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But the contradictions leading to a possible rejuvenation of the European Left have already
left their mark elsewhere: lvaro Garca Linera, vice-president to Bolivias Evo Morales,
was perhaps the first Marxist intellectual to sit in state power in the 21st century. His work
reflects a continued engagement with a unique political experiment in Bolivia, and can be
read, therefore, as a guide to a terrain on which some are trying to plow an eventual road to
socialism. It is the wager of this dossier that much can be learned by more closely
examining both Lineras theory and his political practice not only to understand the man
himself, but also, to understand the innovative political process from which he cannot be
separated, and which may portend something of the future for the electoral Left in other
parts of the world.
The Phantom, The Plebeian and the State: Grupo Comuna and
the Intellectual Career of lvaro Garca Linera | Peter Baker
In the year 1999, a collection of essays concerning the relevance of Karl
Marxs Communist Manifesto to the contemporary conjuncture in Bolivia was published. It
may have gone by unnoticed, were it not for the fact that its authors were about to become
the principal interpreters for the irruption of new social movements in the wake of a state
crisis that took place in Bolivia between the years of 2000 2005. What this group of
intellectuals were looking for, the project that would inaugurate their work, was no less
than a reinvention of the left capable of identifying new strategies appropriate for the
contemporary moment.
The Re-encounter of Indianismo and Marxism in the Work of lvaro Garca Linera
The Phantom, The Plebeian and the State: Grupo Comuna and the Intellectual
Career of lvaro Garca Linera