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Hello, you're very welcome to Long Reads, a Jacobin podcast where we look in depth at

political topics and thinkers. My name is Daniel Finn. On the Features Editor,

here at Jacobin, and I'll be presenting the show. Critics of Karl Marx claimed that he was

incapable of recognizing forms of oppression that aren't linked to a narrow understanding of

class. Kevin Andersen challenged that view in his book, Marx at the Margins, on nationalism,

ethnicity, and non-western societies. Based on a careful reading of Marx's full body of work,

it shows that Marx was far more attuned to questions of race and ethnicity than his critics would

have you believe. Edward Said accused Karl Marx of expressing a Eurocentric and orientalist

perspective in his articles on the British conquest of India. Was that criticism justified

in whole or in part? I think it's justified, but only in part.

Edward Said made two charges. One is that Marx expressed ethnocentric views and condescension

toward Asian societies and peoples, and the other is that Marx viewed the historical

progress in terms of emanating from Europe and shaking up Asia. Those are the two charges.

We can see evidence for this criticism in the Communist Manifesto in 1848 where Marx and Engels

write about bourgeois colonialism goes into places in Asia that it batters down Chinese walls and

forces these most barbarian nations to submit to civilization. This kind of language.

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