Mariátegui and Dependency Theory: Reviewing a Powerful Inheritance in Latin American Thought

• Author: John Cajas-Guijarro,Alberto Acosta
• Published date: 01 January 2022
• DOI: 10.1177/0094582X211064908
• Date: 01 January 2022
• Subject Matter: Articles: Contemporary Theoretical Debates

https://doi.org/10.1177/0094582X211064908

LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES, Issue 242, Vol. 49 No. 1, January 2022, 199–217

DOI: 10.1177/0094582X211064908

© 2021 Latin American Perspectives

199

Mariátegui and Dependency Theory

Reviewing a Powerful Inheritance

in Latin American Thought

by

Alberto Acosta and John Cajas-Guijarro

Translated by

Mariana Ortega-Breña

A review of the multiple approaches to dependency theory alongside some of the

thoughts on dependency of José Carlos Mariátegui highlights the contributions that

Mariátegui could make to the deepening of that theory and even the opening of new paths

and the theoretical affinity to the work of later scholars. Reconstruction of Mariátegui’s

and other critical approaches to capitalism, including the postdevelopmentalist, is an

urgent task.

Una reseña del pensamiento dependentista desde sus múltiples aproximaciones, com-

plementada con una revisión de varias intuiciones sobre la dependencia dejadas por José

Carlos Mariátegui, hace resaltar los aportes que Mariátegui podría brindar para profun-

dizar e incluso abrir nuevos senderos a las teorías de la dependencia. Una reconstrucción

de las teorías tanto de Mariátegui como de otros referentes del pensamiento crítico al

capitalismo, incluso en clave posdesarrollista, es una tarea urgente.

Keywords: Dependency, Underdevelopment, Mariátegui, Coloniality, Crisis of civilization,

Postdevelopment

We certainly do not want socialism in Latin America to be a copy

or imitation. It should be a heroic creation. We have to give life to

Indo-American socialism with our own reality, in our own language.

Here is a mission worthy of a new generation.

—José Carlos Mariátegui, 1928

Theories of dependency are an important part of the Latin American heri-

tage, and there are Latin American thinkers whose work can still contribute to

Alberto Acosta is an economist and has been a professor at FLACSO-Ecuador, former Minister of

Energy and Mines, former president of the Constituent Assembly, and former candidate for the

presidency of the Republic of Ecuador. John Cajas-Guijarro is a Ph.D. candidate in development

economics at FLACSO-Ecuador and a professor of economics at the Universidad Central de

Ecuador. Mariana Ortega-Breña is a freelance translator based in Mexico City.

1064908LAPXXX10.1177/0094582X211064908Latin American PerspectivesAcosta and Cajas-Guijarro/Mariátegui and Dependency Theory

research-article2021

200 LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES

the building and deepening of new paths in its study. The early-twentieth-

century writings of José Carlos Mariátegui, a brilliant Peruvian thinker and one

of the first to address dependency, can help us understand how coloniality

consolidates Latin American subordination to the great global capitalist cen-

ters, both economically and across myriad social dimensions. This article

reviews several lines of reasoning in dependency thought and goes on to

address some of Mariátegui’s approaches to dependency in two of his main

texts, Siete ensayos de interpretación de la realidad peruana and Historia de la crisis

mundial. Finally, we call for a reconstruction of dependency theory that employs

both Mariátegui’s and other critical approaches to capitalism, including the

postdevelopmentalist.

The Many PaThs of DePenDency Theory

Dependency has intrigued Latin American critical thought for decades.1

According to Dos Santos (1973: 76; cf. 1970: 231), it can be seen as “a condition-

ing situation in which the economies of one group of countries are conditioned

by the development and expansion of others,” with the result that “some

countries . . . , being in a dependent position, can only expand as a reflection

of the expansion of the dominant countries. . . . The basic situation of dependency

causes these countries to be both backward and exploited.” Thus “dependency

conditions the economic structure that engenders the parameters of structural

possibilities” (Bambirra, 1999: 10), and this is a conditioning that arises from

both external factors and the internal structures of dependent countries (Kay,

2020: 608).

This notion is complemented by others that address dependency as an

induced (nonendogenous) economic dynamic typical of capitalist underdevel-

opment (Sunkel and Paz, 1978); the expanded but distorted and weakened

reproduction of mechanisms of capitalist exploitation and domination (Cueva,

1977); the inability of capitalist accumulation to find its essential dynamics

within the system, dependent as it is on outside sources even for access to

technology and the means of production (Dos Santos, 2011); the subordination

of formally (but not economically) independent nations, where there are struc-

tures that reproduce said subordination under nonautonomous cyclical

dynamics (Marini, 1973; 1979); a condition observable at different levels in

which center-periphery structures are combined with imperialist and subim-

perialist structures (Marini, 1973) and with concrete class structures in dependent

societies (Velasco, 1981); subordinate incorporation into international trade

via the colonial legacy (Frank, 1970); a condition of subordination including

economic, mercantile, financial, political, military, academic, cultural, and

educational dimensions, consumption patterns, natural resource manage-

ment, etc. (Ghosh, 2001); and even a condition in which the interests, alliances,

and subordination of the elites of dependent societies serve those of the dom-

inant ones (Baran, 1959) while structuring power relations in a context of colo-

niality (Quijano, 1999). There are at least three major perspectives on it:

possible structuralist contributions, dependent development, and the devel-

opment of underdevelopment.2