The complexity of historical time in the Latin American Marxism: Variegated social formations and structural heterogeneity in the work of René Zavaleta and Aníbal Quijano

Introduction

This article explores one of the debates that cross the discussions of Latin American Marxism around the complex problem of historical time. To this end, we will go deep into two concepts that generate debates about the progressive and linear definitions of historical temporality based on the contributions made by René Zavaleta Mercado and Aníbal Quijano.

The first, a Bolivian intellectual, produces the concept of variegated social formation as an attempt to think the plural, the multiple from certain articulations that do not necessarily refer to an organizing center of economic, political, social and cultural activity. The second, a Peruvian intellectual, develops the category of historical-structural heterogeneity as a way of reflecting on the relation between modernization and traditional societies, that is to say, the persistence of non-capitalistic social formations in the historical present. Both address the problem of historical time, polemicizing with orthodox Marxism and unilinear and etapist understandings of history, vindicating its dynamizing potential with respect to the intensities, directions, and meanings of historical time.

The approach to these concepts becomes a relevant contribution at the moment of considering some characteristics in relation to Latin American Marxism, since one of these characteristics is precisely that of questioning the visions of time as a continuous homogeneous advance. This takes us back, on the one hand, to remember the reflections of the late Marx, who wrote a response to Vera Zasulich, who asked him about the role of rural communities in Tsarist Russia (Marx, [1881], 2019), or when the German revolutionary himself questioned the interpretations of an unfailingly capitalist development for all peoples as a necessary condition of the struggle for socialism (Shanin, 1984).

In different texts of Marx we can find some reflections of historical time, not only in the later period of his life, but also in his early manuscripts. For example, specifically in the Feuerbach manuscript in The German Ideology (Marx and Engels, 2015), we find the first ideas about the different modes of production and the possibility that in the present can articulate together. Later, in the Grundrisse, we find a chapter wherein Marx deepens this idea and names it as the form that precedes capitalist production, pointing out the importance of this social formation as a force that can be seen as an ally to the forces of the working class. The point being made is that Marx never thought of the historical homogeneity of capitalist production, but rather thought of it as permanently intertwined with other modes of production (Acha, 2023).

These ideas are part of the core of Latin American Marxism, because the heterogeneity of the social formations can be seen as a problem or as an opportunity that extends beyond Marx.

It is probable that both René Zavaleta Mercado and Aníbal Quijano, in the context in which they theorized on variegated social formation and historical-structural heterogeneity, were unaware of some of these Marxian reflections. Nevertheless, the debate on the existence of different modes of production that coexist simultaneously in a given historical time is something that Latin American Marxism, since Mariátegui ([1928] 1980), has been thematizing. The Peruvian revolutionary pointed out the importance of the forms of reciprocity in indigenous social relations to think of a socialism with continental characteristics. The latter is identified by Quijano when he rereads the importance of the amauta (Quijano, 1982).

In contemporary terms, Marxism has once again thematized the importance of historical temporality in the complete work of Marx (Anderson, 2016), pointing out the importance that “backward” countries would have increasingly acquired in revolutionary processes. In parallel, Bolívar Echeverría (1998) has pointed out the need to examine the “modern ethos” to understand the forms of classification of the different types of temporality presented in the “world of life,” hinting that although modernity is a constitutive moment of everyday life, there would be “folds” to rethink other “forms of life.”

The same philosopher, in an analysis of Walter Benjamin’s theses on history, mentioned the importance of questioning historical temporality, since it would generate the difference between a profound historical materialism, as opposed to another of a social-democratic nature. Both are battling each other:

resistance or claudication before the forces that constrain modern individuals to experience the temporal flow as the vehicle of progress, as the way by which life goes ahead in a continuous line of succession of the victors in the exercise of dominion. (Echeverría, 2005: p. 35)

Rooted in this debate, René Zavaleta Mercado and Anibal Quijano elaborated two concepts that allow to explain the social formations in Latin America and how the historical temporalities coexist in the capitalist mode of production. The idea of variegated social formation and historical structural heterogeneity is an example of creatively theorizing these debates of Marxism.

The complexity of historical time in René Zavaleta Mercado: Variegated social formation and the problem of the future

René Zavaleta has been configured as an intellectual reference of Latin American Marxism, ¹ which is explained by several factors. One of them is that the Bolivian intellectual has been considered an anti-dogmatist since he understood Marxism as an open and dynamic system with respect to reality, which made it possible to build an innovative and creative conceptual architecture that can be understood as a nationalization of critical theory or as an epistemological option based on the logic of the place (Ouviña, 2016; Tapia, 2016).

The theoretical and conceptual production of René Zavaleta is currently configured as a nucleus of good sense for the development of Latin American critical social thought. The categorical universe, made up of concepts such as “variegated social formation,” “social equation,” “primordial form,” “constitutive moment,” “self-determination of the masses,” “apparent state,” “accumulation within the class,” among many others, allows us to argue that the Bolivian intellectual promotes an intellectual project that tries to continue, deepen, reopen, and problematize some nuclei of reasoning opened by Marx and the referents of Marxism. Zavaleta’s intellectual project was translated into a theoretical strategy and a research program that ended up building a rigorous and creative theoretical matrix that serves to develop historical, political, and cultural analyses of social formations such as the Latin Americans.

Another relevant factor for conceiving René Zavaleta Mercado as a referent for Latin American Marxism consists of his ability to translate the categories of Marx and Marxism based on the specific realities of Bolivia and Latin America. According to Luis Tapia (2016), the Bolivian intellectual elaborated a selective recovery of Marx’s theoretical production, according to the great problems of Bolivia and Latin America.

What we have, then, is a process of theoretical appropriation of Marxist ideas, of the central categories to think about the configuration of the social world and of the modern world in particular, which is carried out to work and develop explanations of national realities, of specific social configurations. (Tapia, 2013: 92)

In addition, the works of José Carlos Mariátegui and René Zavaleta Mercado are twinned by analyzing the peasant and indigenous question in the Andean countries from a heterodox Marxism, which advances in an exercise of understanding the struggles for land and the cycles of indigenous rebellions, crossing class and ethnic variables. The critical and heterodox Marxism of both authors is expressed in creative reflections that attempt to understand and explain indigenous struggles articulated with class struggles.

Next, we will delve into the category coined by Zavaleta Mercado of “variegated social formation.”

Variegated social formation

The concept of variegated social formation was constructed by René Zavaleta Mercado, considering the approaches of the German philosopher Ernst Bloch in The Principle of Hope, since that text’s discussion of the “nonsimultaneity of the simultaneous” served to deepen his reflections around societies structured by colonial and capitalist domination and to problematize around the configuration of historical time in societies such as Latin America (Dunkerley, 2016).

The category of variegated social formation refers to the coexistence of the multiple, the diverse, and the heterogeneous. It is a category that emphasizes coexistence, in the disarticulated overlapping, in the concurrence and simultaneity of modes of production, historical temporalities, conceptions of the world, forms of political organization, among others. In variegated social formations, unity is formal, apparent, and incomplete, and what predominates is disarticulation and disorganization. It is a category of enormous richness, as it attempts to complexify reflections on disarticulated modes of production and economic-social formations based on a creative process of translation that attempts to explain the complex social reality of Latin America (Rodríguez, 1998; Tapia, 2009; Antezana, 2009; Souza Crespo, 2013).

In the early 1970s, Zavaleta (1973) argued that in variegated social formations, such as the Bolivian one, various modes of production coexisted in different ways: combining, contradicting, and/or confronting each other. From then on, he would deepen and complexify his reflections, which would lead him to maintain that the concept refers to the disarticulated overlapping, coexistence, and transposition of different social relations of production, land ownership regimes, mercantile exchange practices, among others. This is expressed in Bolivian society by the coexistence of forms of community production and Andean agriculture, with forms of capitalist production associated with processes of colonial de-peasantization, alienation of labor, forced introduction of wages, productive relations based on legally free men and women, etc. (Zavaleta, 2008).

In view of the above, it is relevant to highlight the approach of Luis Tapia (2016), who has commented that different Marxist theorists have argued that in modern economic-social formations, various modes of production can coexist; however, such diversity is under the domination of capitalism, which is guaranteed by the state. From the Zavaletian perspective, variegated social formations would be characterized by the lack of articulation of the modes of production and other social dimensions, since they are societies in which the development of capitalism is weak and the unity that could be achieved by the state is also weak.

In variegated social formations, there is, in turn, an overlapping of ways of conceiving historical time, which move between cyclical conceptions, linked to the seasonal temporality of nature and productive processes, and linear and evolutionary conceptions, which focus on progress and development. Luis Tapia (2013) has clearly argued the existence of two types of civilization in “variegated social formations” (agrarian and industrial), which are differentiated according to their relationship with nature. From here, it is argued that “each type of civilization is a type of historical time, it is a way of living time, of organizing, producing and reproducing the social and economic order that also implies different ways of conceiving time” (2013: 102).

Thus, in variegated social formations, seasonal temporalities associated with agrarian societies persist. Seasonal time, associated with Andean culture, is cyclical and linked to the differentiated production of each ecological floor according to community needs. René Zavaleta (2008) took up the proposals of anthropologist Jhon Murra, who argued that Andean agriculture, based on the vertical control of different ecological levels and territorial reciprocity, has seasonal production times that do not correspond to capitalist production times.

In contrast, the capitalist conception of historical time would be characterized as linear, accelerated, valorized, articulated to productive processes and the division of labor. Capitalism manages to intensify the social rhythm, standardizing and homogenizing temporalities, accelerating the productive moment, which ends up standardizing and simplifying society. René Zavaleta (2008: 50) put it in the following terms: “It can be considered as something immediately false to think of a capitalist society as something more complex, in fact than a precapitalist society. It is true that capitalism multiplies social time, but it is no less true that it makes society homogeneous (standardized).”

Finally, it should be added that Zavaletian approaches emphasized the discontinuous, interrupted, arrhythmic, and multiple character of historical time in variegated social formations. One of the particularities of historical time in societies such as Bolivia is that classes, communities, the state, and the different cultural expressions have their own cadence, and the time that exists in common—that is, that which articulates multiplicity—is the intense time that is concentrated in the crisis. The crisis interrupts plural temporalities and, in this sense, is constituted as an agglutinating element that crosses all layers of society (Souza Crespo, 2013).

Moreover, in variegated social formations, there are cultures, memories, and histories that have been neither fully integrated nor completely dissolved. Rather, they are societies that have unsuccessfully attempted to subsume all human groups into a single colonial and capitalist pattern. However, despite attempts to impose this cultural pattern, in variegated societies, there exist and survive cultural, political, and organizational forms of community character, local forms of authority, and forms of collective resolution of aspects relevant to the production and reproduction of community life, among others.

Based on the above, it can be argued that in variegated social formations, there is a process of failed subsumption or of formal subsumption but not of real subsumption. Put differently, in variegated societies, there is formal subsumption and appropriation of the surplus, but this does not necessarily imply real subsumption to capital.

In variegated social formations where there are processes of failed subsumption, what René Zavaleta called apparent states are configured, which would be characterized by attempts to impose a culture and an official language; to ignore the forms of organization of indigenous communities; to deny local forms of authority, exercises of collective deliberation, among many others. ² Apparent states are state skeletons without a nation, or as Hernán Ouviña (2010) has pointed out in Gramscian jargon, they are domination without hegemony. The following quotation is clear:

The weakness of nation-states in variegated conditions is due to this diversity of forms of society and persistence of their forms of self-government. This implies that there are several spaces where political life is organized according to very different principles and actions. (Tapia, 2013: 106)

Historical time of Quijano’s work

The above reflections of social variegated formations have a long tradition of thinkers, starting with Mariátegui’s seven essays of interpretation of Peruvian reality (1934). The colonial problem is not only a heritage of domination but also a mixture of temporalities that do not allow a complete development of modernity and capitalism in our countries.

One of the most important Latin American intellectuals who has dealt with these issues extensively is Aníbal Quijano. Born in 1930 in Yungay, Peru, Quijano was one of the sociologists who marked the Latin American Marxist tradition. He was formed in the Universidad Mayor de San Marcos and in FLACSO with a PhD thesis about the “cholificación” of the conflict in the 1960s in postcolonial Peru. He also contributed to dependency theory and opened the discussion of marginality on our continent. In addition, he developed the relation between imperialism and national sovereignty, the problematization of the mottled social formations in Latin America. At the end of his career, specifically in the 1990s, in collaboration with Immanuel Wallerstein, he developed the idea of Americanity as a concept (Quijano and Wallerstein, 1992) and developed the notion of “coloniality of power” (Quijano, 2000).

Quijano’s starting point was dependency theory, but with a particular point of view of thinking historical time centered in the diverse mode of production. In contrast with some theorists who considered dependency to be an external phenomenon that had nothing to do with national domination (Furtado, 1971; Ianni and Kaplan, 1973; Sunkel, 1967), Quijano’s theory stated that the interests of the national bourgeoisie were connected to the imperialist bourgeoisie (Quijano, 1968; 1971). However, that was not the only problem, because as the dominant classes shared interests, the development of our societies had a dependency character. In other words, the process of modernization was linked to the phenomenon of dependency, for example, Latin American urbanization: “The central thesis of the approach maintains that urbanization in Latin America is a dependent process. That is, that in their outstanding characteristics they are governed by those of the process of dependency relations in our societies” (Quijano, 1968: 536). In other words, the process of urbanization is related to the centers of development in the countries, and the demographic variable is not the most important to explain this transformation because the dependency conditions the trajectory of peasants in the cities. It is necessary to clarify that the peasant is a mixed identity between the social class and the indigenous tradition; we will expand on this point later.

This internal migration of Latin American countries created an important heterogeneity, not only in terms of class, but also in different ways of life and even diverse modes of production (Quijano, 1977). In these early reflections of Quijano, we can find the core of the thesis of “heterogeneidad histórico estructural”, that is, that Latin America has different modes of production living together but with the hegemony of capitalism. Are social variegated formations synonymous with historical structural heterogeneity? Or does thinking about the historical present have different implications?

First approach to heterogeneity: The mix between capitalism and precapitalism

As we pointed out in a previous work (Cabaluz and Torres, 2021), the notion of heterogeneity in Anibal Quijano's work is extensive. One of the central points in his concept of coloniality comes from it, but this reflection runs through all his work, as Danilo Assis (2020) has pointed out.

The notion of heterogeneity was created when Quijano's concerns were to develop some points on dependency theory. Indeed, Quijano distinguished between situations of dependency and the idea of historical dependency. The first alludes to the external domination of the sovereignty of the nation-state, and the second is about the conformation of Latin American postcolonial societies.

There are two principal characteristics of structural dependency: the articulation between metropolitan interests and the national dominant classes and the subordinated place of our social formations in the global power division. The second created a subaltern structure of power in the continent (Quijano, 1968). In this sense, the dependency is not only a correlation of force among peripheries and centers, but the domination is deeper because it has to deal with the formation of the “national interest” of the dominant classes. In this proposal, Quijano's theory is similar to the concept of “lumpen bourgeoisie” (Frank, 1970) since it implies that the roles of dominant classes in our countries are unable to industrialize economies.

However, the heterogeneity idea is also an inquiry into the situation of dominated classes. The notion of marginality is similar to the Marxian idea of the “reserve army of labor,” but with one central difference. Given that in Latin America there were no industries, with a few exceptions, the workforce was compelled to take any job to earn a living. The idea of marginality emerges to fill a new form of informal work.

The phenomena mentioned are not only economic but also cultural and demographic (Pimentel, 1972). With the “import substitution” model in the 1950s and 1960s, the urbanization of some cities, such as Santiago and Lima, received many migrants, generating a central problem for governments. Marginality, in consequence, was a multidimensional phenomenon (Quijano, 1966). However, in the economic dimension, this workforce was not skilled enough for industrial work, so it must create a place in the market.

According to Quijano (1977), the notion of polo marginal was created to make a difference to the “reserve army of labor” because the first was not integrated into the labor market; moreover, they could only worry about subsisting:

in the phenomenon that we are trying to explore, the defining element is precisely the lack of stable access to the basics resources of production that serve the dominant levels of each of the economic sectors, whose conditions of occupation and mechanisms of their organization can only operate on residual resources, on the one hand, and residuals activities for the most part. (1977: 163)

Starting from the problems generated by migration and the lack of industrial development, Quijano noted the different modes of production (servilism, “gamonalismo”, slavery, capitalism, etc.) in Latin America. However, the articulation, due to imperialism domination, belongs to capitalism. In one article, Quijano argues against other dependency theorists:

In this way, combinations of different configurations were produced to the regions and previous production of structures, on the one hand, and according to the stages of capitalist development in which those regions were subjected to the domination of this system, on the other, between modes of precapitalist production and the capitalist mode of production. (1976: 186)

In other words, that heterogeneity allows the interpretation of the related interests among an imperialist national bourgeoisie, or as Quijano said:

Dependency does not confront the set of basic social interests of the dominated society with those of the dominant society. On the contrary, it presupposes a basic correspondence of interests between the dominant groups at both levels of the relationship, without this including eventual frictions due to the rate of participation in the benefits of the system. (2005: 124)

For Quijano, the victory of capitalism against precapitalist formations is impossible because the interests of the national bourgeoisie are not focused on that (Quijano, 1968; 1976). Consequently, the forms of development are subordinated to their interests, and the national bourgeoisie project was the sale of commodities capturing the possible development of productive force. In this sense, the coexistence of different modes of production was not truly a problem because the existence of reciprocity remnants and community relationships could be the beginning of a new way of understanding public and private properties (Quijano, 1988). In other words, this could have an emancipation potential to confront capitalistic and statal property. The modernization project in Latin America has left out this potential.

Heterogeneity is a characteristic of the historical dependency in Latin America, modernity coexists with premodernity, and the problem of development is uneven and combined, so we cannot have a modernity like Europe—we have to build our own way. The notion of dualism is not productive in describing this aspect because the search for the European way in the direction of modernity cannot be produced by our bourgeoisie. In the same sense, the “democratic revolution” toward a modern mode of production is unfeasible, given that the interests of the dominant classes are not aligned with those of the people, the subalterns (Quijano, 1971).

In the Marxist tradition of dependency, in which Quijano can be placed, the way to solve the situation of heterogeneity was a socialist revolution, whose main objective would be to end dependency relationships (Dos Santos, 1970; Marini, 1977). However, the dispute between heterogeneity and dualism was not solved, because the former was criticized for romanticizing the precapitalist mode of production, while the latter was qualified as Eurocentric.

Quijano draws attention to the emancipatory potentialities of reciprocity and communalism. In the 1980s, his focus of reflection moved from classical Marxism toward critical Marxism. The Stalinist experience was the bifurcation point. In addition, the cultural revolution in China did not excite our thinker, who began to realize the lack of revolutionary referents (Quijano and Lauer, 1981). This does not imply the renunciation of the theses of historical dependency, but a reformulation of it and a new perspective of structural heterogeneity.

In summary, the idea of heterogeneity, in this first moment, was about the structural dependency and the situation of Latin American societies, i.e. on the class and cultural structure of power. The domination of Quijano never meant a one-dimensional kind of dominance; it was a much broader issue, including the coexistence of diverse modes of production, lifestyles, and organizational forms, in many cases antagonistic to colonialism and capitalism.

The new heterogeneity, dependency, and popular economy

Quijano's work about new heterogeneity makes the following point:

In the first place the process of “de-peasantization” or disintegration of the peasantry, does not follow the same paths, nor does it end in the same way that it expected [it refers to how it had happened in Europe]. Especially, it has not led, nor does it lead, the affected population to the final stage of “proletarization” because at the same time the respective needs of capital contracted dramatically. (1989: 21)

The idea of a unidirectional historical process and the notion of evolutionism committed to both dualism and historical materialism was the problem. Quijano's arguments to oppose those positions became established to the Marxian, and not the Marxist, tradition. He distinguished between historical materialism and the materialist theory of history (Quijano, 1989; 2000). This is interesting because he knew about the “late Marx” with Shanin’s reflection and the non-Eurocentric point of view of Marx.

Unfortunately, Quijano did not get to know several of Marx's own reflections on non-Western societies. Álvaro García Linera (1991) translated some works, including Cuaderno Kovalevsky, among others. The idea of reciprocity and the power of communality were part of Marx's reflections. Indeed, as the Treveris intellectual said in a letter to the Russian populist Vera Zasulich:

“The analysis presented in Capital does not give reasons for or against the vitality of the rural commune, but the special study that I have made of it, and whose materials I have searched for in the original sources, has convinced me that the commune is the fulcrum of social regeneration in Russia, but for it to function as such will be necessary first to eliminate the deleterious influences that beset it on all sides, and then to ensure normal conditions for spontaneous development. (Marx, [1881] 2019: 465).

In an introduction to the work of Mariétegui, Quijano found the notion of heterogeneity defined as:

Unity of contradictory elements, in a determined and concrete historical situation, where unequal levels of development are combined, constantly being interpreted and conditioned, and where one of this elements cannot be destroyed without affecting the whole and vice versa, is the categorically Marxist and dialectical vision that Mariátegui gives us. (Quijano, 1979: 46)

The transformation of Latin American societies after the coups was marked by the hegemony of capitalism. The development of neoliberalism and the financialization of economies made a huge difference between the two periods of recent history in our societies. Before this, capitalism was not dominant. Industrialization could be understood as an indicator of this. Therefore, the “gamonalismo,” ³ servility, and incipient capitalist relationship ⁴ in the most important sectors in our economies were the center of order in the recent past of Latin America.

Also new was the development of neoliberalism, but as noted above, the integration of the workforce into industry could not be processed. In addition, the strengthening of the second and third economy sectors needed qualified workers, and the polo marginal did not have those abilities.

The central problem was that historical materialism and dualism focused on the class and cultural problems but not on the historicity of the relations or on the “historical logics”:

To start with, this means that it can be admitted that the System of social classes of capital is the main one in Society, but that other systems and/or fragments of them that do not have the same character would be present. And in this case, it is essential to investigate the relationships between these systems, since the specific character of each class or fragment of it does not come and cannot come exclusively from the logic of the respective pattern, but from a complex and contradictory intertwining between all the patterns and their respective historical “logics.” (Quijano, 1989: 26)

Now it has to be clear that Quijano’s idea of reciprocity was not romantic; in his words:

Let no one think that I am advocating a return to the original Andean communitarianism or to the reciprocity of the old agrarian societies. Neither will they return, nor would they be apt to welcome and satisfy the complex needs of today’s complex societies. Nor do I suggest, here and now, the dissolution of any power other than that of the free associations of free citizens that appear in some formidable utopias of the anarchist movement. (1988b: 67)

Final reflections

This article tries to seek two perspectives that put in tension some of the presumptions about historical time. On the one hand, the notion of motley society points to a specific way to understand the overlap between different and sometimes divergent historicity. In the sense of Zavaleta Mercado, there is not a hegemonic center; consequently, capitalism and other historical times have no direct relation with exploitation. On the other hand, the idea of heterogeneity implies thinking about the diverse constitution of temporalities, production modes and worldviews, but here is the deep difference between the two intellectuals, hegemonized by capitalism.

Both concepts have an important debate that refers us to the problem of real and formal subsumption of capital with respect to other social relations of production. As we try to show, the concept of motley society refers to a formal subsumption of capital; in consequence, it subsists on social relations that do not belong to the value valorization circuit. However, the notion of heterogeneity seems to be a real subsumption of capital.

In this sense, Zavaleta’s motley society presupposes the existence of an outside of capitalism, of folds and strata that have not managed to be subsumed by capital. Quijano's notion of heterogeneity does not have that assumption. The Peruvian sociologist emphasizes the articulation with the accumulation process, whereby the enemies of capitalism are multiplied.

Another difference lies in the focus. Zavaleta's work pointed to a wider vision of historical time, not centered in the production modes, but in the historical time and the experience of living in a not-articulated worldview. For his part, Quijano's work was centered in the debate of production modes, leaving aside other concerns such as cyclic time on agrarian production. But, he considered the appearance of social groups formed on diverse temporalities, like a synthesis of the production modes in dispute, for example the “cholificación.”

In consideration of the above, there is an open debate to think of alternatives to capitalism. The proposal of Zavaleta and Quijano is one of these; undoubtedly, their contributions allow us to think of other possible worlds that grow directly from within and against capital power.

We also tried to contribute to the debate about historical time and Marxism. As recently shown by García Linera (2022), Lezra (2018), Anderson (2016), and Morfino (2013), the discussion about the relation between those concepts is important because of the political consequences that it carries; moreover, this could contribute to reinterpreting a good part of the Marxian corpus.

This debate about the notion of historical time in Marxism has revitalized the interest in studying some theses to show the possibilities of overcoming dogmatism using and not only applying theory.