A economia política da inflação: direito econômico e banco central

Abstract

Having as theoretical frameworks the critique of political economy and Brazilian economic law, this research brings together an inseparable set of over a set of foundational categories of the capitalist economy and State: money, inflation and the central bank, which play a fundamental role in the analysis of capitalism in general and of Brazil’s underdevelopment. The study stems from the concept of money as a social relation essential to the circulation of commodities, being the sign of value and the instrument of exchange. Its history unfolds in the institutionalization of the central bank as monetary authority, that is, as a State agency of currency management. Next, the monetary policy is conceptualized within the State economic policy and the economic law that instrumentalizes the State's action in economy, having in the currency issue the major element of its funding and expansion of its productive system. It is then presented the question of monetary sovereignty and the central bank’s autonomy or independence vis-à-vis the executive branch, brought under pressure by the historical evolution of the international monetary system with the financial globalization that requires the separation of monetary policy from economic policy. Finally, the problem of inflation in underdevelopment and the creation of Brazil’s Central Bank in the context of the clash between national-developmentalism and neoliberalism is analyzed. Therefore, what was sought in this dissertation was to establish the historical, economic and political premises of the institutionalization of monetary authority and of inflation as an intrinsic and inexorable phenomenon to the management of money in the capitalist mode of production. The branch of law and the method of research was economic law, which through a syncretic methodology, incorporates economic and political conceptual categories and objects, and, therefore, has as its content the political economy of the juridical form.