René Zavaleta’s critique of Dependency theory:

affinities and differences with the “MDT” and with Cardoso and Faletto

Abstract

The work of René Zavaleta Mercado has gained greater international prominence in recent years, as a reference for the theoretical debate about the state in Latin America. In parallel, the field of studies organized around the “Marxist dependency theory” (MDT) has also been growing. Thus, this article analyzes Zavaleta’s criticism of dependency theory, which would incur, according to him, in economic and exogenous determinism, as it would explain dependent social formations as mere reflections of their structural position in the world market. It is concluded that Zavaleta’s critique of the dependency theory was caricatural, devoid of originality and consistency. He did not identify the differences between the strands of “Dependency School” or between them and the world-systems theory (also criticized by him), and ignored the works by Ruy Mauro Marini and Vânia Bambirra. His arguments repeated, in a superficial fashion, previous criticism of the “MDT” by other authors, such as Fernando Henrique Cardoso. Finally, based on the affinities between Zavaleta’s and Cardoso’s critiques of the “MDT”, the article begins an exploration of the similarities and divergences between the approaches they proposed to investigate dependent social formations. It is hypothesized that although both shared the search for local conditions of possibility for democracy in Latin America, the fundamental difference between them is that Zavaleta’s investigations would be guided by the strategic bet on action and self-determination of the popular classes. This bet did not exist in Cardoso, even in his time as a “dependentist” social scientist, according to Santaella Gonçalves (2018).