Mariátegui, Critical Thinking And Andean Futures (ENG)

Issue editors: Pascual García, Karina Ponce and Ronaldo Munck

As the experiences of the left turn in some Andean countries and peace processes in others are reflected on, what might a return to the thinking of José Carlos Mariátegui (Peru 1894- 1930) contribute to a better critical understanding and guide to action for the future? This year, one hundred years ago, Mariategui was arriving in Italy where he participated in the founding congress of the Communist party and met Antonio Gramsci, while in Peru a period of indigenous uprisings was beginning. In his short, but very active and influential, career Mariátegui was a labor organizer, an exile in Europe, a radical journalist, and a leader of the emerging Latin American Communist movement. In 1928 he launched the Partido Socialista Peruano, serving as its first secretary general, and published his main work, the Siete Ensayos. The Partido Socialista Peruano was a broad based socialist party (with a communist core) that went on to organize the CGTP (Central General de Trabajadores del Peru) to mobilize and lead the workers movement. In 1929 he was isolated by the communist leaders accused of various heresies including ‘populism’ and a mistaken policy on the ‘indigenous question’.

Mariátegui’s Marxism was what we might call a “warm” one, far removed from the scientific pretensions of the theoreticist Marxism (Althusserianism) that dominated Latin America during the 1970s. His whole rationale was one of practical engagement with the lives of workers and indigenous peasants. He was never a follower of Leninist “theoretical practice” or the theoretical preoccupations of what later became known as “Western Marxism.” Far removed from grandiose or general ideas, he focused his energies on social transformation as a result of popular practices and traditions. Rejecting all forms of a “class essentialism” that would reduce all life to its class origins, Mariátegui focused on the broad, emancipatory potential of social, popular, and ethnic social forces. His thinking and practice was the very antithesis of the statism that came to dominate Latin American Marxism. For him there was an overwhelming need for a ‘practical socialism’—springing from the daily practices of the subaltern classes—that would change society, and not a strong state that would act from above. His fascination with Peru’s Inca past was not with the Inca state (and its so-called Asiatic mode of production as labelled by orthodox Marxists) but, rather, with its communal social practices and ethos that he saw as prefigurative of communism.

Mariátegui understood nationalism and the national question better than most Marxists of his era, and his approach is becoming influential again today. International debates tended to be polarized between a Leninist pragmatics around “national self-determination” and Rosa Luxemburg’s principled opposition to any tarnishing of the proletarian cause by nationalist colorings. He also offered an early critique of Eurocentrism declaring roundly that “socialism was an international doctrine; but its internationalism ended within the confines the West”. Only socialism, however, could for him achieve the unity of Nuestra América (Our America) and supersede the little nationalisms that had emerged since independence. However Mariátegui, at the same time, eschewed all forms of backward-looking romanticism or populism. He was greatly influenced by the Italian avant-garde cultural currents of the time and reveled in the images of futurism. He was a firm promoter of internationalism. Thus Mariátegui was well placed to break decisively with contemporary (and subsequent) sterile counter-positions between nationalism and cosmopolitanism in Latin America.

Finally, Mariátegui provides an early Marxist engagement with the situation and aspirations of the Amerindian peoples, breaking with his own early, quite orthodox socialism in a European frame. He began to focus on the land question as the main underlying factor in Amerindian subjection. Above all he argued, against all forms of paternalism, that the liberation of the Amerindian peoples was a matter for themselves. His analysis was based on an early critique of Marxist and mainstream theories based on “dualism” between country and city, advanced and backward sectors of the economy. Rather, these were seen to be in dialectical unity and the path of social transformation needed to be conceived in a holistic way for him. Mariátegui is extremely contemporary again today in his analysis of the “indigenous communist economy” and “agrarian communism” of the ayllu (Inca community) and its principles of reciprocity and redistribution of wealth characteristic of these communists, their habits of cooperation and solidarity, and their “communist spirit” were, for Mariátegui, harbingers of the socialist transformation required in Peru and Latin America more broadly. These categories are very much part of contemporary debates in the Andean countries under left-of-center governments after 2000.

We also wish to take up the critical thinking of some other influential Andean thinkers: René Zavaleta Mercado (Bolivia 1935- 1984), Agustín Cueva (Ecuador 1937- 1992) and Orlando Fals Borda (Colombia  1925- 2008) who, in different but complementary ways help us develop an Andean de-colonial problematic and praxis. Zavaleta coined the term of ‘sociedad abigarrada’ (imperfectly translated as a motley or variegated society ) which has never been explored sufficiently as a lens for understanding contemporary Latin America, he also made a huge contribution to our understanding of the ‘national-popular’ and stressed the importance of the autonomy of the political. Cueva was an early dependency theorist, an astute observer of the changes in the working class and the importance of the concept of ‘multitude’ and an original theorist of democracy. Fals Borda is of course the originator (not always acknowledged in the North) of participatory action research and the notion of subaltern de-colonial epistemologies, but also a close and acute observer of the Andean peasantry. Separately and collectively we think these thinkers should be recovered and rethought in terms of the current situation in the Andean countries and the alternative futures now opening up, from a critical perspective.  Submissions may focus on one or more of the thinkers listed, the application of their ideas today or analysis of the present situation inspired by their thinking.

We are calling for submissions on the following topics and others deemed relevant to our problematic:

• What is the relevance of the thinking/action of the above authors to the future of the Andean region and the construction of 21^st Century socialism?
• What does their thinking tell us about the project for ‘Andean capitalism’ promoted by García Linera amongst others?
• What do they tell us about Andean socialism, sumak kawsay/ suma qamaña and other alternative visions for the future?
• Can we gain a better understanding of dependency and uneven development in the Andean region from their thinking and the means to overcome them?
• How did these Andrean activist theorists compare to contemporaries in other parts of Indo-America or infuence later thinkers there?
• What is the role of gender and of the environment in these thinkers?
• Can we gain a better understanding of the national-popular from these authors?
• What is the role of religion, culture and language in the process of social transformation in the Andean countries?
• What is the nature and role of the working class in the Andean countries today?
• How has the role of the peasantry changed since these authors, in particular Mariátegui, were writing on the question?
• What is the role of the indigenous peoples in the social transformation of the Andean countries?
• How does the thinking of Mariátegui help us understand the creation of a pluri-national state in Bolivia and Ecuador and the continental Nuestra America project?
• What do these thinkers tell us about the role of the state in a democratic development process?
• What is the role of the party in the construction of counter-hegemony to the dominant order?
• How have these Andrean thinkers influenced Latin American Marxism and critical theory?

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Issue editor contact information:    

(Universidad Técnica Particular de Loja, Ecuador)

Corresponding editor: Ronaldo Munck (Ronnie.munck@dcu.ie)