Transforming Brazil: A History of National Development in the Postwar Era: A History of National Development in the Postwar Era by Rafael Rossotto Ioris

Author:Rafael Rossotto Ioris [Ioris, Rafael Rossotto]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Political Science, Political Process, General, History & Theory
ISBN: 9781317680024
Google: 0xCLAwAAQBAJ
Goodreads: 22214497
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2014-05-09T00:00:00+00:00

Similarly, Roberto Campos, a leading figure in the formulation and implementation of the Targets Plan, believed that the reasons for the economic underdevelopment of the country rested mainly in the absence of investment capital and the low purchasing power of its population. Therefore, in his view, for economic development to occur what was most needed was the attraction of large sums of foreign investment to selected economic projects and that inflationary spending be kept at bay. Particularly during his tenures as director and president of the National Bank of Economic Development and executive director of the Council of Development, Campos consistently argued against the notion that the federal government should seek to attend to the basic social needs of the population by becoming the main promoter of economic development via excessive public expenditures.60

Conversely, given the insufficient rate of domestic savings, the main task the government should undertake, in his view, was to convince foreign investors to set up shop in the county so that higher rates of economic performance could be reached. The influential bureaucrat repeatedly argued that, “the option of development requires above all everyone’s acceptance of the fact that fast economic growth, not socially oriented disbursement, is the main responsibility at hand and the only way to reduce social economic inequalities.”61 Moreover, even though he accepted the ECLA-espoused notion that industrialization was a preferred course toward improving per capita income in agriculture-based economies, Campos consistently warned that this goal should not be pursued at the cost of inflation, and that an industrial path would only be feasible if agricultural production and exports continued to be supported, including with more equitable terms of trade in the international commodity markets.62 Persistent rates of inflation such as those seen in Brazil in the mid-1950s were seen as incompatible with a consistent and sustainable path of economic development as they “distort the possibility of governmental and business planning […] [and] heighten social conflicts due to the erosion of living standards of waged workers […] leading to an overall process of decreased productivity and stagnated growth.”63

Interestingly, coming from someone who later would be consensually considered to be at the opposing end of the ideological spectrum, Celso Furtado, Campos’s former associate at the ECLA-BNDE Joint-Group, had also called attention to the perils of assuming that effective social development would be a natural outcome of fast-paced industrialization, which, if left to its own devices, was more likely to result in increased regional and socio-economic disparities.64 Campos and Furtado indeed espoused similar developmental agendas in the 1950s, but as the decade came to an end their political programs and affiliations gradually diverged, culminating in the different trajectories they followed under the military regime of the 1960s and 1970s. Whereas Campos would occupy key positions in the first authoritarian administration of Castelo Branco (1964–67), Furtado, who had become a key player during Goulart’s disruptive years in power (1961–64), would be forced into a long exile. Differing personal paths notwithstanding, in examining closely their respective assessments of the policies pursued under Kubitschek, important convergences come to the foreground.

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