The failure in promoting economic and social development of almost all peripheral and semi-peripheral countries of the world must be attributed to the fact that the governments of these countries outline strategies to promote national development dissociated from the evolution of the capitalist world-system. In his book Unthinking Social Science, the American sociologist Immanuel Wallerstein states that it is necessary to review the current paradigms of social sciences and going to think otherwise in the XXI century. Wallerstein argues for the adoption of a new theoretical and methodological framework in social science based on analysis of the capitalist world-system to understand how each national system it is inserted in order to promote their economic and social development. The new theoretical analysis of the economic system of a nation taking into account the capitalist world-system proposed by Wallerstein is opposed to the current Cartesian method approach that formulates the development of the national economic system of isolated and dissociated form of the analysis of the insertion of the national economy in the world capitalist system.

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IS IT POSSIBLE ACCOMPLISHING THE INDEPENDENT NATIONAL
DEVELOPMENT?
Fernando Alcoforado *
According to world systems theory, as developed by Immanuel Wallerstein and Fernand
Braudel, the world is organized economically in the form of "economies-world" which
would be, in the language of the latter, "a fragment of the universe, a piece of the planet
economically autonomous, able to be essentially sufficient to himself and to which its
links and internal exchanges give a certain organic unity give a certain organic unity"
[BRAUDEL, F. Civilização material, economia e capitalism (Material civilization,
economy and capitalism). Sao Paulo: Martins Fontes, 1996]. According to Wallerstein,
the capitalist world-system consists of a division between center, periphery and semi-
periphery, depending on the division of labor between the regions of the world
(WALLERSTEIN, Immanuel. Unthinking Social Science. Cambridge: Polity Press,
1991).
For Wallerstein, the center is an area of great technological development that produces
complex products; the periphery is the area that supplies raw materials, agricultural
products and cheap labor force to the center. The economic exchange between
periphery and center is uneven: the periphery has to sell its products at a low price
while buying the products at high prices from the center, and this situation tends to
reproduce itself automatically, almost deterministic, although it is also dynamic and
change historically. Regarding semi-periphery it is an intermediate development region
which functions as a center to the periphery and periphery to the center as is the case in
Brazil.
The semi-periphery is characterized by Wallerstein as a structural element necessary for
performing a stabilizing role similar to that of the middle class within the class setting in
a country. Still assume a role, in the words of Arrighi, of "systemic legitimacy",
showing to the periphery that there is a possibility of mobility within the international
division of labor for those who are sufficiently "capable" and / or "well-behaved"
[ARRIGHI, Giovanni. A ilusão do desenvolvimento (The illusion of development).
Petrópolis: Vozes, 1997]. According to Arrighi, the semi-peripheral condition is
described as one in which a significant number of national states such as Brazil that
remains permanently between central and peripheral conditions, despite having gone
through social and economic transformation of long-range, continues relatively
backward in important ways.
Arrighi says that the most developed countries in the world are those members of the
organic core of the capitalist world economy, ie the countries of Western Europe
(Benelux, Scandinavia, West Germany, Austria, Switzerland, France and UK), North
America (US and Canada), Australia and New Zealand. After the Second World War,
they have joined this core, Japan and Italy. The thesis that prevailed after the Second
World War that it was possible to all peripheral and semi-peripheral nations to achieve
the stage of high level of development enjoyed by the core capitalist countries,
especially the United States did not take place. From the second half of the twentieth
century, there were several attempts to promoting economic and social development in
various countries of the world that have failed are those in capitalist frameworks with
national developmentalism begun, for example, in Brazil and those with the
implementation of socialism. There have been several partial and temporary successes.

2. 2
But just when all indicators seemed heading in the upward direction, all peripheral and
semi peripheral capitalist countries, without exception, collapsed during the 1990s.
One fact is clear: the transformation of peripheral or semi-peripheral capitalist country
to the developed condition is quite difficult to achieve as has been demonstrated by
Arrighi in his work A ilusão do desenvolvimento (The illusion of development). Japan
and Italy were the ones that left the condition of semi-peripheral countries to the core of
developed countries members. Due to the geopolitical importance during the Cold War,
Japan and South Korea have managed to climb to more high level of development due
to the financial support obtained from the United States after World War II and
especially the role of the national state in promoting development. Italy managed to
reach the level of developed country thanks to a number of existing favorable factors in
its economy and the role played by the Italian State. South Korea was the only country
in the periphery of the capitalist world-system that evolved into the semi-peripheral
status.
Wallerstein rejected the concept of the Third World that characterized the countries not
included among the core capitalist countries (First World) and Socialist (Second
World), arguing that there was only one world articulated by a complex system of
economic exchange - a world economy or world system - characterized by the
accumulation of capital between nation states in competition on a balance always
threatened by internal friction. This approach is the theory of the capitalist world-system
formulated by Immanuel Wallerstein that identifies the origin of the modern world
system in Europe and North America from the sixteenth century when it triggered a
process of expansion that culminated in the global system of economic exchanges that
currently exist on the planet. In the nineteenth century, virtually all regions of the world
had been incorporated into the capitalist world economy.
It can be said that the failure in promoting economic and social development of almost
all peripheral and semi-peripheral countries of the world must be attributed to the fact
that the governments of these countries outline strategies to promote national
development dissociated from the evolution of the capitalist world-system. In his book
Unthinking Social Science, the American sociologist Immanuel Wallerstein states that it
is necessary to review the current paradigms of social sciences and going to think
otherwise in the XXI century. Wallerstein argues for the adoption of a new theoretical
and methodological framework in social science based on analysis of the capitalist
world-system to understand how each national system it is inserted in order to promote
their economic and social development. The new theoretical analysis of the economic
system of a nation taking into account the capitalist world-system proposed by
Wallerstein is opposed to the current Cartesian method approach that formulates the
development of the national economic system of isolated and dissociated form of the
analysis of the insertion of the national economy in the world capitalist system.
So that explains the failure of national developmentalism and implantation of socialism
that resulted from the fact that their mentors admit having ability to promote national
economic and social development disassociated from the capitalist world-system. The
authors of the Dependency Theory (Andre Gunder Frank, Theotonio dos Santos, among
others) criticized in the mid-twentieth century the "feudal myth in Brazilian
agriculture", the "external obstacles" to development and also the "dualism" structuralist
ECLAC (Economic Commission of Latin American Countries) that considered exist in
Brazil as opposed two structures: static Interior (represented by large landowners) x

3. 3
dynamic coast (represented by industries). The authors of the Dependency Theory
criticized also those who considered that capitalism was impossible in the periphery of
the world capitalist system and claims that capitalist development actually occur, but in
the form of underdevelopment as actually happened in Brazil. They defended, so that
industrialization in Latin America was not only possible and be completed, as would be
necessary for the capitalist center, but strengthen the underdevelopment of national
economies, in what became known as "new dependency" that, in fact, occurred in
Brazil.
Dependence was forged, so by international division of labor that exists between central
capitalist countries whose capital centralize global capitalist accumulation process and
has industrial parks based on what's most advanced technology, and peripheral and
semi-peripheral countries which export surplus value. Dependence was not forged, so,
by the condition exporting rural or by pre-capitalist heritage of developing countries but
by the pattern of international division of labor of the capitalist world-system. The
international division of labor is between countries whose capital centralizes global
capitalist accumulation process and has industrial parks based on what are most
advanced technology, and countries that export capital gain, are suppliers of cheap
manpower and natural resources and have specialized industrial parks in low value-
added products and / or technology. The dependency that was before marked by
external unequal exchanges shall be exercised by the dependence on technology,
copyright and foreign direct investment, external indebtedness, the imposition of
monetarist and neoliberal policies by multilateral organizations, sending profit
remittances and flows of speculative capital. In the 1960s and 1970s, Latin American
societies, including Brazil, which had already consolidated its domestic market and the
internationalization of capitalism (stage of monopoly capitalism, with the expansion of
multinational companies), indicating a new pattern of addiction which remains to this
day.
It appears from the foregoing that the autonomous national development, whether
capitalist or socialist base, will not be successful if begun on the sidelines of the fight
against the capitalist world-system that determines the development of every country in
the world. The promotion of the development of peripheral and semi-peripheral
countries should be articulated, therefore, with the struggle against the capitalist world-
system that seeks to maintain its dependence on the central capitalist countries. This
means that worldwide people of all peripheral and semi-peripheral countries should
unite aiming the construction of a new economic and political world order that will help
to reverse the plunder that suffer at present held by the central capitalist countries.
Without this perspective, the national developmentalism and socialism as a society
projects will be doomed to failure.

Fernando Alcoforado, member of the Bahia Academy of Education, engineer and doctor of Territorial
Planning and Regional Development from the University of Barcelona, a university professor and
consultant in strategic planning, business planning, regional planning and planning of energy systems, is
the author of Globalização (Editora Nobel, São Paulo, 1997), De Collor a FHC- O Brasil e a Nova
(Des)ordem Mundial (Editora Nobel, São Paulo, 1998), Um Projeto para o Brasil (Editora Nobel, São
Paulo, 2000), Os condicionantes do desenvolvimento do Estado da Bahia (Tese de doutorado.
Universidade de Barcelona, http://www.tesisenred.net/handle/10803/1944, 2003), Globalização e
Desenvolvimento (Editora Nobel, São Paulo, 2006), Bahia- Desenvolvimento do Século XVI ao Século XX
e Objetivos Estratégicos na Era Contemporânea (EGBA, Salvador, 2008), The Necessary Conditions of
the Economic and Social Development-The Case of the State of Bahia (VDM Verlag Dr. Muller
Aktiengesellschaft & Co. KG, Saarbrücken, Germany, 2010), Aquecimento Global e Catástrofe
Planetária (P&A Gráfica e Editora, Salvador, 2010), Amazônia Sustentável- Para o progresso do Brasil e

4. 4
combate ao aquecimento global (Viena- Editora e Gráfica, Santa Cruz do Rio Pardo, São Paulo, 2011),
Os Fatores Condicionantes do Desenvolvimento Econômico e Social (Editora CRV, Curitiba, 2012) and
Energia no Mundo e no Brasil- Energia e Mudança Climática Catastrófica no Século XXI (Editora CRV,
Curitiba, 2015).