Engels (and Marx) on the colonial question (and on the role primacy of the colonised in the struggle): Ken Olende, ‘Engels on Colonialism: Ireland and the Agency of the Colonised’, Socialist History, 65, 2024, pp. 47-62 | settler colonial studies blog

Engels (and Marx) on the colonial question (and on the role primacy of the colonised in the struggle): Ken Olende, ‘Engels on Colonialism: Ireland and the Agency of the Colonised’, Socialist History, 65, 2024, pp. 47-62

15Aug24

Abstract: Frederick Engels’ 1856 tour of Ireland was key to his and Karl Marx’s political shift away from the idea that colonialism might have a progressive element. This article will examine how this relatively early experience, before the Great Indian Uprising of 1857, was part of a shift in Marx and Engels in relation to the agency of oppressed peoples in colonised countries in their own liberation. This replaced the idea that they should wait for help from an outside working class or the development of their own working class. As such it conceptualised capitalism as an interrelated world system.

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