Mariátegui, Pareto y Sorel: revisionismo o revolución decolonial

In the 1920s, José Carlos Mariátegui (1894–1930) engaged in critical dialogue with the Mexican Revolution, the rise of the Soviet Union, the II and III International, the 1927 Chinese Crisis, the fall of European Empires, and the consolidation of capitalist monopolies. This article locates Mariátegui’s hermeneutical systems among two visionaries whom he quoted extensively: Italian sociologist Vilfredo Pareto (1848–1923) and French syndicalist Georges Sorel (1847–1922). Identifying the criticism faced by the founder of Peru’s Socialist Party and the chief editor of the avant-garde journal Amauta, the article argues that the well-known antinomy “revolution versus revisionism” prescribes the diverging evaluations of Mariátegui’s political and editorial work. Placing Mariátegui in dialogue with Spivak’s postcolonial critique and Mignolo’s decolonial matrix, the article suggests that Mariátegui instrumentalized his authorial figure and anticipated contemporary critical postcolonial debates to process aesthetics, politics, and history.