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4 Probs. Communism 17 (1955)
Brazil's CP: A Case Study in Latin-American Communism

handle is hein.journals/probscmu4 and id is 225 raw text is: came they somehow failed to put their program across.14 Perhaps their Indian counterparts will be more fortunate. We have after all learned a great deal since then, both about the operation of a mixed economy and about the dangers of headlong indus- trialization under dictatorial control. Totalitarianism a Deadly Solution WHATEVER the precise path of economic de- velopment taken by underdeveloped countries, there will remain the formidable problem of reshaping the attitudes of those key groups upon whose per- formance economic progress depends. Politically, the problem is how this reshaping can be done under a democratic form of government which excludes the 14 The Narodniks, as we know, advocated a Socialist system based on the indigenous Russian village commune (mir) and brought about by the peasants rather than by the industrial proletariat. The essentials of this program were adopted in the early 20th century by the Social Revolutionaries, who, it will be recalled, won a majority of votes to the democratic Constituent Assembly after the March 1917 revolution, but failed-partly through lack of efficient organi- zation-to put their program into effect before the Bolshevik coup of November 1917. authoritarian manipulation of popular attitudes through an all-embracing system of propaganda and control. Perhaps the best answer that can be given at this date is that the process will inevitably be somewhat slower than under totalitarianism. Yet the element of planning will enter no matter what the political philosophy: A country which chooses the democratic path to economic development must devise new and effective methods of capital formation which at the same time are democratic in spirit.15 The operative words are clearly chooses and devise. Choices cannot be made by the country as a whole, at least at the present stage, but only by its politically conscious minority, i.e., by the intelli- gentsia. The intelligentsia's belief or disbelief in the efficacy of the democratic process thus turns out to be the crucial element in the situation. Nor is this necessarily cause for lament. Intellectuals, after all, are trained to think, and thinking may yet suggest to them that totalitarianism is only one solution among others, and a rather deadly one at that. 15 Staley, op. cit., p. 266. Brazil's CP: A Case Study in Latin-American Communism By Robert J. Alexander SINCE World War II the Communist Party of Brazil has been the largest and most influential Stalinist group anywhere in the American hemisphere. A survey of its activities is important not only as a case study of regional Communist strategy but as a subject of vital significance considering the key loca- tion, size, rapid development and growing weight in international affairs of the United States of Brazil. The postwar strategy and tactics of the Brazilian CP, like those of virtually all Communist parties, fall roughly into two periods demarcated by the Mr. Alexander is an Associate Professor of Economics at Rutgers University, New Brunswick, New Jersey, and a recognized authority on Latin America. This article is based on a chapter from his forth- coming book on communism in Latin America. emergence of Moscow's cold war in earnest. The wide divergencies in the Brazilian Communists' poli- cies and appeals in these two periods, and the seeming ease with which the switch was effected, demonstrate the dangerous flexibility and expedience of local Communist movements and, in particular, their will- ingness to adapt to the foreign policy needs of the Soviet Union. The Early Postwar Period: The Drive for a Mass Movement T HE Brazilian Communists emerged from World War II with full legal status for the first time in many years. The legitimization of the party was the result of a relaxation of the dictatorship of Getulio

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