As well as ancient societies, the contemporary capitalist world appears to be lead by schematized narratives of reality that, among its many roles, are often employed to discipline choices, hopes, and behaviour of individuals, groups, and institutions. Particularly the idea of economic development shows itself filled up assumptions, concepts, and conclusions inhabiting the grey area between scientific knowledge and the myth.

There are at least four major chronicles competing with each other to explain the processes of economic development and thus interfere on decision maker’s choices. The neoliberal school claims that the free market and the liberty of choice could lead countries to achieve a state of welfare equilibrium. The protection of nascent industry rely on State and economic programming to catching up advanced nations. Some researchers claims that entrepreneurs and their use of technical and technological innovations are the truly driving force of capitalism. There is also an increasing interest in the role of institutions on inducing both economic and social change. Each of these chronicles assume cosmogonist interpretations of reality, trust in heroes, denounce alleged villains, and suggest moral conducts that if followed to the letter could carry us to the heaven of development.

Following Celso Furtado’s, Arturo Escobar’s, and Oscar Rivero’s works, among others, we assume that the economic development idea function indeed as an extension of the Western’s myth of progress.

On this essay, our purpose is to understand the theory of economic development as a myth and, consequently, the Brazilian 2000’s neo-developmentalism as a not exactly unique blend of those fable narratives. We follow the semiotic interpretation of Roland Barthes concerning the structure of the mythological narrative to advocate that the development idea work much more as a myth than a scientific guided field. Finally, we analyse the narrative structure and the concrete achievements of the so-called Brazilian neo-developmentalism in order to expose both its lack of theoretical verisimilitude and the contradictions of recent development agenda in Brazil.

The myth of economic development—with all of its compelling and competing narratives—simultaneously reveals and hides its deep sources grounded in the social division of labour and in those particular interests it represents and wishes to generalize. Although the modern myth of economic development offers several alternative narratives, it is built upon a set of normally unquestioned assumptions not necessarily dogmatic neither false, but hyperreal: it is a social construction elaborated as a symbolic structure that mimics the real world; it is a meta-narrative which lurks a tendentious interpretation of history and of the functioning of the economic system. We do not believe that this is just a matter of chance. The myth of economic development—its theories, premises, politics, think tanks etc.—is part of a (not so much) hidden agenda of capitalism: it is bound not to develop countries but opportunities to valorise and accumulate capital.

The idea of development is a product of the twentieth century. Some basic assumptions of those development narratives already spell out their mythological trait: (1) the “homo economicus” and its corollary rational behaviour as the standard agent; (2) social development as synonym of economic growth; and, (3) the possibility for all countries to simultaneously reproduce the standards of living of the rich—which means that the gap between developed and underdeveloped would diminish, as the latter would ‘catch up’.These are the main assumptions that sustain the theoretical core of most development narratives, although each one of them has been contested at length by social sciences.

Furthermore, most economic development narratives chose one and just one aspect of reality to consider as the main problem, their Nemesis. The lack of effective demand in an economic cycle for Keynesians, the State and its taxes to Neoclassicals, the decline of the technological patterns to Schumpeterians, bad institutions to those who follow Douglass North and Oliver Williamson, or the malevolent foreign industry competition to Protectionists, have the role of acting as a challenge to be faced. Pointing out to one singular problem simplifies reality, allowing the development narrative to prescribe just a few simple steps based upon a few direct causalities between variables that, if observed closely, are much more complex.

Moreover, if we have villains, there has to be heroes. Those social processes, which are pointed out as key to solve all development problems, are usually offered as true champions. The way that Schumpeter describes the entrepreneur, for instance, has a mix of dazzle and wonder. The entrepreneur is characterized as courageous, intuitive, proactive, willing to take risks and resilient: a truly superior human being.

Of course, all narratives have arguments to justify their choices for heroes: the market must be reinforced by prices mechanism, concurrency, and property rights, according to Neoclassical thinking; to Keynesians, the State needs a well-prepared Bureaucracy, alongside good statistical methods and reliable macroeconomic policies, everything to boost the capitalist animal instincts; the same can be said about the infant industry of the Protectionists, which relies mostly on State protection; good institutions need the rule of the law, which means that a State Bureaucracy should support it. As for the Schumpeterian school, the entrepreneur himself needs technological innovations that allow him to obtain competitive advantages in order to face the established economic powers. Those justifications, however, do not make up for the disproportionate belief devoted to a single aspect of reality.

Each narrative is built in the form of a journey. Although the narratives here discussed follow only three of Campbell’s 17-step structure (i), the call of adventure, or the problem of development; (ii) the mentor, in our case, the scholars who devise economic development theories; (iii) the road of trials, with its apparently easy beginning, or those initial years of development in which everything seems to go right), we think they have their own specific structure for their hero’s journeys.

Beyond the three mentioned phases directly related to Campbell’s structure, each economic development narrative has: (iv) a stage of compliance, where not the hero, but the society must accept the enlightenment of the theory as the only truth; (v) the new order, in which the hero must be raised to the position of unquestionable government upon the collectivity; (vi) the excuses, when everything goes wrong and the new rulers are questioned about the reasons why they could not accomplish the development objectives: in every tale, the problem is always that the steps were not correctly followed; the solution presented, therefore, is to (vii) deepen the reforms, where society has to make “sacrifices” in the name of a greater good. These two last steps, six and seven, are not part of any economic development narratives’ cannon—but we can say that those are indeed the outcomes of the application of each of them.

Regardless of all of their unrealistic premises, the structural convergence of theses fables tells us much more about the capitalist way of thinking than about the causes (and limits) of development. These narratives are built as a recipe, whose differences are merely a result of some ingredients exchange to meet the tastes and interests of the cook. In our opinion, it does not matter if this nemesis/hero/path/lessons structure are actually deliberate neither accidental.