Abstract
This article aims to revisit in a comprehensive and essayistic way the discussion on the protoforms, genesis and consolidation of the “social question” in Brazil, based on Marx's historical-dialectical materialism and rescuing the contributions of Florestan Fernandes and Octavio Ianni regarding Brazilian social formation, with some contributions from the works of Jacob Gorender, Clóvis Moura and Carlos Nelson Coutinho. Its expository path starts from the universal dimension of the genesis and development of bourgeois sociability to consider the national particularity inserted in this context. The first topic addresses the proto-forms of the “social question” in Brazil and, in the second topic, the genesis and consolidation of the Brazilian “social question” are discussed. Finally, the relevance of Florestan's characterization of dependent capitalism is concluded, formed through the double articulation of internal segregation and external domination, also reaffirming racism as a negative social mark that constitutes one of the dimensions of the essence of the “social question” in our particularity.
Keywords:
Social question; Brazilian social formation; Slavery; Dependent capitalism; Racism