Afro-Caribbean Marxism as Praxis Humanism

https://doi.org/10.25058/20112742.n42.08

Roberto Almanza Hernández
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9089-468X
Universidad del Magdalena, Colombia
ralmanza@unimagdalena.edu.co

Abstract:

Hinkelammert´s Marxism has been known for its criticism of the neoliberal market religion, as a secular worship that has invaded all the spheres of life, paradoxically throwing out human life from its telos. In the face of this dogma, the liberation theologian proposes a praxis humanism, which is, in Marx’s terms, a doctrine in which human being is the supreme being for himself. Based on this framing, I propose to think of Afro-Caribbean humanism through the contributions of Aimé Césaire, Frantz Fanon and Sylvia Wynter as some sort of praxis humanism, since it holds relevance from the experience of Black Peoples, overexploited and racialized by racial capitalism, and is at the same time humanizing thought and action. It is not a mere coincidence that those three thinkers on whom I focus my reflection are aligned with the tradition of black Marxists who have engaged in a diacritical and creative dialogue with Marx’s theories as an epistemic and political horizon of liberation.

Keywords: humanism, Marxism, Black Marxism, Afro-Caribbean, Blackness.