(This was posted to the Introduction to Marxism mailing list today.)
While I have tried to base our readings on material available on the Internet, I am making an exception for a couple of chapters of José Carlos Mariátegui’s “Seven Interpretative Essays on Peruvian Reality” that I have scanned in from a Columbia library book that is generally only available in such research libraries unfortunately. Also unfortunately, the Marxism Internet Archives does not contain any of his writings on Peruvian society, nor are there articles anywhere else on the Internet that do so. This is a real shame since Mariátegui is important for a number of reasons.
To begin with, he is the quintessential 3rd world anti-imperialist Marxist. In distinction to Lenin’s “Imperialism-the latest stage of Imperialism”, his writings are focused on the problems of a “peripheral” society, namely Peru. It is understandable that Lenin would focus on the growth of finance capital in advanced countries like England, France, Germany and the U.S. but Mariátegui was really one of the first Marxists to examine imperialism’s impact on a less-developed country in any kind of depth.
Mariátegui is also important because he is a major influence on Latin American Marxism in general and on the Bolivian revolutionary movement specifically today. In an article titled “The `Indian Problem’ in Peru: From Mariategui to Today ” by Hugo Blanco that appears on the Socialist Voice website, we learn:
"Unlike in Europe, the development of agriculture and cattle grazing in America did not lead to the emergence of slavery; instead primitive collectivism gave way to other forms of collectivism as privileged layers and privileged people arose. Some forms of slavery may have existed for domestic work, but agricultural production was not based on slavery as it was in Greece or Rome. Rather it was based on collective organization, called by different names in the various cultures (ayllu en Quechua, calpulli en Nahuatl)".
In Mariátegui’s view, the ayllu-or indigenous peasant commune-could provide the basis for socialist development. In other words, it was not necessary for Peru to pass through a capitalist stage in order to build socialism. This analysis was sharply opposed to the “stagist” conceptions of the Second International that Lenin challenged in 1917. While this appeared extremely “anti-Marxist”, especially to Kautsky, Lenin’s approach had much in common with Karl Marx’s, who late in life supported the idea of a revolution in Russia based on what amounted to Slavic ayllus. In an 1881 letter to Vera Zasulich , Marx wrote:
"Theoretically speaking, then, the Russian 'rural commune' can preserve itself by developing its basis, the common ownership of land, and by eliminating the principle of private property which it also implies; it can become a direct point of departure for the economic system towards which modern society tends; it can turn over a new leaf without beginning by committing suicide; it can gain possession of the fruits with which capitalist production has enriched mankind, without passing through the capitalist regime, a regime which, considered solely from the point of view of its possible duration hardly counts in the life of society. But we must descend from pure theory to the Russian reality."
Tomorrow, I am going to post chapter one of José Carlos Mariátegui’s “Seven Interpretative Essays on Peruvian Reality” that is titled “Outline of the Economic Evolution” but in the meantime here is an introduction to Mariátegui that I wrote about 12 years ago. (I would generally describe myself as a Mariáteguist.)
full: http://louisproyect.wordpress.com/2008/07/29/jose-carlos-mariategui/ _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
