Dilemas of Latin-American Marxism in the works of Caio Prado Jr. José Carlos Mariátegui

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to compare the relationship between Marxism and the national question in the works of Brazilian historian Caio Prado Jr. and Peruvian journalist and activist José Carlos Mariátegui. Based on the assumption that both share a similar reading of the national question - understood as the nation's unfinished formation, hampered by the persistence of the colonial legacy -, the article discusses the proximities and discrepancies between the two authors through a comparison of their works around some problems treated by both of them: the passage colony/nation, the agrarian question, the relationship between imperialism and the national bourgeoisie, and the theory of revolution. With such interpretative effort, one intends to demonstrate how both authors helped to overcome the difficulties of the Marxist theory for the understanding Latin-American realities.

Caio Prado Jr.; José Carlos Mariátegui; Marxism; the National Question; LatinAmerica