TITLE: Modes of production in the history of Brazil: a contribution from the Marxist theory of law
ABSTRACT: This paper aims to contribute to the debate about the modes of production in the history of Brazil, within which three theses formed: those of the feudal, capitalist and colonial slave modes of production. From a Marxist school of legal theory, the crystallization of law as a form of social regulation historically accompanies the emergence of capitalism. Thus, the archival sources sought evidence of the emergence of the legal form, which can be considered as an indication, at one or another historical moment, of the emergence of capitalism. Since the colonial slavery thesis predicts a Brazilian bourgeois revolution during the nineteenth-century abolitionist cycle, and the capitalist thesis, one during the twentieth-century developmental period. While the capitalist thesis does not foresee revolutionary breakthroughs, one can contribute to the debate described when the legal form begins to appear in the sources.