Francisco Weffort and the Dependency Theory: Populism, Class, and Nation

• DOI: 10.1177/0094582X211052016
• Date: 01 January 2022
• Published date: 01 January 2022
• Author: André Kaysel,Daniela Mussi
• Subject Matter: Articles: Reflections on Historical Thought

https://doi.org/10.1177/0094582X211052016

LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES, Issue 242, Vol. 49 No. 1, January 2022, 91–106

DOI: 10.1177/0094582X211052016

© 2021 Latin American Perspectives

91

Francisco Weffort and the Dependency Theory

Populism, Class, and Nation

by

André Kaysel and Daniela Mussi

Translated by

Patricio Fierro

Discussion of the notions of populism and dependency as part of Brazilian political

thought in the first years after the establishment of the dictatorship in the country, espe-

cially of the contributions of the political scientist Francisco Weffort from 1966 to 1972,

reveals the bumpy path of these concepts in Weffort’s research on national political history

and on the difficulties of building a developed and democratic nation. From the debates

between Weffort and Fernando Henrique Cardoso and Weffort’s growing concern with the

problem of working-class autonomy and criticism of and retreat from the use of the notion

of dependency it is apparent that, contrary to what its own author stated, one of the main

theories about populism in Brazil and Latin America was far from homogeneous.

A discussão das noções de populismo e dependência como parte do pensamento

político brasileiro nos primeiros anos após o estabelecimento da ditadura no país, espe-

cialmente das contribuições do cientista político Francisco Weffort de 1966 a 1972,

revela o caminho acidentado dessas concepções na pesquisa de Weffort sobre a história

política nacional e sobre as dificuldades de construção de uma nação desenvolvida e

democrática. Dos debates entre Weffort e Fernando Henrique Cardoso, e da crescente

preocupação de Weffort com o problema da autonomia da classe trabalhadora e da crítica

e recuo do uso da noção de dependência, é evidente que, ao contrário do que afirmava seu

próprio autor, uma das principais teorias sobre o populismo no Brasil e na América

Latina estava longe de ser homogênea.

Keywords: Populism, Dependence, Francisco Weffort, Fernando Henrique Cardoso,

Brazilian political thought

The beginning of the 1970s saw the establishment in Latin America of a sin-

gularly rich cultural and political environment made possible by the intense

circulation of intellectuals directly affected by the continent’s crises and the rise

of dictatorships. A participant in this environment while he worked at the

Instituto Latinoamericano y del Caribe de Planificación Económica y Social

(Latin American and Caribbean Institute of Economic and Social Planning—

ILPES) in Chile, Francisco Weffort reviewed the contributions of intellectuals

such as Fernando Henrique Cardoso and Enzo Faletto, Aníbal Quijano, and

André Kaysel is an assistant professor at the Universidade de Campinas, and Daniela Mussi is an

assistant professor at the Universidade Federal de Rio de Janeiro. Both are members of the

Universidade de Campinas Political Thought Laboratory. Patricia Fierro is a translator in Quito,

Ecuador.

1052016LAPXXX10.1177/0094582X211052016Latin American PerspectivesKaysel and Mussi / Francisco Weffort and Dependency Theory

research-article2021

92 LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES

Ruy Mauro Marini. Analyses and formulations regarding the underdevelop-

ment and dependency of the Latin American countries were of particular

importance in this environment. Echoes of these formulations appeared in

Weffort’s texts from 1967 on. In “O populismo na política brasileira,” written

for the special issue on Brazil of Les Temps Modernes organized by Celso Furtado,

Weffort (1968b [1967]) presented once again the idea of populism that he had

been developing since 1963 as “a manifestation of the political weaknesses of

the dominant groups,” a bourgeois development that had become “increas-

ingly dependent on foreign capital” and a bourgeoisie condemned “because of

the fragility of populism.” In his doctoral thesis (Weffort, 1968a: 22–23), explic-

itly citing Cardoso and Faletto’s (1970) Dependência e desenvolvimento na América

Latina, Weffort discusses how the dependent political and social formation

played a decisive role in explaining the emergence of the masses in Brazilian

and Argentine politics. This compatibility with the dependency approach

would change dramatically in the years that followed.

The new attitude toward the notion of dependency is noticeable in the texts

prepared for an academic event in Chile in the late 1970s in which Weffort and

Cardoso publicly discussed the topic. Despite recognizing the “critical” and

“renovating” role of the notion of “dependent countries” in the face of “a tradi-

tion of theoretical idealization of advanced societies as the universal standard

of capitalist development” (Weffort, 1971: 4), Weffort had come to see the limits

of its use. In this text he said that the notion of dependency had replaced the

idea of underdevelopment but ended up reviving national-developmentalist

ideology in other terms.

Here we will explore the vicissitudes of Weffort’s adoption and criticism of

dependency theory. The next section will discuss the creation of a Latin

American political lexicon1 in which the concepts of “dependency” and “popu-

lism” occupied a central role, pointing to the position of Weffort’s texts in this

context.2 The following section presents the terms of the debate between Weffort

and Cardoso to show how they changed their positions in the controversy. The

conclusion discusses how his concern with the autonomy of the working class

and his criticism of dependency converged in Weffort’s thought, particularly in

his thesis of “populist unionism” (Weffort, 1972b). This reconstruction is part

of a broader research effort in which we focused on the construction of the col-

lection O populismo na política brasileira (Weffort, 1978), in which Weffort gath-

ered, in more or less modified versions, texts written between 1963 and 1971

with the aim of presenting a consistent approach to populism in Brazil (see

Mussi and Kaysel, 2020). As we will try to demonstrate here by comparing the

different ways in which Weffort thought about the relationship between popu-

lism and dependency, this theoretical production was not fully homogeneous

and continuous.

PoPulism and dePendency in the latin american

Political lexicon

The period from 1960 to 1970 was one of great intellectual effervescence in

the subcontinent, fueled by the spiral of political radicalization that followed