ANIBAL PONCE, INTELLIGENCE AND HUMANISM BETWEEN TWO WORLDS

Abstract

Aníbal Norberto Ponce (1898-1938) had a short but prolific life. As Cinthia Wanschelbaum pointed out, he was born short after The Communist Manifesto was translated into Spanish and twenty years after The Capital arrived to Argentina. Slow-moving marxist works during Ponce´s life illustrate that the author of Bourgeois Humanism and Proletarian Humanism is an example of how some intellectuals “became” revolutionary coming from the positivist and liberal tradition of his mentors, and of a significant part of Argentinian intelligentsia. Ponce studied medicine and after that psychology career, lived the hectic years of University Reform and was a committed fighter against fascism not only with his writings but also promoting and leading institutions such as Free Collegue for Advenced Studies (CLES) and Intellectuals, Artist, Journalist and Writers Asociation (AIAPE), opened in 1935 and closed by the military coup thar year. In the present work we review some of his main contributions to marxist thought.