José Carlos Mariátegui’s Historical Relativism as Historical Materialism

Peruvian Marxist José Carlos Mariátegui’s (1894–1930) application of historical materialism to Peruvian class struggle and the Indigenous question led him to conclude that Peru’s Indigenous peasantry should play a role in the country’s socialist movement. Although modern communism was the goal, the vestiges of Inca communism were economically valuable, progressive and politically useful. In his 1928 Seven Interpretive Essays on Peruvian Reality, he argued that “a certain historical relativism” was needed to see that Inca civilization was communist, despite its difference from modern communism. In this article, I show Mariátegui’s methodological contributions to historical materialism by exploring and elaborating on his explanation of “historical relativism.” A historical relativist approach, I argue, represents a valuable mode of theorizing in Latin America, where the histories and practices of Indigenous and other marginalized peoples are erased and hidden, yet survive into the present to be deployed politically through myths uncovered through historical comparison. Because not all histories are equally visible, historical relativism helps to create a new context for political action—or terrain of struggle—where those whom socialism claims to benefit are its main protagonists and creators. A historical relativist approach also suggests a productive form of comparison that neither privileges distinctiveness nor one side of comparison. Different forms of communism can be compared across space and time, while simultaneously rooting the commonalities in material practices that resist complete abstraction.