What do you think?
Rate this book
Amilcar Cabral, Essai de biographie politique
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
May 9, 2025
An excellent short history of Amilcar Cabral's development as a revolutionary and his political thought. Definitely not an exhaustive study of the revolution in Guinea-Bissau and Cape Verde, but still an excellent summary of Cabral's political struggle. A lot of solid lessons that are still generally applicable for organizers today.
Also on a personal note, I'd love to read more materialist studies of the history of the former Portuguese colonies following their liberation, to analyze their different paths of development and struggles with world imperialism over the last fifty years. The death grip of neocolonialism in Africa since the fall of the USSR has been nearly total, and an analysis of how that's all played out these last few decades is definitely an area I need to learn more about.
Also on a personal note, I'd love to read more materialist studies of the history of the former Portuguese colonies following their liberation, to analyze their different paths of development and struggles with world imperialism over the last fifty years. The death grip of neocolonialism in Africa since the fall of the USSR has been nearly total, and an analysis of how that's all played out these last few decades is definitely an area I need to learn more about.
April 20, 2026
Again I like to reiterate that I don’t enjoy biographies because they tend to be ahistorical and follow the great man theory. But when a book is written by a long-term friend and comrade Marío de Andrade and follows the arc of Cabral’s political thought, I believe it shows a deeper respect to the people that tend to bend the arc of justice forward.
I particularly like the chapter “The Social Lever of the Liberation Struggle” in which it describes Cabral’s focus on empiricism and not dogmatism. Cabral in the midst of revolution was able to establish the distinction of physical strength in the peasantry to the most important in the burgeoning African proletariat. He infused Marxist and Maoist thought where knowing the colonialist attitudes of Portugal could not survive without the countryside while knowing the peasantry could never assume the interests and demands of the other exploited layers like the proletariat. And because of the nature of Portuguese colonialism being much more direct than traditional neocolonialism, the petit bourgeoisie are structured in the class society as holders of intellectual power rather than economic power. Thus, their nature is towards the revolution at least in a national independence form. They supply the cadre, and leaders of unions, they are meant to join the peasant classes to the liberation struggle.
And in this context, the petit bourgeoisie in the face of the revolution is forced to pick to either betray the revolution or commit class suicide. Joining the ranks of the revolutionary workers that they owe so much to.
I particularly like the chapter “The Social Lever of the Liberation Struggle” in which it describes Cabral’s focus on empiricism and not dogmatism. Cabral in the midst of revolution was able to establish the distinction of physical strength in the peasantry to the most important in the burgeoning African proletariat. He infused Marxist and Maoist thought where knowing the colonialist attitudes of Portugal could not survive without the countryside while knowing the peasantry could never assume the interests and demands of the other exploited layers like the proletariat. And because of the nature of Portuguese colonialism being much more direct than traditional neocolonialism, the petit bourgeoisie are structured in the class society as holders of intellectual power rather than economic power. Thus, their nature is towards the revolution at least in a national independence form. They supply the cadre, and leaders of unions, they are meant to join the peasant classes to the liberation struggle.
And in this context, the petit bourgeoisie in the face of the revolution is forced to pick to either betray the revolution or commit class suicide. Joining the ranks of the revolutionary workers that they owe so much to.
November 6, 2019
Siempre es importante aprender más sobre los movimientos de liberación de otros pueblos. En este caso se trata sobre Guinea-Bisáu 🇬🇼 y la lucha de Amílcar Cabral contra el colonialismo portugués.
July 6, 2025
a good book but it really should be longer and providing more context. That being said i did enjoy learning about anti-colonial resistance to portugal and how portugal was not wealthy enough to create neo-colonies like France or Britain did.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews