On Colonies, Industrial Monopoly, and the Working Class Movement

by Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, Zak Cope (Introduction), Aleksander Radenkovic (Introduction)

Overview

Originally compiled and edited by the Communist Working Circle (CWC), in

1972, this is a republished collection of excerpts from the corpus of

Marx and Engels. These show the evolution of Marx and Engels's ideas on

the nascent labor aristocracy and the complicating factors of

colonialism and chauvinism, with a focus on the British Empire of their

time.

This edition of "On Colonies" includes a substantial introduction by

Marxist economist Zak Cope and former CWC member Torkil Lauesen,

centering these concepts in theory and history. Cope and Lauesen show

how Marx and Engels's initial belief that capitalism would extend

seamlessly around the globe in the same form was proven wrong by events,

as instead worldwide imperialism spread capitalism as a polarizing

process, not only between the bourgeoisie and the working class, but

also as a division between an imperialist center and an exploited

periphery. This fundamental contradiction gave capitalism completely new

conditions of growth and accounts for its tragic longevity.

Both foundational and indispensable, "On Colonies" provides a useful

introduction to "Third Worldist" analysis of global capitalism, tracing

its roots back to Marxism's earliest works.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781894946797
Publisher:	Kersplebedeb Publishing
Publication date:	06/01/2016
Pages:	160
Product dimensions:	5.00(w) x 5.90(h) x 0.40(d)

About the Author

Born in Trier, Germany in 1818, Karl Marx was a philosopher, journalist,

economist, historian and co-founder of scientific socialism with his

lifelong friend and collaborator Friedrich Engels. He died in London,

England in 1883 leaving behind an enduring revolutionary legacy.

Born in Barmen, Prussia on 28 November, 1820, Friedrich Engels was a

philosopher, social scientist, journalist and businessman. After Marx,

Lenin considered him to have been "the finest scholar and teacher of the

modern proletariat in the whole civilised world." Engels died in London

on 5 August, 1895.

Zak Cope is the author of Divided World Divided Class: Global Political

Economy and the Stratification of Labour Under Capitalism and co-editor

of the Palgrave Encyclopedia of Imperialism and Anti-Imperialism with

Prof. Immanuel Ness.

Torkil Lauesen has since the late sixties been an anti-imperialist

activist and writer. He is a former member of the Communist Working

Circle in Denmark, and later the Manifest-Communist Workgroup (M-KA). In

1989 he was arrested and subsequently sentenced to 10 years in prison,

for his part in a series of robberies in which several million dollars

were expropriated and diverted to Third World anti-imperialist struggles.