The Brazilian duality of Ignácio Rangel

Abstract

Brazilians dub the eighties “the lost decade”. After forty years of an average
annual growth of 7%, the GDP per inhabitant dropped 5% in that decade. Ignácio Rangel,
a Marxist economist, foresaw the coming of the crisis in 1978, and suggested the only way
out: the privatization of the public utilities. That was before Reagan and Thatcher. The “Brazilian
Duality” is the mainspring of Rangel’s thought. According to it, the national economy
must be analysed from both its “internal side”, i.e., the national economy itself, and its “external
side”, the world economy.

JEL Classification: B31; B24.