Abstract | Marxism trifurcated into Western, Soviet, and Third World Marxism after the end of the Second World War. The trifurcation has produced a theoretical landscape for Marxism that invisibilises national oppression as a specific type of oppression. National oppression is the nub of imperialist-neocolonial relations. In the theoretical landscape, Marxists have succumbed to disciplinary fetishisms of mainstream, capitalist epistemologies. Disciplinary knowledge is inconsistent with Marxist epistemology. This chapter considers the ways in which legal fetishism, state fetishism and market fetishism invisibilise neocolonialism in the ‘epoch of imperialism’ understood as the era of transnational monopoly finance capitalism that emerged after the end of Second World War. The chapter concludes by reflecting on the insights that different strands of Lenin’s thoughts provide, and their relevance for developing an explanatory critique of international law and neocolonialism from Marxist perspectives in the current ‘epoch of imperialism’. |
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