Territoriality, Class Struggle, and the Human–Nature Relationship among the Babaçu Coconut Breakers

Abstract

In the face of the profound and catastrophic climate, economic, and civilizational crisis affecting the planet, with multiple collapse processes unfolding and gaining scale, it is essential to understand the strutural economics roots of this problem. This study is based on the hypothesis that overcoming this crisis requires confronting the class struggle. It holds that only through a critical analysis of political economy is it possible to identify and construct concrete alternatives for new forms of social and productive organization, more humane and ecologically sustainable, where social and natural metabolisms are integrated into a closed cycle, without open rifts. In the context of Brazilian reality, it is essential to identify classes, groups, and communities of workers, men and women, whose production and reproduction of life are in conflict with the advance of capital. Supporting these causes is fundamental for building alliances that aim, ultimately, at a radical transformation of reality through an ecosocialist transition. For this reason, an immanent and theoretical-critical approach to productive activity, territoriality, the organization of class struggle, and the human–nature relationship, as expressed in the experience of the quebradeiras de coco babaçu (babaçu coconut breakers), is justified. The study seeks to reflect on the emancipatory potentials of these experiences in the face of the structural crisis of capitalism. It concludes that the community organization of the coconut breakers represents a concrete example of resistance to capital expansion, pointing to alternative forms of sociability and sustainability that constructively engage with ecosocialist proposals.