Abstract: During two decades of military dictatorship that began in 1964, Brazil has seen gigantic capitalist development, affecting both rural and urban areas. In agriculture, large-scale capitalist production for international market (in sugar, soy, beef) expanded greatly, expelling from land small farmers, sharecroppers, and tenant farmers; results were a growing proletarization of rural labor force and massive migration to towns. In some of larger cities (particularly Sao Paulo) a vast process of industrialization has occurred, promoted mainly by multinational enterprises (automobile, steel, and chemical industries). This transformation of Brazilian economy and society, however, took classic form of the development of underdevelopment (to use Andre Gunder Franks's well-known phrase): it has aggravated regional disparities (between industrial South and hungry Northeast), social inequalities (the rich became richer and poor poorer); and economic dependency, evidenced in astronomic growth of foreign debt. Moreover, large sections of rural migrants were not absorbed by modern (labor-saving) industry and have constituted a mass of poor shantytown dwellers, living a hand-to-mouth existenceeuphemistically called the informal sector by academic political economy. Those who were excluded from profits of capitalist development-the urban workers and unemployed, impoverished rural semiproletariat, ruined professionals hard-hit by inflation-grew increasingly hostile to military regime. At first, they supported opposition movement led by liberal bourgeoisie (Movimento
Publication Year: 1987
Publication Date: 1987-10-01
Language: en
Type: article
Indexed In: ['crossref']
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Cited By Count: 12
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