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to turn the tables creaking floor are on the second floor of the premises, two of the young participants of the workshop will fit uneasily in their chairs and look up. Seconds later, his chin down in a hurry to re-focus on the presentation of one who makes a speaker at this meeting. The other fifteen workers underground, five wooden tables arranged in a circle and a desk to who runs the class, complete the scene. It is one more session of the Workshop Reading of Capital, Karl Marx's work, which is held every Monday afternoon in the basement of the Cultural and Social Center The Union. Despite the dim light of the basement of the old house of Maipú 424, passionate young people involved considerations about the need to clarify the differences between use value and exchange. Hot mate goes hand in hand, follows the discussion of the theory of surplus value and liven up the evening begins with dark tinted when approaching nine. The workshop, aimed at bringing the study of the seminal work of Karl Marx, is headed by Sebastian Zarricueta Cabieses, a young economist 26 years. He and Manuel Hidalgo, and Rafael Agacino, wrote the preface to the recent publication of LOM Ediciones the first volume of Capital in Chile, in September 2010.
This publication, rescues an old translation of the first volume of Marx's work: "Production Process of Capital", published by Progress Publishers in Moscow and performed in the mid-eighties. The translator was the then young Chilean, Christian Fazio, the son of economist and former vice president of the Central Bank during the Popular Unity government, Hugo Fazio.
Although the commission provided for the translation progress of the three volumes of Capital, only the first reached print. While the second volume was delivered by Christian in 1990, with the fall of the Union Soviet Union, the publisher also ceased to exist. The manuscript remained lost in the translation and publication of volume two never materialized.
translation is precisely that reviewed Hidalgo Fazio, Zarricueta Agacino and comparing it with other two-the most prestigious in English-the Wenceslao Roces, the Editorial Fondo de Cultura Economica (FCE), and Peter Scaron, Siglo XXI, Mexico and Argentina, respectively.
Of the three economists researchers Corporation Nexus Platform-organization which describes itself as an "area of \u200b\u200bproduction and dissemination of critical thinking" - Zarricueta is the youngest. Why a 26-year career today is interested in collaborating with a new publication of Capital? Here, judgments and views of those who prefaced the book by Marx in Chile.
What is special about the publication of the first volume of Capital?
work requested by the people of LOM Manuel Hidalgo was reviewing a translation of the ancient capital. At first was to detect and correct the errors in the publication by the Soviets. However, it was a contribution to the Chilean publication, not a mere repetition of the above, we proposed to compare the text with other issues that were on the market, such as editorial XXI century and the Economic Culture Fund. LOM accepted the proposal and extended the work.
What were the contributions to the publication that threw this work?
Throughout the whole book, and especially in the early chapters of Capital in which Marx developed his theory of the value of the goods, introduces many new concepts and is stringing to each other. Given the density and the subtleties of these arguments, he points out some ideas and use italics for incorporating certain concepts. When one faces the reading of these chapters, the emphasis are helpful. In the Soviet edition those italics were omitted by a problem in original editions German, who were basically printing. In fact, some German editions published by Frederick Engels omitted that part, but we thought it was important to follow the reasoning of Marx, so we decided to incorporate. It took us six months to do all this. We did two readings of Capital, one to correct typos and other to make a more detailed document contrasted sentence by sentence with other issues.
Capital is an important book in the sociopolitical history of the world How important is responsible for making their preface?
responsibility is not less because it is a fundamental text for the construction of alternative policy and revolutionary theory. At first I thought I had so much experience and was much work lay on my shoulders, but I realized it was a challenge and learn more. We got into the genesis of the text, and investigate why certain changes occur that include Marx and Engels between an issue and another. Then we had to keep in mind the story behind the book.
is difficult to understand that a young professional interested in studying Marx without having a high political concern, "ascribe to any militancy?
Si. However, not only understand the political and social activism from membership or not a structure established political parties or unions, but on the same realities in which the structure of capitalism, which today are much more flexible. From this point of view, I consider myself a leftist militant, and I think if you talk to Manuel and Rafael, also will consider leftists, the popular movement for workers.
Then this is your place.
Yes, that's my place. From there we face this publication was not just an academic. We do obviously with all the rigor that requires the study of Marx, but in reality there is more. We saw in this publication of the book, and I propose to LOM, a contribution to building sociopolitical in Chile.
But knowing the characteristics of our country, what contributes to the construction of an alternative publication of the capital today?
Good question. It is, however, difficult to answer individually and in a single answer, because I think that is a response rather collective in nature, that has to do with the significance of social movements themselves, residents, Mapuche, etc. give a reading of Capital. This is because the book addresses an infinity of aspects of capitalist society, not only in the economic field. In summary, I believe that the power of Marx's work is that it shows the essence of workings of capitalism, independent of the concrete historical way that capitalist production is articulated. That far surpasses the official economy, academic, and enacting public policy makers, as they like to call today. The capital is a hundred light years of them all so much for the clear exposition of the text as it was visionary when analyzing Marx capitalism 150 or 200 years ago. Econometric models that are managed in today's economy is taught in universities, they pale beside the historical overview and the development that Marx wrote in Capital. From that perspective, is a tool fundamental to social movement to appropriate the conceptual matrix that gives us Marx and so understand what limits are actually reforms within the capitalist state and what can we expect in the future of capitalism. Unfortunately
was implanted in the collective unconscious that any work of Marx is stale ...
There is a catch there because in fact what makes the capital is to analyze the capitalist mode of production, rather than formulating a recipe for building socialism. Marx argues that rather than be a task that will specifically address the workers, the people and that his main task in the capital is to discover the essence of the operation of capitalism. It is in this sense that surpasses any current official economy and is therefore central to the popular movement to appropriate conclusions. The other catch is that the project based on this book failed and therefore what is there is wrong. The same media and common sense to try to impose the ruling classes, and make us believe that we ignore the rigors of revolutionary thought, instead of appropriating it to proceed with the task of political construction.
How would you describe the rigor?
This rigor involves a whole way of looking at history, look at how they operate modern societies, the analysis of trends and developments, and questions about why certain phenomena occur, such as wars, massive social inequality, environmental degradation, exploitation, etc. Marx's theoretical matrix is \u200b\u200bvery rigorous and suggests that this is not attackable partly because it forms part of an overall vision that makes sense in so far as it is interrelated.
is rigorous, but it is the science of construction ...
Yes, I am an enemy of those little things. The technicality and the scientistic vision of politics we have to leave. To the extent that social subjects are constituted as leading actors will be reading The capital in a certain way. Also will be a dialogue between two subjects - 'Hey here are useful elements and they can help us construcción'-political construction and it's going to reinterpret what is there. Rather than saying that if one reads The capital will be clear to policy, it is necessary to understand the relationship between theory and practice that can establish the social subjects in the future will be more complex. Anyway, the rigor has to be in our policy analysis to influence reality.
tend to collectivize enough, what is the collective political work develop? Currently
from the Collective Scaffolding we are promoting with comrades from different areas a collective reading of Capital, but not from the academy. We have a reading workshop focused on people working in the university reality, population or popular media, to contribute to theoretical and policy. It is a training mode that aims to take what is in the capital and its array of thought, the idea is to share the political rigor, analytical.
When did this initiative?
The workshops began last year. In recent times there has been an interest in knowing the work of Marx. Following a recent crisis of capitalism Best selling books in the world was just the capital. In a survey in England asked about the most influential thinkers and Marx was the first in the list. This shows that whenever capitalism goes into crisis systematic, science officer looks at herself and sees that all their predictions fail. The world that science describes, that it is infallible, it is not really well and people tend to look to Marx. Surge power reminiscent of revolutionary thought that capitalism is unstable, which generates crisis and suffering in much of humanity. Something is wrong with the world that Marx is still as valid as current.
is rather impressive how realize the fact that validity ...
certainly striking. In my case, being a person trained in economics, mathematical models of great sophistication, you realize they do not predict anything and models become quite sterile. While studying economics in college, was studying on my own capital and the truth is that the book has a literary beauty that adds value to the route of exposure in itself, it can be found constant references to Goethe, the Bible , Balzac, Homer, etc. Marx moves with great ease between philosophy, history, literature, religion and, of course, political economy. No relation to what they teach in college, where you show a biased economic science which deals with abstract all the elements that are not strictly economic, as defined by them. Finally, it happens that end up being extremely partisan tools to build an explanation of social reality and result in idealization of the capitalist world that we can all be entrepreneurs, capitalists, and in fact is not so.
The last global economic crisis can reveal the evils of capitalism?
building to the left is important not to have illusions about capitalism, often blinded us and we go by easy way. Capitalism in its expansion phase generates some increases in the standard of living of the population, access to higher consumption levels, televisions, phones, etc.. The problem is that when we come out of the blue this crisis, we see that these same increases in living standards also have their inherent limits, limits which are none other than putting the same capital. Surface forms that give meaning to life in capitalism should take into account the left to promote everyday practices and spaces counterhegemony to subvert common sense set by capitalism. How do you look
alternative experience of Latin America?
Look, I think from the late 90 initiates a reset of the popular movement throughout Latin America after all the neoliberal offensive. He settled the issue of the XXI century socialism from Venezuela, which is actually a reflection of ideological thrust. There is an ideological thrust is now experiencing Cuba, Venezuela, Ecuador, these countries independent of whether or not beyond capitalism.
Cuba is in a very particular process.
Cuba is undergoing a process of internal discussion about certain shortcomings that may have Cuban socialism itself, which is good to look through the lens of Marx's work. For example, we started this workshop reading of Capital with an interview of Néstor Kohan, Argentine intellectual, Orlando Borrego, who was a collaborator of Che Guevara when he was Minister of Industries in Cuba. There he noted that the Che destined one day a week, even with a teacher brought the USSR to study Capital. He met with colleagues from the ministry to understand in what state was Cuba and what the prospects were for the construction of socialism. This shows that something as mundane, day to day, as work in a ministry that requires analysis and capital necessary for reading of contemporary reality. How
view the fall of socialism en el mundo?
Tenemos que preguntarnos qué se entendió por socialismo y cuáles fueron las razones de su fracaso. Se entendió socialismo como sinónimo de estatismo. De hecho, hoy una parte no menor de la izquierda chilena mira como algo importante de su construcción política la ampliación del Estado. No se cuestiona la naturaleza de ese Estado y si en realidad el socialismo es sólo estatismo y ampliación del Estado hasta la cooptación de toda la vida económica o si éste puede convivir con otras relaciones sociales en su seno y alentarlas. ¿Puede el socialismo tolerar ciertas esferas que el mercado rija sin atentar contra sus principios básicos? Desde ahí que leer El capital es fundamental, explains the nature of the market, its limits and contradictions. The discussion you're giving the Cubans is in that line. Regardless of how the Cuban people resolved this debate through their structures of popular representation, it is interesting how they are giving.
And in Chile, how you see the profound socio-political change that experience?
Chilean capitalism radically changed the way it works. Since the early twentieth century until 1973, was a much more inward capitalism, the state had a much larger role to play and it was built based on an idea more state socialism, which also tragically showed its limits. The latter option of Salvador Allende's hide in the institutions, in this supposed neutrality were to have the military, is susceptible to paraphrase Marx, the fetishism of the state of the traditional left. On that basis, it is necessary to discern how the dictatorship was able to successfully relaunch for the ruling classes obviously capitalism in Chile.
Will the Chilean left to assume that change?
The left looks much the traditional labor movement as the bearer of alternative social project, being that today the work is more precarious, flexible and may be that those historic structures that occurred in the time the working class, are not wide enough to give a different political structure, radical. Even the parties themselves, structured on descontituídos socio-political subjects, or changes in the bourgeoisie itself, a more cross-class, which looks more to the future, or the reality of a landowning class that actually disappeared and was converted into a capitalist of agriculture, which are competitive abroad or a large estate reality that no longer exists in the way that we knew at the time of land reform. So the first thing is that the left should be responsible for the changes that have taken capitalism.
Has the Chilean left delayed assume that it must stop somewhere else?
anyway. For example, the desire to reconstitute the three thirds of Chile's political map is to look back, meaning that everything that happened between 1973 and 2010 is only a lull in political history. Is it viable reconstruction of the three thirds on classes that now operate entirely differently? For example: the middle class who no longer lives in state money, is made up of young professionals with ambition, to become part of the political and ideological baggage of neoliberalism, which has aspirations to emerge and become rich on their own. And the state functions based management mechanisms in profitability and market logic, that makes the emergence of a class guided by the social project that seeks only the efficiency and competitiveness.
Do you need more courage?
require to be bolder on the left and to recognize this reality. It has become much idealization of past history, and if it is necessary to dialogue with the past and memory take their heroes, we must also recognize its limits and errors. Javiera Olivares
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