The oligarchic imagination and agrarian modernization in Brazil: pillage, appropriation and speculation

Abstract

The modernization process in agriculture did not lead the country to modernity,
as in Europe. Agrarian oligarchies, guided by mercantilist, speculative
and dilapidating reason, appropriated themselves of this process, guaranteeing
their survival. Capitalist reason thus enters the lands, but in ways and contingencies
conditioned by archaic power structures. The state, by its credit policy,
is the great promoter of this process. Behind the rhetoric - shared by economists
and planners on the left and on the right - of introducing capitalist reason
and extinguishing archaic structures, agrarian modernization leads to the reproduction,
in different forms, of old oligarchies. The author illustrates his argument
with projects financed by SUDENE in Northeastern Brazil.