Celso Furtado: do plano das ideias para a ação interventora do Estado no nordeste

Abstract

The participation of the State in the Brazilian economy has always been a subject of debate, necessary for the understanding of Brazilian economic development, notably in the 1950s and 1960s. Some currents of economic thought stood out, among them the one that had Celso Furtado as one of its members, representing the, so-called, critical thinking of the Brazilian and regional economy. He was a great defender of the State as a promoter of economic and social development, being considered one of the main authors, in the CEPAL-thought and Brazilian discussion, of the notion of development/underdevelopment. In this sense, the present study reflects the path of “thinking and acting” by Furtado, in the search to overcome the underdevelopment of the Northeast Region through the State, planning and public policies. Therefore, the study was based on bibliographical research, especially on the vast work by the author, rescuing the formation of his thought and the theoretical influences he received, as well as from other authors who reflected on his thought. As a man of action, Furtado dedicated himself to confronting northeastern underdevelopment, acting as a planner and executor of the development policy in the Northeast from the end of the 1950s. At the GTDN, he presented the diagnosis and the action plan, conceived under the influence of the ECLAC, proposing a planned action by the State in the Northeast through development policies. Since then, there has been a change in the way the State acts in the region, previously based on policies to combat droughts, which did not contribute to its structural transformation. The proposals by Furtado for the region materialized in the creation of SUDENE and in the preparation of Managerial Plans, which faced great resistance to their approval, demonstrating that, unlike what he believed, technique and policy are not isolated in different plans. Thus, the resources of the Managerial Plans were directed to several projects in Northeast, especially the infra-structural ones, considered important for its development. The proposed action plan for the region aimed not only at causing an industrial boom in the region, but also structural reforms. As a result, we realize that, concurrent with his thinking, his quest to overcome regional underdevelopment was strongly anchored in the planned action of the State through qualitative development policies.