Paper short abstract:

By examining how members of the political organisation of the Egyptian Revolutionary Socialists utilise Marxism for their daily theory and practice, despite state repressions and exile, I highlight that academic debates must center the agency of social actors from the global South.

Paper long abstract:

Within the academic spheres of postcolonial theory, much has been written on how Marxism can be drawn on and, what the relations between Eurocentrism and Marxism are. Yet often arguments of the incompatibility of Marxism and postcolonial theories, let alone the “postcolonial world”, ignore the frictions and differences within both canons. In practice, Marxism remains a core analytical framework for many emancipatory movements in the global South on a daily basis.

It is through agency of social actors in the global South that Marxism does travel, is translated, (re)read, debated, and embedded. As alternatives to capitalism and a better world are strived for globally, I focus on how activists from the global south utilise their anti-capitalist critique as a framework for their political practice on the ground while producing knowledge beyond Western academia.

By specifically focusing on how members of the political organisation of the Egyptian Revolutionary Socialists grapple with Marxism, I examine how debates on eurocentrism, dogmatism, decoloniality and beyond are engaged with and translated into theory and practice by Marxist social actors from the global South themselves. Through my ethnographic field research with Egyptian Revolutionary Socialists in exile and the underground, I highlight that much of the academic postcolonial debates on Marxism and Eurocentrism often sideline the agency of social actors from the global South, their theoretical and practical endeavours and own modes of knowledge production. This, I argue, should be given much more weight in a contemporary understanding of Postcoloniality, the Left and the crises we face.