Karl Marx and the struggle against black slavery

Abstract

This article explores Karl Marx’s interpretation of on key categories to understand the outbreak the Civil War in the United State between 1860 and 1865, namely the slavery and racism present as driving elements of that international conflict and explain how such categories still intend tensions the agenda of black in United States. At a time when anti-racist struggles echo with greater intensity, the text an opportunity to analyze as the contribution to the debate on racial issues involving both the United States and Brazil. For this and in an interdisciplinary methodological perspective, two authors are essential in this task to broaden the understanding racial phenomenon, Karl Marx and Frederick Engels (1974), since both authors wrote, each in his own way, about that war. We will highlight the case of Virginia, as it provides a connection between the slave-owning past described by Marx and the current American ethnic crisis. Thus, the legacy of the American Civil War influences disparate political, ethnic, legal, and mental phenomena in the lives of black people.