Developmentalist consciousness evolution: from Eclac to Campinas´ School

Abstract

The rise of Latin American countries in the world hierarchies of wealth and power in the international system has been an enduring concern in the developmentalism thought. This paper presents, in a didactic and objective way, the theoretical conditions to overcome underdevelopment situations in both ECLAC early thought as well as for Campinas’ School. The present paper argues the subject matter to overcome the underdevelopment  formulated by ECLAC in the 1950s is still alive in the Campinas' School, although this school of thought recognizes that the dynamic of contemporary capitalism extended the constrains to reduce the gap between underdeveloped and developed countries. Therefore, in what follows, it will present the similarities and differences between both analytical frameworks ECLAC and Campinas' School in relation to the notion of capitalism system, the determinants of core-periphery relation, and the possibilities to overcome the underdevelopment. By way of conclusion, it suggests Campinas’ School has proposed a critical review of theoretical foundations of Latin American structuralism in order to ground and to instrumentalize the political struggle for redemocratization with a view to sovereign national insertion into the financialized capitalist world system.