Karl Marx from the global South

Karl Marx desde el Sur global

In this article, we intend to explore the complex link between Karl Marx’s work and what we call the Global South (once known as the Third World). By focusing on the relationship Marx maintained with the non-European world and the colonial, peripheral, dependent societies subdued to Westernized impositions, we discuss and challenge the mainstream narrative prevailing in more than a few schools. To do so, we do not only approach the little explored writings by an unknown Marx. In tandem with this, we take a look of various caricatures, whether those of Isaiah Berlin and Karl Popper, widely disseminated in the Anglo-Saxon circuit; or those of Kaustky, Bernstein, Bebel or Ebert, largely extended in the European social democracy arena (from the early twentieth century to the present day). In both cases, a “totalitarian, colonialist and Eurocentric” Marx is made up and constructed — whether in favor of or against. An completely Westernised fictional character, today recycled by counterinsurgent foundations and NGOs for propaganda purposes, though with little or no documentary basis.