A Revolutionary for Our Time: The Walter Rodney Story

by Leo Zeilig

Walter Rodney was a scholar, working class militant, and revolutionary from Guyana. Strongly influenced by Marxist ideas, he remains central to radical Pan-Africanist thought for large numbers of activists’ today. Rodney lived through the failed –though immensely hopeful -socialist experiments in the 1960s and 1970s, in Tanzania and elsewhere.

The book critically considers Rodney's contribution to Marxist theory and history, his relationship to dependency theory and the contemporary significance of his work in the context of movements and politics today. The first full-length study of Rodney’s life, this book is an essential introduction to Rodney's work.

Genres: Biography, Nonfiction

254 pages, Paperback

Published January 1, 2022

About the author

Leo Zeilig is a researcher and writer of books on African politics and history. His books include a biography of Patrice Lumumba, Africa's Lost Leader (Haus Books, 2008) and a history of social movements on the continent, Revolt and Protest (I. B. Tauris, 2012). His most recent non-fiction book is a biography of Frantz Fanon, Philosopher of Third World Liberation (I.B Tauris, 2016). Leo is currently working on a study of Thomas Sankara. Eddie the Kid is his first novel and his second, An Ounce of Practice. has just been published by HopeRoad.

Reviews

[Nathan · Rating 5 out of 5]

See my "graphic review" of this important book in the NYT:
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/24/bo...

[Adam Schendel · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Rodney was murdered when he was thirty-eight years old. However, a life cannot be measured by the number of years we live, and his contribution to activism, history, antiracism, and socialism is equal...to many lifetimes. Rodney's work was a constant effort to sharpen the arrowhead of our popular struggles with learning, history, and organization. His was a clarion call to end the loop that our lives and struggle seem doomed to repeat in an ever-deepening crisis of destruction, unless, as Rodney wrote in 1972, we can finally unite our intersecting struggles to destroy capitalism."

[Simon B · Rating 4 out of 5]

Guyanese historian and Marxist activist Walter Rodney died at just 38 years old: the victim of a 1980 political assassination organised by the dictatorial Guyanese government of Forbes Burnham. This is a well-researched and passionately-written political biography of Rodney, who is increasingly recognised as a major leftist political figure of the 20th century - especially in the English-speaking world. It's clear that the author admires Rodney a lot. I found the transparency of Zeilig's worldview refreshing, but readers who are seeking unsympathetic scholarly detachment may be left wanting. The book also includes a valuable introduction to the history of radical & working class struggles in Guyana and Tanzania.

"If we want a world free of the scourge of sexism, racism, and environmental destruction, Rodney reminds us today, it is to an anti-capitalist and socialist revolution that we must add our labors. But something else he said was of equal importance. According to Rodney, the radical power of social movements can only be fully realized if we capture its force before it disperses and the loop of history is allowed, once more, to repeat—each time reoccurring with more destructive energy. The vessel that can capture this energy is an organization: one committed to the unity of the poor and working people. The WPA [Working People's Alliance of Guyana], for a brief time, was an attempt to forge such an organization, and Rodney was its most brilliant organizer and thinker."

[Vic u · Rating 4 out of 5]

First book I've read about this amazing revolutionary. Great biography that details the extraordinary and short life of Walter Rodney. His analysis of Marxism, black power, imperialism, Pan-Africanism, and so much more, resonates profoundly today. Excited to study his texts.

[Christian Gurdin · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an indispensable biography for any Rodneyist. It brings together much of the newer material on Rodney and builds upon Rupert Lewis’s earlier biography.

Having read Zeilig’s other biographies, it is safe to say he does a better job here than he does with Fanon, but that is perhaps because Zeilig, as a staunch Marxist, feels more at home with Rodney’s writings and political ideology than he does with Fanon’s ambivalence toward the proletariat as “the” revolutionary subject.

That aside, Zeilig’s work here is a valuable contribution to the increasingly popular (and rightly so) Walter Rodney.

[Robert C. · Rating 5 out of 5]

More LIGHT from the African Liberation Movement/Civil Rights Movement

This book is about a person who, during his lifetime, was a direct threat to the global status quo. From his studies and activism in Africa, America, Europe, and the Caribbean, Walter Rodney laid bare the inhumanity of global capitalism.