Socialism or barbarism – Rosa Luxemburg in Brazil

Abstract

For the inauguration of the new headquarters of the Instituto Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung in São Paulo, Paul Singer, Michael Löwy, Angela Mendes de Almeida, Isabel Loureiro, Gilmar Mauro and Paulo Arantes gave interviews for a video about the Polish revolutionary. The book consists of these interviews and a presentation. More than the impact of Rosa Luxemburg's thought, it is a reflection on the impasses of the Brazilian left. The first interview is with Paul Singer, coordinator of the Solidarity Economy Secretariat of the Ministry of Labor during the Lula government. Rosa Luxemburg's fundamental point, when she would have surpassed Marx, was to demonstrate that “there has never been a single mode of production in the world. There have always been different modes of production that interact.” That is why there are “germs of socialism within capitalist society”, which makes possible the “PT socialist vision that is the Solidarity Economy”, for which “the commodity itself has no problem”.