Glen Coulthard's "From Wards of the State to Subjects of Recognition? Marx, Indigenous Peoples, and the Politics of Dispossession in Denendeh" provides an indigenous critique of Marx by positing how dispossession (not proletarianization) forms the settlercolonial capitalist state

To think about distant places, to colonize them, to populate or depopulate them: all of this occurs on, about, or because of land. The actual geographical possession of land is what empire in the final analysis is all about.

—Edward Said, Culture and Imperialism

"Marx was primarily interested in colonialism because it exposed some 'truth' about the nature of capitalism. His interest in the specific nature of colonial domination was largely incidental. This is evident in his position on primitive accumulation. +

...Primitive accumulation involved a dual process for Marx: the accumulation of capital through violent state dispossession that resulted in proletarianization. The weight given to these constituent elements, however, is by no means equal in Marx.+

As he explicitly states in chapter 33 of Capital, Volume 1, Marx has little interest in the condition of the “colonies” as such."

explicitly, in this moment, Marx is not interested in (or even grasps) decolonization. Which is Coulthard's main point: even as Marx works to abolish capitalism and establish socialism, his eurocentric understanding of history prevents him from engaging in something more radical

this blew my mind:

"...he seemed to justify the violent dispossession of place-based, nonstate modes of Indigenous economic, political, and social activity, only this time to be carried out under the auspices of the centralized authority of 'socialist' states."

"By shifting our analytical frame to the colonial relation, we might occupy a better angle from which to both anticipate & interrogate practices of dispossession justified under otherwise egalitarian principles & espoused with socalled progressive state political agendas in mind"

Coulthard provides key footnotes as to how later Marx might actually aid this process. specifically this 1877 letter about primitive accumulation & how it's the: "path by which, in Western Europe, the capitalist economic order emerged from the womb of the feudal economic order”

Coulthard points to how Marx himself amended his previous thinking on primitive accumulation, by accounting for how he had been thinking solely about the development of western Europe (which depended on colonialism), and not "the general course imposed on all peoples"

critiquing orthodox Marxism is necessary for Coulthard because:

"the history and experience of dispossession, not proletarianization, has been the dominant background structure shaping the character of the relationship between Indigenous peoples and the Canadian state."

the experience of settler-colonialism is dispossession.

Coulthard cites Kulchyski who clarifies the distance between the colonized & the proletariate:

“oppression for the colonized is registered in the spatial dimension—as dispossession—whereas for workers, oppression is measured as exploitation, as the the of time.”

i found Coulthard's article while reading Lisa Lowe's @driftinghouse "History Hesitant." in the article, she has a footnote discussing indigenous approaches to Marx. I highly suggest reading Lisa's footnotes always. they are full of wonders

I would argue that Coulthard's critique of Marx is asking for Marxism to be pushed farther & for decolonization to be central to it formation. the article is explicitly critical of settler-colonialism & capitalism. critiques of Marx ≠ pro capitalism. please do not weaponize.