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

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.