Write the history of Marxism in Latin America Disquisitions around a problematic concept

Abstract

During the years of his exile in Mexico, José Aricó participated in June 1981 in a seminar on “Nation, State and Ideology in Latin America in precapitalist formations”, coordinated by Enrique Montalvo Ortega within the framework of the Historical Research Department of the Institute National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH) of Mexico. There he presented a paper entitled “Disquisitions around a problematic concept” in which, taking up reflections that had advanced in Marx and Latin America (1980) and anticipating others that he will unfold throughout the 1980s, he addresses topics such as the “problematic unity” of our continent and raises a series of hypotheses that allow us to understand the singularity of Juan B. Justo's socialism in Argentina and Mariátegui's Marxism in Peru. Finally, he dwells with the problems posed to Latin American Marxism and to the historiography of our continent by reductionist views of the State as well as the formalist application of the Marxian concept of “mode of production” to our reality.