Fernando Alcoforado*
“Think outside the box” is a phrase from the English. When this expression is used, it is usually referring to the ability to think of non-standard creative solutions for whatever problem is presented. Engaging in looking for new things, looking at them from another angle, looking for new alternatives that meet your needs is the starting point for thinking outside the box. It was by thinking outside the box that Immanuel Wallerstein, recently deceased, broke the paradigm of analysis of the development process by formulating the theory of the world system. Wallerstein argued that the unit of analysis should be the “world system” rather than the nation state in which the economic, political, and socio-cultural spheres are viewed as closely connected and not separated according to the traditional approach. In other words, Wallerstein considered it a methodological mistake to analyze a nation state in isolation from the context of the “world system”.
According to Immanuel Wallerstein, the world economy is governed by a system, the capitalist world-system that is composed of a division between center, periphery and semi-periphery and that emerged in the 16th century at the beginning of the globalization process with the great navigations inaugurated with the discovery of America. The most developed countries in the world are part of the center of the world system which is part of the organic core of the world capitalist economy, ie the countries of Western Europe (Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, Scandinavia, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, France, United Kingdom and Italy), North America (United States and Canada), Oceania (Australia and New Zealand) and Japan. For Wallerstein, the center is the area of major technological development that produces complex products; The periphery is the area that supplies raw materials, agricultural products and cheap labor to the center. The economic exchange between the periphery and the center is unequal: the periphery has to sell its products cheaply while buying the products of the center dearly. Semiperiphery is an intermediate development region that functions as a center for the periphery and a periphery for the center (WALLERSTEIN, Immanuel. The modern world system – Vol. 1, 2, 3. Berkeley and Los Angelis: University of California Press, 2011).
The semi periphery is characterized by Wallerstein as a structural element necessary for playing a stabilizing role between countries in the international system similar to that of the middle class within the class configuration in a country. The semi-periphery would also assume a function, in Arrighi’s words, of “systemic legitimation”, showing the periphery that there is the possibility of mobility within the international division of labor for those who are sufficiently “capable” and / or “well-behaved”. According to Arrighi, the semi-peripheral condition is described as one in which a significant number of national states such as Brazil remain permanently stationed between central and peripheral conditions, and which, despite having undergone far-reaching social and economic transformations, continues to exist relatively backwardness in important respects [ARRIGHI, Giovanni. A ilusão do desenvolvimento (The illusion of development). Petrópolis: Vozes, 1997].
It can be said that one of the reasons for the failure to promote the economic and social development of almost all peripheral and semi-peripheral countries of the world can be attributed to the fact that the governments of these countries do not think “out of the box” formulating their development process with emphasis on the analysis of the internal factors of each country in the promotion of national development, that is, in isolation from the capitalist world-system. The new theoretical framework for analyzing a nation’s economic system should take into account the capitalist world-system proposed by Wallerstein, which contrasts with the Cartesian method that formulates the development of the national economic system in isolation. This is one of the reasons for the failure of national developmentalism and the establishment of real socialism that resulted from the fact that its mentors admitted to promoting national economic and social development without regard for the existence of the capitalist world-system (WALLERSTEIN, Immanuel. Unthinking Social Science. Cambridge: Polity Press, 1991).
World-system theory was formulated by Immanuel Wallerstein and its main thinkers André Gunder Frank, Samir Amin, Giovanni Arrighi and Theotonio dos Santos, intellectuals linked to the “theory of dependence”, who claim that “dependence” expresses subordination of the peripheral and semi-peripheral countries in relation to the central capitalist countries whose economic backwardness was not forged by their agrarian-exporting condition or their pre-capitalist heritage, but by the pattern of dependent capitalist development of the country and its subordinate insertion in world capitalism. Therefore, overcoming underdevelopment in peripheral and semi-peripheral countries should result from the end of dependence and not on the modernization and industrialization of the economy as advocated, for example, by ECLAC (Economic Commission for Latin America) in the 1950s. This fact confirms, for example, the misconception of Brazil’s development relying on foreign capital and foreign technology adopted since 1955 with the Juscelino Kubitscheck government and the deepening of this dependence on the adoption of the neoliberal economic model since 1990.
One fact is evident: the transformation from peripheral or semi-peripheral capitalist country to the condition of developed is quite difficult to accomplish as Arrighi demonstrated in his book A ilusão do desenvolvimento (The Illusion of Development). After World War II, Japan and Italy were the only countries that emerged from the semiperipheral to the core of developed countries, and South Korea was the only country on the periphery of the capitalist world-system that evolved into semi-peripheral condition [ARRIGHI, Giovanni. A ilusão do desenvolvimento (The illusion of development). Petrópolis: Vozes, 1997]. The thesis, after World War II, that it would be possible for all peripheral and semi-peripheral nations to reach the high-level stage of development enjoyed by the central capitalist countries, especially the United States, was not realized. Beginning in the second half of the twentieth century, there have been several attempts to promote economic and social development in many of the world’s countries that have failed be those situated in the framework of capitalism with national developmentalism, for example, in Brazil and those with the implantation of socialism
It can be said that peripheral and semi-peripheral capitalist countries such as Brazil will only promote their development if their external dependence (economic and technological) is brought to an end on the central capitalist countries as did, for example, Japan, South Korea and China in the second half of the twentieth century. Achieving the economic and technological break with the central capitalist countries does not mean autarchic development, but rather to promote the internal development of the country with selective foreign economic openness as did Japan, South Korea and China in the 1970s, 1980 and 1990, respectively. The breaking of dependence means active state participation in the planning of the national economy aiming at the development of the productive forces of the country and the internal market, the domestic production in substitution of imported products and for export, the development of own technology and the formation of internal savings in the amount necessary not to depend on foreign capital for investment. This strategy would enable the national economy to expand by generating enough business and jobs to meet the country’s needs, as well as mitigating the impact of crises occurring in the world economy as a result of the US-led trade war against China and possible explosion of the world debt bubble.
Countries, such as Brazil, that have not overcome their foreign dependency by adhering to the neoliberal economic model are threatened with the consequences of global economic crises that tend to worsen over time. In Brazil, the results are: negative economic growth, external imbalances, deindustrialization of the country, denationalization of state-owned enterprises, stagnation of productivity, widespread corporate failure, mass unemployment, high domestic debt and fiscal crisis of federal, state and municipal governments.
*Fernando Alcoforado, 79, awarded the medal of Engineering Merit of the CONFEA / CREA System, member of the Bahia Academy of Education, engineer and doctor in Territorial Planning and Regional Development by the University of Barcelona, university professor and consultant in the areas of strategic planning, business planning, regional planning and planning of energy systems, is author of the books Globalização (Editora Nobel, São Paulo, 1997), De Collor a FHC- O Brasil e a Nova (Des)ordem Mundial (Editora Nobel, São Paulo, 1998), Um Projeto para o Brasil (Editora Nobel, São Paulo, 2000), Os condicionantes do desenvolvimento do Estado da Bahia (Tese de doutorado. Universidade de Barcelona,http://www.tesisenred.net/handle/10803/1944, 2003), Globalização e Desenvolvimento (Editora Nobel, São Paulo, 2006), Bahia- Desenvolvimento do Século XVI ao Século XX e Objetivos Estratégicos na Era Contemporânea (EGBA, Salvador, 2008), The Necessary Conditions of the Economic and Social Development- The Case of the State of Bahia (VDM Verlag Dr. Müller Aktiengesellschaft & Co. KG, Saarbrücken, Germany, 2010), Aquecimento Global e Catástrofe Planetária (Viena- Editora e Gráfica, Santa Cruz do Rio Pardo, São Paulo, 2010), Amazônia Sustentável- Para o progresso do Brasil e combate ao aquecimento global (Viena- Editora e Gráfica, Santa Cruz do Rio Pardo, São Paulo, 2011), Os Fatores Condicionantes do Desenvolvimento Econômico e Social (Editora CRV, Curitiba, 2012), Energia no Mundo e no Brasil- Energia e Mudança Climática Catastrófica no Século XXI (Editora CRV, Curitiba, 2015), As Grandes Revoluções Científicas, Econômicas e Sociais que Mudaram o Mundo (Editora CRV, Curitiba, 2016), A Invenção de um novo Brasil (Editora CRV, Curitiba, 2017), Esquerda x Direita e a sua convergência (Associação Baiana de Imprensa, Salvador, 2018, em co-autoria) and Como inventar o futuro para mudar o mundo (Editora CRV, Curitiba, 2019).
Site Title 