Date: Sun, 17 Mar 1996 12:03:49 -0500 (EST)
From: Louis N Proyect <lnp3-AT-columbia.edu>
To: hariette spierings <hariette-AT-easynet.co.uk>
cc: marxism-AT-jefferson.village.virginia.edu
Subject: Mariategui as orthodox Marxist?


On Sun, 17 Mar 1996, hariette spierings wrote:

> 
> We are talking here of Jose Carlos Mariategui and his school of Though -
> Latin-American Orthodox Marxism.
> 

It is interesting that Adolfo recommends Mariategui to the Trotskyist 
Jorn as medication to combat the diseased anti-Marxism of Castro and 
the Sandinistas. The hostility toward the Castroist current from Maoist 
and Trotskyist circles alike indicates a certain convergence based on 
an ideologically rigid concept of what "Marxism" is. For Jorn, 
Marxism requires a state capitalist analysis. For Adolfo of the 
Peruvian Communist Party, it requires absolute fealty to Stalin, Mao 
and Gonzalo. All other non-conforming currents are opposed to their 
privileged concept of Marxism.

For their part, the goodhearted and ecletic Sandinistas embraced 
Mariategui without reservation.

In December 1980, the Sandinista newspaper El Nuevo Diario ran a 
front page editorial along with a series of essays from influential 
international contributors on Mariategui's Marxism. The editorial 
credited the founder of Peruvian Communism with having "launched 
the revolution in Latin American thought," with having been "the first 
to investigate the origins, effects and functions, development...and role 
of diverse social phenomena including ideologies."

What attracted the Sandinistas to both Castroism and the sort of 
Marxism that Mariategui represented? 

In my last post, I cited Castro's statement: "If a revolutionary happens 
to be one who arms himself with a revolutionary theory but does not 
feel it, he has a mental relation to revolutionary theory but not an 
affective one--not an emotional relation. He doesn't have a really 
revolutionary attitude and sees the problem of revolutionary theory as 
something cold."

Note how this compares to Mariategui's words in a similar vein. A 
revolutionary morality, he wrote, "does not mechanically arise from 
economic interest: it is formed in class struggles waged with heroic 
fervor and a passionate will...For the proletariat to fulfill its historic 
mission it must first acquire an awareness of its class interest, but class 
interest by itself is not enough." Castro speaks of an "emotional 
relation" while Mariategui spoke of "heroic fervor". There is a 
common thread running here. That thread is the need to integrate the 
heart with the brain when making socialist revolution.

Mariategui was deeply influenced by the anarchist George Sorel and 
other non-Marxist thinkers. In commending Sorel, Mariategui hailed 
Sorel for recovering the revolutionary substance of Marxism, but also 
for "transcending the rationalist and postivist bases of socialism... 
[and] invigorating socialist thought with the ideas of Bergson and the 
pragmatists." Mariategui was captivated by Bergson's notion of 
"creative intuition" and pragmatist philosopher William James's "will 
to believe".

If this is "orthodox Marxism", then I am for it. What this has to do with 
the ideological straight-jacket Adolfo is trying to fit us all into, I have 
no idea.

Another influence on the new Marxism in Nicaragua was Antonio 
Gramsci. Gramsci had become a major influence on Cuban 
revolutionary thought and this was inherited by Nicaraguan Marxism. 
Gramsci's interpretation of Marxism, like Guevara's and Castro's, 
appealed to Nicaraguan revolutonaries because of its strong voluntarist 
and activist bent, aimed at inspiring both the hearts and minds of 
workers and their allies. Like Marategui, Gramsci provided a 
justification for the FSLN's emphasis on the subjective conditions of 
revolution.

(The information on Mariategui, Gramsci and the Sandinista 
movement is drawn from "Intellectual Foundations of the Nicaraguan 
Revolution" by Donald Hodges, which I referred to in my last post. I 
was planning on incorporating this material in my next post, but I 
thought that it would be most timely to refer to it now.)



     --- from list marxism-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---