Upstream

Pan-African Marxist, underdevelopment theorist, guerrilla intellectual, father, husband, radical—these are all terms that we could use to describe Walter Rodney. You may know him from his classic text, How Europe Underdeveloped Africa, you may know that he was assassinated at the age of 38 for his activism, or you may not know who he was at all—either way, his ideas and his influence have most likely reached you, if not directly, then indirectly, through the waves and ripples that his life and work created in the many intersecting liberation movements throughout the planet.  Described by some as decolonial Marxism, by others as Pan-African Marxism, or just as a continuation of Marxist theory as applied to the African continent and the African diaspora, Rodney’s work has been monumental in advancing and applying scientific socialism to updated physical and temporal regions which were not covered extensively until Rodney. His theories on underdevelopment as part of global capitalism opened up new spaces for the