Although centered on Recabarren, this book is not a biography, nor does it approach him as a “great man,” but, rather as an “organic intellectual” of the working class. Recabarren’s intellectual output was as much the product of his individual effort as of the enlightened working-class environment where he grew up and worked his entire life. Without denying the importance of his considerable leadership, it was his written works that I studied as fundamental for the advancement of the Chilean working class.

In so doing, I identified the working-class organization and the working-class press as the major areas that Recabarren entrusted with the civilizing and educational role. Recabarren thought that the working-class organization should be an educational vehicle as well as a site in which education should take place. The working-class press should function as educator of the working class and as propagandist of the new theories. The main role of the working-class press was to educate the workers, first, as to their role in capitalism, then as to what they must do towards their emancipation, and finally to take control of their circumstances and prepare to take over production and the state. Without the working-class press, the organizations would not prosper.