Classical Marxism neglected imperialism in its theory of capitalist development

Evidence

Stuart was always clear that the major problem with traditional Marxist theory’s account of the development of capitalism was its relative neglect of the question of imperialism and colonialism. As he puts it in “Cultural Identity and Diaspora,” the missing (third) term is quite particularly his own: “the Caribbean as the Third New World … the empty land … where strangers from every other part of the globe collided … the primal scene where the fateful/fatal encounter was staged between Africa and the West.” The account that Stuart gives here of the traumas of his own familial life in the “pigmentocracy” of Jamaican skin tones, where the body is painfully inserted into crisscrossing hierarchies of class, race, and color, movingly demonstrates how structural conditions of colonization and exploitation come to be lived as personal dramas. — Stuart Hall, Essential Essays, Volume 2, 486

Categorization

• XREF: Direct bridge to how Islamophobia readings treat race as a colonial-epoch formation; the ‘Third New World’ framing connects to Hall’s later anti-essentialist identity work. — connects to: Marxist categories still explain contemporary multinational and media capitalism — Jean-François Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition: A Report on…, 48; Lenin defined imperialism as the monopoly stage of capitalism, making war endemic to it — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market: Human Rights…, 254; Discourse-first theory redefines imperialism as a wealth relation rather than class structure — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory: Classes, Nations, Literatures, 182
• SHARE: For a colleague working on Marxist theories of race or Caribbean postcolonial studies.