Celso Furtado
Encyclopedia : C : CE : CEL : Celso Furtado
Celso Monteiro Furtado (1920 - November 20, 2004) was one of the most influential Brazilian economists, and the most influential leftist economist that Brazil has ever had. He denominated himself as a socio-politic researcher.
He held, among other academic tiles, the degree of Ph.D. in Economics by Université Paris .
Furtado worked for different federal Brazilian governments and influenced the formulation of public policies during 20th century in Brazil, among which must be mentioned his participation in the government of the president Juscelino Kubitschek and the creation of SUDENE - "Superintendência do Desenvolvimento do Nordeste" (an agency for the stimulation of the development of the poor Northeast region of Brazil).
Furtado and Argentine economist Raúl Prebisch, while were working at CEPAL - [Comisión Económica para América Latina y el Caribe], an agency of UN, were decisive for the formulation of a socio-economic policy for the development of Latin America.
Furtado was one of the founders of United Nations Conference on Trade and Development.
Furtado has published more than 30 books, among them: Economic Formation of Brazil (title in Portuguese, "Formação econômica do Brasil"); The Myth of Economic Development (title in Portuguese, "O mito do desenvolvimento econômico") and Global Capitalism (title in Portuguese, "O Capitalismo Global"). The first is his best knowledge book, while the second sounds, thirty years after its first publication, as a prophecy. Many of his books have been being translated in various languages.
The book named "O mito do desenvolvimento econômico" was first published in 1974. It is a prophetic book that deserves to be commented in some details. In the book, Furtado called the ongoing economic process, that is now known as globalization, by the Brazilian-Portuguese expression "mundialização da economia" (what refers to the "spread of world economy"). In the book Furtado has also emphasized many essential aspects of economic development, pointing out important questions for the future. The future of the book is the present days, as some questions suggested by Furtado can show:
1) The myth of economic development versus the need natural resources for economic processes: it's a myth to think that economic development, and its benefits, will some day reach the world society as a whole if the model of economic development does not change. For instance, there are no sufficient natural resources available for every person in the world if one considers the economic model in which economy was based in the 70s and is also based nowadays, i.e. the model where consumerism and individualism are the base for corporate actions throughout the society. For instance, if every person had money to buy a car, our cities would be completely frozen. The critics on the myths of economic development were based on a report for the Club of Rome, which is summarized in [Abstract of The limits to Growth: a report to The Club of Rome];
2) About poverty: in the countries that do not had "central" economies (countries that were not the base for the giants corporations), at most 10% of population could reach the level of richness that are achieved by people in the richest countries. Peripheral economies, which would not create an independent and more complete economy, would continue to be poor countries, with increasing differences between poor and rich people inside this societies;
3) About the World economic superstructure: The world superstructure of capitalist economy (mainly IMF and GATT, which originated WTO (World Trade Organization) would, on the one hand, increase control over World economy, increasing also freedom for capital's flows and for big corporations actions, and, on the other hand, would decrease the number of possible options available for governments, mainly for poor country's governments. This is the kind of development that has been taking place for the late 30 years.
Furtado was officially indicated for The Bank of Sweden Prize in Economic Sciences (Nobel Prize of Economics) in 2004, but was not prized. He died in Rio in November 20th, 2004, at the age of 84.
External links
From Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. Original article here. Support Wikipedia by contributing or donating.
All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License See Wikipedia Copyrights for details.