Anticolonialismo e antirracismo em Marx

Abstract

The work presented here aims to analyze the texts and concepts developed by Karl Marx on the connection between the capitalist mode of production, colonialism, and modern racism. It is sustained in the development of the work that Marx was not a thinker oblivious to these questions, nor did he even treat them with carelessness, since, in his general analysis of capitalism, both colonialism and racism appear as central elements that served the process of accumulation and capital expansion. It is argued that the Marxian materialist dialectic, as it is the author's method of analysis and exposition, must also be the sediment for the proper reading of his work. This perspective is connected to two notions: the Marxian dialectic is, as a Theory that leads to a practice, the method that lays bare the oppressions caused by capitalism as well as provides the best understanding of the historically posited capital subject, and of the presupposed humanity, this presupposition is fundamental to reflect on a human society free from oppression. It is sustained in the course of the work how Marx identified, in his main work, Capital, colonialism as an essential part of the process of primitive accumulation, without which capital would not have developed or even expanded. Colonialism was already identified by Marx as violence and, for this reason, an anti colonialist stance was already presented in Capital. From an open dialogue between Marx and Silvia Federici, primitive accumulation, a process sustained by colonialism, will also be treated as a process that reproduced oppressions, including racial oppression. Here it will be highlighted that the link between capitalism, colonialism, and modern racism, highlighted in the 20th century by Césaire and Fanon, also appeared in Marx's work. Though the German thinker did not develop a general theory of racism, he already identified that capital had appropriated this oppression, evident in the phenomenon of Reification, in order to continue its accumulation process. It is concluded that, in the historical moment of capital's domination, the anti-colonialist and anti-racist struggle is also the anti-capitalist struggle.