How power of state is conquered

HOW POWER OF STATE IS CONQUERED
Fernando Alcoforado *
The first states in Egypt, Mesopotamia, China, India, Central America, the Andes etc.
emerged to ensure the right of property against external (invaders) or internal enemies
(thieves). States also emerged as an organization designed to make the achievement of
collective works (construction of canals, dams, aqueducts etc.) necessary to the
community as possible. The first states were characterized by exercise absolute and
theocratic power, in which the monarchs were identified with a deity.
The power was justified by his divine nature and was the religious belief of the subjects
that sustained. The first important political experiment in the western world was held in
Greece around the fifth century BC. Greek political unit was the polis, or city-state,
whose government was, at times, democratic. The inhabitants who attained status as
citizens - which were excluded slaves - participated in political institutions. This direct
democracy had its truest expression in Athens.
Greece in antiquity until today, there have been disputes over the conquest of the state.
In the early days, the contest for state power only included the rich and powerful, that is,
the property holders. The vast majority of the population was on the margins of political
struggle. At times, it was used by one faction or another in political struggles, at times,
resulted in wars between factions. The modern state was born in the second half of the
fifteenth century, from the development of mercantile capitalism in countries like
France, England and Spain, and later in Italy.
In the Middle Ages, the theory that the power emanating from the entire community
emerged as a new element. The king or emperor, therefore, should be elected or
accepted as such by his subjects, so that their sovereignty was legitimate. The
transformations that occurred in the fourteenth, fifteenth and sixteenth century, with the
advent of mercantile capitalism and the overcoming of the feudal mode of production,
led to the redefinition of the state that has become strong and centered. Initially
appeared the Absolutist State and then the Liberal State.
The Absolutist State was defended by Thomas Hobbes, English philosopher who
advocated the idea that the sovereign state meant the crowning achievement of a
civilized and rational society. He argued that only the state, a power up of individuals,
ensure safety for all. John Locke, the English theoretical Liberal Revolution, fearing
that a man tried to submit the other to his absolute power, men should delegate powers
to a State, through a social contract, to assure that their natural rights, as well as its
property.
It was in France that the proper sense of the liberal bourgeois revolution was stated as
proposed by the French Revolution itself based on the thought of Jean Jacques
Rousseau, from the book The Social Contract and the guidance document of the French
Revolution that was the Declaration of Human Rights and Citizen. From this moment
on, citizens began to influence the electoral process in the struggles for state power with
the advent of universal suffrage. Despite this, the rich and powerful continued to
exercise state power through the strength of economic power. Citizens only legitimized
through elections the conquest of state power by the dominant classes.
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Throughout human history, the state has always been at the service of the ruling classes.
The social progress made by mankind so far as, for example, the reduction of working
hours, the right to strike, universal suffrage, among others, resulted in concessions from
dominant social classes to cool the struggles undertaken by workers in various parts of
the world. In bourgeois democracies, has occurred throughout history coups with the
implementation of dictatorships when the ruling classes feel threatened in the exercise
of state power by dissatisfied social sectors. In Brazil, for example, the coup that
brought Getulio Vargas to power, and was called the Revolution of 1930 resulted in a
faction fight. The coup happened in 1964 to prevent social sectors to conquest of power
and perform social changes detrimental to the interests of the ruling classes.
The conquest of power by the Bolsheviks in 1917, for example, not resulted of a
popular uprising as most people think. In February 1917, the fall of the Tzar was
actually the result of spontaneous outbursts of discontent and revolt which culminated
in a general strike in St. Petersburg and Moscow and the installation of the interim
government. In November 1917, more precisely, is the Bolshevik party, through the
Military Revolutionary Committee of the Red Guard and, taking the Winter Palace and
puts an end to the Kerensky government. Unlike the Russian Revolution that resulted of
a coup, the Chinese Revolution under the leadership of Mao Zedong led a popular
uprising from the rural area.
A great Marxist thinker, Antonio Gramsci argued that achieving hegemony within civil
society constituted a key problem in the conquest of state power that should begin to be
solved theoretically and politically. In your opinion, win all the subaltern classes to their
political leadership were the first task of the revolutionary proletariat and its political
party. This was a preliminary step to the conquest of the State by the revolutionary
proletariat and its political party. As a fundamental consequence of these considerations
is the realization that the struggle for power requires hard work convincing and
persuasion broad popular strata by the social group that aims to conquer it.
In this sense, Gramsci developed a theory that make feasible the methodical and
systematic occupation by workers of existing strategic spaces, an expansion of the
sphere of civil society to political society organized around the state, which allowed the
conquest of political power process. According to him, in Western societies, the
proposed struggle for radical transformation of the capitalist system and the conquest of
state power by the workers would not only further the insurrectionary via the strict
sense, ie, the seizure of power as a sudden and explosive war of movement (taking over
power) as occurred in Russia of the Tsars in 1917.
Everything suggests that the strategy devised by the PT (Worker Party) for achievement
and maintenance in power in Brazil took into account the lessons of Gramsci. From the
Lula government, in civil society, social sectors were conquered by the PT with the
“Bolsa Familia” income transfer program, in addition to unions and social movements
in general that have been co-opted by PT. The structures of the Brazilian state and state
enterprises were also occupied by members of the PT. More recently, the judiciary was
also conquered after the departure of President Joaquim Barbosa because its presidents
of the Supreme Court and top electoral court former members of PT. The victory of PT
in the presidential elections of October 26 would close the maintenance of the Executive
Branch. Possession of the Executive and the Judiciary, the Legislature would be entirely
at the mercy of the PT. The conquest of the state by PT in Brazil would materialize in
practice.
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From the foregoing, it can be stated that Brazil's future will be dictated by the
hegemonic power of the PT and its allies if Dilma Rousseff win the next elections.
Instead of putting into practice the Gramscian way of social emancipation, we instead
have in Brazil playing the dictatorship exercised by the PRI party that controlled the
political life of Mexico for 71 years, through the control of the state apparatus and a
system based on corruption, forming the "Perfect Dictatorship" term used because the
official party to have been sustained in power without punches preserving the elections
and the multiparty system. The political practice of PT points more towards similar to
the PRI party and not in promoter of true social change in Brazil. It is unfortunate that
the Brazilian people have to choose the next election from a candidate who can lead the
country to a prolonged partisan dictatorship and another candidate that means deepening
the subordination of Brazil to the globalized neoliberal dictatorship.
* Fernando Alcoforado , member of the Bahia Academy of Education, engineer and doctor of Territorial
Planning and Regional Development from the University of Barcelona, a university professor and
consultant in strategic planning, business planning, regional planning and planning of energy systems, is
the author of Globalização (Editora Nobel, São Paulo, 1997), De Collor a FHC- O Brasil e a Nova
(Des)ordem Mundial (Editora Nobel, São Paulo, 1998), Um Projeto para o Brasil (Editora Nobel, São
Paulo, 2000), Os condicionantes do desenvolvimento do Estado da Bahia (Tese de doutorado.
Universidade de Barcelona, http://www.tesisenred.net/handle/10803/1944, 2003), Globalização e
Desenvolvimento (Editora Nobel, São Paulo, 2006), Bahia- Desenvolvimento do Século XVI ao Século XX
e Objetivos Estratégicos na Era Contemporânea (EGBA, Salvador, 2008), The Necessary Conditions of
the Economic and Social Development-The Case of the State of Bahia (VDM Verlag Dr. Muller
Aktiengesellschaft & Co. KG, Saarbrücken, Germany, 2010), Aquecimento Global e Catástrofe
Planetária (P&A Gráfica e Editora, Salvador, 2010), Amazônia Sustentável- Para o progresso do Brasil e
combate ao aquecimento global (Viena- Editora e Gráfica, Santa Cruz do Rio Pardo, São Paulo, 2011)
and Os Fatores Condicionantes do Desenvolvimento Econômico e Social (Editora CRV, Curitiba, 2012),
among others.
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How power of state is conquered

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