Bolivian Critical Marxism: An Approach to the Work of René Zavaleta Mercado and Álvaro García Linera

• Author: Tomás Torres López,J. Fabián Cabaluz Ducasse
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/0094582X221099464
• Published date: 01 July 2022
• Date: 01 July 2022
• Subject Matter: Articles: Zavaleta Mercado, Cueva, and Fals Borda

https://doi.org/10.1177/0094582X221099464

LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES, Issue 245, Vol. 49 No. 4, July 2022, 144–158

DOI: 10.1177/0094582X221099464

© 2022 Latin American Perspectives

144

Bolivian Critical Marxism

An Approach to the Work of René Zavaleta Mercado and

Álvaro García Linera

by

Tomás Torres López and J. Fabián Cabaluz Ducasse

Translated by

Mariana Ortega-Breña

While various studies have shown the influence on other writers of two of Bolivia’s

most important intellectuals and proponents of critical Marxism, René Zavaleta Mercado

and Alvaro García Linera, research on the relationship between the two is scarce. Analysis

of their concepts of national classes, the commoner bloc, and the state indicates important

points of agreement as well as divergence in their theoretical production.

Si bien varios estudios han demostrado la influencia en otros escritores de dos de los

intelectuales más importantes de Bolivia y defensores del marxismo crítico, René Zavaleta

Mercado y Álvaro García Linera, la investigación sobre la relación entre los dos es escasa.

Un análisis de sus conceptos de clases nacionales, el bloque plebeyo y el Estado indica

importantes puntos de avenencia, así como divergencias en su producción teórica.

Keywords: René Zavaleta Mercado, Alvaro García Linera, National classes, State,

Commoner bloc

A lot of research has focused on the development of critical Marxism in Latin

America, emphasizing its antidogmatic character and how this has enabled the

production of rigorous, novel, and creative categories and theoretical formula-

tions. This speaks to an ability to adapt Marxist categories to the specific and

concrete historical reality of Latin American societies. Heterodoxy is expressed

in intense debates regarding economism and economic determinism and criti-

cism of labor movements’ relegating peasant and indigenous struggles to the

background. Epistemological and theoretical positions that, from a Marxist

stance, reproduce colonial and Eurocentric rationales have also been ques-

tioned. Finally, critical Marxism in Latin America has been characterized by

unique and specific offshoots of Marxist thought (Grüner, 2006; Acha and

D’Antonio, 2010; Mazzeo, 2013; Giller and Ouviña, 2016; Tapia, 2013; 2016a).

Tomás Torres López is an academic in the School of Sociology at the Universidad Católica Silva

Henriquez, Ph.D. student at the Universidad Alberto Hurtado in Santiago, Chile, and an ANID

scholarship holder (2019, folio: 21190039). J. Fabián Cabaluz Ducasse is a Ph.D. in Latin American

studies at the Universidad de Chile and a researcher on the Proyecto ANID, Convocatoria

Nacional Subvención a Instalación en la Academia (Convocatoria año 2021, Folio SA77210044) at

the Universidad de Playa Ancha. Mariana Ortega-Breña is a freelance translator based in Mexico

City.

1099464LAPXXX10.1177/0094582X221099464Torres and Cabaluz/BOLIVIAN CRITICAL MARXISM

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