CHAPTER 3 The ‘State of Art’ a On Social Philosophy in Latin America

In setting out upon the present study, we followed the plan of spanning the entirety of social philosophy in Latin America. It soon became clear that to do so would be excessively audacious for a single person and that, moreover, despite the best intentions, this was based on a Eurocentric idea, as though the formation of social-philosophical theory in Latin America were so limited as to be possible to condense into such a text on the basis of a few years of research. Nevertheless, allow us to look briefly at the results obtained in the first such inquiries, and especially as regards the situation of the literature written in Europe and the United States on this topic. First of all, we must indicate that a large part (and in some countries, the majority) of writings appearing in Europe on Latin American (social) philoso- phy have come from the pen of authors themselves born in Latin America. Many came to the ‘old continent’ to study for a degree or their doctorate; oth- ers, as exiles or the children of exiles. The latter is the case above all in the cases of France and Spain;288 the former, above all in Germany. In the United States, there likewise exist several works on the topic, written by immigrants from Latin America or their descendants, which are comple- mented by translations of texts, which appeared, or were at least written, in Latin America. With regard to the reflection of Latin American Marxist philosophy in Europe, we can note that there exists an incalculable fixation on dogmatic authors. Some of José Carlos Mariátegui’s writings seem to be the exception, although it is debatable to what degree his theory constitutes a true critique of Soviet Marxism or merely a ‘Latin Americanised’ way of reading it.289 Both bourgeois and Marxist-Leninist authors set out, as if it were the most natural thing in the world, from the idea that Marxist and Marxist-Leninist theories were the same thing. Thus, non-dogmatic Marxist texts – in both philosophy

288 See the attached ‘Selected bibliography on Marxist philosophy in Latin America’ (and in particular, Mexico). 289 See, in this regard, the marginal notes on José Carlos Mariátegui on p. 59 of this book. Studies on Mariátegui, however, have in their overwhelming majority appeared in Latin America. See the selected bibliography cited in the previous footnote.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���5 | doi ��.��63/9789004284685_005 the ‘state of art’ 85 and other sciences – pass unnoticed,290 or are merely considered as exotic footnotes in the development of bourgeois or Marxist-Leninist theories. This simplistic manner of viewing things can be observed not only in research on Latin American social philosophy carried out in Europe or in the United States, but also in synoptic works produced in Latin America itself. In this way, non- dogmatic Marxist authors are always allocated, by the representatives of one of the two theoretical camps, precisely to the opposite one. It seems as though neither side is very fond of them. b On Adolfo Sánchez Vázquez and Bolívar Echeverría

Two clear examples of this attitude appear with regard to Adolfo Sánchez Vázquez’s work. We refer to two theses (‘Dissertation A’) written during the last eleven years of the gdr’s existence. The first is from the year 1988 and was written at the Karl Marx University in Leipzig by the Cuban Jorge Luis Acanda González.291 He formulates his thesis on the basis of a dogmatic Marxist posi- tion; while recognising a ‘progressive intent’ in Sánchez Vázquez,292 he nev- ertheless condemns his philosophy for containing ‘in the end an erroneous idealist interpretation of the practical life process’. The following formulations by Acanda González also clearly express this way of understanding Sánchez Vázquez’s work: ‘the principal element of praxis is of a subjective nature, that is, an effect of consciousness’;293 and also: ‘despite his . . . declarations in opposition to subjectivism and anthropologism, Sánchez Vázquez assumes these same positions’.294 According to Acanda González’s interpretation, Sánchez Vázquez, in formulating his Philosophy of Praxis, makes poor use of central concepts like ‘materialism’ and ‘objectivity’, in order to finally arrive at the horrifying ‘principal objective’ of this ‘incor- rect use of terms’: ‘the interpretation of Marxism as Marxism-Leninism is stub- bornly rejected by the author throughout his work’.295 But what the Cuban doctoral candidate in Leipzig especially laments is the fact that Sánchez Vázquez, with his Philosophy of Praxis, ‘in any case throws

290 See, for example, gral 1979, Carr 1991 and Liss 1991. (In all three cases, the authors under- stand Marxism only in its dogmatic form). 291 Acanda González 1988. 292 Acanda González 1988, appendix: ‘Thesen zur Dissertation A’, p. 10. 293 Acanda González 1988, p. 85. 294 Acanda González 1988, p. 88. 295 Acanda González 1988, p. 93.