March 25: Decolonial Marxism: Essays from the Pan-African Revolution by Walter Rodney
March 25, Saturday (online)
12pm New York | 5pm London | 7pm Nairobi
We will read selections from Decolonial Marxism: Essays from the Pan-African Revolution, a previously unpublished collection of Walter Rodney’s essays on race, colonialism and Marxism. Fortuitously, it will also be 50 years since the publication of Rodney's groundbreaking book How Europe Underdeveloped Africa. This selection is part of our Transformative Futures series where we learn together and tackle new, important ideas.
This book club will meet online.
You can buy the book on the Verso Books website here.
Something extra!
We have screenings of a new Walter Rodney documentary What They Don't Want You To Know planned in New York and Johannesburg.
To RSVP for New York, click here.
Details about the Johannesburg screening are forthcoming.
About the book
Early in life, Walter Rodney became a major revolutionary figure in a dizzying range of locales that traversed the breadth of the Black diaspora: in North America and Europe, in the Caribbean and on the African continent. He not only witnessed a Pan-African and socialist internationalism; in his efforts to build mass organizations, catalyze rebellious ferment, and theorize an anti-colonial path to self-emancipation, he can be counted among its prime authors.
Decolonial Marxism records such a life by collecting previously unbound essays written during the world-turning days of Black revolution. In drawing together pages where he elaborates on the nexus of race and class, offers his reflections on radical pedagogy, outlines programs for newly independent nation-states, considers the challenges of anti-colonial historiography, and produces balance sheets for a dozen wars for national liberation, this volume captures something of the range and power of Rodney’s output. But it also demonstrates the unbending consistency that unites his life and work: the ongoing reinvention of living conception of Marxism, and a respect for the still untapped potential of mass self-rule.
We are an independent initiative and are not supported by institutional funding. We rely on you to create progressive programming and to invigorate engaged reading communities. If you like the work we do, please support us in any way you can: https://radicalbookscollective.com/pages/support-us