The left after social democracy

liberation and warmth

Abstract

In a two-hour interview, given on May 22, 2023, at the hotel where he was staying in São Paulo (SP), philosopher Roberto Mangabeira Unger, professor at Harvard University, in the United States, details his vision on the topic of this dossier: the crisis of the left and its overcoming. To begin with, it defines what it means by left and right in the contemporary context – allocating among conservatives those who believe that collective interests should be pursued “within the existing institutional order”. Faced with the unfeasibility of the once-dreamed-of revolution, it points to the lack of paths bequeathed by the all or nothing associated with the Marxist tradition. He is acidic in his criticism of the “sugar-coated” stance of the left, surrendered to specific compensatory benefits and with its eyes closed to structural changes, which for him are above all institutional. And it proposes the terms of an agenda aimed at the development of Brazilian society in a context of deindustrialization and its contribution to civilization. The “warmth” that European social democracy would lack, for example, will not come from our tradition of family affection, historically used to lubricate inequalities; for the philosopher, this effervescence will come from the institutional imagination in the economic and political fields. “Imagination is what creates this excitement. It removes the phenomenon and sees the phenomenon from the angle of possible variations. She sets the fire”, he bets. Read the full interview, given to professors Carlos Sávio Teixeira and Roberto Dutra, organizers of the dossier.