Robert McNamara practically branded the phrase ‘combat poverty’ after he resigned as US President Lyndon Johnson's secretary of defence to become president of the World Bank in 1968. War was in the air, from Vietnam to Johnson's ‘War on Poverty’. It is difficult to ignore the parallel when reading the title of the book under review. When you battle against poverty or social inequality, who is your enemy – these symptoms or their causes? For the World Bank, as many critics have argued, the target was the manifestation and the solution was money. In this collection of studies organised by Miguel Carter, a Paraguayan political scientist trained at Colombia University, the target is a cause – land concentration – and the solution land reform. For the 19 authors assembled in the book, a domestic social movement and not a foreign financial institution has been the leading strategist in the war to more equitably distribute Brazilian wealth and citizenship.

The book is divided into four parts, with an extensive introduction and thorough conclusion written by Carter. Carter introduces the Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra (Landless Rural Workers' Movement, MST) as the grassroots organisation that has played a leading role in reviving Brazilian democracy following a 20-year dictatorship that started with a coup d’état in 1964. By advocating for land reform, the MST mobilises the rural and urban poor to take responsibility for themselves, demand of the government enforcement of constitutional rights and thus establish land reform settlements that will provide them with a means of ending the country's endemic social inequality. In the conclusion, Carter usefully summarises the findings of the contributors and explores two additional themes, including criticisms of the MST and prospects for the future of land reform in Brazil.

Although no historians participated in the book, its organisation is essentially historical. Part I contains three articles that analyse post-Second World War agricultural development in Brazil – the so-called agrarian question – from economic, social and political perspectives. This part establishes for the reader the contemporary roots of the situation that the MST confronts, including a concentrated land ownership structure and a heritage of diverse attempts to overcome related problems. Part II contains four chapters that examine the struggle for land as a popular process of territorial occupation turned into a systematic strategy in 1984 with the founding of the MST. This part historicises the organisation and addresses its complexity as a social movement born in southern Brazil but active in varied regional settings. Part III looks at the consequences of land struggle and the challenges of agrarian reform after the land has been distributed and settlements established by the government. It underscores the fact that land reform is a process in which obtaining parcels initiates an equally difficult chapter in the struggle, that of agricultural production. The two struggles together – that for the land and that on the land – are held to be necessary for both the revival of democracy and the social mobility of the poor. The fourth part of the book contains five chapters that assess the influence of the MST on Brazil's political and social life.

While each part offers powerful insights from a generally pro-MST perspective, the final part is the most provocative as it provides answers to one of the most challenging questions faced today by social movements – what good are they? As globalisation has revealed more of the world to more people and the media has sought drama in the real-life suffering of the multitude, a sense of disorder – especially titillated by ‘terrorist attacks’ – has led many to question seemingly uncontrolled forces like social movements. After 9/11, the US State Department urged Brazil to target the MST for investigation as if it were a terrorist group, giving credibility to right-wing allegations that it operated military-style training camps and subversive schools. Veja, a popular Brazilian newsweekly much like Time magazine, jumped on the bandwagon with layouts and articles that endeavoured to defame the organisation by demonstrating supposed parallels with Al Qaeda.

The attacks threw the MST off its game, as the confusion they aroused helped the civic organisation's opponents justify repression when the so-called rural caucus (bancada ruralista) in Parliament succeeded in establishing commissions of inquiry that, despite the objections of a hostile executive branch, forced the MST into retreat. Weakened organisationally and publicly embarrassed, the MST and its allies failed to mount an effective defence against a landlord-driven attack on established forest-preservation environmental laws in 2012 and the pace of settlement creation has come to a standstill.

Although these recent events are not discussed in Carter's book, the authors selected explain in detail the gradual but explicit process of outcasting the MST during the first decade of the twenty-first century. The essayists and scholars of the collection are unanimous in presenting the MST ‘as the most important civic organisation in Brazilian history’ (p. 407) and share Carter's optimism that the movement's commitment to the rule of law will lead it forward in overcoming recent setbacks. Carter takes up this apparent paradox in concluding the book with a discussion of the MST as a practical lesson in a form of radical democracy that has the power to inspire imitation on a global scale. He sees it as representing a leftist repudiation of twentieth-century revolutionary models established by the communist parties of Russia and China. Unlike revolutionary movements aimed at conquering power, the MST seeks to express the interests and needs of the poor and to consolidate these demands in a direct action pressure group that has enough force to oblige a democratic state to act and rule in favour of the majority. This is how the MST combats social inequality.

Perhaps a still greater contribution of the book is the fact that it collects in one volume many of the most skilled analysts of the MST, especially those well known in Brazil but little known outside the country. These 13 writers, including Bernardo Mançano Fernandes, Guilherme Delgado, Horacio Martin de Carvalho, Ivo Poletto and Leonilde Medeiros, are major contributors to the agrarian reform debate in Brazil. The articles Carter has painstakingly developed with each of them represent well their key arguments. It is a pity the book was not simultaneously published in English; hopefully an updated edition will soon be produced and published for these readers, as they are the ones who most need to understand that the protagonists of any real fight for social justice must be those most affected by the exploitative systems they seek to transform.