Is Oscar Del Barco a perverse man?

This article seeks to contextualise the ‘Heideggerian’ or destructive critique against Lenin in the 1980s. The hypothesis I develop is based on Oscar Del Barco’s critique against Leninism and on the theoretical moments in which this critique has been resisted by other Latin American thinkers. Del Barco is one of the leading philosophers in Latin America. His extraordinary effectiveness reconstructs the history and thought of the Bolshevik leader in order to abandon the leader’s enlightened programme. I argue that the demonisation of Lenin and the complex relationship with a demand for the authenticity of the Bolsheviks’ original project leads the philosopher to omit the birth or the genealogy of extreme liberalism or neoliberalism. The demonisation of Lenin and the omission of the historical context in which he writes makes Del Barco’s philosophy a propitious place for the neutralisation of the relationship between politics and emancipatory programmes. This hypothesis is confronted with the resistance of authors such as Ernesto Laclau, Chantal Mouffe, García Linera, Bolívar Echeverría, Dominico Losurdo, Marta Harnecker and Tomás Moulian, among others. The article concludes by affirming that the Leninism reloaded by these authors constitutes a ‘toolbox’ for thinking the conflictive and never-finished relationship between politics and emancipation.