"kosher Marxists"? are they circumscribed? On Wed, Oct 22, 2008 at 12:38 PM, Julio Huato <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Louis Proyect wrote: > >> After Robert Brenner wrote his attack on >> dependency theory in the 1977 NLR, the >> impact was immediate. > > Latin American Marxists were very involved in debating the merits and > demerits of dependency theory. I imagine some works influential in > Latin America were never translated into English. From my own > experience, I can say that some of these works were extremely > influential in Mexico, shaping up the views of many young political > activists. > > One of the most effective Marxist critics of dependentism (not the > only one) was an Ecuadorian political scientist who taught at UNAM, > Agustin Cueva. Some of Cueva's critical essays were packaged in "El > desarrollo del capitalismo en America Latina," a book published by > Siglo XXI in the mid 1970s. That year, the book received Siglo XXI's > award to the best essay. > > Cuevas later deepened his critique of dependentism. In 1979, he > published another bunch of essays under the title "Teoria social y > procesos politicos en America Latina." However, this book was > published by a less known publishing house and thus had much less > diffusion. > > This may be obvious, but as far as I can tell, Marxists never disputed > that Latin American capitalism was "dependent" or "interdependent in a > subordinate sense" to the capitalism in the rich countries. The > issues were the mechanisms of such dependency or subordination > (exploitation), its import or size, and the role they played in the > evolution of Latin American social formations -- in particular whether > such mechanisms of exploitation limited or enabled (or both) -- and > how specifically one or the other -- the further development of > capitalist production in Latin America. > > Agustin Cueva posed all these questions most sharply, in Marxist > terms, and showed how the answers supplied by the dependency theorists > were mostly wrongheaded in its understanding, predictions, and > political implications. IMO, what happened in Latin America and the > world in the 3 subsequent decades was not only unexpected, but > incomprehensible under the paradigm of dependency theory, while > entirely discernible under Marxism. > > Having said that, I must admit that the dependentists as individuals > have roughly remained on the right side of the popular struggles in > Latin America in the last few decades, or -- at least -- that their > effective political record is not worse than that of the kosher > Marxists. So, being right or wrong in the theory didn't keep anybody > from taking the right or wrong political stances in important > historical junctures in Latin America. > _______________________________________________ > pen-l mailing list > [email protected] > https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l >
-- Jim Devine / "Nobody told me there'd be days like these / Strange days indeed -- most peculiar, mama." -- JL. _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
