Program for a «new political economy»

Abstract

The publication of Prefácio à Nova Economìa Politica (Preface to the New Political Economy), the most recent book by the Brazilian economist Celso Furtado, in Portugal, is an event of relevant scientific meaning. The book is made of several essays, the main one being presented as the «preface and the contents» of a book that, if it existed, would be an attempt to overpass «the present situation of want of a general theory about the social formations serving as a starting-point for the study of the particular problems of great concern to the economists». Therefore, this essay is the sketch for a «new political economy» guided towards the breaking of the limitations and the end of the inadequacies of the academic political economy. According to Celso Furtado, «the advance towards an economic dynamics implies the understanding of the global social processi, i.e., the making of a theoretical framework that may enable us to approach the study of the whole of social processi». Thus Furtado's essay deals with such a theoretical framework. Of the two parts which it is made of - a preface and the contents of the «new political economy» suggested by the author - one is able to transcrible only the second in Análise Social, and this is done with the purpose, the same purpose of Celso Furtado himself, of «stimulating the debate and confronting opinions».