The Industrialists, the State, and the Issues of Worker Training and Social Services in Brazil, 1930-50

Abstract

U T NTIL recently, most historians and social scientists writing about twentieth-century Brazil have attributed programs for social r eform and concomitant social control to state, particularly regime that came to power with revolution of 1930 under leadership of Getulio Vargas. The corporatist vision of Vargas and his closest advisors has been credited with producing social reforms (in form of legislation) and mechanisms for labor control (in form of government-sponsored unions) that laid groundwork for rapid industrialization with minimal social disruption. Though many students of Vargas period characterize these reforms as ultimately benefiting employers, not workers, according to most historical accounts industrialists themselves played either a peripheral or retrogressive role in process. Lacking a more sophisticated or forward-looking project for reform and control, industrialists allegedly clung to notion that the social question is a question for police, and bitterly opposed labor reforms instituted by Vargas regime.' There is both historical evidence and a variety of theoretical positions that encourage this interpretation of industrialists' role (or lack thereof), especially with regard to those manufacturers based in Brazil's