The Mariátegui Project

The Crisis of Democracy

Mariátegui’s productive years coincided with a period of political turmoil in the imperial core of Europe and North America. In this section of The Contemporary Scene, Mariátegui sketches profiles of some of the political figures of his time and their historical significance and undertakes class analysis of key events.

We should understand his use of the term democracy in context to refer specifically to liberal democracy. Indeed, a key feature of this section is Mariátegui’s condemnation of liberal democracy as a bankrupt political form, which he sees as the superstructural vestige of an economic system — capitalism — that has become outdated and is thrashing about in its death throes, manifested in the surge of reaction embodied most clearly in the birth of fascism as we know it.