Sader brothers. Then

came May 68 and it gave me a great desire to return to Europe. At that

time I also came into political conflict with the director of the Department

of Political Sciences of the University of Tel-Aviv, where I worked. A small

scandal was staged at the university, with many protests. Even the

newspapers discuss whether the professor's discharge was for political

reasons or not. A friend of mine who had lived in Israel but was in England,

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the historian Theodor Chamu, writes an article in the New Statement

denouncing what he calls “McCarthyism at Tel-Aviv University.” A friend of

Chamu, a teacher in Manchester named Peter Worsley, called him a few

days later saying: “We read your article and decided, in solidarity with your

friend who is a victim of discrimination, to invite him to teach here in

Manchester.” For me it was the opportunity to leave, because I was already

feeling suffocated in Tel-Aviv.

In those four years that you spent in Israel, was there any growth from an intellectual or living point of view?

The important growth was that, in order to be able to give the course I

gave, I learned very well the history of political ideas: Machiavelli, Hobbes,

Locke, Tocqueville, Hegel. It was a good learning experience.

Confirming that adage that says that the professor is the one who learns the most…

He's not the one who learns the most, he's the only one who learns.

How was your contact with Jewish culture?

Interestingly enough, throughout my stay in Israel I was never

interested in any aspect of Jewish culture. I never studied, I never wrote

anything! Total indifference. I only became interested in Judaism and Jewish

culture ten years after I left Israel.

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Was there any investment in terms of valuing Jewish culture within your family?

My family was enthusiastically Zionist. So much so that my brother

and mother went to Israel. My education had a lot of Zionisms and

socialism, but my decision to go to Israel was not because of Zionism, it

was, as I said, for family reasons.

During this period when you were in Israel, Brazil was becoming more and more closed. Did you nurture the desire to return to Brazil at some point?

Yes, in the four years that I lived in Israel I had the strong conviction

that I would return. I remember that in 1968 I wrote to Azis Simão saying

that I was thinking of going back and asking if there was any chance to

work in any university. Azis wrote back saying, “Don't come back, don't set

your feet here. Arriving here you're going to be arrested right away. Your

name is well-known, several of your friends have already been arrested.

Don't come back! Please, stay there in Europe!” I was frustrated, but I

thought he was right. Years later, when I first came back to Brazil, Azis

Simão was under the impression that I had broken up with him because of

his negative statement. He tried to apologize, but I said, “You were right!”

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Did you ever think of going back to Brazil to join the Polop as a clandestine political leader? That's what Sader was doing, isn't it?

Yes, but the idea of going back clandestinely was complicated. There

wasn't much structure. There was even a split in the Polop. The people I

was most connected to had created a new organization called POC

(Communist Workers Party) and were approaching the Fourth

International. At that moment Emir Sader came to Europe. We both

discussed and came to the conclusion that the Fourth International was

interesting. But the idea of returning to Brazil was not there, as far as I can

remember.

Besides the teaching activity, did you develop any other research after you left France?

I concluded my thesis on the theory of revolution in the young Marx in

1964, but unfortunately I could not publish it because I went to Israel. That

was a great frustration. Six years later, when I returned to France, I looked

for an editor, François Maspero, talked to him and Georges Haupt, and my

thesis was published. I did very little research in Israel. The climate was not

very favourable to research. My greatest effort was in teaching, in

preparing classes on the history of political ideas. I even wrote a few

articles in Israel, but the only interesting research work was one on Kafka

and anarchism. It's a study in which I've been working for years and never

really finish. In Manchester, I worked on a political sociology course with

Peter Worsley and started studying Max Weber. Anyone who gives a course

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on Max Weber has to study Max Weber. I started researching him and even

wrote an article that was a Marxist criticism of Max Weber. But my main

research at that time, 1968-69, was really more political than academic: a

book about Che Guevara's thought. As a matter of fact, I started this work

by writing articles about Guevara in Israel. I continued my research in

Manchester, and the book was published in 1970.

Before going to England, still in Israel, I had already applied for a

scholarship in France. A year later my application was accepted. I left

Manchester in 1969, landed in Paris and met my old friend Emir Sader, who

was working as an assistant in Paris-VII with Professor Nicos Poulantzas.

He introduces me to Poulantzas and says he is leaving for Chile. Poulantzas

then had me hired as an assistant. From then on I started to work as a

course administrator, chargé de cours, a person who did not have a

contract, who earned by the hour. It was a bit precarious, but I was able to

maintain myself.

What did you think of Poulantzas?

A very friendly guy. We got along very well, but we didn't agree on

anything. Neither politically nor theoretically. He was a Maoist, I was a

Trotskyist; he was an Althusserian, I was a Kantian. Total divergence and

perfect friendship. In the first or second year he proposed that we made a

course together. It was funny, because every week one spoke and the other

criticized. The students loved to see us disagreeing, though very amicably.

Each class was a total disagreement.

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The students must have learned a lot.

They might have. I think the first course we made together was about

Marxism and the national question. I remember from that course I had the

idea to prepare an anthology on Marxism and the national question. I went

to talk about it with Georges Haupt, who had published my book on Marx,

he said that he had the same idea and suggested that we should do it

together. This anthology was published in 1974. Meanwhile, Goldmann

died, unfortunately, leaving me orphaned. When I was in Israel I had little

contact with him, but when I returned to Paris I resumed contact, and

attended his seminars again. Through Goldmann I met Lukács, decided to

do my second doctorate, the State thesis, on Lukács, and would do it with

Goldmann, but he passed away. In the 1970s, I worked on my thesis on

Lukács and wrote some articles: one was a polemic against Althusser,

called “The historicist humanism of Marx or To Read The Capital.” I bought

the Lukácsians' fight against Althusser. Another article I wrote was

“Objectivity and Class Viewpoint in the Social Sciences.” It was the embryo

of a work on the sociology of knowledge. These articles and several others

were first published in Brazil by a friend of mine, Reginaldo de Piero, under

the title Dialectical Method and Political Theory, by Paz e Terra.

After all, I did this thesis on Lukács, travelled to Hungary several times,

worked in the Budapest archive, met Lukács' disciples. The thesis was

published in France with a somewhat strange title: For a sociology of

revolutionary intellectuals. Here in Brazil it also came out with this title.

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At the moment you come back to France many people are also arriving from Brazil.

Exactly. And I integrate directly into the colony of Brazilian exiles.

Although I was not an exile, I identify with them and try as much as

possible to make my small contribution to the defamation of Brazil abroad.

I remember that in 1970 me and a Brazilian friend went to visit Sartre and

ask him to launch a protest by French intellectuals against the tortures in

Brazil. Since we were still very naive, instead of taking a ready-made text,

we took only the idea. He was the one who had to sit down and write the

text. Then he called the other intellectuals to sign it, and the protest came

out. I was at every meeting with Violeta Arraes, who was the main

organizer.

You revealed to us that from university onward you had a rather orthodox thought. Years later, while studying in Paris, having contact with this rather heterogeneous group of Brazilian exiles, how would you evaluate your intellectual positions? Was there any change?

The big change for me was the discovery of Goldmann and Lukács. I

went from an orthodox Marxism to a more open Marxism. As for the exiles,

there was a kind of unity against the dictatorship, a general sympathy for

the armed struggle. My political reference was the POC, which no longer

existed in Brazil—it was therefore a more imaginary than real reference.

The last attempt to reorganize the POC failed in 1971, when a friend of ours

returned to Brazil from Paris and was killed by the dictatorship.

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Did you still think, at that time, that you would return to Brazil?

Frankly, less and less. Among other reasons, there was a personal

one: I had got married. I mean, I didn't completely dismiss the idea, but it

got even more complicated. Then two children were born in France and my

return became more and more unlikely.

Your professional commitment to France should also count.

Yes, but that wasn't the biggest obstacle. Eventually, if the Brazilian

regime changed, I would get a job at a Brazilian university. It was more this

personal problem. And at that time they also confiscated my Brazilian

passport. I went to the embassy to renew my passport, and they explained

to me that I was persona non grata. I had no legal way to return to Brazil.

After they confiscate your passport, how do you stay in France?

In a tight spot. I had applied for French naturalization at the same

time, which was refused. In 1975, I found myself without a Brazilian

passport and without French naturalization. Then I remember my Austrian

ancestors. I go to the Austrian embassy with my father's birth certificate

and I get an Austrian passport. For several years I was Austrian. It was only

after many years that I got French naturalization. I went to see a lawyer,

and he said to me: “Give up, if the presidency changes and the left wins, we

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will return to the subject.” After Mitterrand's election in 1981, I went to see

the lawyer again, and he finally succeeded, but it wasn't easy. A lot of

branches had to be broken.

In the 1970s there was a resumption of intellectual production in Brazil with the implementation of post-graduate courses. Did you accompany this process?

No. My accompaniment of the academic activity in Brazil is zero! The

last thing I followed was at the end of the 60s at USP, when the left-wing

guys published that magazine Teoria e Prática. I sent them a chapter of my

thesis on Marx, and they translated and published it. They were Rui Fausto,

Sader, Schwarz. Later, most of them went into exile. Roberto Schwarz was

in Paris; Emir was in Chile and then went to Cuba; Rui Fausto went to Chile

and then came to Paris, where I got him a job. Many of my friends were in

Paris, I was no longer at USP. So I had no idea what was happening.

Did you have any contact with the CEBRAP5 experiment? CEBRAP is from 1969, Fernando Henrique Cardoso was there.

Of course, I heard about the CEBRAP, but there was no direct

connection. I was more familiar with the latest splits at VAR-Palmares...6

5 T. N.: Brazilian Center of Analysis and Planning.

6 T. N.: Palmares Armed Revolutionary Vanguard

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From when did you resume contact with Brazil?

In 1980 there was a chance to visit Brazil. I don't know how, someone

here in Brazil set up a business for me to go on a UNESCO mission to help

set up a post-graduate program in the city of Belo Horizonte. Thus, in 1980,

after 19 years of absence, I resumed contact with Brazil. It was a culture

shock. I felt that everything in Brazil had changed and everything was still

the same. Everything changed because everything got bigger, everything

expanded. Things that were references to me no longer existed. My house

had been demolished, my gymnasium had been demolished, Maria

Antônia was no longer Maria Antônia. From that point of view I was really

feeling kind of lost. But the people and the Brazilian lifestyle were the

same, it was the old Brazil.

And you liked it?

I liked it and I felt like going back. I didn't come back soon because the

occasion didn't come up, but from 1984 on I started coming back regularly

every two years and resumed university, personal, family contacts.

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In which way does Brazil hold a place within you today?

Being Brazilian has always been a fundamental part of my identity. If

my identity is a kind of brick building, the foundation is Brazilian. But in this

building also comes France. After so many years in Europe we end up

Europeanizing ourselves. But now, for the first time, I am working with

Brazilian themes: the issue of religion and politics in Brazil and Latin

America, surrounding Liberation Theology.

Before getting to that point, let's pick up on your trajectory: Marx, Goldmann, Lukács... Starting from when is there a broadening of horizons?

There's a moment that I think it's important to highlight, which is my

work on the sociology of knowledge. There I finally read Mannheim again—

my dear friend Paula Beiguelman was right, we need to read Mannheim—

and I did a contest project to enter the CNRS—Centre National des

Recherches Scientifiques. Miraculously, I was accepted. I say miraculously

because in order to enter the CNRS projects had to be based on empirical

research, social phenomena were studied empirically. And I was the only

one who submitted a project on sociological theory. Apparently they liked

it. I joined the CNRS with this project and did a study on the sociology of

knowledge that was published in France and translated in Brazil with the

pompous title, half ironic, of The Adventures of Karl Marx against the Baron

of Münchhausen. It is the only book of mine that has had a certain success

in Brazil. It was also published in France, but had much less impact. During

this period I took a step beyond Goldmannian-Lukácsian Marxism. This

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step was taken with the discovery of Walter Benjamin in 1979-80. He gives

me tremendous enlightenment, and a new horizon opens up for me: the

Frankfurt School and the theme of romanticism, which I had already been

working on from Lukács, but which is beginning to interest me more. This

forces me to review a number of things from Marxism and to have a much

more heterodox vision. The interest in the relationship between religion-

Christianity-revolution also begins, hence that book of mine, Redemption

and Utopia.

Do you establish any relation between your inclination for Walter Benjamin and the recognition of the failure, at least in the short term, of the revolutionary project in Brazil?

No. Only in a very indirect way, in the sense that Walter Benjamin is

someone very concerned with the history of the defeated and has a very

strong sensitivity towards it. This can subjectively correspond to the feeling

of sympathy for the victims of the repressive process, and for Brazil itself.

Only if it is very indirectly.

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There is a clear correlation between Gramsci's discovery and the rediscovery of the subject of democracy by the Brazilian left from 1974 onward. Already from the 80's there is a general inclination toward Walter Benjamin. That is, at the moment when the revolutionary project is considered closed, Benjamin's works are translated in Brazil and everyone reads Benjamin.

It may be that the choice for Benjamin in Brazil was made in this

context, but my personal was not like that. On the contrary, I took

Benjamin from his messianic and revolutionary side. On the question of

democracy, for me, the reference was still Rosa Luxembourg. There was no

need for that passing through Gramsci.

Walter Benjamin also helps you reach the referential universe of Jewish culture?

Yes, of course. It is through Benjamin that I discover Judaism and

religion. Both Jewish messianism and religion in general, religion as a

revolutionary culture. My current affiliation with the CNRS passes through a

centre that studies the sociology of religion. Obviously, from the point of

view of someone who is not religious, but observes the phenomenon with

great interest.

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How do you position yourself in relation to the critique that views Marxism as a secular religion?

Put in those terms, of critique, I think it's a punctured, superficial

thesis. It does not realize what Marxism is as a materialistic theory.

However, on another deeper level, no longer as a critique, but as a positive

claim, I find the thesis legitimate. I refer to the level that is studied by

Lucien Goldmann in that book of his about the hidden God, when he

compares Pascal's bet with Marx's bet. He says that both in the case of

religion in Pascal and in the case of socialism in Marx there is an element of

faith, that is, an element that cannot be demonstrated empirically. Both

rely on a wager. Pascal bets on the existence of God; Marx bets on the

possibility of the realization of communism. And that bet necessarily

implies the risk of not succeeding. But the individual has to bet, he is

already onboard, there is no escape. As Pascal says, “we're already

onboard,” you can't look from the outside.. You are obligated to bet on one

thing or another. If you don't bet on God's existence, you guide your life

according to that hypothesis. The Christian, on the other hand, directs his

life according to the other one. The same goes for socialism, we all have to

bet. In this sense there is an affinity, or a structural homology, between

religion, at least a certain type of religion, which is that of Pascal, and the

socialism of Marx. There is an element of faith, an ultimate principle that

cannot be scientifically demonstrated and is based on a wager. Therefore, I

find the comparison between religion and Marxism legitimate, but not in

the superficial, journalistic sense.

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In closing, I would ask you to assess the current state of Marx's thought. You, who have always had the reference of Marxism, how do you face this current movement that claims that Marx was a great author, but from the 19th century, and that it is an anachronism to keep him as a reference?

I'd start by remembering an old quote: “Marx died to humankind.”

Benedetto Croce, 1960. This thesis that Marx is finished is not very new. In

fact, what we are seeing today in France and elsewhere is a phenomenon

that the press itself calls “the return of Marx.” And I think it is quite

predictable, because to try to understand capitalism and, even more, to try

to transform this world, Marx is necessary. Inevitably, sooner or later, he

will return to the agenda, until the moment when it is no longer necessary,

when capitalism no longer exists. As Rosa Luxemburg and Gramsci had

already said, in a post-capitalist, socialist, classless society, the categories

of Marxism will be overcome.

Having said that, I think that a criticism of Marx is obviously in order.

The two aspects of criticism that seem to me the richest to explore are the

libertarian and the ecological approaches. Any libertarian criticism of

Marx's conception of the State and Marx's illusions about the State

deserves to be explored, it is a fertile problem. And the other criticism that

seems interesting to me is the ecological one. It calls into question the

whole doctrine of progress, the whole conception of history based on the

development of productive forces, that is, the core elements in terms of

Marxism, particularly a certain Marxism which, to sum up in one sentence,

I would describe as “the Marxism of the Preface of 1857.” Therein lies an

element that needs to be relocated, and it is not a mere detail, it is a rather

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central element of Marx's theory. I think that a critical revision of Marxism

passes through this, but in the sense of deepening its radical nature and

negativity in relation to capitalist modernity. The majority of criticisms or

revision proposals made to Marx today go in the opposite direction, trying

to dilute radicality and reconcile Marx with capitalist modernity. In my

opinion, what is interesting is precisely to deepen the critical dimension,

putting into question those elements of Marx's work that are insufficiently

critical in relation to the model of Western, industrial and patriarchal

civilization.

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a marxist intellectual: interview with michael löwy

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