The Marxist debate on Latin-American colonial modes of production within Argentinian intelligencia (1890-1973)

Abstract

The debate on the nature of colonial economy has gone beyond the field of historical materialism. Nevertheless, most of the participants in the debate have been Marxists who took as their starting point the concept of “mode of production” or “socioeconomic formation”. This paper focuses on the question of the origins of capitalism and the roots of Latin-American backwardness. While there were intellectuals who affirmed the predominantly feudal character of colonization, others defined it as “colonial capitalism”. This paper compares the materialist hypotheses about the colonial modes of production in the Río de la Plata economic area in order to examine the different Marxist historiographical currents about the origins and development of capitalism in Argentina.

Keywords

• historical materialism
• colonialism
• Marxist historiography
• modes of production