Tanzanian Ujamaa and scientific socialism

by Walter Rodney

Genres: Africa

16 pages, Unknown Binding

Published January 1, 1974

About the author

In his short life, the Guyanese intellectual Walter Rodney emerged as one of the leading thinkers and activists of the anticolonial revolution, leading movements in North America, the African continent, and the Caribbean. In each locale, Rodney found himself a lightning rod for working class Black Power. His deportation catalyzed twentieth-century Jamaica’s most significant rebellion, the 1968 Rodney riots, and his scholarship trained a generation how to think politics at an international scale. In 1980, shortly after founding of the Working People’s Alliance in Guyana, the 38-year-old Rodney was assassinated.

Reviews

[Bill · Rating 5 out of 5]

Brilliant work all around. Rodney provides the basis for achieving socialism outside of a Western European lens. He doesn't argue for anything outside of Marxism, but rather that Africa has it's own material conditions which necessitate a different Marxist path. Rodney wonderfully elucidates Ujamaa, how it works, how it relates to Marxism, how it could be better, etc. In Rodney's eyes it's not that Ujamaa is a divergence but that it is using Marxism to address the material conditions present in Tanzania to move towards socialism. Whether you agree or not, it's a fantastic bit of writing that offers plenty to think about.