The modernity of the controversy on planning between Roberto Simonsen and Eugênio Gudin and the paradoxes of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s economic model (2004-2010)

Abstract

The article discusses the different views about planning in Brazil according to two major Brazilian thinkers of the twentieth century: Roberto Simonsen (1889-1948) and Eugênio Gudin (1886-1986). Simonsen was a defender of economic planning and saw industrialization as an alternative to the rising level of income and the improvement in the standard of living of Brazilian people. Gudin argued that Brazil did not need a plan, but it needed agricultural productivity and free market. The following publi-cations on planning brought about what has been called in the Brazilian History of Economic Thought as "The Planning Controversy in the Brazilian Economy between Roberto Simonsen and Eugênio Gudin". The comparison between both views demonstrates that this controversy returns to the agenda of Brazili-an economic policy at the beginning of the twenty-first century, particularly because of the return of theoretical views that represents a "new" cycle in relation to the need of planning as a global and contin-uous process.