Four theories by Francisco de Oliveira and one by Karl Polanyi to understand the relationship between the market and fascism
Keywords: democracy; fascism; Francisco de Oliveira; self-regulated market; totalitarianism
The advancement of fascism at the current time has been the subject of research in several areas of knowledge. In political sociology and political economy, it is necessary and urgent to revisit the works of Karl Polanyi and Francisco de Oliveira to investigate the nexus between market autonomy and current fascism. This work aims to contribute to the development of new theoretical instruments for understanding this difficult nexus, in its specificity in Brazil at the end of the 20th century and beginning of the 21st century. To this end, we developed our research based on the investigation of Polanyi's works and, mainly, the work produced by Oliveira in the period from 1984 to 2007. Polanyi, researching the 19th century market society, identified that its form of organization gave broad autonomy to the self-regulated market, the reasons for the disintegration of society at the beginning of the 20th century. In his interpretation, such disruption was the reason for the rise of fascism in Europe. Oliveira, observing the transformations in Brazil from the 1980s to 2000s, recognized a new movement towards market autonomy and dedicated himself to understanding its effects on a peripheral society. His findings led him to a conclusion that was congruent with Polanyi's and went further: in Brazil, neoliberalism has become a form of totalitarianism.