Dependence and Freedom: A Political Theory of Non-Western Marxism

 In this event, Martin Arboleda introduces us to his new book, "Dependence and Freedom: A Political Theory of Non-Western Marxism." Dependence and Freedom reconstructs an intellectual tradition that was formative in the Chilean road to socialism under the Allende government. Theories of dependence, in particular, shed crucial insights into the novel forms of international subordination and of political authoritarianism that ensued from conditions of advanced monopolistic integration in the capitalist world economy. Writing beyond the orbit of Western Marxism, intellectuals in this tradition redefined the idea of the democratic republic by framing the scientific development of the productive forces – led by skilled and devoted workers’ parties – to be a central precondition for popular and national liberation. Framed through the lens of political theory, the book shows that dependentistas also espoused an existentialist ethics of responsibility that developed in close connection with the rise of a mass movement for social change, and with transnational networks for antifascist struggle in the aftermath of the 1973 coup in Chile. In posing fundamental questions of strategy, of commitment, and of human freedom, dependentistas advanced a framework for the reunification of thought and action that speaks to the most pressing challenges facing critical theory today.

BIO:

Martín Arboleda is Associate Professor of Sociology at Universidad Diego Portales, Santiago de Chile. He obtained his PhD in Politics from the University of Manchester, United Kingdom. His research explores the political economy of globalized extraction, as well as the political and intellectual history of Latin American theories of development and underdevelopment. His fields of interest include global political economy, critical social theory, and development studies. He is the author of the books Planetary Mine: Territories of Extraction under Late Capitalism (Verso Books, 2020), of Gobernar la utopía: sobre la planificación y el poder popular (Caja Negra Editora, 2021), and of Dependence and Freedom: A Political Theory of Non-Western Marxism (Verso Books, 2027). His research has been published in several scholarly journals as well as in non-academic outlets. He is also a co-convenor of Modernismo Latinoamericano, a digital platform that reconstructs the trajectory of the emancipatory imaginations and struggles that emerged from the region during the development era (1910-1979).