Problems of advanced industrialization in late and peripheral capitalisms

Abstract

This essay analyzes problems of capitalist dynamics in a peripheral economy where the modernity of industrial development coexists with the persistence of relations typical of underdevelopment. It argues that in order to understand the full picture of the “structural heterogeneity” of Brazilian society, it is necessary to analytically separate the problems of the dynamics of late industrialization from those arising from the historical formation of the nation. Thus, in order to rethink the problems of capitalist development in Brazil, it is necessary to differentiate between three orders of structural problems: (a) issues relating to the difficulty of articulating inter-industrial relations in the face of the transplantation of technologies and productive arrangements originating in developed countries to an economy constituted through a process of late and peripheral industrialization; (b) issues relating to production and consumption patterns derived from the organization of domestic markets, in which the predominance of large multinational companies imposes and generalizes their forms of competition; and (c) issues arising from the structure and functioning of urban labor markets, marked by segmentation, marginalization and a structural surplus of labor, and which refer to poverty and the social question.