2. Anti-Imperialist Point of View

Lima, 21 May 1929

Mariátegui submitted this thesis to the First Latin American Communist Conference in Buenos Aires, June 1929. It is reprinted from the El Movimiento Revolucionario Latino Americano (Latin American Revolutionary Movement), edited by La Correspondencia Sudamericana. It also appears in Ricardo Martínez de la Torre, Apuntes para una interpretación marxista de la historia social del Perú (Lima: Empresa Editora Peruana, 1948), 2:414–18. Julio Portocarrero read this thesis at the conference as part of discussion topic ―The Anti-Imperialist Struggle and the Tactics of the Problems of the Latin American Communist Parties." After reading the document, the Peruvian delegate said: "Comrades: So writes comrade José Carlos Mariátegui when formulating his thesis on anti-imperialism, analyzing the economic and social status of Peru" (Obras Completas, Eds.’ Note).

1. To what extent can the situation of the Latin American republics be likened to that of other semicolonial countries? The economic status of these republics undoubtedly is semicolonial. As their capitalism and, consequently, the imperialist penetration, grows, this characteristic of their economy is accentuated. But the national bourgeoisie who see cooperation with imperialism as the best source of profits feel in secure enough control of political power not to worry seriously about national sovereignty. These South American bourgeoisies, who except for Panama have not yet experienced U.S. military occupation, have no predisposition to accept the need to fight for the second independence, as Aprista propaganda naively assumes.¹ The state, or rather the ruling class, does not feel the need for a greater or more secure degree of national autonomy. The independence revolution is relatively too close, their myths and symbols too alive in the consciousness of the bourgeoisie and petite bourgeoisie. The illusion of national sovereignty remains intact. It would be a serious error to assume that this social layer retains a sense of revolutionary nationalism that in other conditions would represent a factor of the anti-imperialist struggle in semicolonial countries overwhelmed by imperialism as in Asia in recent decades.Over a year ago in our discussion with APRA leaders in which we rejected their desire to create a Latin American Kuomintang, and as part of a desire to avoid European imitations and to accommodate revolutionary action to a precise assessment of our own reality, we put forward the following thesis:

Collaboration with the bourgeoisie, and even many feudal elements, in the anti-imperialist struggle in China, can be explained on grounds of race and national civilization that do not exist for us. The Chinese bourgeois or nobility strongly feels Chinese. They respond to white contempt for his stratified and decrepit culture with the contempt and pride of their ancient traditions. Anti-imperialism in China may, therefore, rest on sentiments and the nationalist factors. The circumstances are not the same in Indo-America. The creole aristocracy and bourgeoisie did not feel sympathy for the people through the bond of shared history and culture. In Peru, the white aristocratic and bourgeois despise popular and national elements. They are, above all, whites. The petit-bourgeois mestizo imitates this example. The bourgeoisie in Lima fraternizes with Yankee capitalists, and even with their mere employees, at the Country Club, the Tennis Club, and in the streets. The Yankee can marry an elite girl without the inconveniences of race or religion. She, in turn, feels no nationalist or cultural misgivings in preferring marriage to an individual of the invading race. Nor does a middle-class girl feel such scruples. The "huachauita" or lower-middle-class girl who can catch a Yankee employee of the Grace Company or the Rockefeller Foundation does so with the satisfaction that she can elevate her social status. The nationalist factor, for these objective reasons that none of you can escape, is not decisive or crucial in the anti-imperialist struggle in our context. Only in countries like Argentina, which has a large and rich bourgeoisie proud of their country‘s wealth and power and where the national character for these reasons assumed clearer and more precise characteristics than in more backward countries, could anti-imperialism (perhaps) penetrate easily into the bourgeoisie. But this for reasons of expansion and capitalist growth, not for reasons of social justice and socialist doctrine as is our case.

The full dimensions of the betrayal by the Chinese bourgeoisie and the failure of the Kuomintang were not yet known. A knowledge of capitalism, and not just for reasons of social justice and doctrine, demonstrated how little one could trust, even in countries like China, the revolutionary nationalist sentiment of the bourgeoisie.

As long as imperialist policies are able to ménager [manage] the sentiments and formalities of the national sovereignty of these states, and though they are not forced to resort to armed intervention and military occupation, they can absolutely count on the collaboration of the bourgeoisie. Although they are dominated by the imperialist economy, these countries, or rather their bourgeoisies, will consider themselves masters of their own destinies, as do Romania, Bulgaria, Poland and other ―dependent" countries in Europe.

This factor of political psychology must not be neglected in estimating the potential for anti-imperialist action in Latin America. Neglecting or forgetting this factor has been a feature of APRA‘s theory.

2. The fundamental difference between the elements in Peru that accepted APRA in principle—as a united front plan, but never as a party or even as an effective organization— and those outside of Peru who later defined it as a Latin American Kuomintang, is that the first remained faithful to the revolutionary, socioeconomic definition of anti-imperialism, and the latter explains their position by saying: ―We are leftists (or socialists) because we are anti-imperialists." Anti-imperialism is therefore raised to the status of a program, to a political attitude, of a movement that is self-sufficient and spontaneously leads by some unknown process to socialism, to social revolution. This concept leads to a distorted overestimation of an anti-imperialist movement, to the exaggeration of the myth of the struggle for the ―second independence," and romanticizes that we are already living in the days of a new emancipation. The result is the tendency to replace anti-imperialist leagues with a political organization. From an APRA initially conceived as a united front, as a popular alliance, as a block of the oppressed classes, APRA becomes defined as the Latin American Kuomintang.For us anti-imperialism does not constitute, or can it constitute by itself, a political program, a mass movement capable of conquering power. Anti-imperialism, even if it could mobilize the nationalist and petite bourgeoisie to the side of the worker and peasant masses (and we have already discounted this possibility), does not annul antagonisms between classes, nor does it suppress different class interests.Neither the bourgeoisie nor the petite bourgeoisie in power can pursue anti-imperialist policies. We have the experience of Mexico, where the petite bourgeoisie has come to an agreement with Yankee imperialism. In their relations with the United States, a ―nationalist" government might use a different language than that of the Leguía government in Peru. This government is frankly and uninhibitedly Pan-Americanist and Monroeist. But any other bourgeois government would do virtually the same thing in terms of loans and concessions. The investment of foreign capital in Peru grows in close and direct relationship with the country‘s economic development, the exploitation of its natural wealth, with the population of its territory, with improvements of communication routes. How can the most demagogic petite bourgeoisie oppose this capitalist penetration? With nothing but words. With nothing but a temporary nationalist fix. The taking of power by anti-imperialism as a demagogic populist movement, if it were possible, would not represent the conquest of power by the proletarian masses or socialism. The socialist revolution would find its most fierce and dangerous enemy—dangerous for its confusion and demagoguery—in the petite bourgeoisie placed in power by the voices of order.Without eliminating the use of any type of anti-imperialist agitation, nor by any means of mobilizing social sectors that can eventually contribute to this fight, our mission is to explain and demonstrate to the masses that only socialist revolution can permanently and truly oppose the advance of imperialism.

3. These factors differentiate the situation of South American countries from the situation of Central American countries where Yankee imperialism, by resorting to armed intervention without the slightest hesitation, provokes a patriotic reaction that can easily win a part of the bourgeoisie and petite bourgeoisie to anti-imperialism. APRA propaganda, led personally by Haya de la Torre, has won better results here than anywhere else in America. His confusing and messianic sermons that claim to be based on an economic struggle appeal in fact to racial and emotional factors, thereby meeting the conditions necessary to impress petite bourgeoisie intellectuals. The formation of class parties and powerful trade unions with a clear class consciousness is not destined in those countries for the same immediate growth as in South America. In our countries class is the most decisive factor, is the most developed. There is no reason to resort to vague populist formulas behind which reactionary tendencies can only thrive. Currently APRA as propaganda is confined to Central America. In South America, as a result of the populist, strong man, petit-bourgeois diversion which defined it as a Latin American Kuomintang, it is in the process of total liquidation. Whatever the next Anti-Imperialist Congress in Paris resolves, its decisions must decide on the unification of anti-imperialist organizations and to distinguish between anti-imperialist platforms and agitation and the tasks that fall within the competence of working-class parties and trade union organizations. It will have the final say on the issue.
4. Do the interests of imperialist capitalism necessarily and inevitably coincide in our countries with the interests of the feudal and semifeudal landholding class? Does the struggle against feudalism unavoidably and completely identify with the anti-imperialist struggle? Certainly, imperialist capitalism uses the power of the feudal class, insofar as it considers it to be the politically dominant class. But their economic interests are not the same. The petite bourgeoisie, even the most demagogic, can enter into the same intimate alliances with imperialist capitalism if it is prepared in practice to attenuate its more emphatic nationalistic impulses. Financial capital will feel safer if power is in the hands of a larger social class that meets certain demands and distorts the class orientation of the masses and is better than the old and hated feudal class to defend interests of capitalism, to be its custodian and its steward. The creation of small landholdings, the expropriation of large estates, the liquidation of feudal privileges do not run contrary to the interests of imperialism in an immediate sense. On the contrary, to the degree that the vestiges of feudalism coincide with the development of a capitalist economy, this movement of the liquidation of feudalism coincides with the requirements of capitalist growth, promoted by imperialist investments and technology. The disappearance of large estates, that instead constitutes an agrarian economy based on what the bourgeois demagogy called ―democratization" of land ownership, the old aristocracies are displaced by a more powerful and influential bourgeoisie and petite bourgeoisie—and therefore better able to guarantee social peace—none of this is contrary to the interests of imperialism. The Leguía regime in Peru, even though it is timid in practice when it faces the interests of landowners and gamonales that support it to a great extent, has no problem in resorting to demagoguery in making claims against feudalism and its privileges, in thundering against the old oligarchies, and in promoting land distribution that will make each farm laborer a small landowner. The Leguía regime draws its greatest strength precisely from this type of demagogy. The Leguía regime does not dare touch the large property owners. But the natural movement of capitalist development—irrigation works, exploitation of new mines, etc.—is against feudal interests and privileges. The large landowners, as cultivated areas grow and new sources of work emerge, lose their greatest strength: the absolute and unconditional control of labor. In Lambayeque, where irrigation work is presently carried out, the capitalist activity of the technical committee that leads it and over which a North American expert, the engineer Sutton, presides, has already come into conflict with the interests of the large feudal landowners. These large landowners grow mostly sugar. The threat that they will lose their monopoly of land and water, and with it the means to control their work force, infuriates these people and drives them toward attitudes that the government, although closely linked to them, considers subversive or antigovernment. Sutton has the characteristics of the North American capitalist. His mentality and his work clash with the feudal spirit of the landowners. Sutton has established, for example, a system of water distribution based on the principle that ownership of them belongs to the state. The large landowners believe that water rights are part of their land rights. According to this view, the water was theirs; it was and is the exclusive property of their estates.
5. And is the petite bourgeoisie, whose role in the fight against imperialism is often overestimated, as is said, for reasons of economic exploitation, necessarily opposed to imperialist penetration? The petite bourgeoisie is undoubtedly the social class most sensitive to the prestige of nationalist myths. But the economic factor that dominates the question is the following: in countries with Spanish-style pauperism where the petite bourgeoisie with its ingrained prejudices of decency resists proletarianization; where they because of their miserable wages do not have the economic power to transform themselves into the working class; where the prevailing "employment-mania," the search for a petty government job and the hunt for a "decent" salary and post; the establishment of large companies is generally favorably received by the middle class even though they greatly exploit its national staff, and always represent for this class a better paid job. The Yankee company means better pay, the possibility of promotion, emancipation from the employment mania of the state, where only speculators have a future. This reality acts with a decisive force on the conscience of the petit-bourgeois searching for or having found a job. In these countries with Spanish-style poverty, we repeat, the situation of the middle class is not the same as in countries where these classes have gone through a period of free competition and capitalist growth conducive to individual initiative and success and to the oppression of large monopolies.

In conclusion, we are anti-imperialists because we are Marxists, because we are revolutionaries, because we oppose capitalism with socialism as an adversarial system called to succeed it. In the struggle against foreign imperialism we are fulfilling our duties of solidarity with the revolutionary masses of Europe.

Notes

1 Víctor Raúl Haya de la Torre founded the Alianza Popular Revolucionaria Americana (APRA, Popular Revolutionary Alliance of America) in 1924.