Universality, Necessity, and Progress: Marx and the Problem of History

To offer a compelling critique of the present, critical theory needs an account of capitalism that foregrounds its interrelation with the ongoing legacies of colonialism, imperialism, and slavery. To serve as a resource for such an account, Marx’s critique of capitalism and his theory of history need to be disentangled. This analysis revisits the problems of universality, necessity, and progress in Marx’s work in order to show how Marx’s consistently dialectical and critical account of capitalist modernity can be emancipated from the historicist framework that undergirds it.