Imperialism Reading Group - How Europe Underdeveloped Africa, by Walter Rodney - Week 7 (hexbear.net)

submitted 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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This is a weekly thread in which we read through books on and related to imperialism and geopolitics. Last week's thread is here.

The book we are currently reading through is How Europe Underdeveloped Africa. Please comment or message me directly if you wish to be pinged for this group, or if you no longer wish to be pinged.

This week, we will be reading the first section, "Expatriation of African Surplus under Colonialism", of Chapter 5: Africa's Contribution to the Capitalist Development of Europe - The Colonial Period.

Next week, we will be reading the second section, "The Strengthening of the Technological and Military Aspects of Capitalism" of Chapter 5: Africa's Contribution to the Capitalism Development of Europe - The Colonial Period.

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[-] [email protected] 10 points 2 weeks ago

Imperialism Reading Group ping!

Time for Chapter 5, where we delve deeper into European colonialism.

[-] [email protected] 8 points 2 weeks ago

Though this isn't on the book specifically, I read a PSL article on the life and pedagogy of Walter Rodney, so I thought I'd share if anyone is interested!

https://www.liberationschool.org/walter-rodney-a-peoples-professor/

[-] [email protected] 5 points 1 week ago

It's good to understand pedagogy to turn theory into praxis, which Rodney was concerned with. I'll check it out.

[-] [email protected] 5 points 1 week ago

I haven't yet checked it out myself, but you may be interested in his Groundings, and a collection of Rodney's lectures called Groundings with my Brothers.

Rodney developed a practice for bridging the gap between academia and the working class called groundings. Groundings are a dialectical process of dialogue and exchange aimed at building the revolutionary movement...

Groundings with My Brothers is a collection of lectures developed for their practical relevance. These lectures include tidbits of reflections on practice and pedagogy, but mostly include the content that contributed to the process of groundings.

In addition to this, there are a few more PSL articles in pedagogy I've read recently

Derek Ford, the author of the above also has some books on Marxist pedagogy

[-] [email protected] 4 points 1 week ago

Groundings definitely sound interesting. Gonna have to read this and bring it to an organization.

[-] [email protected] 7 points 2 weeks ago

Love in this chapter when he basically does the "privatize the profit, socialize the losses" meme but describes it for how imperialists applied it: "extract the profits, decrease African wages equal to every loss"

Great book, idk what else to say. I found 3 pages of my handwritten notes about this chapter, and it's just really damn good, and if somebody has not caught up, I'd just start here and continue. It's such a good book and chapter 5 starts a whole new sort of section

[-] [email protected] 6 points 1 week ago

Hey hey hey, now that we're getting to the world war era it's starting to overlap with Superimperialism. Rodney gives a more direct view of how Britain and France extracted from her colonies with the set up of banks and marketing boards. US enters the picture with how much goods from Africa they earned in exchange for war materiel and financing. Of course African colonies must pay the negative externalities while the mother metropoles reap the benefits. Not too much to comment on, just a good section. One thing that stuck out to me was how the World Wars actually intensified colonization and immiseration of Africa. Not usually mentioned in regular readings of the subject.

[-] [email protected] 5 points 1 week ago

Yeah, I'm starting to see that too, with this one excerpt in mind

From 1943, Britain and the United States engaged in what was known as "reverse lend-lease," This meant that wartime United States loans to Britain were repaid partly by raw materials shipped from British colonies to the United States.

[-] [email protected] 3 points 1 week ago

We're getting into super-profit extraction now, which accelerated the growth of capitalism in the metropoles. As usual, Rodney is still very nice to read. Setting up the colonial administration, then taxing the colonies to pay for it was diabolical and really shows how people that claim colonialism cost the metropoles greatly are full of shit.

this post was submitted on 08 Sep 2025

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