A critique of decolonial ideology

The following text is the lecture given by the editorial group of the magazine 'To Dialytiko' as part of the three-day series of events "3 days on war, nationalism and other evils, October 24-26", organized by the group "RevDef" in the squat "Fabrika Yfanet".

The fascination of “decolonial theory” in a time of ideological confusion

In recent years, the discourse on “decolonization” has taken on a central role in academic circles and social movements and is presented as a new, radical language of emancipation. Its impact is undeniable. By providing a framework for critiquing the so-called “white,” “Western” gaze as a universal way of interpreting the world, this movement exerts a powerful appeal. Their term “decolonization” has become a catch-all term applicable to every area—from college curricula and museums to dietary habits and personal relationships—and promises to dismantle the oppressive structures left behind by colonialism.

However, it is crucial to make it clear from the outset that the concept of “decolonization” examined here should not be confused with the historical, political and military process of the collapse of colonial empires. This historical cycle, which included national liberation struggles and culminated in the formal independence of the former colonies as nation-states, was largely completed by the 1970s. In contrast, contemporary use of the term has taken on an almost exclusively metaphorical, cultural and epistemological meaning, which is the subject of this criticism.

The rise of this theory cannot be understood in isolation from its broader historical context. Its spread coincides with and is causally related to the weakening and decline of proletarian struggles and movements almost throughout the world. The weakening of proletarian theoretical and practical criticism was accompanied by the strengthening of geopolitical, ethnocultural, irrationalist and identity-based political tendencies and views that were already present within social struggles. Decolonial theory, as the epitome of this “ethnocultural turn” within the left and the anti-authoritarian milieu, is not just a new academic fad, but a symptom of a deep-rooted political defeat. Its conceptual origins lie in the “cultural turn” that swept the social sciences from the 1970s onwards – a change that was itself the theoretical expression of the decline of the old labor movement.

This shift from the social relations of (re)production to culture and knowledge systems as independent spheres forms the core of the criticism presented in this article. Decolonial theory explicitly eschews criticism of capitalist universality and replaces class struggle – the fundamental driving force of historical change arising from the contradictions of capitalism itself – with an “external impulse” from subjects who are culturally and geographically defined. In doing so, she applies rigid analytical oppositions (West/non-West, whiteness/non-whiteness) that oversimplify complex social realities and lead to reactionary positions.

Drawing on the critical analyzes of Neil Larsen and Ross Wolfe [1], we will attempt to address the crucial questions raised by the revdef comrades. We will endeavor to show that the decolonial turn, despite its radical self-representation, has negative consequences from the perspective of the development of an antagonistic movement against capital and the state and leads to reactionary political dead ends.

Part I: Neil Larsen’s critique of the “jargon of decoloniality”

At the heart of the Marxist critique of decolonial theory, as powerfully expressed in the work of Neil Larsen, is the exposure of a fundamental distortion: the replacement of the analysis of capitalism as the dominant mode of production with its description as a cultural project. Larsen's analysis, inspired by Adorno's The Jargon of Authenticity, focuses on the movement's leading exponent, Walter Mignolo, and deconstructs his theoretical framework, showing how he subordinates social and class relations to cultural and ethnic hierarchies and differences.

The “colonial power matrix” and the dehistoricization of colonialism

A central concept in Mignolo's thinking is the "colonial matrix of power" (CMP), a structure that was supposedly established in the 16th century and continues unchanged to this day, determining every aspect of modernity. According to this view, capitalism is only one of the manifestations of this matrix, the primary element of which is the racial hierarchy of the world population (white/European versus non-white/non-European). Colonialism is therefore not a historically defined phase of capitalist primordial accumulation, but rather an ongoing, almost metaphysical, ontological condition that determines modernity as a whole.

This step has two devastating consequences. First, it dehistoricizes colonialism as such. Instead of a concrete, violent process of integrating pre-capitalist societies into the world market and primitive accumulation, colonialism is transformed into a static, eternal structure of domination. This prevents any meaningful assessment of the actual anti-colonial struggles of the 20th century and their outcomes, since, according to the logic of the ‘CMP’, virtually nothing has changed as a result of formal decolonization. Second, capitalism as such becomes part of the cultural realm. It is no longer analyzed in terms of the exploitation of labor and the accumulation of capital, but as a cultural imposition, as “Westernization.” Criticism is no longer directed against the production conditions, but rather against “Eurocentric knowledge”. This shift away from material and social relations and conditions, away from the critique of political economy and the political and ideological forms of capital, towards culturalism and the realm of “knowledge/power” is a defining feature of decolonial thought.

The jargon of decoloniality as a cover for the actual deficit

Larsen points out that this theoretical unmasking of material reality is obscured by an “impenetrable jargon.” Terms such as “de-Westernization,” “re-Westernization,” “epistemic disobedience,” and “frontier thinking” create a closed, self-referential system that gives the appearance of theoretical depth while in reality they obscure analysis. This language functions almost ritually, like an endless loop of repeating phrases parodying a real theoretical system. The appeal to “the knowledge of everyday life in communities for which academic, scientific and professional knowledge is completely irrelevant” becomes a rhetorical device to protect the theory from criticism, but remains a discourse that is deeply academic and inaccessible to these communities in particular.

From class struggle to Carl Schmitt's geopolitics

The most revealing aspect of Larsen's criticism, however, concerns the unexpected but logically necessary connection between Mignolo's thinking and that of the National Socialist legal and political theorist Carl Schmitt. Mignolo openly adopts Schmitt's concept of the “Nomos of the Earth”. For Schmitt, the “nomos of the earth” is the fundamental act of spatial organization and appropriation of the earth that precedes any right. It is the concrete order based on the distinction between friend and enemy and on sovereignty over a certain space and rejects any abstract, universal legal principle. Mignolo, drawing on Schmitt, proclaims “decoloniality” as the “Third Nomos of the Earth.” This step is not harmless. He transforms a demand for emancipation into a blueprint for a new geopolitical division of the world. “De-Westernization” is equated with the rise of a multipolar world, in which “civilized states” such as China, Russia and Iran (which Mignolo summarizes under the acronym CRI) are portrayed as protagonists of this new order. The rejection of class analysis as a universal framework inevitably leads to the adoption of a geopolitical framework according to which the conflict is no longer between classes on a global scale, but between civilizational state blocs competing for hegemony.The structural affinity between the two theorists is obvious: both Schmitt and Mignolo reject a universal principle of social change within world history (such as class struggle) and replace it with a principle based on geographical separation and the existential conflict between separate entities, which in the case of decolonial theory are culturally defined (friend/enemy in Schmitt, West/non-West in Mignolo). Thus, the fight against imperialism in the name of cultural differences is diverted into supporting one imperialist camp over the other.

The dangerous and politically sensitive nature of this framework becomes even clearer when applied to more recent conflicts. While decolonial criticism is traditionally directed against the “West,” the same conceptual framework can also be reversed. In the case of the war in Ukraine, for example, some proponents of decolonial theory have portrayed Russia as a colonial power and Ukraine as the subject of an anti-colonial struggle. This illustrates the move away from a coherent, materialist analysis of imperialism as a global capitalist phenomenon. Instead of analyzing the competition between different imperialist poles, the conflict is reduced to a moralizing narrative about “colonizers” oppressing the “colonized.” In this way, the criticism ends up supporting the state that is considered colonially subordinate in each case (e.g. Ukraine), and thus also the imperialist camp that supports it, while completely ignoring the capitalist nature of the conflict and the role of all the forces involved in maintaining capitalist rule.

Part II: The distortion of the dialectic

While Larsen's criticism highlights the political consequences of the “cultural turn,” Ross Wolfe's analysis in “Dialectics and Difference” penetrates into the philosophical core of decolonial theory and examines the attempt to “decolonize the dialectic,” as formulated primarily by George Ciccariello-Maher. Wolfe argues that this undertaking does not represent a correction or enrichment of the Marxist method, but rather a complete abandonment of its basic principles, with the result that nothing remains of the dialectic but its name.

The rejection of totality and immanence

At the heart of Wolfe's criticism is the observation that Ciccariello-Maher's “decolonized dialectics” rejects three cornerstones of the Hegelian and Marxist traditions: totality, mutual mediation, and immanent criticism. The concept of totality - i.e. the view that capitalism forms a unified, global and integrated system in which the parts (economics, politics, ideology) are interconnected and mutually dependent - is rejected as “Eurocentric” and “imperialist”. In its place is an image of fragmented, diverse and local dialectics: a multitude of subject positions that locate themselves “outside the system” to varying degrees.

At the same time, the concept of mutual mediation is abandoned; According to this concept, social categories do not exist as self-contained entities that interact externally while otherwise remaining unchanged, but are defined in relation to one another, in a relationship of mutual constitution. For example, the antagonistic social classes are not two independent groups in conflict. The one forms the necessary prerequisite for the existence of the other; their identity arises precisely in the contradictory relationship that binds them together. By rejecting this concept, the decolonial approach paints the picture of a conflict between two sides that remain alien to each other (“West” – “non-West”, “colonial empires” and “national liberation movements”), as if their substance already existed and was taking shape in an area that lies outside the historical dynamics of capitalist relations of exploitation and domination on a global scale.

This rejection of totality and mutual mediation has an inevitable consequence: the rejection of the concept of immanence. In classical dialectics, the movement of history and the possibility of revolution derive internally from the contradictions inherent in the social totality itself. The overcoming of capitalism is a possibility that arises from its own development, namely through the class struggle between capital and labor. Conversely, from Ciccariello-Maher's perspective, since there is no unified whole with internal contradictions, the impetus for change can only come “from outside”. Progress depends on an “appeal to the outside world” and on a “colonial difference” that goes beyond an internal dialectical relationship. The revolutionary event is not the maturation and resolution of the internal contradictions of the system, but an attack from without by subjects (racialized, colonized) who are ontologically located outside the totality.

This theoretical construct is not just a philosophical disagreement. It represents a fundamental denial of the reality of capitalism. The power of capital lies precisely in its ability to include and subordinate everything to its self-valorization and logic, so that nothing remains truly “outside.” Rejecting the category of totality in the name of respect for “difference” has the paradoxical effect of leaving capitalism as a system intact. Criticism may focus on specific manifestations of oppression, but the unifying element that produces and reproduces it - the universal rule of capital in all its forms - remains invisible and untouchable.

From the proletariat to the “people”, from Marx to Sorel

The transition from immanence to exteriority inevitably leads to the replacement of the revolutionary subject. The proletariat as a universal class whose very existence within capitalism creates the possibility of overcoming itself is replaced by the cross-class concept of the “people” (pueblo), a coalition of identities in which class is merely a factor alongside race, gender and nation. This populist shift allows Ciccariello-Maher to redefine nationalism and traditionalism as potentially emancipatory weapons, i.e. h. as “weapons whose meaning seems to change depending on who uses them.”

Here the deep affinity between his thinking and that of Georges Sorel is revealed, an affinity that Ciccariello-Maher himself points out. Sorel, known for his criticism of rationalism and historical determinism, argued that revolutionary action springs not from a rational understanding of material contradictions, but from the power of "myth" - an image (such as the general strike) that mobilizes the masses on a moral and emotional level. For Sorel, the relationship between classes is not dialectical, but one of absolute incomparability and incompatibility, bordering on “non-relationship.”

It is precisely this Sorelian logic of absolute externality and the irrational constitution of the collective subject that is adopted by the “decolonized dialectic”. The revolutionary break is not the result of a dialectical process, but an act of will that comes from a morally superior, external force.

This theoretical line even stands in sharp contrast to the tradition of anti-colonial Marxism. Thinkers such as José Carlos Mariátegui and C. L. R. James (regardless of the flaws their theories may have had) emphasized that capitalism was a global system and that liberation required the action of the global proletariat operating within this totality. Even Fanon - despite the greater ambiguities and contradictions in his later work - did not simply imagine a mythical external world of capitalist modernity. Rather than seeking emancipation in subjects outside capitalist social relations, these thinkers focused on the concrete contradictions that imperialism produced at both the center and the periphery, linking the anti-colonial struggle – albeit in different and sometimes contradictory ways – to the perspective of broader social transformation. The decolonial turn, on the other hand, separates this connection and leads to a politics that welcomes populism and nationalism in the name of difference.

Part III: Political implications and theoretical affinities: From anti-imperialism to ethnocultural populism

Building on the criticisms developed by Larsen and Wolfe, we can now turn to some broader political implications and theoretical affinities of the decolonial turn and extend the argument beyond the specific theses of both authors. Decolonial theory's departure from the materialist and dialectical principles of Marxist critical theory is not merely an academic controversy. It has profound political implications as it fundamentally reshapes the concept of struggle against capitalist domination – including imperialism – and reveals selective theoretical affinities with irrational and populist currents.

The transition from dependency theory to decolonial ideology

Decolonial theory is often presented as the successor to dependency theory, which was developed in Latin America in the 1960s and 1970s. However, this claim is misleading because it obscures a fundamental break that reflects a broader shift from historical materialism to cultural relativism. The dependency theories remain within the framework of political economy. They focus on the putative material mechanisms of unequal exchange and the transfer of surplus value from the “periphery” to the “center” and analyze how the structure of the global capitalist economy actively reproduced “underdevelopment.” Their criticism was primarily directed against economic relations, even if they had shortcomings.

Decolonial thinking, on the other hand, marks a decisive shift from the economic to the cultural and epistemological. The primary structure of domination is no longer economic exploitation, but the “colonial matrix of power” and knowledge – that is, the imposition of a Eurocentric worldview that devalues ​​and erases local knowledge. The problem is not capitalism as a mode of production, but rather “modernity/coloniality” as a unified cultural-epistemological complex. This shift from materialistic analysis to an idealistic critique of knowledge is what fundamentally distinguishes the two movements.

Despite this fundamental difference, it is important to also examine the similarities between dependency theory and decolonial theory: both replace class as the agent of struggle with the people and the nation (decolonial theory, however, at a deeper level of rupture, as it denies capitalism itself the status of a primary structure and does not view it merely as the agent against which it is fought) and advocate the creation of cross-class fronts between the proletarian masses and one "national-popular" military-bureaucratic elite and, in a broader sense, with the decolonial, "anti-imperialist" part of the bourgeoisie, especially in the countries of the East and the South - if we may use these terms in a purely geographical sense - but also in a broader sense.

It should be noted here that Lenin's own anti-imperialism viewed the world proletariat as the subject of struggle and revolutionary change. As he emphasized: “The dialectic of history is such that small nations, powerless as an independent factor in the struggle against imperialism, play a role as one of the ferments, as one of the pathogens that help the real anti-imperialist force, the socialist proletariat, to come onto the scene.” But in the same text, published in July 1916, he attacks the internationalist criticism of the Irish Rising of 1916, which had dismissed it as a "purely urban, petty-bourgeois movement" which "did not have much social support despite the sensationalism it produced". The essence of his polemic is that the social revolution requires the uprising of the petty bourgeoisie and the “backward” workers, led by “the class-conscious vanguard of the revolution, the advanced proletariat”, i.e. h. the party, is exploited to seize power, just as “the general staff in the current war is doing its utmost to exploit every national […] movement in the enemy camp,” since there is no such thing as a “‘pure’ social revolution.” (V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Moscow 1962, Vol. 22, pp. 353-358).

This assessment of Lenin arises from his distorted and top-down view of the social revolution as the seizure of state power by the party. In the case of developed capitalist countries, the party will ultimately only manage production that has already been socialized by capitalism and has now reached its stage of state monopoly - without any transformation of alienated and separated labor and consequently without any criticism of capitalist science, but rather through the application of Taylorism and "one-man management". In the case of colonies and underdeveloped capitalist countries, the Party will establish a development dictatorship that will bring about the development of the productive forces and the completion of primitive accumulation. From here the path to the Stalinist “socialism in one country” and the “alliance with the progressive sections of the bourgeoisie” of Third World thought is very short indeed.

The failure of the anti-colonial struggles to bring about social emancipation and often no economic improvement in the "liberated" nation-states after decolonization - which as a historical process was largely already completed in the 1970s - was understood by proponents of decolonial theory and critics of Orientalism as the result of the reproduction of the "Western system of knowledge and power" and the associated racial and cultural hierarchies. However, such an interpretation is deeply flawed because it shifts the focus from social relations of production and exploitation to an abstract level of “epistemic regimes.” In doing so, it overlooks the fact that the maintenance of unequal development is due to the structural integration of each nation state into global capitalism: into the hierarchical system of states and the global market - and not to the predominance of a Eurocentric mindset. In this way, decolonial theory slides into a form of cultural relativism that glosses over actual class and capitalist dynamics and traps the proletariat in nationalist-populist strategies under the hegemony of bourgeois-bureaucratic elites.

Sorelian logic: myth, violence and the convergence between left and right

The claim that decolonial theory shares a common logic with post-fascist, far-right ethnocultural populism is theoretically based on its connection to Sorel's thought. As noted above, Sorel rejected Marxist historical materialism as deterministic and rationalistic and instead emphasized the irrational formation of political subjects. For him, the masses are mobilized not by a scientific analysis of social conditions, but by the power of “myth” – a collective, emotionally charged vision of the future that inspires heroism and self-sacrifice. In this context, violence is not just a political instrument, but a moral, regenerative force that cleanses society of bourgeois decadence. This Sorelian approach is clearly evident in the decolonial approach. The “colonial difference” functions as a founding myth that constitutes the collective subject – not on the basis of shared material interests (as a class), but on the basis of a shared cultural-existential experience of oppression. The relationship with the “colonizer” is not a dialectical relationship of internal contradictions, but one of absolute ‘outsideness’ and unforgiveness, just as Sorel described in relation to social classes. Nationalism, populism and traditionalism – which Ciccariello-Maher sees as malleable “weapons” – derive their power precisely from their ability to function as mobilizing myths, regardless of their rational or material content.

This replacement of the proletariat by the cross-class “people” and the revival of nationalism and traditionalism as potential “weapons” pave the way for the support of political forces hostile to any emancipatory cause. If the main conflict is defined as a culture war between “the West and the Rest,” any force that opposes the “West” can be considered progressive, regardless of its class and political character.

In this way, reactionary movements – from nationalist groups to Islamist fundamentalists in the Middle East and Africa – are presented as carriers of authentic, “local knowledge” that resists the cultural overlay of the “colonial power matrix”. The class exploitation and social oppression carried out by these forces within domestic societies is overlooked or justified in the name of a broader anti-Western struggle. The fight against imperialism is thus diverted into unconditional support for authoritarian regimes and movements, as long as they are geopolitically aligned with the “right” camp.

This is exactly where the commonality with the modern extreme right lies. The far right also rejects the universal principles of the Enlightenment and contrasts the organic, cultural community of the “people” with the abstract, cosmopolitan “other,” while relying on mobilization through national myths and appeals to tradition. When politics leaves the terrain of rational criticism of material power relations and moves into the area of ​​irrational identity formation through myths, the boundaries between “left” and “right” become dangerously blurred. Both forms of ethnocultural populism ultimately defend authoritarian regimes and imperialist powers (be it Russia and China in the name of “de-Westernization” or the “West” in the name of defending its “civilization”), provided that these embody the corresponding cultural myth.

The field of postcolonial/decolonial feminist and queer theory offers a characteristic example of this contradictory convergence. Decolonial queer texts rightly criticize the instrumental appeal to LGBTQI+ rights to justify imperialist interventions – a practice now referred to as “pinkwashing”. [2] However, the proposed alternative – namely the emphasis on radical ontological otherness and the turn to “authentic” pre-colonial gender practices – turns out to be just as problematic. [3]

In an effort to avoid Eurocentrism, the positions taken go so far as to idealize pre-modern forms of sociality or even reinterpret subordination and confinement to the domestic sphere not as oppression but as a form of agency! [4] By abandoning universalism and universal concepts, the hypostatization of cultural differences in the exercise of gender and agency leads to a “cultural nativism” that does not find common ground and cannot communicate with corresponding experiences in the “West”, thereby slipping into essentialism. This theoretical tendency towards cultural relativism has tragically resulted in it providing the basis for argumentation for right-wing, reactionary forces such as Hindu nationalism (Hindutva). [5]

The rhetoric of a "culturally authentic" Indian identity - which must be protected from foreign influences - is now being exploited to consolidate male dominance in the name of tradition [6] and, above all, to violently marginalize the Muslim population, who are targeted as the ultimate "foreign body" within the nation, while at the same time forming the most impoverished section of the surplus proletariat in India.

The supermarket of “cultural differences” in the context of the “culture wars” as pseudo-conflicts in the age of authoritarian neoliberalism and post-fascism

In contemporary times, the crisis of capital reproduction and the exacerbation of class discontent are being addressed through the promotion of a rationally organized irrationalism. Instead of criticizing capitalist social relations, the debate shifts to cultural, national and religious identities, which are presented as metaphysical forces that shape history. These “culture wars” distract from and obscure the real class struggle; they serve as a source of legitimacy and as a means of overcoming the contradictions of capitalist social formations.

The opposition between capital and proletariat has been replaced by a false dichotomy – namely the cultural distinction between West and East or North and South. This framework, strongly promoted by decolonial ideology, leaves no room for social emancipation and only results in one imperialist camp (e.g. China, Russia, Iran) being favored over another.

In addition, internationalist solidarity is becoming a consumer product. Companies and employers selectively use Palestinian, Ukrainian or other national flags depending on the target group to convey an image of “social consciousness”. In this way, political identity becomes a product in the supermarket of ideologies, obscuring the exploitative role of capital. The debate shifts from the class organization of the proletariat to supporting or opposing individual capitalists depending on which state camp they support. These conflicts are deceptive because, while they showcase spectacular contrasts, they leave untouched the essence of capitalist rule and divert social anger from the real causes of exploitation and oppression.

The danger of decolonial ideology in a new era of state capitalism, new imperialism, the war economy and the militarization of societies

The current era is characterized by the crisis of the “globalization” model and the transition to a new form of state capitalism, manifesting itself in the form of war economies. States increase their military spending and militarize societies because war offers a way out of the crisis and a means of eliminating the surplus proletariat.

In this context, decolonial ideology becomes extremely dangerous. By abandoning the criticism of capitalism as a global system, decolonial ideology replaces it with a mythological and reactionary distinction between the “West” and the “non-West”. This “top-down analysis,” focused on conflicts between states, easily turns into “campism”: support for one imperialist bloc over another.

“Anti-imperialists” ultimately support powers like Russia, Iran or China and present them as a counterweight to “Western” imperialism.

This change is not only possible conceptually, but can also be supported materially. In the current situation, currents that translate anti-colonial discourse into geopolitical orientation can gain access to fundraising networks, NGO and trade union infrastructures, media platforms, institutional recognition and, in some cases, direct diplomatic or material support from states. Such tendencies are therefore not only present within the field; they can be selectively amplified and reproduced.

This campism is dangerous because:

It legitimizes war: instead of promoting the internationalist class struggle against all states, it paves the way for a more comprehensive militarization of society and calls on the proletariat to rally behind one or another national capital.

It throws the struggles off course: the enemy is no longer capital and the state, but an external, culturally defined “other”. This hinders the development of an autonomous class organization and leads to a national mobilization demanding the crushing of all internal resistance.

He perpetuates oppression: supporting “national liberation movements” like Hamas ignores the fact that their goal is not class liberation, but the creation of new capitalist states that will join the same international order.

In the age of new imperialism, in which genocide and the extermination of surplus populations are escalating worldwide (from Gaza to Sudan), decolonial ideology functions as an ideological means to engage the proletariat in its own mutual slaughter and to turn it into cannon fodder for the benefit of the belligerent bourgeois classes. The only way out is not to take sides, but to carry out proletarian, internationalist actions against all states and armies.

conclusion

The previous analysis aimed to outline the basic principles of a critique of decolonial theory from the perspective of the class antagonistic movement against capital and the state. Our analysis sought to show how the cultural turn and the lack of criticism of capitalism as a global social relationship, the abandonment of the dialectical method, the selective theoretical affinities of decolonial theory with irrationalist populism, as well as its reactionary political implications - all of this combine to create a scenario of theoretical and political catastrophe from a proletarian perspective.

Despite its radical choice of words, the decolonial turn not only fails to provide a coherent framework for understanding and overcoming contemporary forms of capitalist domination, but also contributes to their continued existence.

The fundamental problem, as Larsen argued, lies in the rejection of the concept of universality. This rejection is presented as a criticism of “Eurocentrism,” but in reality it is a ploy. It is a trick because no theory can exist without universal concepts - the "colonial power matrix" itself is presented as a universal structure that has dominated the world for the last 500 years. The problem is therefore not universality itself, but its content.

This is the crucial difference in dialectical thinking. On the one hand, there is the false universality of bourgeois ideology, which presents the particular interests of the ruling class as the universal interests of humanity. On the other side, however, is the real, alienated universality of capital. The rule of the commodity form – the enforcement of the law of value on a global scale – is not just an idea. It is a concrete mode of existence of the world, a profound structural reality that links every local situation to the global totality of accumulation.

Marxism contrasts this negative, destructive universality of capital with the perspective of another, positive universality: that of communism. The aim is not to impose a new, uniform cultural model, but rather to create the material conditions - the abolition of private property and class exploitation - that enable the free development of all human potential. This universality arises not from an external, culturally defined group, but from the proletariat, that class which is itself a product of the universality of capital and which, through its own liberation, liberates all of humanity. Of course, it is not a mythical subject, to paraphrase something we wrote a few years ago :[7]

It is not possible to confine experience within the suffocating framework of an identity. The human experience must be freed from all alienating forms of capitalist social relations. In stark contrast to decolonial - and not just decolonial - identity politics, the challenge for a movement aiming to abolish capitalist social relations is to seek, within the diverse and fragmented experiences we have under capitalism, those elements that could potentially unite us, rather than those that divide us, and, if these are not enough, to create them. However, this does not mean that the specific demands and issues from which a struggle can arise are downplayed or dismissed.

What is crucial for us is that experience takes its true dialectical form: that new, richer experiences are created that connect the subject to the totality of social relations. Concrete common interests can arise within this active process – and not on an abstract level.

The challenge for the revolutionary movement is to overcome the fragmentation of alienated social relationships and to attempt, on a collective level, to connect all the different - and often contradictory - experiences in order to abolish the identity of separate experiences. Such an autonomous collective organization of proletarian experience forms the basis for the creation of the proletarian sphere - that is, for the creation of the necessary forms and means of communication and action through which the fragmented experiences of oppression, exploitation, resistance and struggle against capitalist social relations can be united into a collective practice, a way of life and struggle through which we can transform existing social conditions and relations and move towards the abolition of capital and all its alienating mediations.

In summary, it can be said that the task of an emancipatory movement today cannot be to distance itself from an abstract “West” or to search for an authentic, pre-colonial identity. Such efforts are doomed to remain at the level of rhetoric or, worse, become a vehicle for new forms of nationalism and geopolitical rivalries.

True decolonization – that is, the decolonization of the world of commodities and capital – coincides with the communist revolution. As Larsen writes, following Adorno: "And as long as the prerequisite for the abolition [...] of imperialism [...] is not consciously understood as the social universal of a post-capitalist, classless society that has overcome the rule of the commodity form - the universal of communism in this sense - 'decoloniality' remains at best a futile exercise, a deviation and a dead end." Cultural resistance to universality - be it from the decolonial left or the nationalist right - represents the "historically appropriate form of untruth" in today's world. A return to the critique of political economy and the standpoint of the proletarian movement against capital and the state is not an act of nostalgia, but the only realistic way to overcome a system that, in its universality, subsumes and produces all forms of oppression.

August 30, 2026 (English version)

Editorial group of the magazine “To Dialytiko”

Notes

[1] Neil Larsen, “The Jargon of Decoloniality,” Catalyst, Vol. 6, No. 2 (Summer 2022), pp. 52-77; and Ross Wolfe, “Dialectics and Difference: Against the ‘Decolonial Turn,’” Insurgent Notes, No. 15 (August 2017).

[2] The term “pinkwashing” is often used to describe the instrumental use of LGBTQI+ rights to divert attention from other forms of state violence. See Sarah Schulman, “Israel and ‘Pinkwashing,’” The New York Times, November 22, 2011. For a more detailed discussion of the concept in the context of international solidarity movements, see also Sarah Schulman, Israel/Palestine and the Queer International, Duke University Press, 2012, pp. 133–156.

[3] See Rahul Rao, Out of Time: The Queer Politics of Postcoloniality, Oxford University Press, 2020. Rao points out that this strategy – despite its tactical value in highlighting the historicity of queer desire – relies on the “reification of the pre-colonial past” as a purely indigenous space “untouched” by the West. He argues that these idealizations lead to a "pinkwashing of the precolonial past" (overlooking the stigmatization of non-normative desire within that past) and entangle queer politics in a shared nativism with nationalists, in which only those forms of desire that can be shown to already have existed within national borders are recognized as legitimate.

[4] Saba Mahmood, in her ethnographic study of the women's mosque movement in Cairo, "Politics of Piety: The Islamic Revival and the Feminist Subject", Princeton University Press, 2005, goes so far as to question the equation of agency and resistance to male authority made by earlier feminists and to argue that forms of agency are achieved through discipline, obedience, moral self-education and the cultivation of virtues (e.g. modesty) - that is, through practices of Piety – is constituted, clearly drawing on Foucault’s concept of “technologies of the self”. For Mahmood, obedience to tradition represents a distinct form of subjectivity, namely an ability to act within specific historical and cultural contexts. It is obvious to us that this position legitimizes the structures of male dominance in Muslim countries - and beyond - and obscures the material coercion that women face there.

[5] See Meera Nanda, Prophets Facing Backward: Postmodern Critiques of Science and Hindu Nationalism in India, Rutgers University Press, 2003. Nanda analyzes in depth how postmodern and postcolonial critiques of scientific objectivity and Western rationalism (which promoted the idea of ​​“alternative epistemologies”) were strategically taken up by the Hindu right. The aim was to legitimize pseudoscientific theories and religious myths as equivalent knowledge systems and thus protect Hindu fundamentalism from criticism.

[6] See Tanika Sarkar, Hindu Wife, Hindu Nation: Community, Religion, and Cultural Nationalism, Indiana University Press, 2001. Sarkar shows how the figure of the “chaste Hindu wife” and the domestic sphere became central political symbols for the construction of a Hindu nationalist identity. Strict adherence to patriarchal norms has been reframed as a national duty of resistance, while the rhetoric of “protecting” women’s honor is systematically used to demonize the Muslim population as a threat to the moral integrity of the nation.

[7] Editorial team of the magazine “To Dialytiko”, “Lecture as part of the event ‘Capitalism, class antagonistic movements and identity politics’”, available at:https://dialytiko.gr/2020/07/27/eisigisi-tis-ekdilosis-quot-capitalismos...(in Greek).

Postscript: On campism and national liberation

A clarification regarding the use of the term “campism” in this text might be helpful. Campism is often understood narrowly as support for one interstate bloc against another: the familiar logic whereby opposition to US or Western imperialism becomes political support for states such as Russia, China or Iran. This is certainly one of its contemporary forms, and it has become remarkably explicit in parts of decolonial thought. However, the argument developed here uses the term in a somewhat broader sense.

The underlying problem does not only begin when an anti-colonial policy allies itself with a competing imperial power. It already becomes apparent when the autonomous class antagonism is subordinated to a cross-class camp that is constituted as a nation, people or national liberation movement. National liberation and geopolitical camp thinking are not identical, but they share a political logic: proletarians are called upon to recognize as their own a collective interest that supposedly unites them with other classes on the basis of national oppression, colonial difference, or geopolitical opposition. The contradiction between classes is consequently repressed through the confrontation of one political community with another.

This also explains an obvious difficulty in criticizing decolonial thought. Not every decolonial theorist advocates state power, and some explicitly reject the nation-state and instead propose indigenous autonomy, territorial communities, pluriversal worlds, or coalitions of subordinate subjects. Such positions should not simply be equated with the geopolitical camp thinking of Mignolo or Grosfoguel. But rejecting the existing state does not in itself solve the problem if the political subject that takes its place remains a culturally, territorially or nationally constituted cross-class community. Anti-state politics can therefore reproduce a national-popular logic without necessarily striving for a conventional nation-state.

The history of Zapatism illustrates this particularly well. His hostility to state power and his experiments with local autonomy markedly distinguish him from traditional national liberation movements, and his stance on the Russian invasion of Ukraine was markedly more internationalist than that of many contemporary anti-imperialists. Yet, as Charles Reeve argued in the 1990s, the EZLN maintained a language of national liberation, national sovereignty and the Mexican people that could coexist with its libertarian and autonomist dimensions. The issue here is not whether every autonomous or indigenous movement is secretly statist, but rather whether the national or communal form itself can become a political framework within which class antagonisms are hidden.

For this reason, the argument in this text should not be understood as claiming that decolonial theory inevitably leads to geopolitical camp thinking. Rather, the more meaningful claim is that the displacement of the universal antagonism between capital and proletariat by subjects constituted by colonial, national, territorial or cultural differences creates a particularly favorable breeding ground for national-popular and camp-oriented politics. In some cases this takes the form of national liberation; in others, the defense of autonomous peoples and communities; and in its clearest contemporary form, the glorification of a multipolar de-Westernization led by non-Western capitalist states. The political forms differ, but the question that runs through them remains the same: whether the exploited act autonomously against the social relations that constitute them as a class of capital, or whether their struggles are reorganized within a broader cross-class political community.

August 31, 2026

Translated from English by Bonustracks.

Original in English

https://antithesi.gr/a-critique-of-decolonial-ideology/

https://kontrapolis.info/wp-content/uploads/2026/09/movie-dystopia-movie...decoding="async" src="https://kontrapolis.info/wp-content/uploads/2026/09/movie-dystopia-movie...width="150" height="150" alt="movie-dystopia-movies-realistic-thumbnail-photo-no-text-no-border-no-margins-no-solid-background-photo-only.avif" style="display:inline-block" />

web address: https://kontrapolis.info/18631/author/group: editorial group To Dialytikofeed-date: Wednesday, September 9, 2026 - 09:19