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395-407
Cad. EBAPE.BR, v. 19, nº 3, Rio de Janeiro, July/Sept. 2021. ISSN 1679-3951
Welfare state in Brazil: a review or the crisis and
the end of the “Dunkirk spirit”
Claudio Gurgel ¹
Agatha Justen ¹
Abstract
Keywords:
Estado de bem-estar social no Brasil: uma revisão ou a crise e o m do “espírito de Dunquerque”
Resumo
Palavras-chave:
Estado de bienestar social en Brasil: una revisión o la crisis y el n del “espíritu de Dunquerque”
Resumen
Palabras clave:
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Cad. EBAPE.BR, v. 19, nº 3, Rio de Janeiro, July/Sept. 2021.
Welfare state in Brazil: a review or the crisis and the end of the “Dunkirk spirit” Claudio Gurgel
Agatha Justen
INTRODUCTION
The issue of welfare state in Brazil has occupied authors with dierent understandings, including doubts about its eecve
existence here, at any historical me. It is a debate, we must recognize, that in the past it has had greater prominence. Why
return to it now?
Social acon has always been present in the history of capitalism as an expedient of sociability that the mode of producon
has resorted to. The most expressive, although repeve, example is the Poor Law, in its rst edion, in the 17th century.
Despite the recognion of this long-standing social concern, there is no denying that the intensity and extent of measures to
aimed at easing the condions of poverty grew up in the 20th century and even more aer the Great Depression. They are,
therefore, greatly associated with what emerges in England under the tle of welfare state.
In this paper, we take Esping-Andersen (1991) and Mishra (1990) as references, for whom the welfare state was created aer
the Second World War and has as a disncve characterisc, in relaon to previous social policies, is the role that State,
market and civil society, integrally, took over.
Social acons, from this new agreement, are included in the survival plans of the system or, when this is not the case,
in improvement plans, under the declaraon of the need to overcome the limitaons of capitalism, the “market failures”.
This is in the same eld of concern as the well-known chapter 24 of ‘General theory of employment, interest and money’,
where Keynes recognizes in the market economy the “inability to guarantee full employment and its arbitrary and unequal
distribuon of wealth and income” (Keynes, 1964).
This consideraon, however, did not mean for capitalism to give up on becoming a form of social life capable of realizing the
great banners of the French Revoluon. At a certain point in history, the economic and polical leaders of the dominant project
faced the problems of capitalism and looked at the challenge from the point of view of the state’s power under their control.
Contributed to this: economic crises, in their narrow denion; the emergence of the Soviet Union and a set of consequences
of this, ranging from the demonstraon eect to the greater policizaon of labor movement; and the theories of crisis, in
parcular that referenced in the theory of cycles, by Kondraev (1979).
Between 1873 and 1896, the capital experienced its rst major crisis, the Great Depression of the 19th century, followed by
the First World War, from 1914 to 1919, of European spectrum, and, later, the well-known general crisis, which occurred in the
years 1930, aer the crash of the New York Stock Exchange in October 1929. In parallel to the crisis of capitalism, which in its
new epicenter, the United States, registered thousands of bankruptcies, and millions of unemployed, the Soviet Union was
growing at high rates, driven by its rst two ve-year plans (Ellman, 1980).
In a well-known passage, Marx (2001) aributes the crises, ulmately, to the atavisc problem of pauperism and the consequent
low consumpon. In his words,
the ulmate reason for any real crisis is always poverty and the restricted consumpon capacity of the
masses, with which contrasts the tendency of capitalist production to develop the productive
force as if there were no more limit than the absolute consumption capacity of the masses
(Marx, 2001, p. 455).
The crisis of the 1930s produced theorecal-ideological rupture of classical theory, whether on the economic and polical
levels, or organizaonal. On the economic level, this is what made Kalecki and Keynes, from dierent starng points, accuse the
unsustainability of the classic theses of self-regulaon in certain circumstances of capitalist development. In Keynes’s words:
Regarding the propensity to consume, the State will have to exert a guiding inuence on it through its
tax system, xing the interest rate and perhaps by other means [...] a somewhat broad socializaon of
investments will be the only means of ensuring an approximate situaon of full employment (Keynes,
1964, p. 356).
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Welfare state in Brazil: a review or the crisis and the end of the “Dunkirk spirit” Claudio Gurgel
Agatha Justen
The crisis will also lead to the polical review, specically on the role of the state, which is strongly expressed in the New Deal,
when the Roosevelt government mobilizes public resources to emerge from the depression. Although some authors deny
the New Deal`s role in eradicang the Great Depression (Friedman & Schwartz, 1963) and the acve role of the State as an
eecve instrument in combang major crises (Grant, 2014), the truth is that naonal stascs released by Kalecki (1978)
show the posive eects of Roosevelt’s state intervenon.
It is also in this environment that the ideas of a pragmac administrave humanism advance, but which concretely is an
inecon under the weight of the unions, unemployment, the evident wear and tear of capitalism and religious and secular
civilizing movements. It is nally in this scenario that social policies take shape. It is the most explicit way for society to say
that it is eecvely concerned with responding to the challenges le by the rubble of the crisis and the war – challenges that
were not limited to rebuilding physical heritage, but, above all, to rebuild capitalism’s intended ethical heritage.
The advance of crical ideas about classical thought, as a reecon of the connued economic, theorecal and polical
struggle, gains momentum with the Nazi-fascist defeat in the Second World War, and will generate, among other iniaves,
that which has become a paradigm of a new regulaon: the welfare state.
Welfare state is, therefore, the product of a me when it was tried to build, on the lessons of Great Depression and the
stones of the Thousand-Year Reich, the eternity of capitalism, without crises and without war. A me when economic and
polical determinaons created the context to which Wol and Oliveira refer in their arcle “The ‘spirit of Dunkirk’ and the
English NHS: theory, history and evidence”. The text is an allusion, as the authors say, “to the naonal eort to rescue Brish
troops trapped in an increasingly narrow strip in the region of Dunkirk, on the French coast”, in 1940 (Wol & Oliveira, 2017,
p. 206). There, in almost ten days, 400.000 men were evacuated alive, with help of civilians of all creeds, races and incomes.
An epic brought to the cinema under the tle Dunkirk and that had in the protagonist, actor Fionn Whitehead, an illustrave
denion: “The spirit of Dunkirk is the unity of people to deal with a crisis”.
It was the post-Depression of the 1930s and the post-war period, an environment of rebirth. Santos comments that
in this post-war world, peace had been the product of a vast progressive global movement. The allies
imposed democracy on Nazi-fascism, the principles of a social order where naonal sovereignty, democracy
and social jusce and trust in the unity of mankind served as common principles for reordering the
world. Full employment, economic well-being, development and economic growth became universal
ideas (Santos, 2004, p. 156).
Thus, it would be strange for Brazil to be isolated from this scenario. Although not the welfare state of Lord Beveridge, it is
to be assumed that something similar was part of Brazilian conjectures.
Therefore, the objecve of this paper is to resume the debate on welfare state in Brazil, starng from the already exisng
accumulaon and adding elements that can demonstrate how Brazilian bourgeoisie and its State also integrated the passive
revoluon eort (non-Jacobin) which took place worldwide aer Second World War. With this, we want to arm the structural
character of the welfare state, which was the reformist and transformist response (Gramsci, 2007) when economic, social
and polical crises became more potent, and demanded it.
It is necessary to return to this theme because structural reforms are being implemented by naonal states and their public
administraons in response to ongoing crisis, as has occurred in dierent countries and connents since 1980s (Jansen Ferreira &
Mendes, 2018; Pastor-Seller, Verde-Diego & Lima-Fernández, 2019; Stein, 2017). These are social and labor reforms that limit
the provision and access to public services, which suggest us to queson what rights these are and why they emerged in our
country. The statement that the welfare state has also arrived in Brazil allows us to understand the meaning and breadth of
the changes we have undergone.
In other words, it is intended to highlight a discreet, but important, meaning of this debate, which consists in recognizing that
public policies in various areas – from food to transportaon – existed, and their fading is inscribed among the contemporary
social decits, negave praccal consequences of radicality of the crisis we are living in. Reecng on these circumstances
helps to respond to Kerstenetzky and Guedes`s (2018) appeal, when they say that “the welfare state resists, but needs
reinforcement if the objecve is to put inequality and poverty under control”. Likewise, it contributes to replacing the
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Welfare state in Brazil: a review or the crisis and the end of the “Dunkirk spirit” Claudio Gurgel
Agatha Justen
possibility of an economic policy in which the social is not a separate object, but part of the object. That is to say, as Draibe
and Henrique, that “social policies play a central role both in the strategy of income redistribuon and in the promoon of a
sustained economic recovery” (Draibe & Henrique, 1988, s.p.).
For this review, we worked with the classic literature on the subject, both from foreign and Brazilian authors. In addion, we
consulted documents published by instuonal sources that produced informaon pernent to social security, assistance and
the historical moment experienced between the 1940s and 1950s. We have included new texts that point to the meliness
of the theme – an aspect that stands out aer the pandemic that recently shook the world. In the case of documents that
retrieve the Charter of Social Peace and the Teresópolis Conference, important pieces in proving the involvement of the
Brazilian business community with the social project in evidence, we used texts from the employers themselves. We try to
sck to the period close to the launch and the approval of the Beveridge Plan to place Brazilian iniaves in the same “Dunkirk
spirit” that at the me inspired the English iniave.
THE DEBATE
The Welfare State (WS), in general terms, can be dened as “state responsibility to ensure the basic well-being of cizens”,
taking into account, however, that “it cannot be understood only in terms of rights and guarantees. We also need to consider
how state acvies are intertwined with the role of market and families in terms of social provision” (Esping-Andersen,
1991, p. 99). This means that rights and guarantees had already been dealt with previously, in the form of state assistance.
What disnguishes this form that takes shape aer the Second World War is the solidary character of three spheres of social
life, which intertwine to promote these rights and guarantees, which in a way represents the hegemony of social democracy,
broadly speaking.
The construcon that was carried out at that me was of a solidarity nature, comprising the phenomenon to which Santos
(2004) and other authors refer when they speak of the feeling of peace and collaboraon that emerged at the end of the war.
Although it was not long lasng, the alliance built to face fascism seems to have extended for some years beyond conicts
and, along with other intervening factors, le the necessary inheritance, which includes the UN – as a symbol –, Fordism,
Keynesianism and welfare state as public and private references. Among the intervening factors, it is worth remembering,
are the dispute over economic, polical and ideological projects, between the two Cold War blocs, and the widespread belief
that was necessary to maintain the level of global consumpon and full employment to avoid crises and, alternavely, to
migate social conicts.
In Brazilian case, some authors reject the idea that the welfare state occurred here. For various reasons, which are oen
compared with the English case, these authors either deny by absence of fullness, as is the case of Silva (2011), or simply
deny that it existed, as Streck and Morais (2006). According to Silva (2011), “there was no welfare state in Brazil, considering
the characteriscs of the naonal social policies already indicated, which were constantly relegated to the background”
(Silva, 2011, p. 31). In the same vein, Piana (2009) argues that “in the so-called poor and dependent countries of Lan America,
especially in Brazil, well-being of the populaon has never been guaranteed through the universalizaon of quality public
rights and services” (Silva, 2011, p. 31). Faleiros (1991) agrees with this idea, commenng that “in peripheral poor countries
there is no Welfare State or full Keynesianism in polics. Due to profound class inequality, social policies are not universally
accessible” (Faleiros, 1991, p. 28).
As directly as Silva, Streck and Morais (2006) say that “in our country, the promises of modernity have not yet been realized
[...] it is evident, therefore, that in countries like Brazil [...] Social State did not exist” (Silva, Streck & Morais, 2006, p. 84).
More recently, Soares (2020) rearms this posion and arguing that “in Brazil, a country of profound social inequality,
the state of social well-being is quesonable, given the maintenance of the marginalizaon of black, indigenous and poor
communies” (Soares, 2020, p. 3).
Other authors, however, such as Maria Lúcia Werneck Vianna (1991), Sônia Draibe (1993), Wanderley Guilherme dos Santos
(1979), Sônia Fleury (1985) and, more recently, Lenaura Lobato (2016), conduct this complex discussion in a dierent
path. Furthermore, Luís Fiori (1997), in his well-known paper “State of social well-being: paerns and crises”, admits the
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Agatha Justen
assumpon of welfare state in Brazil, even though he classies the Brazilian model as meritocrac, using the typology of
Esping-Andersen and Titmuss.
For beer understanding, Esping-Andersen (1991) and Titmuss (1963), cited by Fiori, oer a taxonomy of the welfare state
that takes the debate to a plan directly determined by criteria and breadth of access to rights and guarantees. This typology is
used by Fiori to situate his posion in the face of the debate that we are now resuming - hence we consider that bringing Fiori
to start the presentaon of the authors who understand the possibility of the welfare state in Brazil is the most economical
soluon presented itself to us.
He exposes us to the typologies of Titmuss and Esping-Andersen, as follows:
i. “The residual welfare model of social policy”, the paern or residual model, “where social policy
intervenes ex-post. And has a temporally limited character”. It would be the contemporary case of the
United States. ii. “The industrial achievement performance model of social policy”, generally translated
as a meritocrac-parcularist model or standard, where social policy intervenes only to correct market
acon. “The welfare system”, in these cases, is only complementary to market instuons. Germany
was perhaps the case that comes closest to this model today (Fiori, 1997, p. 135).
Titmuss characterizes, as we can see, two general types in which the benchmark is the market, either because of its failure
or because of its insuciency. Ahead, his meritocrac-parcularist type has consequences in the light of Italian experience.
In the words of Fiori:
Later, Ugo Ascoli (1984) tried to increase the accuracy of this model, by dierenang two subtypes of its
own: the “corporate” where the weight of unions and corporaons in the delimitaon and distribuon
of benets is greater than in the “clientelisc” where the greater weight moves to the party system
and is more directly submied to polical-electoral cycles (Fiori, 1997, p. 135).
Finally, Titmuss completes his typology with the model that has established itself as a universalist – the redistribuve model
of social policy –, when the merit of work gives way to the value of cizenship. This model, present in the Nordic countries,
especially in Sweden, can be idened, according to Fiori (1997), as “instuonal redistribuve standard”, “aimed at the
producon and distribuon of ‘extra-market’ goods and services, which are guaranteed to all universally covered and protected
cizens” (Fiori, 1997, p. 136).
Fiori brings Esping-Andersen, who, despite not diering substanally from Titmuss, “proposed a new nomenclature for a
typology he now called ‘welfare state regimes’” (Fiori, 1997, p. 136).
The disncon made by Esping-Andersen is that the criterion used in its typology is the polical project implicit in each
welfare state regime. Therefore, he calls for (1) liberal welfare state, (2) conservave and strongly corporate welfare state
and (3) social democrac regimes. In the rst type, found in United States, Canada and Australia, “assistance to proven poor
predominates, reduced universal transfers or modest social security plans and where the rules for entlement to benets
are strict and oen associated with sgma” (Fiori, 1997, p. 136). The second model is found in France, Germany, Italy and
Austria, and “the preservaon of status dierences predominates; rights, therefore, appear to be linked to class and status
[...] and the state emphasis on maintaining status dierences means that their impact in terms of redistribuon is negligible”.
The laer model, in turn, is one in which “universalism and de-mercanlizaon reach the middle class widely and ‘where all
social segments are incorporated’” (Fiori, 1997, p. 137).
Later, however, referring to later studies, as we will see in Draibe, Fiori menons the “richest veins of today’s vast literature
on welfare state”, and resorng instead to Santos and his concept of regulated cizenship, recognizes a type of WS in Brazil:
the meritocrac (Fiori, 1997, p. 137).
The range of situaons is such that we could sll add to Fiori a mixed type, in which in our view, public educaonal system
in Brazil is constuted, bringing together universalism (elementary and high school) and meritocracy (higher educaon).
Vianna (1991) approaches Fiori’s conclusion and is more armave, when she says that “in Italy and Brazil systems t
precisely in meritocrac-parcularist category of Titmuss/Ascoli typology”. She explains her point of view by saying that
“conservave elements became acve in both consolidang a corporate and hierarchical style of granng social benets”
(Vianna, 1991, p. 146).
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Agatha Justen
The author resumes the statement starng from the 1988 Constuon, in the arcle that disposes about social security,
and sees in this the overcoming of the meritocratic-particularist limit. In her words, “today, by article 194, Social
Security [...] extends cizenship, conferring social rights to all Brazilian people. Finally, Welfare State is instuonalized. By
law, the parcularism of corporazed access to benets is overcome” (Vianna, 1991, p. 151).
Draibe (1993), in The Welfare State in Brazil: characteriscs and perspecves, says that, “between the thires and the sevenes,
social state was constuted and instuonally consolidated in Brazil” (Draibe, 1993, p. 19). On the previous page, the author
summarizes the ways in which WS was carried out, in the context of its elaboraon signicantly entled ‘Morphology of the
welfare state in Brazil’ (p. 18). Reecng on “the periodizaon of welfare state, she also states that it is necessary to “carefully
examine the nature of legal producon and innovaons in policies that run from 1930s unl now, in order to avoid a linear
view of movement to build and consolidate welfare state among us” (Draibe, 1993, p. 19).
Draibe acknowledges the polemic about WS in Brazil. She states that “studies and debates about social policies in Brazil
[acquired] a strong negave tone, referred to an opposite - the welfare state - taken [...] Anglo-Saxon specialty in the eld of
social policy” (Draibe, 1993, p. 2). Next, he adds that “it is possible to apprehend the Protecve State less as the concrezaon
of post-war social-democrac programs, rather as an important structural element of contemporary capitalist economies, a
form of arculaon between the state and the market, the state and the society” (Draibe, 1993, p. 2).
In same direction, Fleury (1985), when dealing with social policy, considers that there are three main modalities of
social protecon that accompany the historical development of Modern State: “social assistance, social security and social
welfare state [...]. In the Brazilian case, what I have demonstrated is the existence of these three modalies pointed out”
(Fleury, 1985, pp. 401-403).
Lobato (2016), like Vianna, takes the Constuon of 1988 as “a specic chapter for social order” (Lobato, 2016, p. 90). According
to her, “social security instuonalizes an expanded model of social protecon, along the lines of welfare states”. It is the same
understanding of Crestani and Oliveira (2018), for whom, “considering the Constuon of 1988 as a referenal of changes,
it can be idened that, since then, the Brazilian state began to leave behind the conservave and corporavist model,
approaching the type of social-democrac welfare state” (Crestani & Oliveira, 2018, p. 318). This is also the understanding of
Menicucci and Gomes (2018), who aribute to Constuon of 1988 the transion from a social insurance model to a security
model, raising the level of cizenship.
Considering these three elements (the categories of Esping-Andersen and Titmus, what the aforemenoned Brazilian authors
menoned, and the observaon of the reality built before and especially aer the 1988 Constuon) we are inclined to
recognize the existence of a combinaon of expressions of welfare state that represented achievements, gains, accesses,
rights, and guarantees developed over me, acquired through struggles, pressures, negoaons, concessions, crises, fears,
and solidarity.
ISSB AND THE CHARTER OF SOCIAL PEACE
There are dierent explanaons about the causes of welfare state in England. For some authors, the pressure of unions and
labor pares (Esping-Andersen, 1991; Rosanvallon, 1997); for others, the structural problems of the mode of producon, whose
instability requires state intervenon to guarantee the level of consumpon and full employment (O’Connor, 1977; Oe, 1984;
Przeworski, 1991). Just as we can understand the intermingling of types of WS, we can grasp the complexity of the causes.
To these reasons, of double understanding, we could add another aspect, related to internaonal polics and need to obtain
naonal unity for it. The Beveridge Report, the formal origin of the welfare state proposal, was wrien in war context, in 1942,
recalling the conict of 1914-1919, when socialist organizaons rejected the war, treated it as a maer outside the interest of
workers, classied it as a struggle between bourgeois fracons and condemned the funds allocated to the conict. Illustrang
this, Lenin, certainly an authoritave representave of radical social-democrac wing, spokesman of this senment, said that
“the meaning of the present war is to annex lands and subjugate other naons [...] to divert the aenon of the working
masses from internal polical crises [...] to disunite and confuse the workers with naonalist propaganda and to exterminate
their vanguard to weaken the revoluonary movement” (Lênin, 1976, p. 161).
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Opposions like this one were repeated in Germany, England and France, making it dicult to gather forces and approve war
funds in the rst major conict. The fear that something similar would happen again, recreang the perspecve of internal
dissidence and social revoluon itself, as had happened in Russia, was present at that me. Moreover, in England, under
leadership of Oswald Mosley and his Brish Union of Fascists (BUF), Nazifascist proposals aimed at workers were also evolved,
which also worried conservaves (Colin, 1961; Silva, 2017). It is not without reason, therefore, that in 1941 the Atlanc Charter,
draed by Churchill and Roosevelt, and immediately supported by other countries, pointed to social measures to be adopted
aer the war (Marshall, 1967; Sigerist, 1944). The European uniqueness of the process should not be underesmated when
we recall the Beveridge Report and Plan. The circumstances experienced by the countries of Europe, parcularly England,
advised the eort to build a broad alliance that clearly included workers. For its part, the United States was coming out of a
deep crisis, having also made a “new deal”, including workers explicitly.
The Beveridge Report and Beveridge Plan are the most complete statement of this movement for a class pact. Its 3 principles
and recommendaons stated:
The rst principle is that any proposals for the future, although they should make the most of the
experience gathered in the past, should not be restricted to it. Right Now, when war is abolishing
landmarks of every kind, is the clear opportunity to innovate. A revoluonary moment in the world’s
history is a me for revoluons, not for patches.
The second principle is that the organizaon of social insurance should be treated as one part only of
a comprehensive policy of social progress. A fully developed social security plan may provide income
security; it is an aack upon poverty. But poverty is one only of ve giants on the path to reconstrucon
and in some ways the easiest to aack. The others are Disease, Ignorance, Misery and Idleness.
The third principle is that social security must be achieved by co-operaon between the State and the
individual. The State should oer security for service and contribuon. The State when organizing security
should not se incenves, opportunies, responsibilies; when establishing a naonal minimum,
there should leave room and encouragement for voluntary acon by each individual to provide more
than that minimum for himself and his family (Fordham University, 1942, p. 1).
The State, in order to fulfill the role described in third principle, uses sources of revenue that are once again the
demonstraon of the alliance built on the principle of all principles: solidarity. This is conrmed when Beveridge explains
the two main sources of social security: “By contribuon, the poorest and the richest of men are treated equally.
[...] By tax, on the contrary, the richest, by virtue of his ability to pay, pays more for the general purposes of the community”
(Beveridge, 1943, p. 170).
The Beveridge Report and Plan had inuenced all over the world. In Brazil, there are records of greater disclosure in Jornal
do Commercio, in 1944 (Gonçalves, 2001). However, before that, in 1943, José Olympio, a publishing house based in Rio de
Janeiro, then the capital of the Republic, published the document The Beveridge Plan: Report on Social Security and Related
Services (Beveridge, 1943). Moreover, Brazilian government technicians parcipated in internaonal meengs on social
policies, parcularly on Beveridge Plan, whose popularity made it the subject of debates and arcles (Assis, 1950).
At that moment, at the end of the war, under varied circumstances and polical tensions, Vargas, aenve to naonal
and internaonal polical developments, issued Decree 7.526, of May 7, 1945, creang the Instute of Social Services
of Brazil (ISSB).
Malloy (1976), a professor at University of Pisburgh, in a paper in Journal of Public Administraon, makes the following
comment about the ISSB:
Very important to the scheme was the creaon of a new type of instute called the Brazilian Social
Service Instute - ISSB. The scheme included a comprehensive plan to protect the cradle to the grave,
based on: l) broad medical care; 2) a full range of welfare programs; 3) the tradional rerement
benets and pensions (Malloy, 1976, p. 15).
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Agatha Justen
The goals of ISSB are highlighted by the author to illustrate his allusion to welfare state:
The creators of ISSB, strongly inuenced by England’s Beveridge Plan, aimed at three addional main
goals: 1) to extend social security protecon to all Brazilians (the only two excepons being civil and
military servants, who would keep their own systems), including, of course, rural workers, who unl
then had no assistance; 2) the ISSB would establish a uniform plan of contribuons and benets for
all; 3) all social security acvies would be unied under a single instute, ISSB (1976).
In this excerpt, besides several important aspects, it is note point that, once again, the reference to Beveridge and his plan
appears in the scenario of Brazilian social security and social assistance.
It should also be noted that Malloy’s comment about extension of the ISSB – “from cradle to grave” – follows the Beveridge Plan
itself in its “main feature”: “The main feature of the Social Security Plan is a social insurance scheme against interrupon or
destrucon of purchasing power and for special expenditure arising from birth, marriage or death” (Fordham University, 1942,
p. 5). It was conrmed, also in the Brazilian case, its determinaon to be a broad plan, of complete coverage, revoluonary,
“not for patches”.
Vargas, in a speech extolling his own iniave, once again alluded to Beveridge, saying, “with this plan, Brazil was once again
placed in the leadership of social security systems, ancipang and surpassing in many points reforms in the same sense
undertaken in other naons [...] including the famous Beveridge Plan in England” (1952). The ISSB did not evolve, but the
presence of social issue in the mirror of Beveridge Plan would return at the beginning of Vargas’ second government, with
Naonal Welfare Commission on Social Welfare, which would operate from 1951 to 1954 (Oliveira, 2020).
In parallel to the events involving the Beveridge Plan and the ISSB, a movement was developing among the Brazilian entrepreneurs
that kept the same spirit of conciliaon: the First Conference of Producing Classes (Conclap), which took place in 1945.
There, besides the Economic Charter of Teresópolis, “the Charter of Social Peace was approved, a document that shaped the
philosophy and the concept of social service funded by the business community” (Centro de Pesquisa e Documentação de
História Contemporânea do Brasil [CPDOC], 2009).
There, 183 delegaons were present, and among the most representave gures they were businessmen Brasílio Machado
Lopes and João Daudt de Oliveira, both from commerce; Iris Meinberg, from agriculture; and Roberto Simonsen and Euvaldo
Lodi, from industry. They were unquesonably the greatest leaders of their sectors at the me. The “producing classes”
intended to “join forces in favor of development” and overcome “a major obstacle to this achievement”, poverty, social
conicts, “mainly between employers and employees”, as we read in the presentaon of the Charter of Social Peace (Serviço
Social do Comércio [Sesc], 2012).
The Charter begins by saying that
The Employers and employees who are dedicated, in Brazil, in the various branches of economic
acvity recognize that a solid social peace, founded on the economic order, will result primarily from
an educaonal work, through which men can be fraternized, strengthening in them the feelings of
solidarity and trust. They recognize the need to ensure within the country a long period of cooperaon
in order to process the development of its producve forces and the Brazilian’s standard of living
elevaon (Sesc, 2012, p. 11).
Aer this declaraon of intent, the iniaves and commitments were announced:
For this it is indispensable to promote the increase of national income and its best and widest
distribuon, with the best use of the country’s resources, which can be obtained by implemenng a
broad and objecve economic planning, in the terms of Charter of Teresópolis. To that end, and in the
convicon that nothing will be achieved without the narrowest understanding between employers and
employees [...] solemnly undertake the commitment to advocate the achievement of these objecves
(Sesc, 2012, p. 11).
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Welfare state in Brazil: a review or the crisis and the end of the “Dunkirk spirit” Claudio Gurgel
Agatha Justen
The Economic Charter of Teresópolis, referred to in this quotaon as the Charter of Teresópolis, is the general document of the
1st Conclap. According to the FGV CPDOC website, in the topic “Social Policy” of this it is said that “the populaon should
receive medical care and primary and secondary specialized educaon, [...] up to the age of 14. Likewise, social insurance
should be extended to the enre populaon, and its reserves should be used to build schools, hospitals, and housing for the
insured” (CPDOC, 2019).
Specically, Charter of Social Peace states that “capital should not be considered only as a prot-producing instrument, but
mainly as a means of economic expansion and collecve welfare” (Sesc, 2012, p. 12). Its items 7 and 8 meet, respecvely,
commitments and prescripons for employers and employees, in the sense of, with their means, jointly contribung to the
announced objecves. Item 10 states that, “compleng the set of measures contained in this Charter, employers and employees
will make the State feel the need for the following measures”, followed by monetary, scal and administrave measures that
would be up to the State to implement (Sesc, 2012, pp. 14-16). As for the applicaon of pensions resources, it is rearmed
that the producing classes “think it is fair to allocate to undertakings of clear collecve interest the nancial reserves of social
insurance, especially the construcon of schools and hospitals, as well as houses for the insured” (CNI/Conclap, 1945, p. 15).
The proposed social agenda includes the adopon of the collecve holiday system and the installaon of holiday camps.
In addion, “gather its energies in order to contribute to improvement of Brazilian educaon and health” (CNI/Conclap,
1945, p. 16) and the installaon of popular restaurants (CNI/Conclap, 1945, p. 24). Aribung these demands to the State,
however, entrepreneurs, in the spirit of the me, are also commied. In the Charter of Social Peace, “employers are proposed
to create a Social Fund to be applied in works and services that benet employees of all categories and in social assistance in
general”. Deepening the commitment, they dene that “the Social Fund will consist of a contribuon from each company –
agricultural, industrial and commercial or otherwise–, withdrawing of the net prots of its balance sheet” (Sesc, 2012, p. 13).
Finally, as noted by Delgado (2007) in paper about entrepreneurship and social policies in Brazil,
although restricted, if confronted with the demands of dierent professional categories and with
proposals from groups within the State, the formulaons Economic Charter of Teresópolis about social
policy reveal a growing acceptance, by entrepreneur, of the expansion of public social protecon system
[...]. The suggeson of generalizaon social insurance and the unicaon of social security instutes was
close to the universalist formulaons that gained inuence with the disseminaon of Beveridge Report
in England. As a whole, therefore, Economic Charter of Teresópolis reveals a business community willing
to accept the intensicaon of the State’s protecve acon, in order to overcome “disagreements and
misunderstandings” (Delgado, 2007, pp. 150-151).
It is true that Charter of Social Peace is pragmac and, to some extent, authoritarian. It explicit states that its promises and
intenons are given “not only for the sake of social solidarity, but for economic convenience” (Sesc, 1971, p. 12). An equally
conciliatory posture is demanded of the workers, insofar as the leer asks them to “d) cooperate so that the necessary discipline
in the execuon of the work reigns”, and even “f) to try to encourage individual producvity”, to determine “that the dissent
are resolved rst in the joint union commissions”. He also asks that “[...] any rights be claimed by peaceful means, formally
condemning all recourse to violence” (Sesc, 1971, p. 16). These formulaons seem obvious and reasonable. However, it is
known that its applicaon has quite authoritarian nuances. But, equally undoubtedly, it is possible to consider the Economic
Charter of Teresópolis and the Charter of Social Peace tesmonies of the aempt to build in Brazil a social project in the style
of what existed in England, with the broad support of civil and polical sociees. This is conrmed by the tripod supporng
security – workers, employers and the State - and by its intenonally wide extension. These are elements that, recalling Esping-
Andersen, make the disncon between pre-postwar social policies and welfare state.
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Welfare state in Brazil: a review or the crisis and the end of the “Dunkirk spirit” Claudio Gurgel
Agatha Justen
CONCLUSION
The so-called social issue, which extends to the present day under special condions, has a strong reference in the welfare
state. The welfare state, of English origin, presented itself to the world, since its birth, as an advanced step, a revoluonary
project, as classied by its main formulator, Lord Beveridge.
It was a plan maintained by society’s contribuon, in the form of taxes and contribuons paid by all, either by employers,
by employees and by the State. We are talking about society because employers’ contribuons and taxes have never ceased
to be passed on to prices, and it is up to everyone to pay them. In turn, the State does not have its own resources, but in
issuing operaons. Its primary revenue is taxes, which come from society.
Thus constuted, the Beveridge Plan, which gave rise to the welfare state, inaugurated a broad scheme of scal support and
coverage, focusing on the worker, in its various forms, including housewives, tending to welcome the cizen, universally,
as would happen.
Two aspects stand out in this descripon: 1) solidarity, movated by several reasons, when, as we have seen in Santos,
“naonal sovereignty, democracy and social jusce and trust in the unity of the human race served as common principles
to reorder the world”; and 2) generosity, in the double sense that this word can have in the context, that is, the feeling that
a new world was being built, “not a patch”, as Beveridge wrote, and that in this new world there was no place for peness
and exclusion.
In Brazil, the welfare state issue is addressed by two readings: first, which has become better known, affirms its
inexistence in our history; the second considers that there are similaries in the Brazilian system, following the internaonal
scenario, but especially from the 1988 Constuon. In the laer case, there would be a combinaon of restricted policies
with universal generous, policies, which are congured in the constuonal text.
The recovered historical facts show that post-World War II social policies, either in England or in Brazil, followed similar traits
and close steps: aempt to rescue capitalism as an economic and social development project, search for class conciliaon,
concern about the polical consequences of the advancement of democracy and socialism, aenon to the basic needs
of the low-income segments and the intenon of wide coverage, “at birth, marriage or death” (Beveridge), “from cradle
to grave” (ISSB).
This is the rst angle of the debate that we want to highlight here. It is important because it corresponds to the structural
needs of capital, once we consider dialeccally that the contradicons of the mode of producon, the pressures and struggles
of the workers, the problems of consumpon, investment and full employment – set of explanatory causes of the Welfare
State – are, in fact, a unit to which, respecng naonal singularies, all post-war capitalism has been ed up.
The second angle is that, since the advent of the capital crisis, in the 1970s and especially in the 1990s, a process of reducing the
state of social welfare has followed, under the claim of scal limitaons, but also in the name of restoraon of market values,
including its self-regulatory power. While this power does not present itself, it is intended to overcome the persistent crisis
of over accumulaon through physical/economic assets and public funds, which connue to be increasingly mobilized, in
privazaons, concessions, tax waivers, subsidized credits and investments in infrastructure. They are tradional ways of
coping with crises, from a certain perspecve. The answer, therefore, depends on the very reasonable queson that can be
asked about how much post-war concerns about structural and social problems have been overcome. The answer that is
being congured, in light of the condions of increasing income and wealth inequality, associated with the reducon of public
security, is that these problems not only connue, but their treatment is not taking the path of universal social policies. The
concerns and, worse, the “Dunkirk spirit” are being relegated.
With polical threats aside, given the fragility of unions and labor pares, the “common principles for reordering the world”,
naonal sovereignty, democracy, social jusce and condence in the unity of humanity no longer seem to be part of the
logic or the discourse of most of business and polical leaders. In the medium term, as long as the histoire conjunturelle,
to use Braudel’s expression, does not change in its main elements, we should not expect anything like the Beveridge Plan,
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Welfare state in Brazil: a review or the crisis and the end of the “Dunkirk spirit” Claudio Gurgel
Agatha Justen
the ISSB or the Charter of Social Peace. Aer all, the unity of causes that led to passive revoluon today lacks its polical
dimension, without which the economic dimension, exclusively, is not capable of leading to any reform in the progressive
concept that has that word.
Finally, we cannot agree with Vargas that Brazil has gone beyond Beveridge or that it has come close. However, we are certain
that low-income Brazilians, workers and the so-called middle classes have had and sll have something to lose. Social security
and assistance policies; protecon for the elderly, children, adolescents, women and the most vulnerable segments; in addion
to public educaon and health, they are public values that have served and serve millions of people. Its decient existence
needs improvements, correcons and improvements, but not its suppression. Defending them is more than reasonable,
parcularly when inequality and its consequences call for aenon. Part of that aenon is the rehabilitaon of solidarity as
a constuve, structural element of sociability.
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Claudio Gurgel
Agatha Justen
Welfare state in Brazil: a review or the crisis and the end of the “Dunkirk spirit”
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Claudio Gurgel
ORCID: hps://orcid.org/0000-0003-4840-9772
Agatha Justen
ORCID: hps://orcid.org/0000-0002-6191-7942
