Artigo



Dados n. 10 Rio de Janeiro 1973

Desenvolvimento Econômico e Política Patrimonial

Schwartzman, Simon

Resumo

The historical experience of Canada, Australia and New Zealand, among other countries, led to the "staple theory" of development, according to which countries industrialize and modernize thanks to the comparative advantages of a single or a few export products. The failure of countries like Argentina, producer of meat, wool and cereals, and Brazil, producer of coffee, to achieve the same results, led to the notion that the theory of comparative advantages does not hold. The alternative theory, used to explain the lack of development of Latin American countries, holds that the classic theory of international division of labor leads to economic dependence, progressive worsening of the terms of trade between primary and industrialized products, social and institutional indifferentiation due to the "plantation" type of economic organization, and so on. According to this view, the export sectors tend to become a conservative, traditional and anti-industrialist power group which would forestall all attempts to shift the country and its economy to modem industrialized patterns. Only external crises could influence this status quo, giving opportunities for import substitution, to the rise of middle sectors to positions of political influence, and ultimately to industrialization. What this "crisis theory" does not explain is why it presumably worked in Latin America but not in the "new" agricultural countries of the Commonwealth. This inquiry leads ultimately to the reformulation of the crisis theory; to the notion that the factors that stimulated, in some cases, and inhibited, in others, the process of industrialization, are related to the way the staple product and the economic system created by it are placed in the political and social conte{<( of the country. ln the case of Brazil, the coffee industry developed in a State which was relatively marginal to the national political system, which was patrimonialistic in nature and not geared to defend and support the expansion of a dynamic export product. The duality between the economic and the political centers of the country was. not a simple matter of group differentiation, but acquired the characteristics of regional imbalances and geographic cleavages. A proper understanding of the relationships between the more capitalist, export sector of the economy and the patrimonialistic organization oi the political system is essential if the conceptual deadlock between staple vs. crisis theories of development is to be overcome.

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Desenvolvimento Econômico e Política Patrimonial