The Virtù of a Latin American Marxist

• Author: Marcos Antonio da Silva,Guillermo Alfredo Johnson
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/0094582X221109505
• Published date: 01 September 2022
• Date: 01 September 2022
• Subject Matter: Book Reviews

238 LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES

The Virtù of a Latin American Marxist

by

Marcos Antonio da Silva and Guillermo Alfredo Johnson

Translated by

Victoria Furio

Atilio Boron Bitácora de un navegante: Teoría política y dialéctica de la historia

latinoamericana (Antología esencial). Buenos Aires: CLACSO, 2020.

DOI: 10.1177/0094582X221109505

Despite recent progress, Latin America in the twenty-first century continues

to be a region with alarming inequality indicators, persistent forms of social

and political exclusion, an inconsistent and unequal development process, an

increase in migratory waves, and high levels of violence. These indicators illus-

trate the persistence of colonial structures compounded by the current financial

capitalism, generating a racist, exclusionary, unequal, and subordinate society

more than ever in need of profound structural changes. In addition, these struc-

tures reveal the persistence of the coloniality of knowledge and power, relegat-

ing the region to a marginal role in modernity and in the contemporary

international scene. They display a Eurocentric perspective that affects the

region’s economic and political structures, reinforcing subordination and

dependency, and, in the academic and political realms, impedes the develop-

ment and appreciation of Latin America’s own critical thought. For this reason,

Bitácora de un navegante: Teoría política y dialéctica de la historia latinoamericana

(Antología esencial)(A Voyager’s Log: Political Theory and Dialectic of Latin

American History [Essential Anthology]), in presenting an overview of Atilio

Boron’s thought, contributes to the understanding and development of critical

thought and, in particular, of Latin American Marxism and its current chal-

lenges.

Latin American Marxism has a long history, going back to the nineteenth cen-

tury, which spotlighted classic intellectual and political figures (such as

Recabarren, Aníbal Ponce, Juan Marinello, Julio Mella, Luis Carlos Prestes, and

José Carlos Mariátegui) and contemporary ones (Che Guevara, Camilo Torres,

Pablo González Casanova, Ruy Mauro Marini, Adolfo Sánchez Vázquez,

Florestan Fernandes, Fernando Martínez Heredia, René Zavaleta, and Agustín

Cuevas). As Michael Löwy (2016) has indicated, there is a fundamental core of

reflection and action in this tradition centered on the debate over the nature,

character, and dynamic of the Latin American revolution as an alternative to

capitalism and the region’s secular problems. This debate was present, in one

form or another, in all the intellectuals, movements, and Marxist organizations

on the continent that, in an attempt to comprehend capitalism in Latin America

and design a strategy to transcend it, were confronted with a tension between

the acritical incorporation of dogmatic, Eurocentric Soviet Marxism and the

Marcos Antonio da Silva is a professor in the Social Sciences degree program and the Postgraduate

Sociology Program of the Universidade Federal da Grande Dourados. Guillermo Alfredo Johnson

is a professor in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology and the Postgraduate Public

Policies Program of the Universidade Federal do Maranhão. Victoria Furio is a translator and

conference interpreter located in Yonkers, NY.