“The Ornithorhyncus”: 20 Years later

Abstract

The present work retrieves the criticism present in “O Ornitorrinco”, a famous essay from the last phase of the theoretical production of the Marxist sociologist Francisco de Oliveira, which discusses the structure of the Brazilian economy at the beginning of this century is discussed, characterizing it as an “evolutionary impasse”, similar to the animal that gives the essay its title. Published at a moment of great euphoria when Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva took office as President in his first term, the text, in contrast to this, confirms Oliveira as one of the few staunch critics of the new government in its initial stage. Indeed, by identifying, very early on, the project of the PT administration as being in continuity with its predecessor, FHC, he understood it both as a blow to the hopes of social transformation and as a great wasted opportunity. It was, for him, therefore, a political project that would confirm the country in the historical limbo between what was then “most primitive” and “most advanced”, functioning in a complex and organic whole solely to confirm and deepen what the Brazilian capitalist society had historically produced as its most brutal features. The article makes a brief (not exhaustive) assessment of Oliveira’s analysis in dialogue with some points that seek to characterize the country’s reality exactly 20 years later, at the moment when Lula begins his third term as President.