How (not) to Decolonize Marx/ism

Since the late 1970s, postcolonial theorizing and decolonizing activisms have directed attention to a taken-for-granted Eurocentrism in Marx/ism. Since the early 2000s, the explosion in available texts, published in original languages and in English translation, has enabled these critiques to develop. Scholars of Marx and activists within Marxism have sometimes responded defensively with apologetics. In this article we analyze an exemplar of this dogmatic and moralizing genre, showing how it deploys three tropes that commonly structure intellectual biography and scholarly commentary. These three story-telling devices are: projection, passivity, and hermeticism. Shifting gear, and proceeding from an agent-oriented reading strategy, we then offer an alternative theoretical practice. In our recovering, re-thinking, and rereading of the relatively neglected and undervalued Part VIII of Capital, Vol. 1, we argue that Marx/ism represents an important ally and inspiration for decolonizers. That demonstration resets the terms through which Eurocentrism supposedly makes sense.