Sui generis capitalism and the translatability of Marxism in Latin America

Abstract

The universalist impetus of historical materialism, directly linked to the expansionist logic of capital and the socialist emancipatory project, has often been mistakenly converted into cosmopolitanism, abstract universalism. In Latin America, the acclimatization of Marxism to such complex social formations was slow to begin, a limitation that victimized even its founding fathers and facilitated its mistaken and malicious labeling as an irremediably Eurocentric thought. Contrary to this trend, Marxism loses its exoticism to the exact extent that it becomes translatable, as Gramsci pointed out. In this sense, we will present the positive link between Marxism and the national-popular, enabling it to mobilize the categories necessary to navigate this shifting terrain. Marx, following Aricó, is presented as someone who, despite his mistakes, pointed out useful paths by revising his perspective on history and the historical subject from the Manifesto in his writings on Ireland and Russia. Finally, we draw on Lechner and Zavaleta to defend the thesis that a state-centric prism is essential for understanding capitalism in the region.