Pure Capitalism Turns Brazil Into Haven for Technocrats

Brazil is the only purely capitalistic country in the world. The wealthiest five percent of the population can shoot striking workers at will, fix prices, monopolize, cartelize and avoid paying taxes, reported an exiled Brazilian congressman.

Marcio M. Alves, who presently lives in France, addressed a gathering of students and other "marginals in American society" on Friday night in Boylston Hall.

American foreign policy has specific goals and no flexibility with which to achieve them. Alves informed his audience. The Brazilian technocratic elite and its military bodyguard have chosen to take advantage of their status as a U.S. satellite country in order to obtain capital and technology to promote industry, he said.

"Operation Euthanasia", the term Alves used to characterize the Brazilian government's investment policy, aims to maximize growth only in sectors of the economy which can rapidly modernize. Lack of attention to food production and a growing scarcity of markets for Brazilian industrial products may create serious problems for the technocratic elite, he said, unless they can teach the people to eat the country's main product, automobiles.

Growing protectionist tendencies for finished goods in the United States and a rapidly increasing foreign debt have caused the Brazilian government to attract American firms to manufacture components for export and assembly elsewhere. The Ford Motor Company has decided to transfer its production of motors for Pinto models to Brazil in order to avoid high labor and tax costs in Britain, Alves pointed out.