Between the “economic miracle” and the “golden five years”: introductory analysis of the brazilian and portuguese economic plans (1968-1973)

Abstract

This work has as central theme the analysis of one of the forms of organization of the interests of the leading bourgeois fractions, the economic plans. The time frame, 1968-1973, is justified because this is the moment, both in Brazil and in Portugal, of the consolidation of large industrial projects and the intense defense of developmentism as a strategy of accelerated economic growth. Therefore, the main objective is to compare the economic plans of two countries that received different nicknames at the same time of economic growth with high investment rates and opening the economy to foreign capital - keeping the specifics. In Portugal, the Caetano government became known as “the golden years of Portuguese capitalism” or the “golden five years”, while the Medici government in Brazil became known as a time of “economic miracle”. As a secondary objective, we intend to map the similarities and differences of the III Development Plan - prepared in 1967 with goals to be achieved between 1968 and 1973 - and the I National Development Plan (I PND) between 1972 and 1974. As a central tool of analysis, this article has as theoretical framework the elaborations of Antonio Gramsci about the State, understood in a broad perspective, that is, the official institutions as its restricted scope (also named as Political Society) and Civil Society as an aspect of broadening the notion of state. The central hypothesis runs through the notion of centrality of economic development in the two countries mentioned above as a strategy for promoting accelerated economic growth with a very strong social base argument that would in some way legitimize developmental discourse.