Marxist Thought In Latin America

José Carlos Mariátegui, the Peruvian political theorist of the 1920s, was instrumental in developing an indigenous Latin American revolutionary Marxist theory. He rejected a rigid, orthodox interpretation of Marxism and applied his own creative elements, which he believed could move a society to revolutionary action without the society having to depend upon more traditional economic factors. His interpretation of Peruvian history had a profound effect upon subsequent social movements throughout Latin America. This volume reviews the essential elements of Mariátegui's thought and important influences on his intellectual development. It demonstrates the role he played in defining a Latin american identity, the nature of his intellectual contribution to the development of indigenous revolutionary movements in Latin America, and the inflluence he had on successful revolutionary movements in Cuba and Nicaragua. An understanding of Mariátegui's thought is fundamental to understanding the nature of revolutionary changes in Latin America.

This is the first new anthology of writings by Latin American Marxists to appear in over twenty years. Its purpose is to fill this vacuum and to provide a working tool for both students and activists. While including theoretical, sociological, historical, and economic writings, the majority of the documents center on political struggles throughout the continent. The anthology's method is historical, considering the evolution of Marxist thought in the context of social and political struggles during the different historical periods in Latin America, as well as in connection with developments in the international workers' movement. Of particular interest are hard-to-find documents from the early years of the Communist International; a number of important and previously untranslated texts by Jose Carlos Mariategui, widely considered the most important Marxist thinker of the Americas; documents from the 1932 revolt in El Salvador, led by Farabundo Marti; and selections from the most dynamic elements of the Latin American left, including the Central American revolutionary movements, the Brazilian Workers Party, and liberation theologists.

At a time when the validity of Marxism is being questioned because of the collapse of the Communist regimes in Eastern Europe, Richard Harris examines the relevance of Marxism and socialism for Latin America and the Caribbean. Dr. Harris discusses recent revolutionary regimes and attempts at socialist transformation in the region in terms of Marxist theory, comparing them with the historical experiences of the Soviet Union, China, Yugoslavia, and Vietnam. The author argues that Marxist theory offers a framework for understanding recent revolutionary transformations as well as the contradictions and limitations of existing democratic regimes in the region. Particular attention is given to revolutionary Cuba, the Allende administration in Chile, the Popular Revolutionary Government in Grenada, the Sandinista regime in Nicaragua, and contemporary leftist parties and movements throughout Latin America. He contends that democratization and the solution of the region's economic and social problems require a democratic socialist project.

In Translating Marx, Martín Cortés ponders José Aricó’s contributions towards the constitution of Latin American Marxism. Accordingly, he studies Aricó in terms of his trajectory as a publisher and translator, while considering his thoughts on Marxism’s fundamental theoretical problems.

In a work centred on Marx's harsh biography of Simón Bolívar, José Aricó examines why Latin America was apparently 'excluded' from Marx's thought, challenging the allegation that this expressed some 'Eurocentric' prejudice. Aricó shows how the German thinker's hostility towards the Bonapartism and authoritarianism he identified in the Liberator coloured his attitude towards the continent and the significance of its independence-processes. Whilst criticising Marx's misreading of Latin-American realities, Aricó demonstrates contemporaneous, countervailing tendencies in Marx's thought, including his appraisal of the revolutionary potentialities of other 'peripheral' extra-European societies. As such, Aricó convincingly argues that Marx's work was not a dogma of linear 'progress', but a living, contradictory body of thought constantly in development. English translation of the Marx y América Latina edition, Fondo de Cultura Económica, 2010.

In recent decades, the global North has been engulfed by neoliberalism. Neoliberal ideas have dominated the economy and public policies, and have become deeply entrenched as “common sense.” Latin America has not been immune to this trend. However, at the same time, governments and popular mobilizations across the continent have actively resisted and challenged neoliberalism. Countries such as Venezuela and Bolivia have sometimes been grouped under the label of a “pink tide,” denoting their leftist alignment and their resistance to the Washington-led neoliberal consensus. This opposition to neoliberal development patterns in Latin America has gone beyond social-democratic reformism to a revival of Marxist theoretical perspectives and political practices. This book provides an insight into the rich diversity of Latin American Marxism, historically and contemporarily. Given the global interest in the revival of radicalism in Latin America, it will appeal to a wide audience, and should be of interest to non-Marxist as well as Marxist scholars with interests in topics from political economy to cultural theory.

Since the 1970s, sociocultural analysis in Latin American studies has been marked by a turn away from problems of political economy. Accumulation and Subjectivity challenges this turn while reconceptualizing the relationship between political economy and the life of the subject. The fourteen essays in this volume show that, in order to understand the dynamics governing the extraction of wealth under contemporary capitalism, we also need to consider the collective subjects implied in this operation at an institutional, juridical, moral, and psychic level. More than merely setting the scene for social and political struggle, Accumulation and Subjectivity reveals Latin America to be a cauldron for thought for a critique of political economy and radical political change beyond its borders. Combining reflections on political philosophy, intellectual history, narrative, law, and film from the colonial period to the present, it provides a new conceptual vocabulary rooted in the material specificity of the region and, for this very reason, potentially translatable to other historical contexts. This collection will be of interest to scholars of Marxism, Latin American literary and cultural studies, and the intellectual history of the left.