Introduction: Indigenismo, Socialism and Philosophy

In this chapter I explore how José Carlos Mariátegui’s understanding of socialism as an “active philosophy” conceives of a new kind of literary and artistic practice adequate to a heterodox vision of revolutionary politics, within which indigenismo becomes first defined and situated historically. In this context, socialism does not merely provide Mariátegui with a theoretical lever to interpret Peruvian reality; it becomes part of an integrative practice of theory and theory of practice that articulates the labor of intellectual production, avant-garde artistic creation and emancipatory political action.

In the first section, I explain how Mariátegui conceives of indigenismo within a dialectical narrative informed not only by Marxist and Leninist tenets but also by various theoretical registers and disciplines. I show how indigenismo emerges within a unique periodization of Peruvian history, coordinating the literary and political process. In the second section, I explain how Mariátegui’s understanding of socialism as an “active” philosophy prefigures a revolutionary praxis that forges a cooperation between intellectuals and the working class, giving rise to a “national consciousness” through which Peruvian history also enters the internationalist horizon of the proletariat revolution.

In the second section, I explore the different ways in which, for Mariátegui, attending to Peruvian social reality also enjoins an amendment of Marxist theory and practice. Drawing from insights formulated, among others, by Alberto Flores Galindo, Bruno Bosteels and Alain Badiou, I show how Mariátegui reconceptualizes the figure of the proletariat subject, inspired by the principles of European syndicalism and the perceived latent potentials of rural Indigenous cooperativism. In particular, I focus on how Mariátegui’s dialectical history of the development of Peruvian society and of the place of the rural Indian within it is of a piece with a re-elaboration of the Marxist dynamics of class struggle, conducive to a more capacious concept of the working class. Adapting socialist philosophy to the Peruvian sociohistorical context implied an unprecedented coalition between intellectuals and workers, that is, the organizational tasks of the socialist party and syndicate union had to operate alongside the doctrinal and theoretical practice proposed through the periodical Labor and the multidisciplinary work of the journal Amauta.