Marx, Marxism, and the problem of eurocentrism

• Thomas Jeffrey MILEY University of Cambridge

Keywords: Marx, Marxism, Eurocentrism, Colonialism, Decoloniality

Abstract

This article sets out to review and evaluate the charge of Eurocentrism frequently levelled against Marx and Marxism.  The essay begins with an assessment of Esteban Torres’s recent attempt to at least partially acquit Marx and Marxism of this charge.  It relates Torres’s discussion of the problem to broader polemics surrounding the topic.  It hones in on debates about Marx’s evolving views on European colonialism, and its relationship to capitalism.  It pays special attention to the postcolonial critiques advanced by Edward Said and Dipesh Chakrabarty, as well as to more recent decolonial critiques advanced by Walter Mignolo and Ramón Grosfoguel.  It also considers Marxist responses to these.  It concludes with a revindication of the contributions of heterodox “Third World Marxists” such as Frantz Fanon and Aimé Césaire, arguing that what is at work in such figures thinking from and for the Global South is not a logic of diffusion, imitation, and mimicry, but rather, can be more accurately portrayed as translation, reinvention, and creative appropriation.

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