Abstract

NECOECHEA G., Gerardo. Revueltas, Lombardo y la clase obrera. Cuicuilco [online]. 2015, vol.22, n.64, pp.11-42. ISSN 0185-1659.

This essay discusses the ideas of José Revueltas and Vicente Lombardo Toledano, two of the most important Mexican Marxists, regarding the working class. As Marxists, both men agreed in ascribing the leading role in the revolution to the working class, and both considered Mexican workers to have exhibited a weak class consciousness. A mature class consciousness would not result from experience but would have to be injected from outside the subject: Revueltas thought workers needed the Communist Party to attain it, whereas Lombardo considered the State created, through legislation, the position workers were meant to occupy. For Lombardo Toledano, the weakness of the working class would be overcome by the leadership of the right-wing post-Revolutionary government, thus bringing about the independence of the labor movement. Revueltas, for his part, thought the dependent nature of the whole class could not be easily overcome, but his chronicles of workers' struggles opened up the possibility of examining experience in the process of class formation.

Keywords : working class; historiography; Marxism; Revueltas; Lombardo Toledano.