ABSTRACT
One of the most enduring debates in contemporary radical thought is whether Marxism is overdetermined by Eurocentric assumptions and perspectives or whether it is a universal theory that can account of the realities of the non-Western world as well as of subaltern groups within the capitalist metropole that are not reducible to traditional class-reductionist analyses. This chapter will trace the history of this debate through three focal points: first, by delineating pivotal developments in Marx’s thought as he obtained a fuller understanding of the indigenous and precapitalist societies of his own time in the last decades of his life; second, by discussing the contradictory development of post-Marx Marxism during the Second and Third Internationals, when intense debates were waged over how to extend Marxism beyond its initial European framework; and third, by responding to recent Marxist scholarship which seeks to engage the issues raised by postcolonial, feminist, and queer studies while seeking to reconstitute the Marxian critique of capital and reified social relations for the twenty-first century.
