Publicações

Csaba Deák

1  Brazil in the 80's
2  The elite State
3  Extensive accumulation
4  Hindered accumulation
5  The urban question
6  Urban policy in context

However, the crisis is not going away, economic disarray spread to the political level, the economic policy of the Government is going the way opposite to the one outlined by the definitions of the currently sitting Constituent Congress ⁽¹⁾ and the signs point farther yet. The 'export model' is exhausted and the supporters of its re-assertion find it increasingly difficult to refute the arguments of the advocates of the 'option for the home market'. Leadership of the commanding elite, as well as the latter's immunity to the sanctions of Common Law are overtly challenged by an emerging middle class, the ideological production of which cannot be ignored or silenced any longer. The subsistence level of the working class appears suddenly to be inconsistent with the current stage of technical progress. And there is a distinct feeling that the mere continuation of the historical process of growth of urban agglomerations is simply unconceivable.

What, therefore, is the change being born? What is the connection between those signs? And finally, what kind of re-interpretation of the urban process can be produced which would signpost an urban policy? This paper, moved by such questions, proposes a draft framework, a view on Brazilian society and recent history which in turn, it is hoped, brings elements for an interpretation of the current crisis.
 
 

1 BRAZIL IN THE 80's

[We shall] re-integrate this country into (sic) its historic path.

According to this view, Brazilian society is being part in a process which in turn makes part of the great movement that started with the emergence of capitalism in England of the XVII-th century and followed on with the spread of the former from the XIX-th century onwards, taking particular forms and acquiring peculiarities according to the places and stages of development it went through. Specifically, this country is entering a transformation process by far wider and deeper than those crises which have been held for landmarks to a periodization of Brazilian history, such as Independence (1822), the Paraguay War (1860-5), the Abolition/ Proclamation (1888/9)⁴, the '1930 Revolution' or the turmoil ensuing from the fall of Populism in the 1960's. These 'events' were but adjustments, under the effects of crises generated in various centres of accumulation at a world scale, within a same stage of development. The latter can be characterized at the level of social organization as one of a society of elites --as distinct from bourgeois society-- and at the level of the organization of production as one of predominantly extensive accumulation with a special feature, namely, surplus expatriation.
 
 

2 THE ELITE STATE

However ... if the reduction is retroactive, it will leave the foreign branches of Brazilian banks who detain 7% of the country's debt to banks [or some US$ 6 bn] in a very difficult situation. (...) The strategy of Brazilian authorities might be, therefore, to work for a partial 'carve-out'.

Thus if the elite had originally been formed under the conditions of external domination when the colony was organized for the production and expatriation of surplus, with the foundation of the Brazilian state it created the conditions of its own reproduction. This has sometimes been called 'internalization of dependence' because the policy in favour of the over-privilegement ⁽⁵⁾ of the elite is so closely linked with the interests of the capital of the dominant imperialist power of the day that it looks as if the country, or its State, was dominated by the former.

The most fundamental feature of the elite society is that in it neither the commodity form is generalized, nor social relations are reified ⁽⁶⁾. From this derive some well-known characteristics that have been frequently interpreted as imperfections with reference to bourgeois society. Thus the primacy of the commodity form (of exchange value over use value) and the reification of social relations are the very means of bourgeois domination, but the over-privilegement of the elite is inconsistent with formal equality and liberal democracy can not be realized. As a result, ideology is weakened and thus insufficient to ensure domination, and the lack of hegemony (obtaining the active consent of the oppressed) must be made up by the use of increased overt repression. Further, under these conditions the identification of the interests of the dominant class with common interest obviously becomes problematic and the concept of nation remains empty.

Accordingly, the 'laws of motion' in elite society do not derive from the dialectique of the commodity form ⁽⁷⁾ as in bourgeois society. They must be sought elsewhere, and we start with a look at the organization of production.
 
 

3 EXTENSIVE ACCUMULATION

A Giant by Nature herself,
Beau, strong, dauntless Colossus,
Laying eternally in its splendid cradle,
To the sound of Sea, in deep Sky's light.

In order to highlight the distinction between these two stages, let us recall that Marx went as far as to equate accumulation with expansion. "Accumulation --he said-- is (therefore) the multiplication of the proletariat." It might be that he meant it to apply to capitalism as such but it certainly holds when referred to this first stage of development of capitalism, 'the so-called primitive accumulation' ⁽⁹⁾. Indeed, in a context of slow technological progress (such as was the case in England of the seventeenth and the first half of the eighteenth), accumulation has to proceed first and foremost by means of the extension of the basis of surplus production, that is to say, of wage labour. The 'secret' of 'primitive accumulation', the crucial fact of the initial stage of capitalism, is the submission of an ever growing proportion of the labour force to capitalist relations of production through the transformation of bondsmen, yeomanry and artisans alike into wage workers.

The limits of this stage are the very limits to the expansion/ extension of the new mode of production. Once that such limits are reached as in England by the end of the eighteenth century, there follows necessarily ⁽¹⁰⁾ --amidst a transformation crisis-- a next stage, this one characterized by a predominantly intensive regime of accumulation, spurred by rapid evolution of techniques and accompanied by a widening of the role of the State in the organization of production and social reproduction. The fulgurant start of this transformation came to be known as the industrial revolution.

England was the first country to reach the stage of predominantly intensive accumulation, but the existence of a world market imposes that once this stage had been reached by one country, all the nation-states must follow suit, or face colonial submission. It is in this way that when capitalist relations of production emerged in Germany, this country entered directly the stage already reached in England, namely, a stage of predominantly intensive accumulation fueled by rapid technological progress centred in the case of Germany and of the time, on the electric and chemical industries. A generation later Japan set on a similar path, from feudalism directly to intensive capitalist accumulation. The alternative referred to above --the colonial condition-- occurred, in the same period, in the European East and Russia (we are not talking of ex-colonies taken by the force of arms, of which later); while North America, behind its protective barriers (thus, safe from the world market), and availing itself mainly of territorial expansion at the expenses of its neighbours, extended the first stage till up the turn of the twentieth century, when the crisis of its exhaustion was postponed to the 1920's thanks only to the First World War. 'Fordism' is the name given to the start of the transition to the stage of intensive accumulation in the US, and which consisted essentially in the incorporation of a substantial part of the subsistence (or 'home') economy into commodity production. A greater portion of clothing, houseware and housing itself, even cooking and, yes, collective and individual means of transport became commodities to be purchased on the market and paid for out of the wage. This had been made possible by the cheapening of industrial produce due to the evolution of productive techniques, accompanied by a raise in the subsistence level of the labour force, an implication of sustained technical progress. Among the well-known effects of this process are a simultaneous wage rise, an enormous expansion of the home market and consequently of the scale of production and rapid diffusion and substitution of the techniques of production.

The current stage of capitalist development will not last for ever either and it might well be that Brazil, in the possible company of India, will be the last country to enter it, if enter it it will at all. The current perspective offered to this country is, though, still the one of this very stage: transformation of the relations of production, starting with the conditions of the reproduction of the labour force required by technical progress -- and confrontation with violent competition in the world market. However, a transition to the intensive stage of accumulation in this country implies deeper changes than in Great Britain and the US, rather more like in Germany and Japan of the above examples, for the exhaustion of the extensive stage poses the question of the permanence of elite society itself.
 
 

4 HINDERED ACCUMULATION

In 1808 starts our descent to Hell.

The crises are generated by the antagonism between surplus expatriation and accumulation. This is a process of hindered accumulation: a substantial part of the surplus generated in commodity production is continuously creamed off and sent across borders instead of being incorporated to expanded reproduction. However, there is still a certain measure of accumulation and this, imposed by the maximization of expatriable surplus. Since the production of surplus is based on wage labour, wage must expand at least at the rate of the growth of the labour force, even if wages are kept low, as they are, and this results in a corresponding expansion of the market. However restricted this market is, namely, to consumption goods for the wage workers (for reasons to which we return below, on Department I chronic atrophy is imposed and production for subsistence is historically high, although falling with the retreat of the 'frontiers' already mentioned), at this level the laws of accumulation prevail and raise forces antagonistic with surplus expatriation.

Un-hindered accumulation in the home market would require the full development of the productive forces and especially the strengthening of a bourgeoisie that ultimately would challenge the elite's domination as a class. This is why it is prevented at all costs, through the systematic dismantelment of embryonic development of industry by a variety of means such as fiscal, monetary, financial etc. measures complemented by liberal import policy in strategic industries of the time, currently centred on the means of production. Successive rounds of 'import substitution' are still necessary due to balance of payment constraints; when this occurs, the dynamic industries are given over to foreign capital which will not create internal forces that challenge the elite's position, as in the case of automobile industry in the fifties, wholly in foreign hands from the start, or with the electro-electronic industry in the sixties, when a nascent home industry was led bankrupt or depreciated through recessive policy, then passed over to foreign capital. Such policy is known as entreguismo, literally: 'give-away-ism' ⁽¹¹⁾. These industries are highly, in some cases wholly, protected from competition either home or from abroad with the additional consequence that, on the one hand, they operate at very high rates of profit and on the other hand and more important, the motor of technical progress is removed.

In the crises provoked either by balance of payments constraint or by an excessive strengthening of home production in the interim periods, both forces -- for and against the maintenance of the status quo-- come into open conflict. Such crises run through Brazilian history in seemingly endless and un-ending succession since the trans-migration of D.João VI (1808) from generation to generation. It prompted Florestan Fernandes (1972) to sum it up in the phrase "Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose" (Lampedusa's saying comes from Italy in a similar stage in many respects: "It is necessary to change, so that everything may remain the same"). History seems to come to halt. Indeed, what is the same in these crises is that they were always resolved so far in favour of the re-imposition of the primacy of surplus expatriation.

Now accumulation-cum-surplus-expatriation is possible only at very high rates of accumulation, such as those allowed in a regime of extensive accumulation, where the rate of expansion is equal to the rate of surplus proper (within commodity production) plus the rate of extension of surplus production (that is, of commodity production itself), where the second is the more substantial part. One part of the surplus is expatriated and still there is enough left for accumulation --although hindered accumulation.

The same does not hold for a regime of predominantly intensive accumulation in which the best part of the rate of accumulation is restricted to the rate of surplus proper, as deriving from the increase of the productivity of labour, which then may be either expatriated but no longer expanded or used in expanded reproduction. With the exhaustion of the extensive stage, hindered accumulation is no longer possible. Thus what is not the same in Brazilian history is the conditions and the way in which the primacy of surplus expatriation has been re-asserted even throughout the extensive stage, with the relative weight of the home market and the corresponding social forces increasing, but especially those in which it can be re-asserted now, at the end of that stage ⁽¹²⁾.
 
 

5  THE URBAN QUESTION

The most important urban question in Brazil today is whether or not the middle class makes an option for public transport.

Indeed, the two stages of accumulation impose entirely different performance requirements upon urban agglomerations. The misery of the masses --along with the opulence of the elites-- of the metropolises of the early stage of capitalist development is widely known and São Paulo of the seventies has little either to teach to or to hide from London of Dickens, Paris of Victor Hugo or Manchester of Engels (1845). What is less widespread is the interpretation --opposed to the notion of 'scarce resources'-- that the environment of these cities do correspond precisely to the conditions of the reproduction of the respective societies, with their labour force depleted, inert and miserable. The operation of rudimentary machines and coarse techniques requires an abundant, un--skilled and subdued proletariat.

It was only after the state of abandonment combined with sheer size of workers' districts had reached critical levels to the point of developing epidemics which threatened social reproduction itself, that measure of relief were undertaken. The building of what we designate today by urban infra-structure and public facilities, at first one by one, later in co-ordination, marks the emergence of urban planning and also the start of explicit and increasing State intervention in spatial organization of capitalist production. The first such service in London was established in the 1850-s to supply piped water: the London Water Authority started as a private entreprise and was nationalized twenty years later (on having been concluded that water supply to the whole population was not 'economicly feasible'). By the end of the century, England was taken by a vigourous movement for intensified urban planning, that reached proportions of a national question. Among the reasons of the claim were: the very high rate of unfits among the conscripts for the Boer War, and the (well founded) fear of England being overtaken by Germany as much in industrial production as in military power (Ashworth,1954:168-9). In an inversion of cause and effect, Germany's industrial-military might was seen to coming from the advanced stage of its urban planning, which was put by the founding father of British planning, Sir Patrick Abercrombie, as an example to be followed by his country ⁽¹⁴⁾.

Returning to Brazil and the present, the urban conditions reflect precisely, the conditions of extensive accumulation. Under the primacy of surplus expatriation, furthermore, which is founded on the maintenance of bare-minimum wage for an abundant labour force, there is no problem in the worker spending four or five hours a day in overcrowded buses to and from the workplace. There is equally no problem in him/her living in unpaved streets or on invaded land or breathing polluted air or lacking education and health facilities. Even under such conditions, with high rates of demographic growth and the frontiers of expansion open, his/her reproduction as wage labourer, the reproduction of the labour force at the levels of subsistence and work capacity required by the stage of development in question, is still ensured.

All this changes if we are a witness to the supersession if this stage. If it is true that we are entering a stage of predominantly intensive accumulation, better conditions in the urban environment in general but especially for the working class cease to be a question of administrative goodwill, bourgeois philanthropy, food for cheap rhetoric or even issue for workers' struggle, to become rather historical necessity. The implementation, for example, of a rapid mass transport system at higher than minimal performance levels is no longer, then, a question of 'availability' of resources: it is a conditio sine qua non, in the realm of spatial organization, to a stage of development founded on the continuous and sustained increase of the productivity of labour. An eventual failure in reaching the required standards of urban infrastructure would immediately prevent realization of productivity gains obtained through the progress of the techniques of production.

It is easy to realize that a historical necessity, a perquisite peculiar to intensive accumulation, transcends the question of its own 'economic feasibility'. What was said of transport can be said also of any other sectoral item of the urban environment, and particularly it is true also for this all-pervasive question of the capitalist urban process, namely, the housing question. Here also holds the imperative that housing, since it makes part of the conditions of the reproduction of the labour force --to repeat: at the required levels of fitness and skills--, be provided at standards compatible with the stage of technological evolution of the time. Finally, and to take a less particular example of the urban process: if, with the rising of the subsistence level of the workers, the widening of the middle class and the assumption of self-government --so many conditions for ideology to be able to produce the idea of the common wealth shared in by The Citizen and the very idea of nation-- then even such concepts as quality of life, preservation of 'nature' or the aesthetics of urban environment, devoid of all meaning they might have while not even the bare survival of large portions of the country's population is a 'question', let alone their status as a member of society, could be invested with some meaning and pertinence.
 
 

This much can be concluded, though: whether the great movement of transformation of Brazilian society will be concluded forwards or backwards, will be decided from without the realm of urban policy as such. On the one hand, this should help avoiding illusory fights, 'misplaced class struggle'. On the other hand, it leaves room for the task of working out the implications, for the urban agglomeration, of the transformation in potential so as not to be taken by the latter with the ideas still caught in the stage being superseded. Meanwhile, for sure, and to paraphrase Engels' closing words in his The housing question: while elite society lasts and surplus expatriation prevails in peripheral countries, there will be no solution to urban transport, the housing question or to any other urban question.
 

Notes

1   Congress was called to write a new Constitutional Chart for the country and started its work by mid-1987. It completed a draft Chart by July 1988 (time of writing) while the conclusion of a final version is scheduled for August in the same year.

2   On being informed that his term has just been extended by one year, by the Constituent Assembly.

3   Francisco de Oliveira performs a critique (1972) of the theory produced by CEPAL on the score that focus on external dependence has prevented analysis of the inner wor-kings of Brazilian society, and outlines an interpretation of his own (1979) in a book entitled The economics of imperfect dependence, where the strong word is 'imper--fect' while the weak one is 'dependence', as will be seen in what follows.

4   Slavery was 'abolished' in 1888 when there were a mere 800.000 slaves in Brazil, or less then one-fifth of the labour force. The next year Monarchy went with it, and Republic was 'proclaimed'.

5   'Over-privileged' is a term coined by Florestan Fernandes (1972) and may be explained thus: it is not that the elite are "more" privileged than, say, a feudal landlord, but rather that its privileges are different from bourgeois privileges and from a bourgeois perspective such privileges look oversized. Actually they are more than that: they are incompatible with bourgeois organization of society (see also further below).

6   Clearly we do not adhere to Bottomore's or to any other 'sociological' concept of elite, which identify 'elite' with a certain stratum within bourgeois society. Rather we are closer to Florestan Fernandes' conceptualization (Fernandes,1972). According to Fernandes, Brazilian and other Latin American societies are characterized by having an elite which includes a quasi-bourgeoisie ('compradora bourgeoisie') in place of a bourgeoisie as a dominant class. Further it is Fernandes' thesis that there was no bourgeois revolution in Brazil yet, and maybe there will be none, the alternative being of course, socialist revolution.

7   Capitalism is seen here as being moved by the antagonic forces arising from the tendency to a generalization of the commodity form in a unified market within the institutional framework of a nation-state where an autonomous regime of accumulation then takes place. The limits to the generalization of the commodity form impose State intervention and the direct production of use values. Production is organized by the simultaneous and antagonic processes of the market and state intervention, under the primacy of the former. In the intensive stage the antagonism develops further, because State intervention (planning etc.), which negates commodity form even though it is necessary to preserve it, increases and re-assertion of the commodity form --negation of the negation-- becomes ever more problematic: privatization is not the same as commoditization. See Deák (1985:168ss and 1986); for a discussion of the limits to commoditization, Sekine (1976).

8   Which is precisely the reason why in the industrialized South already over 30% of the sugar cane harvest is mechanicized as opposed to the traditional use of seasonal work and this proportion is growing rapidly. Due to the drying up of the source of plenty un-skilled and un-waged labour which after use can be thrown back into 'subsistence economy', the use of machines comes out currently about 20% cheaper.

9   The phrase quoted is to be found in Capital I:764 (Penguin), in the Chapter [25] on "The general law of capitalist accumulation".

10  The alternative being stagnation, so feared of by the classical economists, or colonial subjection to which we return further below.

11  Current government policy is precisely an exacerbation of such measures, in a reaction to a tendency to the emancipation of the home market and 'nationalism' on the rise. In a 'letter of intent' to the IMF (which is meant to look like being 'imposed' upon the country), a plan of 'converting' US$ 3,32 bn of debt into equity in 1988 alone is stated (1.7.1988), as reported in the Gazeta Mercantil, 7.7.88:Fp.

12  This is probably also where the histories of Latin American countries diverge and the reason why we avoid any generalization or even any otherwise attractive comparison, which would require a similar account specific to each country.

13  Intervention at a Seminar on the 1985 Development Plan for São Paulo, FAUUSP, São Paulo.

14  Sutcliffe (1981):9. --As stated earlier, capitalism in Germany developed directly within the stage of intensive accumulation. The conditions, at the level of State intervention, to the development of this stage in general and of urban planning in particular, were ensured by the legacy of the Prussian State with long tradition and all-encompassing administrative structure.

15  Senhor 342 (6.10.87):37. The quote goes on: "..., a mean, ordinary and pale event" etc, reflecting the disbelief of its author in that we would be at a turning point in Brazilian history, even though he is among those who contribute most to it.
 

References
 

Publicações