Yankel Peralta García

El artículo critica la obra _Descolonizar la dialéctica_ de George Ciccarello-Maher, quien propone “decolonizar” la dialéctica hegeliano-marxiana para liberarla de supuestos eurocéntricos, teleológicos y deterministas. Maher apuesta, en cambio, por una dialéctica radicalizada, centrada en la contingencia, la indeterminación y el antagonismo irreconciliable. Nuestro texto cuestiona esta interpretación, señalando que Maher tergiversa tanto a Hegel como a Marx. La dialéctica de Hegel distingue claramente entre mecanismo (determinismo externo) y teleología (autodeterminación consciente), al punto de plantear una antinomia entre ambas formas de objetividad. Por lo demás, esta teleología no implica la imposición de un plan externo, sino una finalidad inmanente ligada a la acción humana. Por otro lado, en Marx, el determinismo no es mecánico, sino que opera con base en tendencias estadísticas (ejemplo: la caída tendencial de la tasa de ganancia), sin negar la agencia política. Rebatimos también la acusación de que la dialéctica inhiba la lucha política: si, en Hegel, la teleología autoconsciente es la antinomia del determinismo mecánico, en Marx, el antagonismo de clases tiene una base objetiva, aunque su resolución no sea automática. La crítica de Maher al eurocentrismo hegeliano-marxista es válida, pero su propuesta de una dialéctica “inconmensurable” y “sin certezas” resulta teóricamente vaga y políticamente trivial. En conclusión, rechazamos la tesis de que la dialéctica pueda “decolonizarse”. La obra de Maher, pese a su intención emancipadora, termina por diluir el potencial crítico de la dialéctica, porque ignora por completo su fundamento conceptual.

Latin American decolonial theory has been presented as a critique and overcoming of Western thought insofar as this tradition carries Eurocentric biases. However, this approach has been based on reductionisms and raw generalizations that have spread many other prejudices instead of contributing to critical thinking. In this sense, I discuss one of the fundamental interpretations of decolonial theory: that of Cartesian thought. Specifically, I criticize the idea, defended by the philosopher Santiago Castro-Gómez, that Descartes based his thought on a zero point, that is, from a supposed point of view dissociated from space and social relations. Such a proposal not only does not capture the spirit of Cartesian thought, but it spreads more prejudices than it helps to debunk.

The post-Marxist stance against class politics unearths significant political demands often neglected by Marxism. However, in Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe’s approach, this step forward is followed by two steps back. They deny that class struggle against capitalist exploitation has any political significance for the masses or any essential link with the socialist-democratic project. But they do so at the cost of misrepresenting Marxian theory and underestimating the global phenomenon of labour exploitation. This faux pas is due to two misconceptions at the core of the Laclau-Mouffean critique: an ambiguity in the use they make of the economic concept of surplus, and an incorrect identification of working-class and productive workers. With Laclau and Mouffe, I share the firm conviction in the necessity of a post-Marxian theory. Nevertheless, post-Marxism will be just as robust as our Marxist bedrocks.

This paper tries to address the ethical question of Nazism from the point of view of social relations. That implies linking the fulfilment of the fascist ideology with its economic conditions. In this sense, the main proposal is to highlight that, crimes such as those committed by the Nazi regime, are not only possible based on a monstrous bureaucratic formation but also from a permissive dynamic of production and exchange. However, the relative autonomy that we can claim over the ideological factor of the phenomenon faces severe limits. In the "National-socialist" case, those limits are the declining demand, the increase in government debt and the inhibition of the productive investment of capital. It is as if Evil incarnated only at the cost of eroding its conditions of possibility.

This paper discusses Bolivar Echeverria’s concept of «abundance» in the specific sense of “surplus”. The criticism that we formulate is based on the Marxist conceptual affinity between “surplus” and “surplus-product”, understanding the latter as objectification of “surplus-labour”. In Marxist terms “surplus-labour” stands for a workday segment under conditions of exploitation. According to this, we believe that the echeverrian concept of “abundance” fails in its attempt to rise above the productivist and capitalist frame of thought.