THEOTONIO DOS SANTOS
MARXIAN ECONOMIST AWARD 2013 (WAPE)
I
am very honored for receiving the Marxian Economics Award 2013 from the World
Association for Political Economy (WAPE). I would like to praise the effort of
a large group of political economist in the world that open this front of fight
against the dominance of a decadent scientific thought (neoliberal) that brings
back the economic theory to the XVIII Century, when the European bourgeoisie
try to prove the possibility to build an economic system based in the “free
market”, considered an ideal instrument for the conversion of the “rational
economic behavior” in the principle of organization of modern society. According
to them this society will be the realization of
the essence of human nature in the concrete world.
It
is very important to us, Brazilian, that created our Society of Political
Economy (SEP), 13 years ago, receive your 8th Congress in the Federal University of Santa Catarina and to
established a strong cooperation with you. At the same time we are very happy
to colaborated also in the creation of the Latin American Society of Political
Economy that will be part of this common adventure in the field of economic
thought. All this means that we are developing an offensive that can liberate
us of absurd economic policies inspired in ideological principles presented as
“scientific” truth.
Latin American thought reached great prestige during
the 1960s and 1970s, when the theory of dependence represented “the greatest
challenge faced by official Eurocentric thought”, as affirmed by the Swede
political scientist Bjorn Hetne in his detailed study about this theory. There
are many controversies about the creation of this theory, but it is out of
question that our contribution was fundamental. According to the Canadian
sociologist, Lawrence Aschules, Theotonio dos Santos “has been one of the
firsts to articulate the theory of dependency. Others have followed him and the
theory expanded in such a way that, despite of its youth, we can consider him
the grandfather of the theory”.
Anyway, in these years, I became so strongly
identified with Latin American social thought that the Russian philosopher
Chestopol wrote “Theotonio dos Santos, brazilian sociologist, is the most
eminent representative of the Nueva Dependencia school (…). Along with time,
the works of Theotonio dos Santos became a symbol of Latin American Social
Science, not only for colleagues from the continent, but also from other
countries in the world”.
Due to this global dimension that my thought reached,
I was considered by the economics department web site of the Universidad de
Malaga (www.euned.net) one of the 250 greatest economists of all history of
this science.
My contribution to the social literature of the
region has the particular characteristic
of having been written in the two regional languages, Spanish and Portuguese, as a result of my long years of exile in Chile
and Mexico. For this reason I decided to joint several articles
and papers and organized a collection of my works in Englishin a book under the
title of my Fundamental Works: World System, Imperialism and Dependence. I hope
that will permit an over view of my scientific work, that I expect to be a
scientific contribution that has a more important role than merely regional and can be summarized in
three main points:
1) My academic contribution
is considered important for the methodology for inter-and trans-disciplinary
activities. Economists, sociologists, political scientists, historians,
anthropologists and philosophers have taken it as having also influenced hisown
discipline. It was also appointed as a important influence to the Liberation
Theology and the Liberation Philosophy.
I was also accepted as a
substantial contributor to the advance of the methodology because I have
introduced the use and methodological control of the levels of abstraction as
an essential element of dialectical inquiry. My article on the concept of social
class that develops this methodology was
considered by the U.S. Marxist journal Science
and Society as "a classic on the subject."
2) The development of a
theory explaining the physical and economic backwardness in Latin America that
sought to demonstrate its deep bond with a situation of structural dependence
of the same to the world economy. I showed how this dependence became
historically evolving into increasingly complex forms, from a commercial and
financial dependence to industrial dependence, reaching today a scientific and
technological dependence. These arrangements led to dependence on various
social formations that were based on different class structures, different
classes and dominant and dominated groups.
The demonstration that this delay (which takes the form of underdevelopment) and this dependence are linked with the formation and consolidation of
an economic, social, political and cultural global hegemonic
center that produces different geopolitical
and shift constantly as a result of the advance in the
productive forces of humanity. This part of my work made me one of the instigator and developers
of the world system theory, which has today a strong influence on the international social thought. I considered this achievement a fundamental
evolution of my theoretical work and my researches.
I have yet demonstrated that this world system developed historically in
cyclical movements of short and long term that are linked with various forms of
organization of the productive forces and social relations of production. These
cyclical movements also allow explaining the geopolitical hegemony imposed at
each stage of evolution of the global system and the difficulties of looping with the growing dynamism of
technological change under the impetus of accumulation of the capitalist mode
of production. My analysis of the
scientific technical and socio-economic impact raises the
question about the need for a global
civilization based on social justice,
democracy and the sovereignty of peoples and nations.
As
I affirmed in this period, dependence is not the ‘external factor’ which it is
often believed to be. As I have described in an earlier work on Brazil, a
national situation should be approached “by determining its own specific
movement. The international situation, in which this movement occurs, is conceived as a general condition but not as
a demiurge of the national process, because they are the elements within a
nation which determine the effect of international situations upon the national
reality. It would be too easy to replace internal dynamics by external
dynamics. Were it possible, we would be spared the study of the dialectic of
each movement of a global process and could instead substitute for the analysis
of different concrete situations a generalized and abstract formula”.
A unilateral outlook which only analyses the problem
from the point of view of the hegemonic center must be transcended and the
peripheral areas must be integrated into the analysis as part of a world-wide
system of social and economic relationships. Thus the analysis of dependence
and its dynamics can acquire its full theoretical and scientific value, and be
considered as a basic instrument to study the international capitalist order
and its regional expression. It will permit us to understand more easily why
capitalist world order is a unequal combination of classes and economic private
interests.
I had also a role
in global “peace
studies”. My work was a reference for the renewal of peace research in the 1970s, as
documents of the International
Peace Research Association (IPRA), of which I was a member steering committee. I
participate also in the creation
of Latin American regional coordination
and of the Asian
one and I was chair of the Brazilian
Association of Peace Studies. On this subject,
particularly on education for peace
and regional and world security, I took
part in various activities as a
consultant to UNESCO, the United
Nations University, the University of
Peace and other institutions. As
part of this work, I developed the
concept of Planetary Civilization as a conceptual basis for proposing a superior civilization
and necessary stage toward which the existing
civilizations converge, without losing its fundamental identity.
About practical consequences it is important to take
in consideration that the question of peace is the most important theme of
discussion about the future of the world and it is always considerated in the
political debate. A definition about dependence and globalization is always
necessary to the candidates to president, ministers and public functionaries in
general even when they are not well prepared about this theoretical achievements.
My life
has also a meaning of rebellion and repudiation of the
current socio-economic, political and
cultural order. My ongoing intellectual and
political-revolutionary activities
transformed me into
an object of constant political
persecution by the fascist
regimes that I condemned.
In April
1964, I was part of the first list of dismissed from the University of Brasilia, following the military coup. I was condemned in many processes in the Brazilian military regime, the main one
being sentenced as revel to 15 years imprisonment by the Military Court of Juiz de Fora (MG) as "intellectual
mentor of subversive penetration in the
county side," which led me into
exile in Chile, after two years
of underground activism against the regime, as one of the leaders of
the Marxist Revolutionary
Organization “Workers Politics” (Organização
Revolucionária Marxista Política Operária - POLOP). The
POLOP, which was
founded in 1961, had a fundamental theoretical and political role for the redefinition of the Brazilian and Latin American left in this historical
period. The present president of Brasil, Dilma Rousseff initiated her political
militancy in the POLOP, as several members of her government.
In Chile, as participant of the Socialist Party of Salvador Allende, founder, advisor and contributor to
the weekly Chile Hoy, director of the Centre for Socio-Economic Studies of the University of Chile (CESO) and one of the most active organizers of Brazilian resistance abroad,
I attracted the hate of the fascist right that put
me in the first list of political
persecution in the country during the “coup d´état” of
1973. Unable to participate in
the resistance in this country,
I was forced into exile in the Embassy
of Panama, under the government
of General Torrijos and after
6 months impeded from leaving the country
I got the "laisser passer" to Mexico with a visa issued by the President
Luis Echeverria.
During my
exile in Mexico, between 1974 and 1980, I devoted myself to the struggle against military dictatorships
in the region mainly through the Latin American Solidarity Committee,
the COPPAL (
where I represent the movement to restructure the Brazilian Labor Party )
and I was active in several
movements in favor of Chilean and Brazilian solidarity. I was also an
active militant in the International Association of Third World Economist and
other movements relate to the Non-Aligned Movement. As a reflex of these
activities I work very hard on the understanding of these questions that
strongly influenced my academic work.
Back to Brazil, following
the vote on the amnesty in 1979, I participated in the formation of the Partido
Democrático Trabalhista (PDT). I was one of the writers of its program and
manifesto, becoming a member of its national board and head of its executive board
in the State of Minas Gerais, where I was a candidate for Governor in 1982.
During this period I fought hard in favor of resistance against Chilean dictatorship,
of the support of Sandinist struggle in Nicaragua, the Cuba's international movement for
non-payment of external debt, as for the defense of human rights at different
levels , for the Committee of Defense of the People of Palestine and Lebanon that
I head in the state of Minas Gerais, and several others movement, eventually
occupying government functions in the State of Rio de Janeiro (director of
training of the FESP-RJ, or as Secretary of International Relations to the
state of Rio de Janeiro) where PDT and my current Party since 2002 (Partido
Socialista Brasileiro) have head the
state government.
But I feel more and more
the need to organize a network of researchers around a UNESCO and United
Nations University Chair on Global Economics and Sustainable Development that I
finally head in Rio de Janeiro with a strong cooperation of researchers and
institutions of research and teaching in all continents. The reasons for this
institutional effort is to try to materialize a synthesis of a live of research.
At the present, I am currently one of the founders
of the movement “Network of networks in defense of
humanity”, that has his headquartered in the Bolivarian Venezuela and Cuba, and brings
together the best of the world's
intellectual struggle against the
of a pretended hegemonism of one nation ( the United
States of America) over the world which threatens
all humanity, in the same way as the Nazi-fascism did in
the 1930s and early 1940s. This
is a practical dimension, among other, of an effort to understand the future of
humanity that is, I think, the main contribution of the ideas that I developed
in a large live of struggle. Thank you for your award. It is an impulse to continuous this intellectual
and political fight.
