Celso Furtado and the West (Society) on State of Denial

Publicado em outubro 3, 2013

This is my little thoughts from the emerging world to anglo saxon world, It is my answer to good article from The Economist Magazine this week (Has Brazil blown it?): Verso em portugus: Celso Furtado e o Ocidente em State of Denial Celso Furtado was known as the great Brazilian economist, like many others, I have a different understanding, Furtado was a great thinker and social philosopher, the way he defined himself in 1973 [*]. Celso Furtado graduated from the Law School in the early 40s, put on the uniform of the Armed Forces of Brazil, and was fight in the Second World War in Europe. And returned from the war wanting to understand the world. For the generation of post World War II, he is an economist in the sense that, like others great thinks in Political Economy, just as Joseph Schumpeter, graduated in Social Science at the early of the XX century and being chair of anthropology professor at the university, became a thinker of Political Economy , just as John Kenneth Galbraith, formed at the Faculty of Agriculture (1931) in Canada, became a thinker in Political Economy as well as the already famous businessman and famous writer after the treaty of Versailles (1919), John Maynard Keynes became a thinker in Political Economy after the great Depression of the 1930s. The generation known as the economists of the twentieth century, as we know today, was not Homo Economicus, as Larry Summers and many others that wander around, but great thinkers and social philosophers. Celso Furtado, looking ahead on the horizon of two to three decades in the late twentieth century, as envisioned and warned us. about the future, between the West and the East: (..) The growing interest in scientific and technological applications is remarkable feature of Western civilization. Great Eastern civilizations (Oriental) had amassed a huge mass of knowledge, but did not get to capture the complex relationships between ordered knowledge (science), ordered the wealth (goods and services), and the faculty normative to exercise power. Today, this situation is no longer the same: the positions of the vanguard of the West in science and its applications, the singularizaram until the late nineteenth century, on the have vanished last decades of the twentieth century. Indeed, the most recent projections

regarding the spatial distribution of the fruits of development, both economic and scientific, indicate that in the next two to three decades the Eastern world have reached, or even surpassed, the West. (The responsibility of scientists Inaugural Address in ABLBrazilian Academy of Letters, July 4, 2003 - Celso Furtado Essential, 2013 p: 489). Whats new in the West today, from Bob Woodwards book, The State of Denial (2006) the peak of moral judgment and absence (vacuum) the power of government Bush Jr. deriving in the crisis of values and the big surprise a black American to be elected president of the USA? The novelty in the West is a Latin Pope del fim del mundo, as he defined himself. It is the first Pope from the Society of Jesus, nearly 500 years after being created by Ignatius of Loyola in 1534 and papal bull in 1540. Reached the summit of power in an institution that has almost 2000 years. Institution that has history and culture to dialogue with the ancient cultures of Asia. In recent decades, the church has shown, it has a pattern (apparent signs of not being a mere serendipity). In the 70s the white smoke that came out of the chimney at St. Peters Square at the Vatican, raised a Bishop of the communist world to be Pope. After the total failure of the doctrine (and administration) of the Anglo Saxon German theologian, the consensus of the ancient church is the apparent returns to Vatican II by John XXIII, with the arrival of a Latin Pope del fim del mundo. A quantitative study on global demographics, from The Economist magazine in 2010, almost a decade after the qualitative analysis of Celso Furtado, shows us that, in 2030, 85% of the global population will be concentrated in Asia, Africa and Latin America. The Economist magazine, estimates that about three billion people will ignite the consumer class, a fact unprecedented in the history of the world, nearly 50% of the world population will become consumer class. In this sense, the trade agreement fast (clear political bias, hiding the facts) between North America and the European Union, which is only 15% of the world population in 2030, appears to be a shot themselves in the foot, even worse, are playing with fire, are not clearly vision of the future, or do not know how to face reality, playing a dangerous game, trying to isolate China. The secular geopolitical question: Who will control the world and on what terms?

Young people go to the streets in Spain, or in the USA (Occupy Wall Street), with the full support of the global media, is not the same situation of young people on the streets of Brazil and the emerging world. In the world of OECD countries, young people return home (they have a place to live), they have food to eat, if its winter, they have heater, if its summer, they have air conditioning. They are defending their wonderful achievements of Western society after WWII. In Brazil and in emerging countries is the opposite, is to win a minimum quality and dignified life that we never had in our history. Brazil has a watershed in its history, the Constituent Assembly of 1988, in this sense, in the last ten to twenty years, over 40 million people lit the new consumer class middle class: (graphic indicators of Brazil the past 25 years) I wonder what will be the Western world (U.S. and EU) with a new consumer class world with three billion people from Asia, Africa and Latin America? Two decades ago, the sum of nominal GDP between the U.S. and EU was almost 70%, today it is around 50%, the trend is clearly in decline: In 2030 will be as: 30% or 20%? And in 2050? The strong impression that hangs in the air of Western society, they still did not understand, not yet assimilated the manner and the time of thinking of the ancient culture of the Chinese people, like the famous answer Zhou Enlai, the question of Henry Kissinger, in the early 70s: Henry Kissinger asked the Prime Minister of China, Zhou En Lai: - What is your opinion about the French Revolution (1789)? The response of Zhou Enlai: - still too early to say. The Western Society, the stablishment of Western society, in full State of Denial. And thats not a good sign, much the contrary, history shows us, that is a very dangerous game. Herodotus, the father of history, told us, the XXV centuries ago (Western calendar):

History is marked by alternating movements across the imaginary line that separates East from West in Eurasia. The imaginary line in the third millennium, it is no longer only between East and West in Eurasia but a global and planetary line, encompassing Africa and Latin America del fim del mundo. The West can become (again), coward society? William Shakespeare could say by his Othellovoice of tragedy, from Euro-American: Yes we can. Paraphrasing the question American Conservative, Wake Up America, for the new imaginary line planetary: wake up citizens of the world! [*] (..) When I finally began to study economics in a systematic way, at age 26, my world view, fundamentally, was defined. This way, the economy would become more to me than an instrumental, I would, more effectively deal with problems that I came from the observation of the history and life of men in society. has had little influence on the conformation of my spirit. I never could understand a problem strictly economic. for example: inflation was never in my mind another thing that the manifestation of some kind of conflict between social groups, a company has never been anything other than a manifestation of the desire of power to one or more social agents, in one of its many forms and so on. (Aventures dm conomiste brsilien, Revue Internationale de Sciences Sociales, Paris, Unesco, v XXV, n. 1/2, 1973. Celso Furtado Essencial, 2013, p:45).

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