By Michael Wongsam
Part 1: Introduction
The history of global capitalism is inseparable from the histories of slavery, colonialism, and settler colonialism. From the plantations of the Americas to the extractive economies of Africa and Asia, the development of the capitalist world system — which expanded from Europe — has relied on the expropriation of land, labour, and resources outside of Europe. Marxist theory provides a critical framework for understanding how these processes were not incidental but central to the accumulation of capital in the capitalist core. First of all, slavery was central to the rise of industrial capitalism in Europe, with profits from the Atlantic slave trade and plantation economies helping to finance Britain’s industrial development.
Eric Williams [1] has shown that wealth from slave plantations flowed into British banking, shipping, insurance, and manufacturing, while industrial sectors like textiles, metal goods and Shipbuilding depended heavily on colonial trade. Slavery was therefore part of a broader capitalist system, and integral to it, rather than a pre-capitalist relic. Racism arose as a part of the social and ideological superstructure resultant from the insertion of slavery into the base. These matters are discussed further in later articles.
Marxism distinguishes between classical colonialism, which reorganised existing societies to serve the capitalist market, and settler colonialism, which involved the dispossession and elimination of indigenous populations for the benefit of settler societies.
In particular, colonialism is described as a necessary process through which the bourgeoisie expands its markets and compels all societies to adopt capitalist modes of production [2]. Commenting on the barbarity and despotism of British rule in India – although stressing that it was not any more nor any less so than that of the Dutch in Java – the pre-existing Asiatic mode of production which required large scale public works conducted by a centralised government was destroyed by the colonisers and threw the society backwards. England then drove Indian cotton from the European market, and introduced British cotton goods into the Indian market.
Therefore, Indian agriculture and textiles were destroyed and replaced by the cultivation of tea and opium for Europe and China respectively [3]. Therefore, colonial and slave-based systems were crucial to industrial capitalist development. ”Slavery is an economic category of the highest importance. … Without slavery, you have no cotton; without cotton, you have no modern industry” [4]. In other words, the oppression of Black people, and the racism that is its social expression, are not ancillary features of capitalism, but are fundamental to its genesis and development.
Following the economic slump of the 1870’s another expansionary wave accompanied the transformation of capitalism into its further incarnation – imperialism. Africa was partitioned following the deliberations at the Conference of Berlin, 1884-5, and West Asia was partitioned as a result of the collapse of the Ottoman Empire through the Sykes-Picot Agreement. But the globalisation of capitalism produced the globalisation of the class struggle, announced by the Russian revolution, the retention of state power by the Bolsheviks, and the establishment of the Comintern. From the outset, and in contrast to the approach taken by the Second International, the Comintern at its second Congress proceeded according to the centrality of the national and colonial question:
“…the Communist Party should not place the main emphasis in the national question on abstract and formal principles, but in the first place on an exact evaluation of the historically given and above all economic milieu. Secondly it should emphasise the explicit separation of the interests of the oppressed classes, of the toilers, of the exploited, from the general concept of the national interest, which means the interests of the ruling class. Thirdly it must emphasise the equally clear division of the oppressed, dependent nations which do not enjoy equal rights from the oppressing, exploiting, privileged nations, as a counter to the bourgeois democratic lie which covers over the colonial and financial enslavement of the vast majority of the world’s total population, by a tiny minority of the richest and most advanced capitalist countries, that is characteristic of the epoch of finance capital and imperialism” [5].
The class struggle, now taking on a global character, was explicitly referred to in Lenin’s Address To The Second All-Russia Congress Of Communist Organisations Of The Peoples Of The East [6].
“It is becoming quite clear that the socialist revolution which is impending for the whole world will not be merely the victory of the proletariat of each country over its own bourgeoisie. That would be possible if revolutions came easily and swiftly. We know that the imperialists will not allow this, that all countries are armed against their domestic Bolshevism and that their one thought is how to defeat Bolshevism at home. That is why in every country a civil war is brewing in which the old socialist compromisers are enlisted on the side of the bourgeoisie. Hence, the socialist revolution will not be solely, or chiefly, a struggle of the revolutionary proletarians in each country against their bourgeoisie — no, it will be a struggle of all the imperialist-oppressed colonies and countries, of all dependent countries, against international imperialism. Characterising the approach of the world social revolution in the Party Programme we adopted last March, we said that the civil war of the working people against the imperialists and exploiters in all the advanced countries is beginning to be combined with national wars against international imperialism. “
What this passage describes is the fact that the class struggle has become a global struggle, and this global struggle was inaugurated by the Russian revolution. The position was further elaborated and updated in Theses on the Revolutionary Movement in the Colonies and Semi-Colonies at the Sixth Congress of the Comintern [7].
In a similar fashion, The Comintern addressed the so called ’negro question’ in the United States by treating it as a special case of the national and colonial question. This approach was outlined in Resolution on the Negro Question in the United States (Sixth Congress, 1928) [8], and again in Resolution on the Negro Question in the United States (Seventh Congress, 1931) [9]. As a matter of fact, the idea of Black nationhood — Black people constituting a nation within a nation — has a history going as far back as the 1830s — ”many Black writers of the 1930s and 1940s embraced the concept of nation as an appeal for African American political autonomy comparable to the demands for justice and independence of the colonized around the globe” [10].
W. E. B. DuBois in an essay written in 1935 entitled “A Negro Nation within the Nation” argued that African Americans form a distinct cultural and political entity within the United States [11].
The global class struggle, and the role of the Russian revolution in bringing it forth has been vindicated by subsequent history [12]:
“It was the October Revolution that made possible the Chinese Revolution and the rise of modern China, the Vietnamese revolution, the Cuban revolution and therefore the other successful struggles which smashed to pieces the vile colonial Empires which had controlled the overwhelming majority of the world’s peoples for three centuries. It was fear of the spread of the overthrow of capitalism into Western Europe after World War II, itself the product of the October Revolution, which forced West European capitalism to grant the welfare state — a welfare state the population of Western Europe is now having to increasingly fight to defend given that the direct threat in Europe from the consequences of the October Revolution no longer exists. It was the fear of the spread of the overthrow of capitalism internationally, of the consequences of the October Revolution, and of the international discrediting of the US, which was the decisive international pressure which aided the African- American population of the US in their struggle to destroy the US Jim Crow system and launch the modern struggle for civil rights. It was the material aid from the Soviet Union and the People’s Republic of China, both products of the October revolution, which allowed the defeat first of France and then the United States in Vietnam — the event whose consequences in the US and internationally are felt to this day.”
Similarly, Samir Amin’s work on Africa [13] highlights how the continent’s underdevelopment is not a product of internal failings but of systemic subordination and dependence on the metropolitan core.
However, Marxism distinguishes between what has become called colonialism, and settler colonialism, which predates capitalism [14], and which establishes the racial basis which informed the expansion of capitalism to become a global system comprising an essentially ’white’ dominating metropolitan core with an essentially ’non-white’ subordinate periphery. This global structure lends a racial aspect to the global class struggle. These matters have been extensively discussed by John Bellamy Foster [15].
The present series of articles summarises colonialism, settler colonialism, and neocolonialism from a Marxist perspective, examining in particular settler colonialism in the United States, Algeria, and Israel, and colonialism while situating contemporary Africa within the ongoing dynamics of global capitalism. There are obviously major omissions regarding Latin America and Asia, which deserve attention in their own right. These omissions regrettably detract from the Discussion.
The Black liberation struggle — that is the struggle against the oppression of the people of non-European origin by the people of European origin — plus the struggle for liberation and Self-Determination, and the class struggle are clearly linked. Indeed it is possible to correlate periods of upsurge in class struggle with periods of upsurge in the Black struggle. For instance between the formation of the Second International through the revolutionary wave of the turn of the twentieth century to the isolation and encirclement of the fledgling Soviet State it is possible to trace a simultaneous rising and then descending arc of Black struggle. For instance
● The Indian National Congress was founded in 1885 — the first modern nationalist movement to emerge in the British Empire in Africa and Asia, became a pivotal participant in the Indian Independence Movement, with over 15 million members and over 70 million participants in its struggle against British colonial rule.
● The Furen Literary Society which was founded in Hong Kong in 1890; the Revive China Society founded in Honolulu in 1894; etc. were formed mainly outside of China by Sun Yat-sen, and came together in the Revolutionary Alliance, the predecessor of the KMT, to force the Xinhai revolution in 1911.
● The Philippine Revolution began in August 1896.
● The First Pan-African Conference was held in London from 23 to 25 July 1900 [16]
● The Indonesian independence movement began in 1908
● The ANC was founded in 1912.
● The UNIA was founded in Jamaica, 1914 by Marcus Garvey.
Then after a period of downturn there is simultaneously an expansion of revolutionary struggle during and following the second world war together with a renewal of the Black struggle in the form of the colonial revolution and the struggle against racism and for civil rights. In fact there was significant overlap between the colonial revolution and the socialist revolution in a number of important theatres including China, Vietnam, and Cuba. Also notable were
● The Vietminh was founded in 1941.
● 5th Pan-African Conference held 1945 in Manchester.
● The Arab Socialist Ba’ath Party was founded on 7 April 1947.
● The Non-aligned movement was founded at the Bandung conference in 1950.
● The Algerian NLF was founded in 1954
● The broadening of the strategy of the civil rights movement to embrace direct action following the Supreme Court ruling in Brown vs. Board of Education (1954) with the Montgomery Bus Boycott (1955) culminating with the Selma to Montgomery marches.
● TANU (Tanganyika African National Union) [17] was founded in 1954.
● MPLA (People’s Movement for the Liberation of Angola) [18] was founded in 1961.
● ZAPU (Zimbabwe African People’s Union) [19] was founded in 1961.
● FRELIMO (Mozambique Liberation Front) [20] was founded in 1962.
● ZANU (Zimbabwe African National Union) [21] was founded in 1963.
● The PLO (Palestine Liberation Organisation) [22] was founded in 1964.
● Founding of the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense [23] in 1966.
Also, the fact that in this period the Soviet Union was able to break out of its pre-war isolation, emerging immeasurably stronger, meant that the US had to give large concessions both at home and abroad in order to contain the socialist advance. This created further openings for the advance of the colonial revolution and the Black liberation struggle and in turn bolstered the prestige of the Soviet State.
These themes are discussed in further detail in later articles in this series.
Notes
1. Williams, Eric; Capitalism and Slavery; The University of North Carolina Press, 1994
2. Marx, Karl; Engels, Frederick; The Communist Manifeto; https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/download/pdf/Manifesto.pdf
3. Marx, Karl; The British Rule in India; https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1853/06/25.htm
4. Marx, Karl; Capital ; Volume III, Chapter 20; https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1894-c3/ch20.htm
5. Lenin, V.I; Theses on the National and Colonial Question; https://revolutionsnewsstand.com/2023/02/11/theses-on-the-national-and-colonial-question-drafted-by-lenin-from-the-proceedings-of-the-second-congress-of-the-communist-international-publishing-office-of-the-communist-international-new-york/
6. Lenin, V I; Address To The Second All-Russia Congress Of Communist Organisations Of The Peoples Of The East; https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1919/nov/22.htm
7. Theses on the Revolutionary Movement in the Colonies and Semi-Colonies; Sixth World Congress; 1928; https://revolutionsnewsstand.com/2025/01/13/utionary-movement-in-the-colonies-and-semi-colonies-from-workers-library-publishers-new-york-1928/
8. Resolution on the Negro Question in the United States by the Political Secretariat, Communist International; October 26, 1928. https://revolutionsnewsstand.com/2025/09/04/question-in-the-united-states-by-the-political-secretariat-communist-international-october-26-1928/
9. Resolution on the Negro Question in the United States by the E.C.C.I. from Communist International. Vol. 8 No. 2. February 1, 1931.https://revolutionsnewsstand.com/2024/08/15/resoquestion-in-the-united-states-by-the-e-c-c-i-from-communist-international-vol-8-no-2-february-1-1931/
10. Pinderhughes, Charles; Toward a New Theory of Internal Colonialism; Socialism and Democracy, 25(1), 235256. https://doi.org/10.1080/08854300.2011.559702
11. Du Bois, W. E. B.; A Negro Nation Within the Nation; Current History (1916-1940) 42, no. 3 (1935): 26570. http://www.jstor.org/stable/45335107
12. Jackson, Brian; The October Revolution created today’s world ; Socialist Action, November 6th, 2017; https://www.socialistaction.net/2017/11/06/the-october-revolution-created-todays-world/
13. Amin, Samir; Underdevelopment and Dependence in Black Africa: Origins and Contemporary Forms; Cambridge University Press, 1972.
14. In a later article a modern form of settler colonialism — that of the Zionist state of Israel — is discussed, and which must be understood as coming into being as a distinct project of modern capitalism.
15. Bellamy Foster, John; Imperialism and White Settler Colonialism in Marxist Theory; https://monthlyreview.org/articles/imperialism-and-white-settler-colonialism-in-marxist-theory/
16. It was subsequently followed up by conferences in 1919 in Paris, 1921 in London, 1923 in London, 1927 in New York. Another such event did not take place until 1945 in Manchester, 1974 in Dar es Salaam and 1994 in Kampala
17. See Tanzania and its Support of Southern African Liberation Movements; South African History Online; https://sahistory.org.za/article/tanzania-and-its-support-southern-african-liberation-movements . See also Nyerere, Julius; The Arusha Declaration and TANU’s Policy on Socialism and Self-Reliance; Marxist Internet Archive, February 5th, 1967; https://www.marxists.org/subject/africa/nyerere/1967/arusha-declaration.htm
18. Witeck, John; Angola — Where the Vanguards Failed, Part II Angola — MPLA’s Victory Spurs African Liberation; Marxist Internet Archive, https://www.marxists.org/history/erol/ncm-4/hus-angola-2.htm
19. Nyandoro, George; ZAPU — Zimbabwe; Interview with George Nyandoro General Secretary of ZAPU, 1973; https://africanactivist.msu.edu/recordFiles/210-849-30833/CW-LSM-Zim-Nyandoro-opt.pdf
20. See A Look Back at the Past, To Understand the Present: The Founding of FRELIMO; Marxist Internet Archive; https://www.marxists.org/subject/africa/frelimo/founding-frelimo.pdf
21. Sithole, Ndababaningi Rev; ZANU Policy Statement, November 1963; https://www.marxists.org/subject/africa/zanu/zanu-policy-statement.pdf
22. See Al Jazeera’s archive of articles at https://remix.aljazeera.com/aje/PalestineRemix/search.html?search=plo
23. See Black Panthers; Marxist Internet Archive; https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/workers/black-panthers/
The above is the first part of Michael Wongsam’s article, entitled “Marxism, Black Liberation and the Global Class Struggle”. It was originally published here on the For Liberation, Against Racism blog.
The full article, “Marxism, Black Liberation and the Global Class Struggle” is available publicly here.
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