Former Bolivian vice president Álvaro García Linera is one of Latin America’s most distinguished intellectuals, and one of the region’s most experienced political actors. During his fourteen years at the helm of Bolivia’s plurinational government, he was responsible not only for designing much of Evo Morales’s political strategy but also for providing the theoretical foundations for the governing MAS (Movement Toward Socialism) party.

During the 1980s, García Linera and others led the Marxist Túpac Katari Guerrilla Army; due to his political activity, he would spend much of his formative intellectual years behind bars, serving a five-year sentence for alleged involvement in an armed insurrection against the government of Jaime Paz Zamora. While serving time, García Linera dedicated himself to the study of Marx and Marxism and wrote his now classic Forma Valor Y Forma Comunidad.

García Linera’s intellectual influences are varied and eclectic: Marxism and indigenismo, the autonomist thought of Toni Negri and the democratic socialism of Nicos Poulantzas. By many accounts, García Linera is one of the Left’s most original thinkers — Latin American or otherwise.