Postcolonial Theory

Marxism and Anti-Imperial Struggles

Variants of Karl Marx's theory of capital, which was developed and popularized during the height of the colonial period, were foundational frameworks for critiquing colonial oppression during direct rule and after it ended. Marxist theories could be applied con-textually in different regions yet also provided universal concepts, which could unite various peoples around issues of not only their material, economic exploitation but also the social and cultural forms of oppression. The success of communist revolutions in Russia (1922) and then China (1949) helped to provide global leadership and support for socialist resistance groups in various colonial settings. Other anti-imperialist networks of support were formed across the Atlantic between African, African-American, and African-Caribbean intellectuals and resistance groups, as seen in the Negritude and pan-African movements of the early to mid-twentieth century. The cultural turn in Western Marxism during this historical period was thus also being considered and developed in the colonial and postcolonial “peripheries.” Many twentieth-century anti-imperial theorists and leaders in the developing, or third, world were influenced by a combination of Marxism and a nationalism, which at least in part aimed to restore and renew aspects of indigenous culture, that had been repressed or marginalized during colonial times. These leaders included Che Guevara and Fidel Castro in Cuba, Leopold Senghor in Senegal, Kwame Nkrumah in Ghana, Frantz Fanon in Algeria, Ho Chi Minh in Vietnam, and Jomo Kenyatta in Kenya to name but a few.

As many liberationist movements discovered soon after their state independence was granted, however, the end of political subjugation to external powers did not necessarily equal economic freedom. In most postcolonial societies, enduring neocolonialism by indirect, or direct, Western control over local and international business and finance was evident. A number of different theoretical approaches to understanding this continuing inequality were advocated. As Robert Young argues, on the left, theories of dependency and world-systems predominated, with a debt to Marxism, while on the right, Keynesianism, monetarism, and, currently, neoliberalism have been put forward. Dependency and world-systems theories, through various case studies, have sought to illustrate the ways in which Western economic growth has been achieved by a process of deindustrializing many developing countries. Periphery economies are kept in an underdeveloped state, so these countries are primarily suppliers of raw commodities and cheap labor, whereas substantial profits tend to be confined to developed metropoles and small numbers of periphery elites.

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