From Germany to North and South America: Carl Landauer and the strategies to deal with uncertainty in the 1930s and 1940s

Abstract

Carl Landauer dealt with the uncertainties of the 1930s and 1940s through strategies articulating theory and policy. For him, economic planning was a strategy to overcome the uncertainties of the market economy: a planned economy would reach an optimal use of resources and avoid monopolies. In 1933, he emigrated to the United States as part of a process of transference of knowledge from Europe to North America, due to the rise of fascism. In America, he conflated the defense of planning with democracy. At this point, the great uncertainty was the transition to a postwar economy. Landauer engaged in a critical debate with Keynesianism and presented planning as a device capable of ensuring economic stability and full employment after the war. His American intellectual production eventually reached Brazil, where the industrialist Roberto Simonsen assimilated Landauer’s ideas to legitimize economic planning as an instrument to promote industrialization and overcome economic backwardness.