SOCIAL CLASSES IN THE BRAZILIAN COUNTRYSIDE UNDER AGROIMPERIALIST CAPITALISM: HISTORICAL FORMATION, TRANSFORMATIONS AND CLASS STRUGGLE

Abstract

This article analyzes the social classes of the Brazilian countryside, understanding rural space as a historically constituted dimension of capitalist social relations, marked by profound inequalities, contradictions, struggles, and conflicts. It is based on the assumption that the agrarian space cannot be interpreted in a peripheral manner or dissociated from the broader dynamics of capitalism, as it is articulated with processes of land concentration, capital centralization, and the reorganization of production relations. The objective of the analysis is to understand how the structural transformations of the Brazilian countryside reconfigure class relations, reproducing and deepening inequalities, contradictions, and struggles among different social subjects. The study adopts a qualitative, theoretical-critical approach, based on bibliographic review and historical-structural analysis of rural social classes. The theoretical framework is situated within the classical tradition, drawing on authors such as Marx, Engels, Lenin, Florestan Fernandes, and Octavio Ianni, among others, mobilizing the category of social class as one of the key analytical tools for understanding social relations in the countryside. It is argued that, in the contemporary context, agroimperialist dynamics operate as relevant mediations in the intensification of conflicts and in the reconfiguration of rural social classes, deepening processes of contradiction, expropriation, labor exploitation, and economic subordination.