EconPapers    
Economics at your fingertips  
 

The Africana paradigm in Capital: the debts of Karl Marx to people of African descent

Biko Agozino

Review of African Political Economy, 2014, vol. 41, issue 140, 172-184

Abstract: This article will attempt an original interpretation of Capital (Marx, K. 1867. Capital: A Critique of Political Economy , Vol. 1. Marx/Engels Internet Archive, 1995, 1999. (http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx) and other major works of Karl Marx to demonstrate that people of African descent are central to the discourse of Marx, contrary to widespread misconceptions by critics who attribute a Eurocentric orientation to Marx because of the accident of his birth in Europe and by allies because of his scholarly activism in European working-class politics. The paper argues that the earlier work of Marx and Engels ([1847] 1969. The Manifesto of the Communist Party in Marx/Engels Selected Works , Vol. One, pp. 98-137. Moscow: Progress Publishers), especially the Manifesto of the Communist Party , may have misled critics into believing that the history of all hitherto existing society alluded to by Marx and Engels was exclusively European history. On the contrary, there are hundreds of references to the 'Negro' in Capital , not as part of a peripheral or superficial concern relating to the issue of class exploitation in Europe, but as a foundational model for explaining and predicting the ending of the exploitation of the working class globally. The paper concludes that this reading adds credence to Africana Studies paradigms that privilege critical, Africa-centred scholar-activism as an important contribution to original theoretical, methodological and policy innovations.

Date: 2014
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/03056244.2013.872613 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:revape:v:41:y:2014:i:140:p:172-184

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/CREA20

DOI: 10.1080/03056244.2013.872613

Access Statistics for this article

Review of African Political Economy is currently edited by Graham Harrison, Branwen Gruffydd Jones, Claire Mercer, Nicolas Pons-Vignon, Aurelia Segatti and Ray Bush

More articles in Review of African Political Economy from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().

 
Page updated 2025-03-20
Handle: RePEc:taf:revape:v:41:y:2014:i:140:p:172-184