A Crown of Thorns: Cardoso and Counter-Revolution

Abstract

The fundamental question which must be addressed to dependency theory is that of the determination of the practical consequences of the theory for the antiimperialist struggle in Latin America. Dependency theory in its various forms has been advanced as a revolutionary alternative to the dominant bourgeois accounts of Latin American backwardness (Frank,1969:xiii). At the same time, the theory of dependency has been posited as a new theory; one which adapts the principles of Marx and Lenin to such concrete conditions as obtain in Latin America today (Cardoso,1973a: 10). The Cardoso variant of dependency theory will be examined here in order to make explicit some of the practical implications of the theory which may for a number of reasons be obscure. In the first place, Cardoso has produced a significant number of works in the eight-year period since the publication of his major work with Enzo Faletto in 1967. Within these works, many of which are unavailable to the English-reading public, Cardoso has presented his position in a manner which is more explicit and more developed than one finds in his earlier work. In a second (and more fundamental) respect, many of the practical implications of Cardoso's theory are obscured by the highly abstract nature of his theoretical discussions of dependency, and the fundamentally anti-Leninist nature of his theory is obscured by his constant use of Marxist terminology and frequent references to the political and economic theories of Lenin. A less than thoroughgoing reading of Cardoso's works (1972:104-122; 1973d:99ff) could leave one with the impression that Cardoso is a Marxist, orthodox enough to defend Marx against the attacks of Althusserian revisionists, and a Leninist in terms of the political analysis which he (Cardoso) gives of the superstructure of imperialism. The fact that Cardoso (unlike Frank (1974:97)) maintains his claim to an important relation between his theory and the theories of Marx and Lenin (coupled with his use of Marxist and Leninist phraseology) implies considerations which are themselves practical ones. On the one hand, the Cardoso variant of dependency theory appears to pass itself off as the up-to-date inheritor of the tradition of Marx and Lenin. As such, one might expect Latin Americans who are engaged in the practical anti-imperialist struggle to turn to Cardoso for theoretical guidance. There are hardly better credentials for an anti-imperialist theoretician than to be in the company of Marx and Lenin. On the other hand, Cardoso repeatedly argues against the vulgar and mechanistic application of European based dogma to the concrete conditions of Latin America today. But to see this as a criticism of vulgar Marxism alone is to miss a point fundamental to the foundation of Cardoso's theory of dependence. Cardoso argues, not simply that the theories of Lenin must be applied concretely to Latin American conditions, or in other words, that the problem with applying Lenin's prescriptions lies simply in the fact that the