A fábula fala de ti, só que com outro nome! Colonialismo e escravidão no Livro I d’O capital

Karl Marx, in the first volume of Capital, points to the need to study modern colonial slavery in detail since it would reveal a world shaped according to the image of the bourgeoisie, establishing, thus, the colonial slavery as a structure able to reveal a truth about capitalism itself. Therefore, this article intends to understand how this could work. This is, then, an exercise to highlight aspects of Marxian investigation of the capitalist mode of production, considering the metropolis-colony relations. To do so, in addition to the reading of Capital, this article also draws on Marx’s writings on the Civil War in the United States, a theme that is present throughout Volume I. This comparative reading between these two Marx’s texts shows the functioning of this investigative procedure, which departs from the particular historical fact to extract truth concerning the general logic of capitalism.