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redfish

13 Jun, 10 tweets, 3 min read

Today we remember Walter Rodney, the revolutionary anti-imperialist, socialist and Pan-Africanist intellectual and activist who was assassinated on this day 41 years ago.

Widely known today for his influential book "How Europe Underdeveloped Africa", Rodney was one of the most renowned intellectuals of Pan-Africanism, looking to build unity among African and Afro-descendant peoples, while connecting their struggles to the working class struggle.

Rodney developed a Marxism in which Black Power was central, developing historical analyses of slavery and colonialism and convinced that only "under the banner of socialism and through the leadership of the working classes" Africans could break from imperialism and colonialism.

His dedication to the struggle took him all around Africa, especially Tanzania where he was a leading voice of the anti-imperialist Dar Es Salaam School of Radical Historiography.

After returning to Jamaica where he did his undergraduate studies, Rodney got involved in organizing there, making the government take notice.

His ability to connect radical students with working people was so terrifying to the elite that he wasn't let back into the country when Rodney went abroad for a conference. His banning led to angry student protests that would escalate into the infamous Rodney Riots.

Back in Tanzania, Rodney finished "How Europe Underdeveloped Africa" in which he argued that imperialism and colonialism created impenetrable structural blockades to progress in Africa.

He explained African underdevelopment as the flip side of European development, as a product of capitalist, colonialist and imperialist exploitation.

When Rodney returned to his home country Guyana in 1974 he co-founded a multi-racial socialist party. The quick rise turned Rodney into an enemy of the government, which would orchestrate Rodney's assassination in 1980.

His work remains insightful, inspirational and important for those seeking to fight oppression and exploitation around the world today.
"By what standard of morality can the violence used by a slave to break his chains be considered the same as the violence of a slave master?"

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