Editing Landless Workers' Movement (section)

=== Ideological foundations of MST's later activism===

The supposed opposition to capitalist modernity on the part of the movement<ref>Jagdish N. Bhagwati,''In defense of globalization'', 24, which equates MST activism with the late mediaeval and early modern anti-[[usury]] laws</ref> has led authors to ascertain that the MST activities express, in a way, the ''decline'' of a traditional peasantry, and its desire of ''restoring'' traditional communal rights.<ref>Anthony W. Pereira, ''The end of the peasantry: the rural labor movement in northeast Brazil''. University of Pittisburgh Press: 1997, {{ISBN|0-8229-3964-9}},page 165</ref> This is what differentiates between the MST and a movement for the ''preservation'' of communal rights, such as the [[Zapatista Army of National Liberation]].<ref>Henry Veltmeyer, Tom Brass: ''Latin American peasants''. London, Frank Cass, 2003, {{ISBN|0-203-50566-2}}, page 312</ref>

However, there are others who assert that instead of expressing the "decline" of the peasantry, the MST, developing as it was in Brazil, a country where agriculture has been tied to commodity production since colonial times, expresses the ''absence'' of a proper peasantry,<ref>Joan Martínez Alier, ''Ecologia dei poveri. La Lotta per la giustizia ambientale''. Milan: Jaca Book, 2009, {{ISBN|978-88-16-40840-1}}, page 341</ref> and has, as its social basis, a rural working class that strives to gain a foothold in the field of capitalist production. As remarked by non-specialist foreign onlookers, the MST's tagging of the landless as "rural workers"—i.e. proletarians, in the Marxist sense—appears sometimes more as a purely ideological branding than anything else.<ref>Ana Sofia Ganho, Timothy Michael McGovern, ''Using Portuguese: A Guide to Contemporary Usage''. Cambridge (UK): Cambridge University Press, 2004, {{ISBN|0-521-79663-6}}, page 17</ref>

According even to a Leftist scholar like [[James Petras]], the MST is undoubtedly a ''modernizing'' social movement, in that its main goal is to convert fallow states into viable units that are able to produce a marketable surplus—"to occupy, resist, and ''produce,''" as the movement's own motto goes.<ref>James F. Petras, ''The new development politics: the age of empire building and new social movements''. Aldershot: Ashgate Publishing,2003, {{ISBN|0-7546-3540-6}}, page 97</ref> It is also not a movement with a clear-cut anti-capitalist stance, as what it seeks is to "create a land reform based on small individual property-owners."<ref>David Nugent,& Joan Vincent, eds. ''A companion to the anthropology of politics''. Malden, MA: Blackwel, {{ISBN|0-631-22972-8}}, page 346</ref> As far as its steads are concerned, the movement has adopted a mostly private enterprise-friendly stance: with the monies it has procured, it has financed mechanization, processing enterprises, livestock breeding, as well as granting access to additional credit sources.<ref>Haro Brookfield, H. C. Brookfield, Helen Parsons, ''Family farms: survival and prospect : a world-wide analysis''. Abingdon: Routledge, 2007, {{ISBN|0-203-93597-7}}, page 169</ref> Some even see the movement's aims as "quite limited," as in practice, it tends to merely provide a chance for some people "to interact with the [ruling] capitalist economy"<ref>Anil Hira, ''An East Asian model for Latin American success: the new path''. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007, {{ISBN|978-0-7546-7108-4}}, page xii</ref> by means of a kind of "guerrilla capitalism," aimed at ensuring that smaller producers' associations carve a share of the market for agrarian produce against the competition of mammoth agribusiness trusts.<ref>Michel DuQuette, ''Collective Action and Radicalism in Brazil'',145</ref>

In the view of Marxist authors, like Petras and Veltmeyer, such a stance would reflect the incapacity of a heterogeneous coalition of rural people to engage in a broad, anti-systemic coalition, which would include the urban working classes.<ref>Tom Brass,ed., ''Latin American Peasants''. London: Frank Cass Publishers, 2003, {{ISBN|0-7146-8319-1}}, page 15</ref> Shunning this Marxist paradigm, other authors see in the rhetoric of the MST the reflection of an ideological struggle, not for taking power, but for ''recognizance'', for "reconstituting the diversity of rural Brazil".<ref>Malcolm K. McNee, "Soundtracking landlessness", IN [[Idelber Avelar]] & Christopher Dunn, eds., ''Brazilian Popular Music and Citizenship''. Duke University Press, 2011, page 151</ref> This struggle for recognizance - despite its being couched in fiery radical rhetoric - is seen by some as "indeed relevant for the democratization of 'rural society', but [it does] not entail political motivations destined to promote ruptures".<ref>Zander Navarro, "'Mobilization without emancipation': the social struggles of the landless in Brazil". IN Boaventura De Sousa Santos, ed., ''Another Production Is Possible: beyond the capitalist canon''. London: Verso, 2006, {{ISBN|978-1-84467-078-9}}, page 156</ref> In even more blunt terms, a recent academic paper asserts that the ideology of the MST, connected as it is in practice with the landlesss' concrete needs for making out a living in the countryside, is above all an ''edible'' ideology.<ref>Wendy Wolford, "Edible Ideology? Survival Strategies in Brazilian Land-Reform Settlements".''Geographical Review'', Vol. 86, No. 3, July 1996, pp.&nbsp;457–461</ref> A recent German handbook describes the MST as a mere ''pressure group'', unable to exert actual political power.<ref>Markus Porsche-Ludwig,Wolfgang Gieler,Jürgen Bellers, eds., ''Handbuch Sozialpolitiken der Welt''. Münster: LIT Verlag, 2013, {{ISBN|978-3-643-10987-3}} , page 140</ref> Other authors, however, maintain that the interest of the MST in maximize its members' everyday participation in the running of their own affairs is enough to describe the movement as "socialist" in a broad sense.<ref>[[Steve Ellner]], ed., ''Latin America's Radical Left: Challenges and Complexities of Political Power in the Twenty-first Century'' . Lanham, MA: Rowman & Littlefield, 2014, {{ISBN|978-1-4422-2948-8}} , page 39</ref>