Marx in Texas: Capitalism, Racism and the Rise of the American West

Presented by the Department of Sociology & Sexuality Studies

A Talk by Ryan Moore, Ph.D.

What if Karl Marx had emigrated to Texas in 1845, on the eve of a war against Mexico fueled by an ideology of Manifest Destiny? What if he had joined the other émigré veterans of 1848 in agitating against slavery, electing Abraham Lincoln, and fighting the Civil War? What if he had then witnessed the rollback of Reconstruction, the triumph of industrial capital and the crushing of the labor movement in 1877?

Join us to speculate about what the founder of modern communism might have said if he had found himself on the frontier during the most pivotal period in U.S. history.