Brazil: The Triumph of 'Savage Capitalism'

Abstract

The great majority of the articles reviewed here were published in 1982-1983 and are concerned with contemporary politics, economic development, and issues of public policy.1 Taken as a whole they provide a rounded and largely internally consistent account of the triumph of 'savage capitalism' in Brazil, and its social, political and cultural consequences. A further substantial group of articles dealing with the periods of the Empire and the First Republic illuminates the origins ofthe process of state-led dependent development. Foremost among the latter is Carvalho (1982b), who discusses the factors behind Brazil's avoidance of the post-independence divisions and fragmentation experienced by Spanish America. He argues that 'the presence in Brazil by the time of independence of an elite that by the place and content of training, by career pattern and occupational experience, constituted a closely united group of people, ideologically homogeneous, statist oriented, and practical in government matters, was a basic factor in the maintenance of the unity of the former colony and in the adoption of a centralized monarchical system' (p. 390). His rejection of alternative explanations for the divergent experiences of Spanish and Portuguese America and discussion of the creation ofa unified elite trained at Coimbra in civil law and channelled into public office as magistrates and judges in Brazil, with the consequent emergence of a separate 'state' interest, will become classic points of reference. On a more modest scale, Ridings (1982) finds from an analysis of records of contributors to the Industries and Professions tax in the last two decades of the Empire that business elites were overwhelmingly foreign. This applied even to the coffee comissarios and the pro-tariff hat makers. The overwhelming presence of Portuguese among this elite, many with Brazilian heirs, and the 'nationalism' of those whose interests dictated it render invalid the conclusion that the data help to explain 'the strength and endurance of Brazil's traditional export-import economy and the nation's sense of ties of economic dependency toward the developed world' (p. 96). A second, slighter piece by Ridings (1983), displaying great knowledge to little effect, confirms the impression that he has squeezed himself dry. Of more specialized interest is Colson's (1983) account, in a good set of papers, of Brazilian finances in the bridging years between 1886 and 1892. Cammack (1982a) charts the rise to prominence of the state of Minas Gerais in the early years of the Republic, relating it to the crisis which hit the rapidly expanding coffee economy in the late 1890s, and its paradoxical effect of uniting different producer interests in Minas around a common programme, and allying them with the powerful leaders of Sao Paulo. The implication is that programmatic concerns have greater explanatory power than ties of patronage. Bak (1983) similarly brings out the significance of regional political economy in her analysis