José Carlos Mariátegui and the Russian revolution: Global modernity and cosmopolitan socialism in Latin America

Abstract

Este ensayo postula que la Revolución Rusa representó para Mariátegui no solamente un acontecimiento que lo impulsó a adoptar el credo socialista que lo acompañaría hasta su muerte en 1930, sino a colocar su praxis intelectual dentro de un cuadrante global. Contra las visiones que ciñen su pensamiento a una perspectiva nacional, el ensayo argumenta que la clave que ordena la trayectoria de Mariátegui está dada por un socialismo de tipo cosmopolita. Esa perspectiva, que el peruano desarrolla en su labor cotidiana en la prensa periódica, se desgrana en una serie de dimensiones de su pensamiento, tales como la preeminencia que tiene la dimensión temporal por sobre la espacial, el peso que detentan en su obra las filosofías, las literaturas y las artes contemporáneas, y el prisma asimismo mundial que se deriva de su adscripción al marxismo.

In contrast to the hegemonic perspective that in Latin America seeks to read José Carlos Mariátegui as a quintessential figure in the fusion of Marxism and the national question, this essay approaches the Peruvian intellectual as an expression of cosmopolitan socialism. As the essay demonstrates, this cosmopolitanism was particularly motivated by the Russian Revolution, which for Mariátegui was both a key element in his adherence to Marxism and a powerful vector that led him to internationalize his interests and envisage a broad spectrum of cultural and political phenomena throughout the world. The press, the principal space in his intellectual education, together with literature, philosophy, and the arts from a variety of distant places, became the subjects of Mariátegui’s close attention as his field of vision expanded following the events of 1917 and were scrutinized as elements key to understanding the dynamics of the proletariat movement around the globe. Thus for this intellectual, who in a manner unparalleled in Latin America managed to superimpose political vanguardism and aesthetic vanguardism, socialism and cosmopolitanism were orientations that interacted and mutually reinforced each other.