Redefining the Role of the Bourgeoisie in Dependent Capitalist Development

Abstract

Passing the torch to the recalcitrant local winners of the neoliberal campaign emanating from the international financial institutions, Eduardo Modiano, the president of the state-owned Banco Nacional de Desenvolvimento Economico e Social (National Bank of Economic and Social Development-BNDES) and coordinator of the Collor administration's Programa Nacional de Desestatizac,o (National Destatization ProgramPND), exhorted the Brazilian to assume the role of agent of development with responsibility and vision as the government promotes the withdrawal of the state from the entrepreneurial space it occupied and to commit itself to the task of expanding the social basis of the economy, enlarging the market, generating more employment, and multiplying the wealth of the country (Jornal da Privatiza9io, 1991: 1). For a class empirically found to be historically weak, lacking a vocation for hegemony or a national project, and structurally dependent on a state that was unquestionably central to the country's industrial transformation (Cardoso, 1964; 1977; Diniz, 1978; Evans, 1982; Diniz and Lima, 1986), this redefinition of its role would appear highly problematic. But if we join Cardoso and Faletto (1979) and Evans (1979) in the view that in this semiperiphery the conquering bourgeoisie has long since been replaced by a power bloc including the sponsor state and both international capital and the elite local bourgeoisie, then it is clear that the withdrawal of the entrepreneurial state will not leave local capital fending for itself. As these dependencistas (Cardoso and Faletto, 1979: 157, 167; Cardoso, 1975: 125134; Evans, 1982: S213-214; 1979: 31, 39-40) further suggest, with the internationalization of the domestic market-the rise of direct investment