Celso Furtado

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Furtado, Celso


Born 1920 in Pombal, Brazil. Brazilian economist.

In the 1960’s, Furtado was Brazil’s minister of planning; he helped formulate economic development plans for Brazil, Mexico, and Venezuela. After the Brazilian military coup of 1964, Furtado emigrated. He has been a professor at Yale University (1964) and the University of Paris.

Furtado takes a liberal bourgeois position in his criticism of the business practices of foreign capital and especially of multinational corporations in Latin America. He points out the fallacy of the theory of stages of economic growth and holds that the economic backwardness of the developing countries is related to the establishment of the world capitalist economy. Furtado is an advocate of increased government intervention in the economic system. He is aware of the class contradictions based on private capitalist property relations; even though he reduces the class struggle primarily to its economic aspects, he also recognizes its decisive importance for socioeconomic development.


A economia brasileira. Rio de Janeiro, 1954.
Uma economia dependente. Rio de Janeiro, 1956.
Dialéctica do desenvolvimento. Rio de Janeiro [1967],
Développement et sous-développement. Paris, 1966.
Teoría y politica del desarrollo económico. [Mexico City, 1969.]
La economía latinoamericana: Una síntesis desde la conquista ibérica hasta la revolución cubana. Santiago de Chile [1970].


References in periodicals archive ?
Other more recent theories of development, such as those linked to human development (Amartya Sen) (6) and the critique of the theory of underdevelopment (Celso Furtado) (7), emphasize a common aspect of distribution.
Em um segundo momento, refletiremos sobre certos conceitos consolidados em obras de Florestan Fernandes (1920-1995), Fernando Henrique Cardoso (1931-) e Celso Furtado (1920-2004), referentes a condicao periferica do Brasil e o seus atrelados subdesenvolvimento, dependencia e autonomia.
The themes of inequality, oppression of the poor, raising popular consciousness, the "culture of silence," dependency are popular concepts that had been explored by a number of Latin intellectuals, among them, Peruvian Paulo Freire, Bolivian Luis Ramiro Beltran, Antonio Pasquali, Celso Furtado, Orlando Fals Borda, Arturo Escobar, and Fernando Henrique Cardoso (who became president of Brazil).
Por certo Gilberto Freyre, Sergio Buarquee Celso Furtado, leituras que fundam algumas das mais potentes interpretacoes sobre o enigma brasileiro, mas tambem com perspectivas criticas formuladas por autores e interlocutores que frequentemente propuseram novos desafios.
The writings of thinkers like Raul Prebisch, Celso Furtado and Eduardo Galeano and the reports of the Commission for the Development of Latin America (CEPAL) have elaborated extensively on this.