They suppose that black revolutionaries must outgrow Marxism to grasp the plight of black people against imperialism. The advocates of that tradition misconstrue Marxism as European in its outlook, and therefore incompatible with black liberation- Rodney never believed that. This point must be stressed, in particular, against those who want to claim Rodney for the ‘Black Radical’ tradition, along with CLR James, WEB DuBois and Richard Right. Although there is some truth to all these descriptions, they fail to highlight that the mature Rodney aspired above all to be a Marxist. Meanwhile, his most ardent supporters identify as ‘Rodneyites’. They have described him as a Pan-Africanist, a Black Nationalist or an anti-imperialist. Scholars have attached various labels to Rodney’s ideas and political identity.
This book intends to encourage young black people to read about Rodney and fight for the ideas he stood for.
Readers unable to access academic libraries often cannot obtain Rupert Lewis’s Walter Rodney’s Intellectual and Political Thought. However, most biographies on Rodney are currently out of print. In recent years, they have republished Rodney’s Groundings with My Brothers, How Europe Underdeveloped Africa and released his manuscript on the Russian Revolution. Rodney’s family and the Walter Rodney Foundation have already done important work in this respect. This short introduction is an overview of Rodney’s life, activism and political thought, which aims to preserve and promote his legacy. Fewer still remember the revolutionary struggle he led before his death in Guyana. If some remember him as an influential Black Power advocate in Jamaica, few know about the time he spent in Africa. Yet, his incredible journey and contributions to the struggle of the oppressed are largely unknown beyond Pan-African activist and academic circles. Rodney is best known for his famous book How Europe Underdeveloped Africa which he wrote in Tanzania in 1972. Throughout his short life, he waged a relentless battle against the horrors of capitalism, for which he should be revered as one of the great black leaders of the last century. Walter Rodney was almost the same age as Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr when he was assassinated on 13 June 1980 in Guyana at the age of 38. Chukwudinma also looks at Rodney’s early life in Guyana before he moved to Jamaica to continue his studies. In the first part of Chukwudinma’s study of Walter Rodney, he explains that Rodney was a Marxist of impressive originality and in his last years of his life, his ideas and practice developed as he moved closer to Marxism. His life encompassed the great movements of the time, and he was a leading activist and thinker of this tumultuous period.Īware of the inherently destructive capacities of capitalism, its incessant drive to war and conquest, and the relentless decimation of the natural environment, Rodney realised that the most important task for humanity was the revolutionary transformation of the present.
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Over nine weeks we will be publishing Chukwudinma’s full study, from Rodney’s early years in Georgetown, to Jamaica, the UK, Tanzania and back to Guyana. We are serialising ROAPE’s Chinedu Chukwudinma’s study of Rodney’s life A Rebel’s Guide to Walter Rodney – due to be published on 23 March (Rodney’s birthday). This year is the 80 th anniversary of the birth of the Guyanese revolutionary Walter Rodney, and fifty years since he published the ground-breaking How Europe Underdeveloped Africa.
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