Constructing Hegemony

Abstract

Fernando Henrique Cardoso long ago argued that the business class in an underdeveloped country was limited in its power by its dependence on the state’s participation in the economy and on foreign capital. In the course of the past decade, however, the conditions for business-class hegemony in Brazil did in fact develop. The late 1980s saw the rise of entities that organized businesspeople of different sectors and argued for democratization and grassroots consultation. The Pensamento Nacional das Bases Empresariais, founded in 1990, viewed the market as a regulatory mechanism but did not seek to eliminate state intervention from every sector of the economy and envisioned a new relationship between capital and labor based on negotiation of agreements that satisfied both. Businesspeople came to see in Cardoso a leader who could resolve the crisis of representation of their class and lent him their support in the 1994 election. As they approached the government’s position, however, they began to support objectives quite different from those that had led to their organizations’ creation.