The democratic modernity of the left: goodbye to the revolution?

Abstract

Left-wing intellectuals and political parties, in current times, have made democracy the main theme of their theoretical concerns and the central issue of their political agenda. As an English sociologist recently observed, "the left has surrendered to democracy." Reflecting on political culture in the capitalist West, P. Hirst concludes that "the intellectual left in Europe and the USA has adopted democratization as the essence of its political demands." In Brazil, until the mid-1960s, the left was mobilized around social reforms, national developmentalism, socialism and revolution.