The New North is the Global South: Comments on Ronaldo Munck’s Article on Marxism

Ronaldo Munck’s article presents a careful assessment of what LAP has offered over the last 25 years, highlighting its main contributions, controversies, and discussions. It covered many topics: the socialist revolutions of the 20th century; the dilemmas between democracy, dictatorship and socialism; cultural criticism and its controversies with Marxism; the different reflections on dependence in Latin America, etc. As my space here is short, I will indicate just a few central points, among many analyzed by Munck, which are extremely relevant for the next 25 years of LAP, as they concern the survival of humanity.

My first point can be summarized as follows: LAP’s contribution to the debate on dependency theory has been great. On its pages, multiple approaches were published. The question that persists is: why does Latin American capitalism continue to perpetuate the binomial dependence and super-exploitation of work, so densely formulated by Ruy Mauro Marini? (Marini and Stookey, 1994). And more, why does this binomial not stop expanding in the Global South and is also increasingly present in the center of capitalism (Martins, 2022)?

My second point concerns the debates around feminism. There were several aspects presented in Munck’s text demonstrating how LAP sought to take into account different critical approaches to contribute to the crucial debate between feminism and Marxism. My recommendation, then, is that LAP should further expand this debate, through the publication of the most diverse expressions of anti-capitalist and Marxist feminism, especially from the South, which has been developed by black and indigenous thinkers. Just some examples: black feminists like Lélia Gonzalez; Marxist feminists like Heleieth Saffioti; black Marxists like Clóvis Moura; militants of the indigenous cause, such as Davi Kopenawa. They are increasingly vital for the construction of a new way of life, without forgetting Mariátegui’s pioneering work on the debate about the role of original communities in social transformation (Duarte, 2022; Munck, García-Macías, and Ponce, 2022). It will be from this varied range of studies that feminism and Marxism will be able to find their greatest fertility, so that an ontological and dialectical analysis between class, gender, race and ethnicity can give concreteness to the struggle for substantive equality and human emancipation.

My third point concerns the current challenges of socialism. If the pages of LAP (Löwy, 2015; Antunes, 1998) were already open to different reflections on the socialist revolutions of the 20th century, it will be vital to promote new debates with the aim of rescuing the principle of socialist hope, which is currently so discredited, overcoming both dogmatism, so strong in the last century, and the many charms arising from current capitalism, in the phase in which the system of antisocial metabolism in capitalism has become irremediably destructive (Mészáros, 1995) and even more bellicose than in the past.

The example of the destruction of nature is emblematic: global warming, fossil energy, pesticides and GMOs, mineral extraction, wildfires, etc. are expressions of the destructiveness of the capitalist system in relation to environmental issues. As nature is collapsing, the crucial imperative of our time is to invent a new way of life (Antunes, 2022a).

And so I arrive at the fourth point, which I can only briefly sketch out: how can we reconstruct a new socialism without the crucial understanding of who the working class is today? In addition to the Eurocentric and mistaken theses about the end of work and the working class, it is urgent to reflect on who the class-that-lives-from-labor is today (Antunes, 2022b; 2013), what are its limits and potential in the struggle to overcome the system of antisocial metabolism in capitalism.

These are some vital issues of our time that Latin American, African and Asian Marxisms have a lot to contribute to over the next 25 years with the decisive support of LAP.