The ISEB development concept revisited

Abstract

ISEB was a group of Brazilian nationalist intellectuals in the 1950s who conceived the country in global sociological and political terms. They defined development in broad terms as a capitalist and national revolution, and more specifically as an industrialization process through which the growth of per capita income would become self-sustained. In the process of nation-building and institutionalization of a national market, a domestic bourgeoisie would join with the state bureaucracy and workers, having the national interest as the common objective or criterion. These ideas were criticized by the São Paulo School of Sociology, which emerged ten years later, rejecting nationalism and insisting on the existence of class conflict. However, ISEB's errors were not related to this critique. Rather, the Institute overestimated the capacity of the modern sector to absorb the labor surplus in the traditional sector and underestimated the possibility that a crisis stemming from excessive foreign indebtedness might put a halt to the national revolution.