Raymundo Faoro was a Brazilian jurist, social scientist, historian and writer. Author of an important book on the political and social formation of Brazil, the power owners, Faro explained how the Brazil has consolidated itself as a bureaucratic republic which concentrates powers in the same groups since the colonial period.
At weberian interpretations of Faoro place him as a liberal, however, during the Brazilian civil-military dictatorship, there was an intense rapprochement between the intellectual and political parties and personalities of the left Brazilian.
In his extensive career, the intellectual served as Attorney of the State of Rio Grande do Sul, lawyer, chronicler and columnist, chaired the Brazilian Bar Association (OAB) and held a chair at the Brazilian Academy of Letters.
Read too: Paulo Freire – important Brazilian educator widely honored and cited
Biography Raymundo Faoro
Raymundo Faro was born in the municipality of Vacaria, in the interior of Rio Grande do Sul, on April 27, 1925
. Faoro was the son of farmers from Rio Grande do Sul who moved to the city of Caçador, in the interior of Santa Catarina. There, the boy had the opportunity to continue his studies in secondary school (currently High School). Back to Rio Grande do Sul, Faro studied Law at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul, earning his bachelor's degree in 1948.the intellectual started writing for the press still as a university student, and in 1947 he contributed to the foundation of a magazine of artistic and literary criticism important to the youth scene in the city of Porto Alegre in season: the magazine Quixote. Throughout his life, he contributed to several periodicals, some of which are well-known in the national political and economic scene.
In the 1950s, Raymundo Faoro was a lawyer until he was selected, through a public contest, to take over the position of Attorney of the State of Rio Grande do Sul. In 1958, the Brazilian sociologist released his first and most influential work, the book The owners of power: formation of Brazilian political patronage. This book, however, was slow to be noticed, studied and sold.
![An important book analyzing the political history of Brazil. [1]](/f/09ebba6b7d652404bec4b0925a2253ec.jpg)
Sociologically inspired by the work of the classic German sociologist Max Weber, Faro he was a convinced liberal, especially in the political sense of the word. The Brazilian civil-military dictatorship, which took place between 1964 and 1985, awakened Raymundo Faoro's commitment to fight for rights and against the oppression of the bloodthirsty government that left its heaviest burden to Brazilians between 1968 and 1977, during the so-called "years of lead" of the dictatorship.
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The Brazilian thinker had his first work (the power owners) reedited and expanded in 1974, which caused a large number of intellectuals and political leaders who resisted the dictatorship, both Democrats and Marxists, started to read the sociologist. At that time, as a lawyer, Faoro represented an important figure in the peaceful resistance against dictatorial government, fighting against the so-called Institutional Acts and for the amnesty of political prisoners and exiles.
Between 1977 and 1979, Faro was president of the Brazilian Bar Association (OAB), showing himself as a strong ally in the fight for Brazilian redemocratization. His biography, displayed on a page dedicated to his memory on the website of the Academia Brasileira de Letras, states that departed from the OAB headquarters, in Rio de Janeiro, “the first large detailed denunciation against the torture of prisoners politicians".
The page also claims that the intellectual's home in Rio has become, after the amnesty and redemocratization, a point for politicians such as Tancredo Neves and Luís Inácio Lula da Silva (former president Lula)|1|. Lula even invited Faoro to run on his ticket as vice president in 1989, an invitation that was refused.
On November 23, 2000, Raymundo Faoro was elected to seat number six at the Brazilian Academy of Letters. He died on May 15, 2003, in the city of Rio de Janeiro, at the age of 77.
Raymundo Faoro's Ideas
Raymundo Faoro based his theories on the great sociological structure of the German thinker MaxWeber. Between the 1940s and 1980s, most Brazilian sociologists were aligned with the dialectical historical materialist method in Karl Marx. Raymundo Faoro, contrary to this majority (it is worth remembering that Marxist sociologists were trained in Sociology, while Faoro graduated in Law and studied and produced sociology outside the environment academic), aligned with the Weberian sociological analysis method, that is, to the comprehensive method. In terms of political principles, he was liberal.
Two concepts are very important for understanding Raymundo Faoro's work:
bureaucratic status
The word status designates a form of society in which there is no (or almost no) social mobility. An example of a state-owned society is the one established within the feudalism and it spread to the European monarch national states, marked by noble bloodlines.
For Faoro, Brazil was formed as a bureaucratic state, as a state bureaucracy, since colonial times, which privileged certain classes, as a bourgeoisie powerful, who have remained in power ever since. Some families from the colonial elite dominate (or give rise to other families that dominate) the political economy to this day.
The state bureaucracy was something studied and defended by Weber, including as a means of legitimizing the power and monopoly of violence given to the state. However, Faoro sees that the bureaucracy in Brazil was created and maintained in another way, through patrimonialism.
Patrimonialism
Patrimonialism is the Brazilian way of governing that takes government from the public sphere as if it were private. Instead of creating a state composition and governance scheme based on impersonality and impartiality, Brazilians tend to take things personally, without major constitutional concerns and legal entities.
See too: Gilberto Freyre – great scholar of Brazilian social formation
Raymundo Faoro Communist or Liberal?
A left-wing or a right-wing intellectual? Intellectuals and personalities from the two great political sides wanted to take over Faoro's work and intellect. With the reprint of the power owners in 1974, both Marxists and Brazilian Democrats who opposed the military government joined in the analysis and interpretation of this work.. The struggle against the military dictatorship and the redemocratization of Brazil put the sociologist in contact with left-wing leaders in the country in the 1980s, such as former president Lula.
Self-proclaimed philosopher Olavo de Carvalho, a conservative and admirer of Faoro's work, speaks of incorporation of the sociologist's theories in the founding of the Workers' Party (PT), which was formed in Brazil in the 1980s as a new left-wing political alternative after redemocratization. While a large part of the right and left try to bring the Faorian work to themselves, some people with a certain influence of opinion formation, beyond Olavo de Carvalho and extending to personalities linked to serious liberal movements, push Faoro's work to the side left.
Faoro, however, never adopted a posture of distancing from liberal ideas. too never adopted a Marxist stance in his theory, distancing it, at least sociologically, from left-wing thinking.
Grades
|1| To access the page of the Brazilian Academy of Letters, click on here.
Image credit
[1] Blue Library (Reproduction)
by Francisco Porfirio
Sociology Professor