Dependent Capitalist Development, U.S. Foreign Policy, and Repression of the Working Class in Chile and Brazil

During the past decade, scholars have produced a substantial body of literature on the negative impact of advanced industrial capitalism upon the Third World. These writings, now referred to as dependency theory, lead us to examine the ways in which foreign governments, trade unionists, industrial, commercial, and financial interests, as well as international organizations, bolster the Latin American ruling classes, providing them with resources they would not otherwise possess (see Chilcote, 1974b; Latin American Perspectives, I, (Spring 1974) and II, (Spring 1975): 7-66, 136-148). Most dependency analysts concentrate on the international productive, financial, and trading systems and, especially, on the relationships between them and their counterpart systems in Third World countries. Few of these writers, however, make explicit the ways in which dependent integration into the world capitalist economy has affected the Latin American working classes. We begin this task here.