And of the works of the authors themselves

489

Nova Economia_Belo Horizonte_25 (3)_477-500_setembro-dezembro de 2015

 

Luiz Felipe Bruzzi Curi_Danilo Barolo Martins de Lima

Physiocratic-Smithian economics tends 

too much to a cosmopolitan conception, 

whereas mercantilist-protectionist economics 

sometimes exaggerates the national point of 

view. Yet in principle and ultimately the latter 

is more correct 

(WAGNER, 

1909

 [

1876

], P. 

39

)

.

Wagner’s conceptualization of economics in the 

Grundlegung gave preference to national interests, 

when these collide with cosmopolitan ones. Rodbertus’ 

theory of crises, sketched in his letter to Kirchmann 

later published as Le Capital, was based on the idea 

that a deregulated capitalist economy would cause the 

relative share of wages in national income to decline, 

which, given a rising productivity, would engender 

overproduction and underconsumption.

It is not possible to state that in his speech Simonsen 

intended to derive all the theoretical and analytical 

and practical implications of the ideas developed by 

Rodbertus and Wagner, so as to conceptualize, as they 

did, overproduction crises and the national economy. 

Nevertheless, both concepts are embedded in lines of 

theoretical reasoning rather coherent with Simonsen’s 

purposes in the parliamentary speech of 1935.

Certainly, in his speech Simonsen intended to convey 

contents which were not exactly equivalent to those 

implied by Rodbertus and Wagner: the target audience 

of each author and the contexts in which each text was 

produced were very different. But Simonsen did use 

the concepts present in the works of these economists, 

mentioning their names at the beginning of his speech, 

where he exposed his theoretical and ideological affinities. 

This appropriation, described in its specificity, helps to 

understand the kind of economic thinking developed 

by Roberto Simonsen and to shed light on some 

particularities of the dissemination of economic ideas  

in the 1930s, in Brazil.  

4.2_Roberto Simonsen’s appropriations:  

the organization of production and nationalism

Rather than follower of a specific tradition of economic 

thought, Simonsen was a thinker of multiple references. 

He began his professional career very close to the  

ideas of Frederick Taylor in the field of scientific 

administration and gradually moved toward protectionist 

conceptions such as List’s and Manoilescu’s in the 1920s 

and 1930s. As a founding member of the Free School for 

Sociology and Politics, he was in contact with American 

sociologists. His important book, Economic history 

of Brazil (1937), contained a wide range of intellectual 

references, among which the Portuguese historian João 

Lúcio de Azevedo, who inspired the interpretation of 

Brazilian economic history in terms of the cycles of 

exported primary commodities.

In order to produce the reports that integrate  

the “controversy on economic planning” (1944-45) 

Simonsen came closer to a literature directly related to 

economic planning, in order to respond to the criticism 

presented by his interlocutor in the discussion, the liberal 

economist Eugênio Gudin. In the various political and 

intellectual contexts in which he was involved, Simonsen 

searched for diversified references, forging an economic 

thought that, far from containing a unified analytical 

proposition, was rather a set of insights about the 

Brazilian economy and Brazilian economic history, based 

on a plurality of theoretical inspirations. The debate 

about the Agreement of 1935 was one of these moments  

in which Simonsen sought for theoretical foundations:  

in this case, they should give support to an exposition 

about commercial policy. 

---

Roberto Simonsen and the Brazil-U.S. Trade Agreement of 1935 

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490

Accordingly, it is interesting to indicate some of 

the possible reasons for the inclusion of Rodbertus and 

Wagner among the references mentioned by Simonsen in 

the speech. In the case of Rodbertus, the main element 

highlighted by Simonsen is the disruptive nature of the 

free market, which should not be abolished, but regulated 

by the State. In Rodbertus’ scheme capitalists are not 

to blame for economic crises, these being a result of 

an important dysfunction of the free market, capitalist 

economy: productivity grows, as the wage share in output 

declines. This idea reinforced Simonsen’s argument 

that the free market (at international level) was not 

necessarily beneficial: it might be harmful, as he implied 

in the speech, to the development of the Brazilian 

industrial sector.

Adolph Wagner, in turn, gave preference to the 

“national point of view” over the “cosmopolitan” one. 

Similarly, Simonsen intended to show that, in Brazilian 

policymaking related to international trade, national 

interests should prevail – and he saw these as identical  

to the interests of Brazil’s nascent industry. He sought  

to reveal in his parliamentary address that many 

developed countries, such as the United States,  

had adopted protectionist measures, having defended 

their national industrial production, when this was 

convenient. Moreover, Wagner formulated a typology  

of economic development in which the most civilized 

phase corresponded to a stage of national unification  

and economic integration. By the same token,  

Roberto Simonsen viewed the establishment of a  

national institutional framework as a prerequisite of 

economic development.

The inclusion of references to these German authors 

approximates Simonsen’s reasoning of a lineage of 

economic thought coherent with his arguments, due to 

the critique of the free market principle and  

to the positive assessment of the nationalist point  

of view, in opposition to the cosmopolitan one.  

The presence of these thinkers as authorities legitimizing 

Simonsen’s speech may be an indication that he was  

in tune with the German traditions of economic thought, 

incorporating elements of historicism, nationalism and 

social reformism.

Roberto Simonsen resorted to German authors in 

other opportunities. In 1931, in a speech delivered at the 

Mackenzie College, in São Paulo, he presented himself 

as a follower of Friedrich List’s protectionism, and in 

his book Economic history of Brazil (1937) he referred 

to arguments developed by Gustav Schmoller. German 

traditions of economic thought were not the only source 

of inspiration for Simonsen, as he was influenced by 

various intellectual tendencies, but they played an 

important role in his thinking, the parliamentary  

address of 1935 being an example of this.

Now turning to some particular arguments 

presented by Simonsen in the speech, an important 

point was the connection between foreign trade and 

international capital. He considered the presence of 

external capital in Brazil to be inevitable, given the 

historical scarcity of national capital. In addition, foreign 

capital had, according to him, brought a considerable 

impulse to the country’s economic progress. The problem 

was that this foreign investment resulted in ever growing 

remittances, which had to be covered with enduring 

balance of trade surpluses. The eventual decrease of these 

positive results, historically attached to the cyclical sales 

of the primary commodities Brazil exported, would cause 

the flow of foreign capital to cease.

Brazil was not, according to Simonsen, responsible 

for these difficulties to pay for foreign capital: the 

---