The party intellectual and the modern Prometheus

Augusto Bunge’s “socialist ideal”

Abstract

This article analyzes the proposals of Augusto Bunge, intellectual and party representative of Argentinian socialism, concerning the “ideal” of socialism as a historical mission for the regeneration of humanity and its conception as a new religion. It addresses how his studies, his political-cultural ties, and his partisan trajectory in the 1910s and 1920s allow him to be identified as an exponent of the sacralization of modern politics. The perspective adopted combines the intellectual history of socialism, its local influences, and receptions, with a study of trajectories from the perspective of the history of intellectuals. The main sources studied are Bunge’s greatest work (The Cult of Life), where he first condensed the arguments that he later displayed in partisan debates and in the translations of socialist thought that completed his thesis of socialism as religion.