Abstract
This article analyzes the theoretical-conceptual and political adhesion to democracy by a group of Brazilian communist intellectuals throughout the 1970s and 1980s. It presents the historical hypothesis that the publishing of Carlos Nelson Coutinho’s essay “Democracy as a universal value”, in 1979, is the decisive moment in terms of adhesion to democracy by Marxist intellectuals, particularly those linked to communism, in Brazil. This article also presents a particular interpretation of how the movement towards adhesion to political democracy was accomplished and justified from a renewed Marxist theoretical-conceptual framework - with concepts from Lukács, Gramsci and Lenin.
Keywords:
Brazilian Marxism; Democracy; Communism; Carlos Nelson Coutinho