Latin American Marxism

George Ciccariello-Maher

Much like other third world Marxisms, Marxism in Latin America has during most of its history been forced to navigate the treacherous strait between capitalist colonial powers and the imposition of Comintern doctrine from the Soviet Union. Latin American Marxism enjoyed only a brief period of autonomous development prior to the Russian Revolution in 1917 and the 1919 founding of the Comintern. In 1895, Marx's Capital first appeared in the region, in a translation by Juan B. Justo—one of many radical physicians to emerge from Argentina—who founded the Argentine Socialist Party (PSA) the following year. But the PSA, like other pre-communist parties in Latin America, embodied a tension expressed in the coexistence of both minimum and maximum (i.e., Marxist) programs, seeing a 1917 split over World War I, which gave rise to the later-renamed Communist Party. However, as the newly formed Latin American Communist parties were quickly incorporated into the ...

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