ABSTRACT
The classical roots of structuralist thought can be traced back to the Schumpeterian/Marxist view of free-enterprise capitalism as an inherently conflictive rather than harmonious system, and to its development as an irregular series of jumps that generate countless other imbalances. Structuralist thought—either in its most radical form associated with the Marxist tradition, or in its reformist version linked to the Keynesian and institutionalist schools of thought—falls within the realm of political economy. In clear contrast with structuralism, in fact, it might be said that neostructuralist thought has the opposite bias: a lot of emphasis on short-term analysis and relatively little emphasis on the long run. At the risk of sounding redundant, one can start by saying that structuralist thought views structural characteristics as the basic determinants of a society's evolution. C. Furtado's pessimism with respect to the possibilities of continued growth was not shared by other structuralists.
