Year: 2023
Type: article
Abstract: After enduring the negative impacts of state terrorism, theoretical dogmatism, and academic neoliberalism, the Marxist Theory of Dependency (TMD) has been gaining traction as a theoretical framework embraced by various authors within the Brazilian intelligentsia, particularly in the field of Social Work.In the current climate, the Katálysis Journal is dedicating a volume to explore the class struggle in Latin America within the context of imperialist relations and dependency.The approach, pioneered by Ruy Mauro Marini, Vânia Bambirra, and Theotonio dos Santos, continues to demonstrate its relevance and critical methodology.This robustness can be attributed to the incorporation of historical materialism and its essential concepts, including totality, historicity, contradiction, mediation, levels of abstraction, and determination.However, it also embraces what István Mészáros termed as a radical methodological openness when approaching historical development.This approach involves recognizing the potentialities embedded in each moment without reducing the historical process to a predetermined direction or 'necessary logic'.By doing so, it avoids the risk of overlooking important material dimensions and contradictions that, although not fully developed, are crucial for a comprehensive understanding of social reality.Explanations that rigidly adhere to a fixed structural perspective at any given moment can lead to an arbitrary simplification of the complexities of human action.Therefore, it is vital to consider latent elements present in social relations as an integral part of the analysis.This approach allows us to grasp the contradictions that create opportunities for emancipatory processes while also acknowledging the persistence of structures of exploitation and domination.Viewing Latin America through the lens of these insights requires recognizing it as an open ontological totality.To achieve this understanding, it is essential to untangle the determinants that shape, arrange, and drive social relations across the continent.As the universal becomes universalized through particularization, the particular not only expresses the universal but also manifests itself uniquely in different times and spaces, giving rise to new historical developments.This dynamic process allows for the real to open itself to transformation or modified reaffirmation.The TMD aimed to embrace this radical historical openness through its examination of the uneven development between imperialism and dependency.By exploring the additional tendencies in the value law that characterize dependent economic-social formations within the capitalist mode of production, TMD sought to shed light on the intricacies of these systems.In this issue of Katálysis, readers will encounter various relations categorized by Ruy Mauro Marini, such as the super-exploitation of labor, the counterinsurgency state, and the dependent state, which offer valuable explanations for current realities.
Source: Revista Katálysis
Author: Carla Cecilia Campos Ferreira
Institution: Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro
Language: English
Subfield: Sociology and Political Science
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: diamond
OpenAlex ID: W4387875855