"Direito do capital e direito do trabalho": uma leitura crítica de Roberto Lyra Filho

Abstract

This article intends to establish a critical reading of one of the most powerful and erudite interventions made by Roberto Lyra Filho treating on labor law: his small brochure "Capital Law and Labor Law" ("Direito do Capital e Direito do Trabalho"). The work, based on the materialist-dialectic referential, evokes many provocations to the Labor Law reading in the 80ties, as well as in our times, in which the legal protection of workers is profoundly fragile, facing the capital offensive. This paper intends to (i) contextualize the work - which follow the process of social advancement experienced in the country in the early 1980s, fundamental to the process of the so-called redemocratization of the country - pointing to parallels and distinctions with the socio-historical moment in which we live today and highlighting its political and "anti-academic" propositions; (ii) to explain the theoretical repertoire that supports the jurist in his reflections, which evoques not only the Marxian work but also part of the most heterodox (or "non-dogmatic") of Marxists traditions - such as references to Rosa Luxemburg, Karl Liebknecht, Ernest Bloch and Ernest Mandel - in the deep belief of bureaucratically degenerate workers' states - as in the mentions of Trotsky and Rudolf Bahro - and in the french marxists critique of law - especially the works of Gérard Lyon-Caen and Michel Mialle; (iii) to expose the robustness and contradictions that flows from the main points of confrontation proposed by the author, among them the critique of capitalism and the so-called "real socialism" and the need to affirm the "democratic socialism"; the contradictory structural role fulfilled by Labor Law in the capitalist society, since it simultaneously serves the logic of reproduction of the social relation of capital and provides means for its confrontation; the distinctions necessary to approach the Labor Law in relation to its effects on individual and collective relations of work; the critique of an alleged "left positivism" and the practical limits of legality; the importance of the Right of Strike, among others; (iv) discuss the concepts of "Capital Law" and "Labor Law" in his presentation; so that we may (v) conclude the text with critical notes that, aiming at a dialectical derivation of Lyra Filho's elaborations and its adequacy to the contemporary context, aims to reaffirm its originality, actuality and theoretical importance.