Power, counter-conduct, and societies against the State
The history of Brazil can be read as a succession of attempts to capture life through power mechanisms—colonial, imperial, republican—and, simultaneously, as a succession of failures of this capture. These failures have a historical name: popular revolts. These are not occasional deviations from order, but recurring expressions of counter-conduct, in the Foucauldian sense, that is, collective practices that refuse to be governed in the way they are intended to be governed.
Michel Foucault observes that where there is power, there is resistance, but that this resistance is not external to power: it is born within social relations (Microphysics of Power). Brazilian history confirms this formulation forcefully. Popular revolts do not arise outside the process of domination; they arise as a direct response to the intensification of exploitation, discipline, and control.
Before the State: Resistance as a Mode of Existence (16th–17th Centuries)
The European invasion encountered indigenous societies that, far from being politically “incomplete,” were organized in such a way as to prevent the permanent concentration of power. Pierre Clastres demonstrates that many indigenous societies did not ignore the State: they actively rejected it (Society Against the State). War, in this context, was not disorder, but a political mechanism for preserving collective autonomy.
Indigenous resistance in colonial Brazil—such as the Tamoio Confederation—must be understood as concrete anti-state practices, not as instinctive reactions. Colonization could only advance through continuous warfare, forced settlement, and the systematic destruction of these ways of life, as John Manuel Monteiro demonstrates (Blacks of the Land).
With the implementation of African slavery, colonial power shifted its focus to the total control of bodies. Here, Foucault’s analysis of disciplinary power becomes central: the slave system was a technology of government based on surveillance, exemplary punishment, and the normalization of violence. The quilombos—especially Palmares—then appear as zones of escape from colonial biopower.
Edgar Rodrigues, in his libertarian historiographical work, insists that the quilombos (maroon settlements) were not on the margins of the system, but frontal negations of the slave order, experiences of self-management and solidarity built under permanent persecution (Os Companheiros, Nacionalismo & Cultura Social). The extermination of Palmares confirms Clastres’ thesis: the State cannot tolerate societies that demonstrate, in practice, that it is not necessary.
18th Century: When resistance becomes a political crime
In the 18th century, colonial power became rationalized. Domination no longer depended solely on brute force, but on taxes, laws, and bureaucracies. Foucault describes this process as the transition to more capillary forms of power, which penetrate daily life (Security, Territory, Population).
The Vila Rica Revolt and the Bahian Conspiracy express this moment. Popular sectors began to resist not only material exploitation, but also the legitimacy of the social order. The Bahian Conspiracy, by articulating racial, social, and political equality, broke with the colonial pact of submission. João José Reis demonstrates that its participants were predominantly urban workers and Black people (Slave Rebellion in Brazil).
David Graeber argues that inequality is sustained by moral narratives that naturalize obedience (Debt: The First 5,000 Years). When these narratives are broken—as occurred in Bahia in 1798—the State responds with extreme violence, because its symbolic authority has been threatened.
19th Century: The Nation-State as a Pacification Machine
Independence and the Empire did not break with colonial logic; they merely internalized the enemy. The people became the primary object of pacification. The revolts of the Regency period—Cabanagem, Balaiada, Malês—should be read as insurrections against state centralization.
In the Cabanagem, indigenous, black, and urban poor populations seized control of the provincial government. Magda Ricci demonstrates that this experience was crushed by a repression that eliminated a significant portion of the population (The Cabanagem). Foucault describes this type of response as the exercise of sovereign power in its most naked form: to kill in order to reaffirm authority.
Canudos, at the end of the 19th century, perhaps represents the clearest case of a society refusing to be governed. The rural community organized work, land, and daily life outside of state administration and the market. Euclides da Cunha recorded that the Republic mobilized its entire military apparatus to destroy this experience (Os Sertões).
For Graeber, communities like Canudos reveal something intolerable to the modern state: the real possibility of social organization without centralized bureaucracy (Fragments of an Anarchist Anthropology). Therefore, they were annihilated.
20th Century: Anarchism, Direct Action, and Modern Counter-Conducts
At the beginning of the 20th century, state power became urbanized and technologized. The Vaccine Revolt reveals what Foucault called biopolitics: the government of bodies in the name of public health, without popular participation. Nicolau Sevcenko demonstrates that the revolt was a response to the authoritarian imposition of urban order (The Vaccine Revolt).
The General Strike of 1917 marks the moment when the counter-conduct becomes explicitly organized. Influenced by anarchism, the labor movement rejected parties and elections, betting on direct action. Edgar Rodrigues extensively documents the role of anarchism in the formation of the Brazilian working class (Socialism and Syndicalism in Brazil).
Here, Graeber’s reading is crucial: anarchist movements do not seek to seize power, but to render power irrelevant, creating forms of life based on horizontality and mutual support. This explains why they were systematically repressed, even when they did not represent an immediate institutional threat.
Dictatorship, democracy, and the continuity of control
The military dictatorship made explicit the violent character of the State, but redemocratization did not eliminate its fundamental mechanisms. It only refined them. Foucault already warned that modern power does not disappear; it reorganizes itself.
Recent popular mobilizations—from land occupations to the June 2013 protests—express a profound crisis of representation. Graeber interprets this type of revolt as a sign of the exhaustion of traditional forms of government and the search for horizontal practices that are still unstable, but persistent (The Democracy Project).
Conclusion: Brazil as a Territory of Societies Against the State
The history of popular revolts in Brazil confirms a central hypothesis of anarchist thought: the State is not a natural result of social life, but a historical imposition sustained by violence. Whenever populations have managed to organize life in a relatively autonomous way, the State has responded with extermination, criminalization, or co-optation.
Edgar Rodrigues insisted that official history silences these experiences because they disprove the myth of the necessity of power. Clastres demonstrated that societies can exist against the State. Foucault showed that power is never total. Graeber reminded us that political imagination precedes the institution.
The timeline of popular revolts in Brazil does not point to conciliation, but to the persistence of conflict. It is not a matter of a superseded past, but of a historical structure still in progress. Wherever there is imposed government, there will be counter-conduct.
Wherever there is domination, there will be revolt!
In the struggle, we are dignified and free people!
Key References
Bakunin, M. Statism and Anarchy
Clastres, P. Society Against the State
Foucault, M. Microphysics of Power; Security, Territory, Population
Graeber, D. Debt; Fragments of an Anarchist Anthropology; The Democracy Project
Rodrigues, E. Socialism and Syndicalism in Brazil; The Comrades
Reis, J. J. Slave Rebellion in Brazil
Monteiro, J. M. Blacks of the Land
