Skip to content

Main Navigation

Historical Materialism
  • Blog
    • Articles
  • News
  • Journal
    • Issue
    • Instructions for authors
    • Guidelines Book Reviews
    • Online First Articles
  • Book Reviews
  • Book Series
  • Reading Guides
  • Interviews
  • Figures
  • Networks
  • Conferences
  • Media
    • Podcast
    • Broadcasts
  • About Us
  • Blog
    • Articles
  • News
  • Journal
    • Issue
    • Instructions for authors
    • Guidelines Book Reviews
    • Online First Articles
  • Book Reviews
  • Book Series
  • Reading Guides
  • Interviews
  • Figures
  • Networks
  • Conferences
  • Media
    • Podcast
    • Broadcasts
  • About Us
Layer 1

Author: Gregory Slack

Did Marx Defend Black Slavery?

Over the past 40 years a tradition of Marx interpretation has built up around a single passage concerning black slavery in an 1853 letter from Marx to Engels, in order to demonstrate that Marx’s support for emancipation was conditional on the level of ‘civilization’ attained by black slaves. I will argue that this interpretation, which

Newsletter Signup

Join HMNews

Subscribe to our newsletter to stay up-to-date with news, events, and publications in Critical Marxist Theory.

Historical Materialism is a Marxist journal, appearing four times a year, based in London. Founded in 1997 it asserts that, not withstanding the variety of its practical and theoretical articulations, Marxism constitutes the most fertile conceptual framework for analysing social phenomena, with an eye to their overhaul. In our selection of material we do not favour any one tendency, tradition or variant. Marx demanded the ‘Merciless criticism of everything that exists’: for us that includes Marxism itself.

  • Subscribe
  • Contact
  • Submissions
Layer 1
2025 © Historical Materialism | Manufactured by Sociality