By VERA LUCIA AMARAL FERLINI*
Foreword to the newly published book by Caio Prado Júnior
Who, in the intellectual journey of understanding Brazilian reality, did not have Caio Prado Júnior's books as their initiation? Essential studies that are still debated today and indicate research and academic and political positions. Among these is this one Outline of the foundations of economic theory, from 1957, which reveals the author's erudite universe, allowing us to understand the theoretical options of his analyses of Brazilian history.
A multifaceted intellectual and heterodox communist activist, Caio Prado Júnior found strong support in philosophy, sociology and geography, although history was his foundation. Through Marxism, he analyzed Brazil in an attempt to understand its formation and guide its future. He stood out by creating a powerful paradigm in national historiography, and history was the instrument to fulfill his great passion: political action. Not just any political action, but one capable of leading Brazil to autonomy and social equality.
His origins in the São Paulo elite and his concern with the exhaustion of the oligarchic game explain, still in the 1920s, having recently graduated in law, his adherence to the Democratic Party, of a liberal nature. Enthusiastic about the possibilities of change, he participated in the movement that brought Vargas to power in 1930. Disappointed with the direction of Vargasism, however, in 1932 he effectively joined the Communist Party. In 1933, he published Brazil's political evolution, a text of materialist interpretation of Brazilian history that innovated the approach to historical studies.
And this moment of impasse constitutes, in national thought, a rediscovery to find the basis of our identity and direct a national project, as Oliveira Vianna had already attempted.
Alongside Gilberto Freyre, who in Big House & Senzala exposed the racial relations that sustained political patriarchy, and of Sérgio Buarque de Holanda, who in Brazil roots highlighted the cultural identity of the colonizer, Caio Prado Júnior pointed out the political identity based on commercial exploitation, slavery and an imperfect class system.
From 1933 onwards, the political scene became polarized; Caio Prado Júnior, in 1935, actively participated in the National Liberation Alliance (ANL) and was arrested. Released in 1937, he went into exile and deepened his studies in history. The maturation of his positions regarding the nation is evident in Formation of contemporary Brazil, from 1942, a work in which he articulated his axiom for understanding Brazil: the meaning of colonization. A meaning perceptible in duration, in the diachrony that underpins the specificity of our history as a structuring element. This work, which to this day is a paradigm of academic discussions and political guidelines, highlighted the deficiencies of our social formation, inherited from slavery, but which left outside the organic pole of master/slave the large mass of the free population that, on the margins of the synergistic elements of the dominant law and culture, would make Brazil, as Louis Couty said, a country that had a population but no people.
In 1945, the economic focus became the center of Caio Prado Júnior's production, with the publication of Brazil's economic history, a book that exposes the structures of the national economy, emphasizing its ancestral insertion in capitalism and its vulnerability to imperialism.
The end of the Estado Novo and the legalization of the Communist Party encouraged the candidacy and election of Caio Prado Júnior to the Legislative Assembly of the State of São Paulo in 1947. That year, however, the PCB was once again declared illegal, and in early 1948, Caio had his mandate revoked and was arrested shortly thereafter. After his release, his activism and intellectual work gained momentum – Caio, for example, edited the magazine Brasiliense between 1948 and 1955. Fundamentals, with a strong nationalist bias and linked to the PCB.
If the historian's gaze dissected the past, the militant intellectual, when thinking about the present, revealed the possibilities of the future. The destiny of Brazil and the nations formed by colonialism had to find their own structural changes for their development. The Second World War, by shaking the world and indicating a new order, opened up prospects for freedom and socialism. Understanding the nature of these areas and their possibilities for development was a nascent and burning issue. The wave of decolonization after 1945 pointed out the horizon of action and its reflections, and directed the debate on underdevelopment and the specific directions of these economies.
The 1950s brought to the world political scene the struggles for decolonization waged in the context of the Cold War and imperialist dispute. Once again, Caio Prado Júnior's positions on the specificity of countries with colonial formations pointed to the need for political autonomy for economic development. This was a central issue in the discussions of the recently created United Nations and which, inspired by Raúl Prebisch, led to the establishment of ECLAC. The new theoretical instrument to address the problem would be the concept of dualism, which emerged within the commission's thinking, whose analytical framework focused on the idea of unequal development of the world economy, in which pre-capitalist and large-scale agriculture represented the backward sector and the industrial core identified with the capitalist fraction of the economy.
Caio Prado Júnior had two disagreements with ECLAC. The development strategy indicated by the organization was based on the models of hegemonic capitalism, which implied the strengthening of the bourgeoisie in the face of a temporally backward structure and the denial of the specific character of these peripheral societies of colonial formation. In fact, the meaning given to these societies by colonization, their original insertion in the capitalist process, had placed Caio Prado Júnior since the 1930s at odds with the theses of the PCB, which pointed to the former colonies, subjected to imperialism and due to their archaic structure, as an expression of a feudal or semi-feudal economy. This position was reiterated by the party in 1943, at the Mantiqueira Conference, and explicitly defended by Prestes in the 1954 Program, regarding the weight of feudal remnants and support for the progressive character of the bourgeoisie, within the staged strategy of the revolution.
In 1954, he applied to be a professor of political economy at the Faculty of Law of the University of São Paulo. In the competition, held in 1956, he received the title of associate professor, but not the position. His thesis, Guidelines for a Brazilian economic policy, presented the impossibility of repeating in Brazil and other countries with colonial formation the self-sustained development of the imperial centers. This position marked Caio Prado Júnior's struggle for a revolution that, alongside social changes and the colonial structure, would support specific economic policies, based on the historical trajectory and specificities, positions later vigorously defended in the brazilian revolution (1966) History and development (1968) and the agrarian question (1979)
Firm in his position that the development of peripheral countries was not due to a time lag, but to their genesis as colonies, and that solutions had to correspond to national affirmation, Caio Prado Júnior launched the Brasiliense Magazine, a periodical that brought together academic figures and activists between 1955 and 1964, and which was an important means of disseminating nationalist discussions and the political and ideological controversies of the time.
Guidelines for a Brazilian economic policy e Outline of the foundations of economic theoryemerged at the same time and responded to challenges posed to the country's politics and economy. At the end of the Vargas era, development projects and the goals plan pointed, in the populist wave, to industrial growth and progress.
Amidst a vast body of historical and political work, this book is a true introductory course on the subject, structured around the assumption that the economic development of peripheral countries is blocked by their situation of dependence and underdevelopment. It is therefore necessary to restructure their economies on a national basis.
With an introduction and eight chapters, the author leads the reader to the main thesis of the specificity of economies of colonial formation. Right at the beginning, he defends the historical nature of the economy and its understanding within the socio-temporal process of capitalism. He emphasizes the relationships between economic history, the history of economic doctrines and political economy. And he highlights: “The point of view of history would be […] that of the simple succession of those facts. […] But economic history is not a simple chronology, but rather an interpretation and logical systematization as well – just as the claim of political economy to abstract from temporal contingencies is illusory.”[I]. Based on the assumption of unity between theory and practice, the author introduces his reflections, stating that theory cannot be understood or explained without experience, since theory is the theorization of experience, but also practice, action.
It explores economic theory to present the best tools for understanding the era, in which the economy, in connection with the history of Brazil, plays a central role. In five chapters, it discusses the importance of history in the construction of economic theory, and conducts an analysis of political economy as a historical product of capitalism and an instrument of its action. It points out the genesis of economic relations in the process of appropriation of the product and how the division and specialization of labor result in trade and the establishment of the exchange value of economic goods. This mercantile system in which it occurs, of the generalization of economic goods and even of the labor force, is capitalism as interpreted and explained by Smith and Ricardo. However, it is in Marx, in his considerations, in the critique of the limits of classical economics, that the best theory of analysis is found. The strength of Marxism, highlights Caio Prado Júnior, is a result of its historical origin and rigorous objectivity, extracted from natural dynamism.
Using empirical data and critical acuity, this work analyzes, in its two final chapters, the relationship between hegemonic capitalism and peripheral economies, which reiterate their dependence and underdevelopment. Economic development in these areas is not limited to the adoption of modern techniques or the substitution of imports. It is necessary to create conditions for the implementation of these techniques and direct them towards specific objectives. It thus criticizes the simplistic view that considers only the
dissemination of technology as a solution, pointing out that the real challenge is to use this technology strategically for national benefit.
Caio Prado Júnior proposes an economic theory that does not view these countries merely as members of the international capitalist system, but rather seeks economic emancipation and the construction of an autonomous national economy. This perspective implies complex choices between integrating into the international capitalist system or seeking an independent path of development. Integration policies generally promote the opening of markets and the attraction of foreign investment, but result in economic dependence and social inequality. In turn, the emancipation approach prioritizes the strengthening of internal productive capacities, the protection of local markets, and an active role for the State in the economy. The choice between these paths involves historical, political, social, and economic factors, as well as the internal power structure and the dynamics of international relations. The theory proposed by Caio Prado Júnior suggests that this choice should not be static, but adaptable to the changing and specific circumstances of each country, allowing the construction of a development path that meets national needs and aspirations.
The publication of this book is timely because it highlights the importance of history in the constitution and action of the economy. It is a thought-provoking work that confronts us with the dilemma of national development and questions our peripheral insertion in capitalism; it points to the need to create paths, beyond episodic and circumstantial actions. Above all, it is a fundamental work for understanding the evolution of Caiopradian thought and its backbone: the meaning of colonization.
[I] See p. 20 of this volume. (NE)
*Vera Lucia Amaral Ferlini is a Professor in the History Department of the FFLCH of USP, Director of the National Monument Ruins of the Engenho São Jorge dos Erasmos of USP and President of the Management Committee of the Jaime Cortesão Chair of the FFLCH/USP/Instituto Camões. [https://amzn.to/4dHZ4sX]
Reference
Caio Prado Junior. Outline of the foundations of economic theory. São Paulo, Boitempo, 2024, 280 pages. [https://amzn.to/4h2fgIi]
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