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José Carlos Mariátegui: An Anthology
José Carlos Mariátegui is one of Latin America's most profound but overlooked thinkers. A self-taught journalist, social scientist, and activist from Peru, he was the first to emphasize that those fighting for the revolutionary transformation of society must adapt classical Marxist theory to the particular conditions of Latin American. He also stressed that indigenous peoples must take an active, if not leading, role in any revolutionary struggle.
Today Latin America is the scene of great social upheaval. More progressive governments are in power than ever before, and grassroots movements of indigenous peoples, workers, and peasants are increasingly shaping the political landscape. The time is perfect for a rediscovery of Mariátegui, who is considered an intellectual precursor of today's struggles in Latin America but virtually unknown in the English-speaking world. This volume collects his essential writings, including many that have never been translated and some that have never been published. The scope of this collection, masterful translation, and thoughtful commentary make it an essential book for scholars of Latin America and all of those fighting for a new world, waiting to be born.
481 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 2011
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About the author
José Carlos Mariátegui
111 books69 followersJosé Carlos Mariátegui La Chira was a Peruvian journalist, political philosopher, and activist. A prolific writer before his early death at age 35, he is considered one of the most influential Latin American socialists of the 20th century. Mariátegui's most famous work, Seven Interpretive Essays on Peruvian Reality (1928), is still widely read in South America. An avowed, self-taught Marxist, he insisted that a socialist revolution should evolve organically in Latin America on the basis of local conditions and practices, not the result of mechanically applying a European formula.
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
January 8, 2023
José Carlos Mariategui is known as the father of Latin American Marxism, helping inspire Che and other revolutionaries. His writing is very clear and captivating. He has a profound understanding of Latin American political economy and is a must read for anyone wanting to understand the history of Marxism in Latin America.
July 13, 2025
Mariategui's shorter works here are not exactly groundbreaking anymore, but like his major works show his ideological affinity with other, more well-known and cited Marxists like Gramsci and Mao. Very important historically and in the development of Marxism in the Global South.
May 8, 2025
Mariátegui wird regelmäßig als Gramsci Lateinamerikas bezeichnet. Es gibt substantielle Gemeinsamkeiten zwischen beiden, aber an das Niveau Gramscis kommen seine Arbeiten zur Kultur und zur revolutionären Politik nicht heran. Gerade im Bereich der Kultur ist Mariátegui oft schwärmerisch, schwammig, überspannt. Das kommt sicherlich von seiner starken, ausdrücklichen Beeinflussung durch Sorel.
Viele der intelligenteren, kreativeren Marxist:innen der Zeit haben in überspannter Reaktion auf den metaphysisch-dogmatischen Marxismusbegriff der Zweiten Internationale ihre Inspiration aus bürgerlichen Quellen gezogen: Hegel (Lukács und Labriola), Croce (Gramsci), Sorel (Mariátegui). Sie suchten den Ökonomismus durch eine verstärkte Betonung der Subjektivität, des Bewusstseins, der Praxis auszugleichen. Lenin zeigte dann, ebenfalls unter kritischem Rückgriff auf Hegel, wie man das erreichen kann, ohne eklektisch oder inkonsequent zu werden. Daher finden die besten Theoretiker:innen auf dieser Linie auch zu Lenin - so auch Mariátegui.
Die große Stärke Mariáteguis, in der er uns noch heute Orientierung und Klarheit bieten kann, liegt in seiner Behandlung der nationalen Frage, der Indigenen, der Verwandlung, die Kolonialismus und Imperialismus mit den Gesellschaftsformationen unterdrückter und ausgebeuteter Länder anrichtet. Hier finden sich brillante, tiefe, weitsichtige und vor allem prinzipienfeste Untersuchungen, die noch vor Mao viele entscheidende Antwort auf bis heute drängende Fragen unserer Befreiung bieten. Und hier geht Mariátegui auch oft über Mao hinaus was die konkrete Theoretisierung angeht.
Das Vorwort der Sammlung ist leider recht dumm und wenig informativ.
Viele der intelligenteren, kreativeren Marxist:innen der Zeit haben in überspannter Reaktion auf den metaphysisch-dogmatischen Marxismusbegriff der Zweiten Internationale ihre Inspiration aus bürgerlichen Quellen gezogen: Hegel (Lukács und Labriola), Croce (Gramsci), Sorel (Mariátegui). Sie suchten den Ökonomismus durch eine verstärkte Betonung der Subjektivität, des Bewusstseins, der Praxis auszugleichen. Lenin zeigte dann, ebenfalls unter kritischem Rückgriff auf Hegel, wie man das erreichen kann, ohne eklektisch oder inkonsequent zu werden. Daher finden die besten Theoretiker:innen auf dieser Linie auch zu Lenin - so auch Mariátegui.
Die große Stärke Mariáteguis, in der er uns noch heute Orientierung und Klarheit bieten kann, liegt in seiner Behandlung der nationalen Frage, der Indigenen, der Verwandlung, die Kolonialismus und Imperialismus mit den Gesellschaftsformationen unterdrückter und ausgebeuteter Länder anrichtet. Hier finden sich brillante, tiefe, weitsichtige und vor allem prinzipienfeste Untersuchungen, die noch vor Mao viele entscheidende Antwort auf bis heute drängende Fragen unserer Befreiung bieten. Und hier geht Mariátegui auch oft über Mao hinaus was die konkrete Theoretisierung angeht.
Das Vorwort der Sammlung ist leider recht dumm und wenig informativ.
March 18, 2024
It's a solid collection. It unfortunately doesn't contain all of the 'Seven Essays', only two (the Land Problem and the Indigenous/Indian problem). But it does contain his writings on imperialism and myth, which were quite interesting. He quotes José Vasconcelos, who used the phrase 'Pessimism of the real, Optimism of the Ideal' seems too similar to the Gramsci quote for comfort. Mariategui was in Italy in the factories at the same time as Gramsci, but I think we don't know if they meet, but this quote might suggest that they did, or at least one knew of the other.
September 30, 2014
This was my first encounter with the thought of Maríategui-- the man who was the founder of Peruvian Marxism and a guiding influence on Latin American revolutionary thought still only has this book and one other, "Seven Interpretive Essays on Peruvian Reality," available in English.
My experience of this collection was enough to convince me of Mariátegui's significance as a creative mind who successfully applied Marxism to the Latin American experience. Though I hope to read him in Spanish should I get the chance in the near future, what I read here reminded me in no small way of Gramsci, another brilliant Marxist revolutionary who "translated" Leninist theory into the language of Italy and much of the west.
Most of Mariátegui's time, and hence a lot of this collection, was spent developing a revolutionary understanding and strategy around the indigenous question. At the time he wrote, Indians were 4/5ths of Peru's population. Though capitalist agriculture for export, especially sugar and cotton cultivation, had developed in plantations on Peru's coast due to favorable labor conditions for British and American capital, the Indians in the Sierra continued to labor under "semifeudal" relations of the labor compulsion (mita) to provincial landlords and the Church. Mariátegui believed that the significant weight of the semiproletarian Indian masses in agriculture, as well as their communal way of life held over from the time of the Inca Empire, made them the crucial force in Peru's revolution and the future construction of socialism. I don't know enough about the background to judge whether he was entirely correct, but his approach reminds one of Marx in his later years on the Russian village commune.
For Mariátegui, the chronic underdevelopment of Peruvian agriculture and the pressing need to enact land reform that would give the Indians justice was simply the most visible symptom of Peru's colonial status in the world economy. He writes that after the Latin American wars of independence, the creole ruling classes which came to power in these nations, unlike that of (for example) the United States had no real national feeling or relationship to the masses, and hence they preferred to profit as a junior partner of British and then American imperialism. Hence, the anti-imperialist struggle in Latin America, in order to consistently achieve its program, would have to fully break with capitalism, embrace the masses and carry through a social revolution. Here again, his observations on the struggles in Mexico and Peru bear an interesting relationship to Leon Trotsky's theory of the permanent revolution- though not an unqualified one, as Michael Löwy describes in an article which is unfortunately only available in Spanish.
The pieces in this collection on the Indian question and the problem of land, especially the chapter from "Siete ensayos," were for me the most noteworthy in this collection, but it also contains much of value from Mariátegui's writings on culture, and an interesting selection from his "Defensa del marxismo," a polemical pamphlet defending Marxism against the "spiritual" reformism of Henri de Man and the pragmatist revisionism of Max Eastman. Mariátegui, though he still officially endorsed the developing Stalinist orthodoxy at the end of his life (1930) was clearly an original thinker who owed a huge deal to Trotsky as well as Rosa Luxemburg, as well as non-Marxists like Georges Sorel, and took an antisectarian stance toward anarchist and reformist workers' groups.
I have two complaints about this collection, which would otherwise merit five stars. First of all, there are some shoddy errors of translation which are either mistyping or trying to be too literal with English from Spanish. Second, which is more important, there are too many pieces which last only a page or three which are often of a trivial nature, and cover material which is discussed at length in the introduction anyway. I would have preferred a collection that had fewer but longer pieces which allowed us to see more of Mariátegui's thought.
My experience of this collection was enough to convince me of Mariátegui's significance as a creative mind who successfully applied Marxism to the Latin American experience. Though I hope to read him in Spanish should I get the chance in the near future, what I read here reminded me in no small way of Gramsci, another brilliant Marxist revolutionary who "translated" Leninist theory into the language of Italy and much of the west.
Most of Mariátegui's time, and hence a lot of this collection, was spent developing a revolutionary understanding and strategy around the indigenous question. At the time he wrote, Indians were 4/5ths of Peru's population. Though capitalist agriculture for export, especially sugar and cotton cultivation, had developed in plantations on Peru's coast due to favorable labor conditions for British and American capital, the Indians in the Sierra continued to labor under "semifeudal" relations of the labor compulsion (mita) to provincial landlords and the Church. Mariátegui believed that the significant weight of the semiproletarian Indian masses in agriculture, as well as their communal way of life held over from the time of the Inca Empire, made them the crucial force in Peru's revolution and the future construction of socialism. I don't know enough about the background to judge whether he was entirely correct, but his approach reminds one of Marx in his later years on the Russian village commune.
For Mariátegui, the chronic underdevelopment of Peruvian agriculture and the pressing need to enact land reform that would give the Indians justice was simply the most visible symptom of Peru's colonial status in the world economy. He writes that after the Latin American wars of independence, the creole ruling classes which came to power in these nations, unlike that of (for example) the United States had no real national feeling or relationship to the masses, and hence they preferred to profit as a junior partner of British and then American imperialism. Hence, the anti-imperialist struggle in Latin America, in order to consistently achieve its program, would have to fully break with capitalism, embrace the masses and carry through a social revolution. Here again, his observations on the struggles in Mexico and Peru bear an interesting relationship to Leon Trotsky's theory of the permanent revolution- though not an unqualified one, as Michael Löwy describes in an article which is unfortunately only available in Spanish.
The pieces in this collection on the Indian question and the problem of land, especially the chapter from "Siete ensayos," were for me the most noteworthy in this collection, but it also contains much of value from Mariátegui's writings on culture, and an interesting selection from his "Defensa del marxismo," a polemical pamphlet defending Marxism against the "spiritual" reformism of Henri de Man and the pragmatist revisionism of Max Eastman. Mariátegui, though he still officially endorsed the developing Stalinist orthodoxy at the end of his life (1930) was clearly an original thinker who owed a huge deal to Trotsky as well as Rosa Luxemburg, as well as non-Marxists like Georges Sorel, and took an antisectarian stance toward anarchist and reformist workers' groups.
I have two complaints about this collection, which would otherwise merit five stars. First of all, there are some shoddy errors of translation which are either mistyping or trying to be too literal with English from Spanish. Second, which is more important, there are too many pieces which last only a page or three which are often of a trivial nature, and cover material which is discussed at length in the introduction anyway. I would have preferred a collection that had fewer but longer pieces which allowed us to see more of Mariátegui's thought.
January 10, 2016
Just some very brief impressions of the book....
Really remarkable collection of very readable, journalistic essays and articles. I really like Mariategui's writing and for some reason I'm convinced I'd like him as a person. His writing demonstrates a formidable intellect and a very serious attitude to the political tasks he was faced with. As a theorist he had huge potential but there is no exposition as full and competent as you find in the best Marxist theorists. In particular his use of words like fascism lack the materialist and sociological rigour of Trotsky, and while he at times seems to be theorising about what we Trotskyists know as permanent revolution it's never as full or consistent as it ought to be.
My favourite parts were those on imperialism and myth. In the former Mariategui discusses some fundamental Marxist ideas (revolution, internationalism) in ways that I really enjoyed. In the latter, he scathingly rebukes the sterility of rationalist thinking and powerfully asserts the importance of the utopian and mythic impulse. At times he seems to move away from a Marxist position (there is a degree of eclecticism in his thought, which is sometimes refreshing but can also be a hindrance), but I really enjoyed it as a corrective to the endless misunderstandings which occur (among Marxists and non Marxists) about what scientific socialism means. That is, not rationalism with a 'revolutionary' face, but the synthesis of pre-modern utopian communism with the technical, intellectual and class bases of bourgeois society.
Least favourite part was on women. The less said the better. It's so dated that if you don't find it offensive you will laugh. Of course, he aligned himself unswervingly with contemporary feminism (with the necessary class qualifications). But this is scarcely worth a penny given how freely he uses cliché gendered language. To get a full picture of Mariategui's limits it's necessary to read this section but it offers no real insights.
Conclusion: There are parts of this collection which I think are required reading, and it's a testament to the great intellectual vibrancy of the international communist movement in its heroic period. For this reason, and the sheer enjoyment I derived from Mariategui as a writer, I give full marks.
Final note: the editors are quite uncritical, which is a little annoying. But the introduction gives a nice, succinct summary of Mariategui's life, and their annotations are restrained but helpful. Which is as it should be.
Really remarkable collection of very readable, journalistic essays and articles. I really like Mariategui's writing and for some reason I'm convinced I'd like him as a person. His writing demonstrates a formidable intellect and a very serious attitude to the political tasks he was faced with. As a theorist he had huge potential but there is no exposition as full and competent as you find in the best Marxist theorists. In particular his use of words like fascism lack the materialist and sociological rigour of Trotsky, and while he at times seems to be theorising about what we Trotskyists know as permanent revolution it's never as full or consistent as it ought to be.
My favourite parts were those on imperialism and myth. In the former Mariategui discusses some fundamental Marxist ideas (revolution, internationalism) in ways that I really enjoyed. In the latter, he scathingly rebukes the sterility of rationalist thinking and powerfully asserts the importance of the utopian and mythic impulse. At times he seems to move away from a Marxist position (there is a degree of eclecticism in his thought, which is sometimes refreshing but can also be a hindrance), but I really enjoyed it as a corrective to the endless misunderstandings which occur (among Marxists and non Marxists) about what scientific socialism means. That is, not rationalism with a 'revolutionary' face, but the synthesis of pre-modern utopian communism with the technical, intellectual and class bases of bourgeois society.
Least favourite part was on women. The less said the better. It's so dated that if you don't find it offensive you will laugh. Of course, he aligned himself unswervingly with contemporary feminism (with the necessary class qualifications). But this is scarcely worth a penny given how freely he uses cliché gendered language. To get a full picture of Mariategui's limits it's necessary to read this section but it offers no real insights.
Conclusion: There are parts of this collection which I think are required reading, and it's a testament to the great intellectual vibrancy of the international communist movement in its heroic period. For this reason, and the sheer enjoyment I derived from Mariategui as a writer, I give full marks.
Final note: the editors are quite uncritical, which is a little annoying. But the introduction gives a nice, succinct summary of Mariategui's life, and their annotations are restrained but helpful. Which is as it should be.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews