Guerreiro Ramos and sociological reduction: dilemmas and prospects for Brazilian Economic Development

ABSTRACT

This article examines Alberto Guerreiro Ramos’s contributions to understanding the dilemmas and prospects of Brazilian economic development, emphasizing the originality and relevance of his thought. The methodological approach is based on a bibliographic review, aiming to identifying the State of the Art on the subject. The analysis is structured around four axes: i) biographical context, ii) theoretical-methodological foundations, iii) critiques of structural obstacles, and iv) proposals for a national-developmental project in Brazil. The study concludes that Guerreiro Ramos’s work represents a landmark in Critical Sociology and Sociology of Development, in Brazil and should be further explored in contemporary economic studies.

KEYWORDS:
Guerreiro Ramos; economic development; sociological reduction; popular nationalism; critical sociology; sociology of development.

INTRODUCTION

Alberto Guerreiro Ramos (1915-1982) was a distinguished Brazilian sociologist, politician, and public intellectual. He developed an extensive and diverse academic production, alongside an active political and social engagement spanning from the 1940s to the 1980s. His intellectual trajectory is marked by interdisciplinarity and by transitions across distinct fields of knowledge, including public administration, sociology, economics, philosophy, and psychology. Regarded as one of the leading figures of Brazilian sociology, he also made significant contributions to the institutional consolidation of this discipline in the country, as well as to the field of public administration. Guerreiro Ramos’s thought is pioneering, original, and singular, occupying a distinctive position within the Brazilian intellectual tradition and the broader landscape of Global South thought.

Although widely studied in sociology and public administration, Guerreiro Ramos’s work remains relatively unknown and underexplored within the field of economics. This paper, therefore, aims to investigate his main contributions to economic thought, particularly his views on economic development, by examining his concepts, methods, interpretations, and perspectives. The relevance of this inquiry lies in the fact that Guerreiro Ramos’s reflections on the economy constitute one of the fundamental pillars of his intellectual production, yet they are seldom addressed in academic curricula or research. His reflections on economic development are particularly valuable for understanding both the history of economic thought and the evolution of the Brazilian economy. Moreover, Guerreiro Ramos’s analyses of the roots and possible overcoming of economic underdevelopment in Brazil may offer valuable insights and lessons for contemporary policymakers, as well as inspire new lines of academic research.

To achieve its objectives, this study employs an extensive bibliographical review, focusing primarily on Guerreiro Ramos’s writings, interviews, and public addresses. The goal was to outline the state of the art regarding the theme of economic development in his work. In addition, the study incorporates the contributions of scholars dedicated to examining his thought and related topics, thereby broadening the analytical scope and situating his ideas within wider intellectual debates that remain relevant to contemporary contexts.

The paper is structured into three main sections, in addition to this introduction and the concluding remarks. The first section discusses his analytical, interpretive, and investigative method, known as sociological reduction. The second section examines his assessments and explanations of the structural obstacles to economic development in Brazil. The third and final section explores his perspectives and concrete propositions regarding the Brazilian national-developmental project. Finally, the conclusion highlights the pioneering nature and continuing relevance of Guerreiro Ramos’s work, recognizing him as one of the forerunners of Critical Sociology and the Sociology of Development in Brazil, and reaffirming the significance of his analysis for contemporary debates in economics, both in Brazil and across the Global South.

THE SOCIOLOGICAL METHOD

From his earliest writings - “The Process of Sociology in Brazil” (O Processo da Sociologia no Brasil - 1953); “Primer for the Apprentice Sociologist” (Cartilha do Aprendiz de Sociólogo - 1954); “Critical Introduction to Brazilian Sociology” (Introdução Crítica à Sociologia Brasileira - 1957); “Sociological Reduction: Introduction to the Study of Sociological Reason” (A Redução Sociológica: Introdução ao Estudo da Razão Sociológica – 1958); “The National Problem of Brazil” (O Problema Nacional do Brasil - 1960) and “The Crisis of Power in Brazil: Problems of the National Revolution” (A Crise do Poder no Brasil: Problemas da Revolução Nacional - 1961) - Guerreiro Ramos’s sociological work was marked by a persistent concern with constructing a method capable of interpreting Brazilian social reality. Many of these works were produced when Guerreiro Ramos was part of the Higher Institute of Brazilian Studies (Instituto Superior de Estudos Brasileiros - ISEB), a public institution linked to the Ministry of Education and Culture of Getulio Vargas, and as a professor of sociology at the Brazilian School of Public Administration (Escola Brasileira de Administração Pública - EBAPE).

For him, Brazilian sociology should move away from “hypercorrection” - exaggerated confidence in imported theories, disregarding reality and practices that contradict their sources. It should instead move toward “critical pragmatism” - an attitude of identification with national elements and the contextual conditions of the environment in which they live, opportunistically serving imported theories (Guerreiro Ramos, 1996).

According to Guerreiro Ramos (1995, 1996), Brazilian sociology was mostly composed of armchair social scientists and elitist intellectuals who pretended to possess knowledge that was unattainable to “ordinary people.” This supposed enlightenment was due to their access to foreign authors and works which, according to Guerreiro Ramos (1995, p.107), “[...] it generally consists of training for conformism. [...] He learns to receive ready-made solutions, and when faced with a problem in his environment, he attempts to solve it by comparing texts, appealing to the recipes he has absorbed from textbooks.”

As Guerreiro Ramos (1995, p.108) observed, this was not only a “consular sociology” but also a kind of “canned sociology,” “[…] since it is consumed as a true cultural jam.” In his view, it represented yet another instance of cultural transplantation - a process by which Brazilian society imported values, institutions, science, and cultural models from the core economies and applied them uncritically to the national context, disregarding local specificities.

Thus, what he termed “consular sociology” - referring to the Brazilian model based on foreign theorists inserted into the local reality without critical questioning - and “canned sociology” - characterized by the passive consumption of ready-made sociological theories originating in core economies, disregarding national particularities - were by-products of “cultural transplantation.” For Guerreiro Ramos (1963, 1995, 1996), this leads to: i) the imposition of foreign models, ii) alienation from national reality, iii) cultural and intellectual dependence, and iv) distortions in national economic development. In the author’s words:

Our conventional sociologists are infinitely alienated in addressing these issues [...]. They assess the needs of sociological work using abstract, symmetrical, and analogical criteria. [...] It is precisely these conventional sociologists who are the best paid in Brazil, the favorites of external organizations that finance research. Yet everyone knows their participation in the current effort to formulate a genuine national sociological thought is nil. This thought is emerging despite them and against their resistance. (Guerreiro Ramos, 1996, pp.23-24)

As noted by Caldas (2021), imbued with a critical and self-reflective stance toward sociological and administrative theory, Guerreiro Ramos sought to elaborate a theoretical-methodological alternative to the conservative and functionalist tendencies that predominated in the 1940s and 1950s in Brazil. He aimed to overcome the mechanistic determinism underlying interpretations that sought to reproduce European and US theories uncritically within Brazilian social sciences. Guerreiro Ramos, thus, proposed the construction of a Critical Sociology.

In this sense, Guerreiro Ramos (1995) sought to recover Brazilian authors who had pursued the opposite path to “canned” or “consular” sociology - intellectuals engaged in what he called an “authentic sociology.” This school, he argued, “[...] while drawing upon the accumulated experience of universal sociological work, seeks to use it as an instrument for self-knowledge and for the development of national and regional structures” (Guerreiro Ramos, 1996, p.108). Among those he considered most successful in this endeavor were Sylvio Romero, Alberto Torres, and Oliveira Vianna.

According to Bariani (2006), the methodological debate raised by Guerreiro Ramos was part of a broader intellectual confrontation among Brazil’s emerging schools of sociology - a dispute between ISEB and the University of São Paulo (USP), Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo, “Carioca sociology” versus “Paulista sociology,” and, symbolically, Guerreiro Ramos versus Florestan Fernandes. On the latter, Guerreiro Ramos remarked:

[...] in truth, Mr. Florestan Fernandes, regarding foreign sociology, is a hypercorrect. At no point does he show any understanding that, in an underdeveloped country, sociological work cannot achieve scientific character unless it complies with certain adverbial rules - of a historical and social nature - that distinguish its pattern from the alien pattern. These rules, of course, do not affect the general principles of sociological reasoning. (Guerreiro Ramos, 1996, p.22)

Oliveira (1995) succinctly summarized the main points of this divergence, which helps illuminate Guerreiro Ramos’s thought and method. For the author, the “Paulista sociology” of USP, represented by Florestan, conceived sociology as a positive science of the social, modeled on thinkers such as Max Weber, Émile Durkheim, and Karl Marx. The “Carioca sociology” of ISEB, represented by Guerreiro Ramos, did not deny these classical authors, indeed employing their concepts and theories, yet was more skeptical about their universality.

For Florestan, social science was positivity; for Guerreiro Ramos, it was perspective. Florestan was not an engaged sociologist at that time; Guerreiro always was. Consequently, the ISEB school embraced sociology as a critical, holistic, contextual, multivariable and autonomous science. As seen, Guerreiro Ramos has an interdisciplinary background, grounded in different fields of knowledge such as philosophy, anthropology, sociology, politics, education, psychology, psychoanalysis, and cultural studies. His line of thought it is the sociological line of Georges Gurvitch, sharing the heritage of Pierre-Joseph Proudhon and Saint-Simon, for example (Oliveira, 1995).

The influence of the Sociology of Knowledge, structured by the Russian sociologist based in France, Georges Gurvitch, with his multivariational analysis, on Guerreiro Ramos, is highlighted by Brigagão (2016, p.256): “He once asked me if I knew the French sociologist Georges Gurvitch. I didn’t know anything about Gurvitch, I had never heard of this author in my life. He said to me: ‘My dear friend, to study sociology and political science, you have to read Georges Gurvitch.’”

The perspective of Guerreiro Ramos and the Rio de Janeiro school of sociology, therefore, understands that social reality must be interpreted from a plural and non-linear perspective. The sociologist must employ diverse theoretical references and methodological approaches in conjunction with the congruences and lived social, historical, and political experiences of the local context - what Ramos called extensional (empirical) combinations. Authentic sociology, therefore, required a multivariable analysis rather than mere reproduction of structured procedures and directives formulated mainly in Europe and the US.

Another crucial point in Guerreiro Ramos’s view is that sociological knowledge must be applied to the resolution of social problems. Thus, sociology, in his conception, possesses not only a scientific dimension but also a social function. Authentic sociology was, therefore, the only form capable of producing a theoretical framework relevant to Brazilian reality - contributing to the construction of national identity and to economic and social development (Guerreiro Ramos, 1995, 1996).

According to Guerreiro Ramos (1996), authentic sociology should employ the sociological reduction method. In short, this consists of three stages or moments. The first is the “reduction of the object,” which makes it possible to delimit the object of research, preferably a social problem. The second stage is the “reduction of the context,” which situates the social problem within the historical, social, economic, political, and cultural context in which it occurs. The third and final stage is the “reduction of data,” which is responsible for selecting the data that are relevant and necessary to solve the social problem that has been defined (Guerreiro Ramos, 1996). Regarding authentic sociology and the reduction process, Guerreiro Ramos states:

This type of sociology requires much more effort from the sociologist than merely acquiring ideas and specialized information: it requires initiation into intellectual skill, into an intellectual instance [...]. Reduction is precisely the opposite of repetition. The mere analogical repetition of practices and studies contradicts the essence of the scientific attitude, because it loses sight of the constitutive particularity of every historical situation. (Guerreiro Ramos, 1996, p.21, emphasis in the original)

For Guerreiro Ramos, sociology is a science and, in Brazil, the method of sociological reduction is capable of conferring autonomy and substantive value on Brazilian sociological thought, as opposed to the mere uncritical reproduction of theories and concepts forged in other contexts. In the author’s words:

Sociological reduction is a method designed to enable scholars to transpose knowledge and experiences from one perspective to another. It is inspired by the systematic awareness that there is a Brazilian perspective. Every national culture is a particular perspective. This is why sociological reduction is merely a restricted modality of the general attitude that every culture in a process of formation must adopt. (Guerreiro Ramos, 1996, p.42)

However, to prevent sociological reduction from degenerating into a crude or reductionist simplification, Guerreiro Ramos (1963, 1996) emphasized the necessity of a “parenthetical attitude.” This is a “provisional suspension,” a stance that places the assumptions and concepts of categories of thought imported from foreign contexts “in parentheses” (hence the term parenthetical), without, however, abandoning empirical-inductive grounding, in pursuit of critical pragmatism.

The parenthetical man, in this sense, is the social researcher who has achieved critical independence from the imperatives of society. This process involves: i) a critique of theoretical alienation - questioning foreign theories that do not engage with the particularities of Brazil; ii) the contextualization of national reality - prioritizing a sociological analysis rooted in Brazilian culture, history, and social structure; and iii) the construction of autonomous thought - developing one’s own analytical categories, focused on the challenges and potentialities of the country (Guerreiro Ramos, 1963, 1996).

For Guerreiro Ramos (1996), sociological reduction, combined with the parenthetical attitude, constitutes a process of overcoming the intellectual and cultural alienation experienced by former colonies. However, the parenthetical method and man are not without references in the classics of sociology, nor do they act in a scientific manner, since “[…] sociological concepts did not come out of the heads of sociologists, they were not revealed to them in a moment of mediumship; they resulted from the critical examination of situations experienced within historical limits” (Guerreiro Ramos, 1954, p.89). He further affirmed:

Since its inception, sociology has espoused a concept of social reality in empirical terms [...]. Data collection is meaningless if it is not guided by a holistic perspective, by an a priori that is not arbitrary but is objectively implied, as a principle, in the practical life of the cognizant subject [...] The comprehensive theory of a society is the prerequisite for understanding its parts. [...] There is no other way to know social reality than by participating in it. (Guerreiro Ramos, 1960, pp.80-84)

It is evident that there are three basic meanings present in Guerreiro Ramos’ sociological method: i) reduction “[...] as a method of critical assimilation of foreign sociological production”; ii) parenthetical attitude, allowing the researcher “[...] to transcend, as far as possible, the circumstantial constraints that conspire against his free and autonomous expression”; iii) authentic sociology “[...] as overcoming sociology in its institutional and university terms” (Guerreiro Ramos, 1996, p.11).

Through this specific method and by adopting the parenthetical attitude, Guerreiro Ramos developed his in-depth analysis of the dilemmas and prospects of Brazilian economic development.

DILEMMAS OF BRAZILIAN ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT

To understand Guerreiro Ramos’s reflections on economic development, it is essential to grasp ISEB’s conception of national-developmentalism. The ISEB included, in addition to Guerreiro Ramos, intellectuals such as Álvaro Vieira Pinto, Cândido Mendes, Hélio Jaguaribe, Nelson Werneck Sodré, Ignácio Rangel, Rômulo Almeida, and Roland Corbisier. Its mission was to promote the study of social sciences, philosophy, economics, and politics to better understand Brazilian reality. It was also responsible for developing the theoretical framework that would enable national economic development (CPDOC, 2001).

Our intention was to create something equivalent to the Collège de France. That was the original idea - a very ambitious one. What is the Collège de France? It is an institution that recognizes individuals who do not hold formal university positions but are great luminaries, regardless of titles. It is the supreme institution of intellectual consecration. The Collège de France was our model at ISEB. (Guerreiro Ramos, 1981, pp.155-157)

According to Bresser-Pereira (2004), ISEB’s thought included a concept of economic development that employed ideas from Latin American Structuralism, Marxism, and Schumpeterianism, but did not align with any of these models. For ISEB, economic development is the process through which a country carries out its capitalist revolution, fostering capital accumulation and the incorporation of technical progress. This, in turn, leads to sustained increases in income per capita - or, more precisely, in living standards. The drive of economic development, for ISEB, is industrialization.

According to Abreu (1983), ISEB intellectuals believed that economic development would bring about changes in Brazil’s social and political structures and dynamics. Authors such as Hélio Jaguaribe, Roland Corbisier, and Nelson Werneck Sodré argued that strengthening the national industrial bourgeoisie would enable the process of economic development; Guerreiro Ramos, on the other hand, was skeptical about the leading role of the industrial bourgeoisie in driving Brazilian economic development.

In Guerreiro Ramos’s view (1957, 1960, 1963, 1966, 1996), the obstacles that hinder Brazil’s capitalist revolution, making it impossible to build a national-developmental industrial bourgeoisie class with “[…] a consciousness between its subjective understanding and the objective meaning immanent to the process that sustains it in power” (Guerreiro Ramos, 1960, p.25), thereby legitimizing it as a ruling class - are essentially the legacy of colonialism. In Brazil, this results in: i) a lack of national identity, ii) ideological alienation, and iii) unequal socioeconomic structures marked by asymmetric and dysfunctional racial relations.

For Guerreiro Ramos (1960), the colonial legacy experienced by Brazil induces a naïve self-consciousness, reproducing the mental, cultural, political, economic, and social shackles of that period. Brazil’s ruling class and industrial bourgeoisie are still aligned with the colonial status quo, creating a complex dependency that hinders the overcoming of economic underdevelopment and facilitates the action of imperialism.

According to Guerreiro Ramos (1960), Brazil’s political independence did not bring the country’s social and economic emancipation. The national form that was established did not bring with it customs, values, norms, and organizations capable of ensuring the existence of a national identity and culture that would enable autonomous economic development. “With independence, we became a fictitious nation, a nation only from a legal and formal point of view and for the purpose of transactions with the rest of the world. Internally, we were and continue to be, for a long period, a nation without a people” (Guerreiro Ramos, 1960, p.242).

In this sense, for Guerreiro Ramos (1960, 1996), national identity is intrinsically linked to the struggle of peripheral peoples to achieve full sovereignty and free themselves from the ideological bonds that legitimize the colonial order. In Brazil, national identity is still incomplete due to the lack of critical awareness among the ruling classes and the exclusion of the people from the development process. According to the author, there are two societies in Brazil: “[…] one old, with all its commitments to the past, [and] another recent, implying a new lifestyle yet to be created or only tentatively rehearsed in avant-garde circles” (Guerreiro Ramos, 1960, p.87).

As such, the Brazilian society is induced to follow the models, values, and behaviors of core economies with cultural and technological organizations that are supposedly more prestigious. It is through the mental subordination of the local elite, which imported a canned version of the “national reality” from the dominant countries, that economic underdevelopment and imperialism are perpetuated in the periphery. In the author’s words:

Countries formed by colonization exhibit a mimetic character resulting from their global situation. The prestige of the metropolises is inexorably imposed on them. [...] This is why Brazilian society has been marked by heteronomy. [...] The criteria in force here are not, broadly speaking, derived from the national reality. They are derived from the reality of other countries. (Guerreiro Ramos, 1960, p.91)

This phenomenon of ideological alienation in Latin American colonies can be better understood through the concept of Herodianism. According to Sandner and Steger (1973), this term refers to the figure of Herod, King of Judea (37 BC-4 BC), who lived physically in Palestine but culturally in Rome. In this sense, it is possible to say that there is a “Herodianization” of Latin American elites, as they are “[...] societies that, ultimately, only physically had their home in Latin America, but in reality, live intellectually, economically, and politically in their respective hegemonic centers (Sandner and Steger, 1973, p.25).

For Jaguaribe (2013, p.32), total and blind Herodianism “[…] deprives the Herodian society of its personality and character and, therefore, leads to the suicidal destruction of its historical-cultural identity.” Jaguaribe’s concept of total Herodianism can be linked to the term “submissive” (entreguista). This term was coined in the 1950s by members of the Brazilian Labor Party (Partido Trabalhista Brasileiro - PTB) and defenders of national developmentalism to designate sectors that promoted strategic submission to foreign interests in the name of a supposed “modernism,” often in collusion with local elites.

According to Guerreiro Ramos (1960), the submissive imbued with the ideology of legitimizing the colonial order, has the following characteristics:

• 1) The submissive does not believe in the people as the principal leader of the Brazilian process.

• 2) The submissive does not believe that Brazil can solve its problems with domestic resources. He tends to view Brazilian development as essentially dependent on foreign capital inflows and external aid.

• 3) The submissive believes that Brazil’s destiny is invariably linked to that of the United States.

• 4) The submissive objectively contributes, through his work, to the success of ventures that are harmful to national interests.

• 5) The submissive does not consciously participate in any collective efforts aimed at promoting national emancipation. (Guerreiro Ramos, 1960, pp.252-253)

The submissive are functional elites of imperialism. It is no coincidence that sectors with this view supported the 1964 coup. The lack of national identity - with the “total Herodianism” or sell-out of the Brazilian elites, resulting from the influence of foreign models and the lack of appreciation for local traditions, values, and culture - creates fragmentation in the national culture, preventing the formation of a cohesive national identity. This opens the door to institutional monoculture, cultural transplantation, and economic-political subalternity, thereby perpetuating domination-dependency between core and peripheral economies.

Brazil’s unequal socioeconomic structures and its racial perplexity are also closely tied to the remnants of the colonial mentality prevailing in the country. These are unresolved colonial bonds and barriers to the national-developmental process.

According to Guerreiro Ramos (1960, p.108), the notion of socioeconomic structure “[...] is the idea that it always refers to a set of interrelated parts.” It “[...] designates a set of functional relationships between different elements. The structure seeks ‘[...] regularities.’” [...] “It can be obtained by deduction. [...] It is legitimate, however, to resort to the inductive process to develop the notion, a process that consists of using as subsidiary information the events that characterize historical transformation [...]. History is the true laboratory of sociology.”

From this conceptual operationalization of socioeconomic structures, it becomes clear that, for Guerreiro Ramos (1960), social inequalities and racial relations in Brazil are not merely quantitative issues; they are also characterized by qualitative aspects. He recognizes that Brazilian society is marked by asymmetric structural relations, with sharp differences among social classes and ethnic groups - particularly between whites and Blacks (Barbosa, 2015).

Drawing on history to generate his inferences, Guerreiro Ramos (1960) states that unlike Europe, where the interests of the commercial class, since its emergence, opposed the interests of the feudal lords; in Brazil, large landowners and merchants, due to the agro-export model (“hacia afuera”) imposed by colonization, were born allies. “Our latifundium [large estates] resemble medieval fiefdoms internally, but are commercial enterprises in their external relations” (Guerreiro Ramos, 1960, p.236).

As a result, unlike Europe - where merchants became industrialists and agriculture increasingly served domestic demand (hacia adentro), stimulating the economy and significantly expanding the consumer market - Brazil never experienced a rupture in the alliance between agro-exporting landowners and mercantile interests. In the author’s words:

In Brazil, [...] the latifundium [large estates] and its beneficiaries remain vigorous at the very moment when the commercial revolution is far from complete and an industrial base is in the making. This simultaneity of different phases has thus far prevented the emergence of an industrial bourgeoisie capable of fully exercising a revolutionary role […]. (Guerreiro Ramos, 1960, p.237)

According to Guerreiro Ramos (1960), the Brazilian ruling class is made up of large landowners allied with merchants (mercantile groups). These are closely connected to the interests and dominance of foreign capital. Furthermore, “[...] industrial capitalism in Brazil has been significantly shaped by the reconversion of the initiative of large landowners or major exporters” (Guerreiro Ramos, 1960, p.237).

In the Brazilian socioeconomic structure, therefore, a nascent industrial bourgeoisie coexists with an old ruling class composed of large landowners and mercantile elites. If the old ruling class has no commitment to national development, the industrial bourgeoisie, even if it manages to become the dominant class, would need to acquire not only class consciousness, but also collective and national consciousness, recognizing the organic needs of Brazilian society. Only then would it assume the role of the ruling class of the developmental revolution in the country.

However, for Guerreiro Ramos, Brazil’s industrialization unfolded “[…] at a time when other countries had already established their manufacturing sectors - a situation that grants them the capacity to penetrate emerging capitalisms in the form of economic, financial, and technical collaboration.” This undermines the ideological formation of the industrial bourgeoisie, “[…] without which they cannot truly lead the process” (Guerreiro Ramos, 1960, p.237).

For the author, the industrial bourgeoisie could become the dominant class, but it would not be able to become the ruling class unless it gained a critical and national-collective consciousness. Nevertheless, due to its origins and formation, it tends to unite with large landowners, merchants, and the ideological right against a supposed “socialist specter” of nascent trade-union organizations. The industrial bourgeois regime maintains a naïve consciousness and consolidates a particularly antisocial, anti-national, and anti-democratic model. In the words of Guerreiro Ramos:

The historical weakness of the national bourgeoisie is further aggravated by another circumstance peculiar to the formation of the country’s social structure. […] Brazil’s late industrial formation produces an overlapping of the historical roles of the national bourgeoisie and the proletariat, which leads the former to hold back or refrain from bold initiatives, fearing the short-term loss of material advantages from which it benefits. (Guerreiro Ramos, 1960, p.237)

This was the central divergence between Hélio Jaguaribe - who believed in the industrial bourgeoisie as the protagonist of Brazil’s national-developmental revolution - and Guerreiro Ramos, who distrusted the capacity of the industrial bourgeoisie to lead the process of overcoming the country’s economic underdevelopment. Specifically on this point - one of the reasons for his departure from ISEB - Guerreiro Ramos declared:

[…] we have nothing, and never had anything, in common with the ‘ISEBians’ […]. I have never taken seriously the cerebral musings of certain lesser intellectuals, lackeys of bourgeois “developmentalism.” Read [...] what we wrote about the fallacy of bourgeois nationalism in “The National Problem of Brazil” (O Problema Nacional do Brasil) and “Myth and Truth of the Brazilian Revolution” (Mito e Verdade da Revolução Brasileira) and about “developmentalism” in “The Crisis of Power in Brazil” (A Crise do Poder no Brasil). Furthermore, our departure from ISEB in 1958 [...] serves as a cipher for understanding the existential reasons for our position. The proletarian point of view is the basic reference of our sociological thought. (Guerreiro Ramos, 1996, p.36)

With respect to socioeconomic structure, Guerreiro Ramos also developed a deep, lifelong analysis of race relations in Brazil. For the author, the domination of European whites during colonization was not achieved solely through force and direct violence, but also through the creation of a system of pseudo-justifications, the establishment of stereotypes, and processes of psychological domestication. “Human color thus loses its character as contingency or accident and becomes truly substance or essence” (Guerreiro Ramos, 1957, p.242).

To guarantee domination and exploitation, the dominant white minority of European origin persistently and systematically carried out “[...] the aesthetic devaluation of the black color, or rather, the association of this color with ugliness and degradation [...].” This was promoted through “[...] a dogmatic inculcation, a linguistic and religious community, of aesthetic values and customs” (Guerreiro Ramos, 1957, p.219).

In a country like Brazil, colonized by Europeans, the most prestigious and therefore accepted values are those of the colonizer. Among these values is whiteness as a symbol of the exalted, the sublime, the beautiful. God is conceived as white, and in white are imagined all perfections. In contrast, the black color is imbued with a millennial load of pejorative meanings. In black terms, all imperfections are thought of. (Guerreiro Ramos, 1957, p.241)

The construction of this ethos and norm, in the author’s view, embedded in Brazilian society a social pathology of “whiteness.” It leads mixed-race Brazilians - or even Black Brazilians - to resort to subterfuges to disguise their actual ethnic condition. “They are, in general, very proud of their ennobling origins and seize any pretext to proclaim them: rings, home décor, naming conventions, linguistic style” (Guerreiro Ramos, 1957, p.227).

For Guerreiro Ramos (1957, p.230), a pathology of whiteness became hegemonic in Brazil. It is a “[…] maladjustment of the Brazilian ‘white’ to his ethnic context […] that Brazil is a country of mixed-race people.” For the author, this established a racial hierarchy in which one segment of the population feels superior to another, as well as feeling closer to their European origins than to the social reality of Brazil.

According to Guerreiro Ramos (1957, p.231), the “[...] current phase of Brazil’s socio-economic development no longer has concrete supports that allow our minority of whites to sustain their Aryanization (Arisierung) attitudes.” The process of miscegenation has absorbed a large part of those who could declare themselves white in Brazil. “What remains today of pure whites among us is a relatively small quota. Brazil is, therefore, from an ethnic point of view, a country of mixed-race people.”

To Guerreiro Ramos, “Whiteness” in Brazil, therefore, is an artificiality, a fiction, a pathology, a paranoid trait. Brazilian society seeks an idealization of whiteness, leading to a lack of social integration, cultural cohesion, and national consciousness. “The ideal of whiteness, as we illustrated earlier, under current conditions, is a survival that hinders the process of psychological maturity of Brazilians, and, moreover, contributes to weakening the social integration of the constitutive elements of national society” (Guerreiro Ramos, 1957, p.231).

In this way, Brazil’s colonial legacy leads many Brazilians to undervalue their own society, their miscegenation, their culture, and their scientific production, adopting a posture of intellectual subordination and importing the “national reality” in a canned form from dominant countries. As a consequence, the country lacks a cohesive national identity, suffers from cultural transplantation, and faces dysfunctional, asymmetrical, and deeply fragmented social, cultural, and ethnic structures and relations. From Guerreiro Ramos’ sociological perspective, this prevents the overcoming of Brazilian economic underdevelopment.

PROSPECTS FOR BRAZILIAN ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT

In light of his critical analysis of ideological alienation, the absence of a cohesive national identity, and the pathologization of whiteness in Brazil, Guerreiro Ramos (1957, 1960, 1996) argues that overcoming underdevelopment necessarily requires the construction of a distinct worldview rooted in the country’s historical, social, and cultural reality. To that end, it is essential to foster critical consciousness and move away from ontological insufficiency - understood as the inadequacy of sociological categories imported from core countries for analyzing Brazilian reality. His proposal of sociological reduction seeks to confront this insufficiency by developing interpretations grounded in national reality.

Based on the method of sociological reduction, Guerreiro Ramos (1957, 1960, 1963, 1966, 1996) establishes some prospects and guidelines for national economic development. For the author, development cannot be conceived solely in economic terms; it must entail a deeper transformation of society that recognizes the diversity and, above all, the social and cultural complexity of Brazil. Economic development would involve: i) industrialization, ii) national identity, and iii) popular critical consciousness.

According to Guerreiro Ramos (1960), industrialization enabled Brazil to constitute itself as a people and as a society. Industrialization was a moment of integration of Brazil into the history of humanity, of transformation into a nation in fact, and not merely in law. “The State no longer operates in a historical vacuum. It is now conditioned by society. The terms of the dynamics of power have changed since the Brazilian people emerged from the historical limbo in which they found themselves” (Guerreiro Ramos, 1960, p.29).

For Guerreiro Ramos (1960, 1996), industrialization is a fundamental premise for overcoming economic underdevelopment, insofar as “[...] all development is necessarily achieved through industrialization” (Guerreiro Ramos, 1960, p.113). However, industrialization must be understood as a sociological category. It is “[...] a civilizing process that spreads through all sectors of economic activity and not only through the restricted sector of what is normally called industries” (Guerreiro Ramos, 1960, p.126).

Thus, for Guerreiro Ramos (1960), industrialization implies the expansion, integration, and sophistication of the productive structure - and even of society as a whole. It is not a mere modernization of the secondary sector. “Industrialization is a global process […] its consequences transcend even the scope of the economy and reach other levels of society, promoting true historical changes” (Guerreiro Ramos, 1960, p.126).

Although fundamental to overcoming economic underdevelopment and to forming the people’s critical consciousness, industrialization per se is not sufficient to propel economic development. Industrialization, without an underlying nationalist and social project, would lead Brazil to a reactive rather than a self-directed development model. The Brazilian economy could indeed industrialize, but it would remain in a pattern of accommodation and complementarity with the core economies (Guerreiro Ramos, 1960).

A complementary model - even with industrialization - does not break with the ideology that legitimizes the colonial order. It fails to institutionalize distinctly Brazilian modern values and norms and does not yield an authentic, national process of economic development and socio-political transformation. According to Guerreiro Ramos (1960), the essential thing is to overcome complementarity, not merely to industrialize. Regarding complementary development, the author states:

This is the choice that apparently involves the least risk and still offers immediate probabilities of reasonable material expansion. However, this expansion, neither in the long term nor, much less, in the short term, is likely to eliminate our condition as external proletariat of the Western world. [...] any advice based on an economic science that considers the situation of complementarity between the dominant economy and its periphery to be definitive, therefore reveals its ideological and consequently alienated intention from the point of view of the peripheral countries. (Guerreiro Ramos, 1960, pp.30-31)

According to Guerreiro Ramos (1960, p.39), economic development must necessarily break with the old frameworks of “[...] complementarity and exploitative domination from which privileged oligarchic groups benefited.” Economic development, therefore, is not simply about industrialization. Economic development is a political issue. Thus, “[...] the problem of the economic development in a peripheral country involves a radical choice whose validity must be assessed in the sphere of values [...] an existential act stemming from the will of each citizen [...]” (Guerreiro Ramos, 1957, p.28).

To Guerreiro Ramos, what drives the economic development project are values and systems of ideas. In politics, these are organized around an ideology. This occurs because “[...] the fundamental meaning of all economic programming is found in its ideological situations. Whether one is aware of it or not, all economic programming has a political-ideological presupposition” (Guerreiro Ramos, 1960, p.191).

The ideology of the process of industrialization and Brazilian economic development, therefore, cannot continue to be of a colonial nature and rooted in the pathology of whiteness. The ideology must necessarily be nationalist and mixed-race. It can only be developed through the critical and collective consciousness of the Brazilian people, generating an emancipatory force that pressures the State to achieve true sovereignty and break away from the model of complementarity.

According to Guerreiro Ramos (1960), the ideology of nationalism and miscegenation must erupt within society, not just in the State. This is because the State in Brazil is no longer “[...] a kind of sociological artifact built upon our territory. The State no longer operates in a historical vacuum. It is now conditioned by society” (Guerreiro Ramos, 1960, p.29). This is the most arduous path; however, it is not utopian or theoretical. It “[...] is objectively outlined in Brazilian life [...] a collective praxis, that is, a popular behavior driven by a concrete motivation” (Guerreiro Ramos, 1960, pp.31-32, emphasis in the original).

The collective praxis of Brazilian economic development, according to Guerreiro Ramos, is largely sustained by nationalism. “The national character of a people is not independent of the factors that constitute it; it is implied in them” (Guerreiro Ramos, 1960, p.91). The conscious, intentional human action to transform Brazilian reality and to build a cohesive national identity is a collective act - not merely a State-driven one. “Effective sovereignty is a historical attribute acquired by collectivities through struggle, audacity, and initiative” (Guerreiro Ramos, 1960, p.225).

Brazilian society, in Guerreiro Ramos’s view, must reject the universalism of the dominant peoples that imposes the model of complementarity. This “[...] demands the conformity of large fractions of humanity excluded from the benefits of civilization.” Peripheral economies “[...] will not achieve these forms without constituting ourselves as sovereign national personalities” (Guerreiro Ramos, 1960, p.226). Without nationalism, a cohesive national identity does not arise, and there is no interruption of the domination-dependence and the imperialism of core economies.

Nationalism, according to Guerreiro Ramos (1960), is not a mere political movement based on racial heritage, fundamentalism, or the cult of symbols (anthems, flags, dress etc.), but a social force. Nationalism “[…] is more than love of the land and loyalty to the symbols that represent it.” Nationalism is “[...] the ideology of peoples who, in the present era, struggle to free themselves from colonial conditions. [...] Nationalism is an essential claim made today by peoples who are not yet fully enjoying sovereignty” (Guerreiro Ramos, 1960, pp.32, 225). Nationalism is “[...] all of this and the project of elevating a community to the total appropriation of itself, that is, to making it what the philosophy of existence calls a ‘being-for-itself’” (Guerreiro Ramos, 1960, p.32).

Furthermore, nationalism in Brazil, according to Guerreiro Ramos (1960, p.230), “[…] did not clarify itself as a movement due to the aristocratism of the majority of its leaders […]” and in the belief that economic development and the definition of Brazilian national identity “[…] could result from the feat of individual intelligence.” Additionally, it is also known that the ruling class and the industrial bourgeoisie, fearful of the social and economic reforms of the Labor Party, do not connect with the national collective consciousness and opt for anti-national (pro-foreign interests) measures, actions, and ideologies. In the words of Guerreiro Ramos:

On more than one occasion, in peripheral countries, this has been the tactic used to bring the national economy to its knees. By skillfully employing instruments of information and manipulation of the public, a privileged pressure group can create an artificial environment of economic and financial panic, obfuscate the assessment of events, and thus find the minimum approval to implement measures that would normally encounter the repulsion and resistance of the community. (Guerreiro Ramos, 1960, p.213)

Consequently, the nationalisms that have taken shape in Brazil - given this political, social, and economic density and these actors - are “[…] misguided ones, such as naïve nationalism, utopian nationalism, elite-driven nationalism, academic nationalism, and circumstantial nationalism” (Guerreiro Ramos, 1960, p.248). All these categories are degenerate and lax forms of nationalism.

As a result, Brazilian society - and the State itself - lacks an ideology serving as a normative foundation capable of orienting the collective will toward economic development. It does not possess its own form of organization and social experience, but acts through improvisation. “South American societies, like the Brazilian one, are, so to speak, blank societies, devoid of consistent frameworks within which collective effort can be carried out at a given time and from generation to generation” (Guerreiro Ramos, 1960, p.94).

Aware of this, Guerreiro Ramos contends that nationalism cannot be imposed by the State or propagated by intellectuals. Nationalism will be consolidated in Brazil only when it becomes “[…] essentially a popular ideology and can only be formulated by inducing from the people’s practice its true principles” (Guerreiro Ramos, 1960, p.230). He characterized the nationalists as he did the same with those who surrendered foreign interests. Namely:

• • The coherent nationalist believes in the people as the principal leader of the Brazilian process.

• • The coherent nationalist believes that Brazil can solve its problems with domestic resources, provided it adopts a popular-based regime organized according to sovereign criteria.

• • The coherent nationalist believes that Brazil’s destiny is not invariably linked to that of any hegemonic power and that it should maintain relations with all peoples.

• • The coherent nationalist does not contribute, through their work, to the success of undertakings that are detrimental to national interests.

• • The coherent nationalist participates not only through words, but also through practical tasks, in collective efforts aimed at promoting national emancipation (Guerreiro Ramos, 1960, p.252).

For nationalism to emerge as a coherent, cohesive social and popular movement - and to increase the political representativeness of nationalists - Brazilian society must detach itself from the pathology of whiteness. Thus, the condition for the consolidation of nationalism in Brazil relies, in particular, on the appreciation of the national ethnicity - miscegenation -, popular culture, and local science, for example.

In the process of recognizing the true Brazilian reality, it is necessary to deconstruct the imagination and mentality imposed by white colonizers that reduce Black and mixed-race values to the level of naivety or mysticism. “In a country of mixed races like ours, accepting such a view constitutes a symptom of self-disparagement or of unconscious subservience to European aesthetic standards” (Guerreiro Ramos, 1957, p.244).

The appreciation of Black and mixed-race people in Brazil is “[…] a preliminary step in the total rebellion of people of color to become subjects of their own destiny” (Guerreiro Ramos, 1957, p.248). For the author, Blackness has a universalist character as part of the liberation struggles of colonial societies. Overcoming dependency-domination in the periphery involves affirming ethnic identity and national self-assertion.

The cultivation of consciousness - by affirming Brazilian mixed-race and Black culture, values, and aesthetics - would make it possible to distance the country from Eurocentrism. It is a mechanism of struggle against “total Herodianism” and the pathology of whiteness present in a segment of Brazil’s population. This is done while at the same time providing dignity and value to national culture and popular action. In academia, the overcoming the colonial ideology would occur through sociological reduction.

It is clear that in Guerreiro Ramos’s work, blackness and miscegenation do not manifest as a movement to reclaim African origins and values. Rather, they represent a rejection of cultural transplantation and the ideological alienation imposed by central economies, particularly European and American ones. It is an anti-colonial thought, linked to nationalism, science, and economic development. This is why Guerreiro Ramos never advocated for any solution such as a “black party.”

For Guerreiro Ramos (1957, 1960), overcoming Brazil’s pathology of whiteness would allow the country to develop its own national-developmental project, a critical sociology rather than a “consular” one; in short, it would strengthen a genuinely Brazilian culture, art, science, and philosophy, and consequently, a solid national identity. One of the main focuses of his texts, in this sense, was the need for the formation of a Black and mixed-race intelligentsia and the valorization of the subjectivity of Black and mixed-race people as a way to overcome the traumas caused by slavery, colonialism, and economic and social exclusion in Brazil (Guerreiro Ramos, 1950).

This consolidated national consciousness, in turn, would ground an autonomous economic development project guided by the needs and values of Brazilian social reality - thereby overcoming the mere transplantation of foreign techniques, institutions, and doctrines. According to Guerreiro Ramos, Brazil would also assume world leadership in the politics of a genuine racial democracy - not something imaginary as some sociologists proclaimed and that never existed.

For Guerreiro Ramos (1950, 1957, 1960), the vanguard of science, culture, arts, politics, and even of the national-developmental project lies with the Brazilian people - not the people idealized by the pathology of whiteness, but the real people: mixed-race, national, and with the values of Blackness truly incorporated. In the author’s words:

• 1) The people are the main entrepreneurs of the Brazilian economic process. Through their work, wealth is created, factors are combined and transformed into goods and services [...].

• 2) The people are an all-encompassing social reality that transcends the exclusive scope of any single class [...].

• 3) The people are the political leaders of the historical-social process [...].

• 4) The people are the true genius of the national culture. Culture and national science exist only from the people’s standpoint. (Guerreiro Ramos, 1960, p.244)

It is evident that, for Guerreiro Ramos (1957, 1960, 1996), popular nationalism is the true drive of Brazilian economic development. Industrialization is a means to enable workers to aspire to better living conditions - wage increases, labor organization, access to education, consumer well-being, demand for culture - facilitating the emergence of critical consciousness as opposed to naïve consciousness.

From this, understanding the constraints of the ideology that legitimizes the colonial order and the pathology of whiteness - true promoters of the lack of national identity, ideological alienation, and unequal socioeconomic structures marked by asymmetrical and dysfunctional racial relations - and seeking autonomous, inclusive, and sustainable economic development, the people - holders of Brazilian culture and national science - would assume the vanguard of the national-developmental revolution process in Brazil. In the words of Guerreiro Ramos:

All evidence suggests that, in Brazil, a bourgeoisie capable of initiating a national revolution is not in formation. Contrary to what occurred in Western Europe and the United States, our bourgeoisie is not fit to carry out such a task. It is rather the people who will lead it in the Brazilian national revolution. (Guerreiro Ramos, 1960, p.237)

In sum, the principal challenges facing Brazilian society consist in building a national culture emancipated from dependency on core economies and capable of promoting self-sustaining economic development. This fundamentally entails strengthening nationalism - as ideology - and popular vanguardism - as an emancipatory movement. These are, for Guerreiro Ramos, the true drivers of national economic development.

FINAL REMARKS

This article sought to recover and demonstrate the relevance of the sociologist Alberto Guerreiro Ramos’s thought for understanding the dilemmas and prospects of Brazilian economic development. Not only are the originality and uniqueness of his work notable, but also its contemporaneity. Even more than fifty years after his principal writings, his concepts, arguments, and theories remain capable of significantly illuminating the political and socioeconomic dynamics of Brazil.

The analysis confirms that the method of analysis and investigation formulated by Guerreiro Ramos - sociological reduction - can serve as a research tool not only for Sociology but also for other areas of the Social Sciences, including applied subfields such as Economics. Sociological reduction enables a critical, creative, and autonomous understanding of national reality, distancing itself from “canned” models and cultural transplantation. Thus, an authentic sociology concerned with national problems and issues would emerge in Brazil, countering the hypercorrection and ontological insufficiency of “consular sociology.” This would facilitate the development of a genuine science with substantive value, rather than one that is merely formal and adjectival.

By employing his method, Guerreiro Ramos identified the main obstacles hindering the country’s overcoming of underdevelopment: the lack of a cohesive national identity, ideological alienation, and the pathologization of racial relations around “whiteness.” These issues are understood as vestiges of colonialism that impede the establishment of Brazil’s true sovereignty.

Furthermore, the sociologist understood that Brazil’s economic development cannot be reduced to industrialization. The sophistication, expansion, and integration of the country’s productive structure must be underpinned by a national and social project. Otherwise, modernization would occur only at the periphery, without overcoming the pattern of accommodation and economic complementarity vis-à-vis hegemonic countries. The relationship of domination and dependency between core and periphery would persist, even amid industrialization in peripheral economies.

In other words, for Guerreiro Ramos, economic development is also political; therefore, it is not achieved solely through the modernization of production, but depends on an entire political, cultural, social, and ideological framework. Popular-nationalism is the true driving force of economic development; industrialization is a means, helping to form the population’s critical consciousness. From this arises nationalism, as the ideology of cohesion around the project of overcoming economic underdevelopment, and the Brazilian people, truly mixed, become the real political leaders and the cultural genius of this transformation.

Finally, it can be inferred that Guerreiro Ramos’s work is the cradle of Critical Sociology and Development Sociology in Brazil. These areas are currently highly neglected by research and studies in the Economic Sciences and need to be reclaimed. The article hopes that the works of this author, in their multiple dimensions - theoretical, methodological, and interpretative - will be more studied and embraced, as they still resonate with contemporary Brazilian reality.

JEL Classification:

B31; O10; P16; Z13.

DATA AVAILABILITY

The entire dataset supporting the findings of this study is published within the article.

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Editor responsible for the evaluation process:

Luiz Carlos Bresser-Pereira

CONFLICTS OF INTEREST

The author has no conflicts of interest to declare.

Publication Dates

• Publication in this collection
  21 Sept 2026
• Date of issue
  2026

History

• Received
  26 Mar 2025
• Accepted
  26 June 2025