Abstract
The development gap within Africa and between Africa and the rest of the world persists despite years of “progress” in trying to bridge this gap. “Why is Africa still poor and what steps must Africa take to reverse this situation?” “What is the stuff that is unsaid in our writings—what are our silences? Are we over-relying on the colonial library that silences the underdogs? What alternative methodologies should be thought about?” (Msindo, 2019, Writing history beyond Trevor-Roper, p. 20) By returning to the work of Walter Rodney within and beyond the postcolonial Walter Rodney National Archives, I show how Rodney attempted to address these questions, the challenge that remains and how Black economists, inspired by Rodney’s work, have developed stratification economics as a distinctive theory, even a political-economic school of thought, and a movement to address these questions and study Africa within and beyond underdevelopment.
From the Enemy Within to the Enemy Beyond
In 2005, Black economists launched a new field of political economy: stratification economics. William Darity Jr., gave the lecture that established the field as a theory, even an academic school of thought and a movement (Darity, 2005a). This “tour de force” (Darity et al., 2015) has been framed as a major extension of the age-old Black Radical Tradition, the economics of the Black Radical Tradition (Obeng-Odoom, 2020a, 2020b, 2020c).
A major influence on William Darity Jr. has been Dr. Walter Rodney, whose work has featured prominently as a crucial building block for stratification economics (see, e.g., Darity, 1982, 1992, 1998, 2005b). Darity is now one of the commissioners of the Walter and Patricia Rodney Commission on Reparations. Many have reflected on the contributions of, say, Eric Williams’ (1944/2021) Capitalism and Slavery (see Darity, 1998, 2021) and W. E. B. Du Bois’ sociology generally (Stewart, 2022) to stratification economics. And, in an interview with Schmitt (2017), Darity referenced the possibility of drawing on Thorstein Veblen’s work for extending stratification economics, themes (Du Bois and Veblen) which have further been developed by stratification economists (see Davis, 2026). But the influence of Walter Rodney on stratification economics has received far less attention. Yet, doing so can help to address the question that this journal posed in its call for papers: “Why is Africa still poor and what steps must Africa take to reverse this situation?”
In both mainstream and Marxist responses to this question, capital is the central issue—celebrated by some, condemned by others. Bonaventure Swai, a historian at Ahmadu Bello University in Nigeria, criticized this stagnant state of literature as analytical stasis. He pointed out that orthodox accounts often depict the victors as benevolent guides leading a “dark continent” to enlightenment, while critics focus on Africa’s glorious past and the need to return to it. Both perspectives, however, miss the mark: the former undermines action and challenge, while the latter romanticizes the past (Swai, 1987, p. 129). Works like Rostow’s (1960/1990) The Stages of Economic Growth epitomizes orthodoxy, while revisionist approaches suggest gratitude for the in-group’s contributions in areas like education, health, and transport, proposing win-win partnerships. This is part of what Loury (2024) calls “the enemy within.” Yet, this neglects the deliberate miseducation and manipulation that keep the out-group marginalized (Woodson, 1933/1990). Marxists supported these critiques but pointed out that they focused too much on exchange and not production within and around capitalism. Black scholars like Césaire (1972) and Diop (1967), as well as African economic historians like Zeleza (1993/2003), have, however, shown that the capitalist-centered Marxian approaches can be quite ahistorical, overlooking non-capitalist African economies.
This body of work clarifies some, but not all, of the puzzles. Specifically, three critical questions remain: “Why does the development gap persist and what is the stuff that is unsaid in our writings—what are our silences? Are we over-relying on the colonial library that silences the underdogs? What alternative methodologies should be thought about?” (Msindo, 2019, p. 20). These questions are ontological and historical. So, the most enduring and most compelling answers must come from Walter Rodney, an Afro-Guyanese born to enslaved Africans in Guyana (Chukwudinma & Kallon, 2025), who made lasting contributions to all three areas simultaneously. But both supporters and detractors have twisted his intellectual legacy (Campbell, 1987, 2022). Sometimes the problem is not “twisting,” but rather (Hirji, 2017) or relative silencing. Even Zeleza’s magisterial A Modern Economic History of Africa (1993/2003) gives relatively little attention to Rodney. Then there are the taxonomic studies about Rodney (for a review, see Valkama, 2025) that freeze Rodney’s work, forcing it into silos, and looking askance at the political-economic context and repositories of Rodney’s work in Guyana, even though this is central to more fully understanding Walter Rodney’s political economy. Rodney’s studies of modernity in Africa (Rodney, 1970) tend to be overlooked by both orthodox (e.g., Rostow, 1960/1990) and critical writers (e.g., Gills, 2014) on the history of the global political-economic system.
This preamble raises the need to revisit the Black Radical Tradition (Section 2) of which Rodney’s work is a part. What Rodney said about history generally is well documented in biographical works, from which we learn that he spoke truth to power and did not suffer fools lightly in doing so. His claim that whatever Prime Minister Forbes Burnham touched turned to “shit” has become iconic (Andaiye cited in Scott, 2004, p. 191). But, to explore these questions, we need to read an underappreciated part of Rodney’s work, what I call “Rodney’s theory of social stratification.” My exposition of Rodney’s pursuit of autonomy and his ontology of evolutionary materialism completes the picture.
Overall, by returning to the work of Walter Rodney within and beyond the Walter Rodney National Archives of Guyana (see Figure 1) and the University of Guyana Library (Caribbean Writers’ Section, Figures 2–4), I show how Rodney attempted to address the research questions.
I also investigate the challenge that remains and how Black economists, inspired by Rodney’s work, have developed stratification economics as a distinctive political-economic school of thought to study Africa and beyond. I argue that Rodney’s materialism was, in fact, an evolutionary political economy focused on the inverse relationship between economic surplus and social stratification in Africa. He identified the sources of accumulation and deprivation as external, with institutions controlled by the Global North, such as plantation slavery and transnational corporations, bearing culpability. Through empirical studies (Figure 4), Rodney examined institutions like property, revealing how they shaped stratified economic outcomes.
Rodney’s approach can inform studies of resource conflicts, but it must evolve into stratification economics that considers legal questions more seriously, as these disputes about social stratification have morphed into legal disputes around property and the political economy of just change in energy, environmental, and worldwide system change (Obeng-Odoom, 2026a).
This interpretation of Rodney is original and timely. Much of the writing on him pigeonholes him as a Marxist, Decolonial Marxist, or Pan-Africanist. Recent research sees him as a blend of these, applying “classical Marxism” to some themes and “stretching” it to others (Valkama, 2025). Yet, Rodney is more than a Marxist or even a “Third World Marxist” (Scott, 2023, p. 69). For stratification economists, Rodney’s institutional and evolutionary materialism also warrants attention and extension.
The Black Radical Tradition
Black political economists, particularly stratification economists (e.g., Mason, 2023), argue that the conditions of Black people are more compellingly explained by examining institutions controlled by the dominant group. A fundamental cause of the racial wealth gap between the in-group and all these Africans in the out-group is the role of slavery (Darity, 2005a; General Assembly, 2026), colonialism, and ongoing racial imperialism. This emphasis reflects the Black Radical Tradition in C. J. Robinson’s account, Black Marxism: The Making of the Black Radical Tradition (1983). It shows that the Tradition engages “the emergence and limitations of European Radicalism,” examines “the roots of Black Radicalism,” and positively develops “Black Radicalism” beyond “Marxist Theory.” Without elaboration, Robinson (1983, p. 316) regarded Rodney’s work as contributing to the “matured” form of the Black Radical Tradition.
Rodney dedicated his professional life to this Tradition within his field: history and, with it, historical political economy. For Rodney, the production of history was guided by questions like “how, for whom, and by whom is this enterprise practiced?” (Swai, 1987, p. 123). A related question is “what would African historiography look like if it worked for Black liberation rather than subjugation?” (More, 2022, p. 43). The answers are not ideological. Rather, they provide empirical sunlight to challenge ideological darkness, including racist notions about how Africa was so raw that it had no concept of property, trade, or money (Roudaire, 2025). In A History of The Upper Guinea Coast, 1545 to 1800, Rodney (1970) provides empirical insights into how African societies were organized before their encounter with imperialists. Trade, money, and property flourished in a modernity that differed fundamentally from Western exclusionary and extractivist modernism (Rodney, 1970, pp. 32–36, 152–170). What is more important for Rodney is what he calls “Afro-European commerce,” a crucial machine for extracting and siphoning surplus from Africa (Rodney, 1970, pp. 169–199). In How Europe Underdeveloped Africa, Rodney clearly states—and responds to—his research questions:
The question as to who, and what, is responsible for African underdevelopment can be answered at two levels. First, the answer is that the operation of the imperialist system bears major responsibility for African economic retardation by draining African wealth and by making it impossible to develop more rapidly the resources of the continent. Second, one has to deal with those who manipulate the system and those who are either agents or unwitting accomplices … The capitalists of Western Europe were the ones who actively extended their exploitation from … Europe to cover … Africa. In recent times, they were joined, and to some extent replaced, by capitalists from the United States; and for many years now even the workers of those metropolitan countries have benefited from the exploitation and underdevelopment of Africa. (Rodney, 1972/2011, p. 27)
Rodney’s insights liberate Africans from the maddening cycle of self-blame encapsulated in the theory “we are poor because we are poor.” A. M. Babu emphasized this point:
we have been posing the wrong questions regarding economic backwardness. … We were told … that our poverty was caused by our poverty … and we went around in circles seeking ways … of breaking that circle. Had we asked the fundamental questions which Dr. Rodney raises in this work we would not have exposed our economies to the ruthless plunder brought about by “foreign investments” which the exponents of the vicious circle theory urged us to do. (Babu, 1972, p. 284, italics and quotation marks in original)
Rodney’s political economy may be classified as Marxist, stretched Marxist, development scholar, or historian (Valkama, 2025). But while Rodney was grounded in all of these, his work cannot be reduced to any alone. His most significant contribution transcends these labels. George Lamming, Rodney’s close friend from Barbados, wrote the foreword to Rodney’s last book, A History of the Guyanese Working People, 1881–1905. Lamming (1981) revealed Rodney’s motivation as a historian. Many historians had written about Guyana, but they consistently did so from the in-group perspective—planters and imperialists—claiming that the out-group’s indolence caused their deprivation, that the in-group’s benevolence would save them, and that bondage and servitude were benign. The narrative was maintained through racial conflict.
The prosperity and freedom of Black ex-slaves threatened former slavers, who then brought in Indians to undercut Black workers, ensuring stable labor through Indian indenture. This dynamic pitted Black former slaves against Indians. Educated people were supposed to see through this deception, but education became a means for the educated class to mimic the in-group, creating a wedge between common people and educated groups where racial conflict festered. Amidst this intransigent conflict was a substantial accumulation benefiting the in-group.
Black economists worked on many of these questions, but their approaches differed from Rodney’s. For instance, W. Arthur Lewis seems to develop an “enemy within” model in his Politics in West Africa (Lewis, 1965), an approach that has far more in common with Loury’s (2024) Confessions of a Black Conservative. Both approaches, however, differ from conservativism (Obeng-Odoom, 2025b). Rodney supported those who saw that business could not be done as usual, even if his politics differed from theirs. That was evidently how Rodney came to support W. Arthur Lewis, even though Rodney was on the left of Lewis. As an undergraduate student at the University College of the West Indies (UWI), Jamaica, Rodney was in the audience when W. Arthur Lewis, the only Black person to have won the Nobel Prize in Economics and the first West Indian Principal in 1959, was outlining his vision for the university. Lewis was against student elitism, seeking to make education as widely accessible as possible. He considered that a scholar needed to speak the truth whether it favored Left- or Right-Wing positions. Students had to approach politics and public life in a more balanced and scholarly way, always speaking the truth regardless of the cost to one’s own interest. His emphasis was using one’s talents for public and community service, not self-serving careerism. The responsibilities of intellectuals include asking “dangerous questions,” addressing social problems, speaking truth to power, and aiming for scientific excellence, building bridges across race, conciliation, and political tolerance. Both staff and students were against this position. “Radical Caribbean political economists” and “Leftwing political economists” were particularly against Lewis, portraying him as a conservative, a Western tool. In one case, students confronted Lewis so directly during dinner that he had to leave “literally in tears!” (Lalljie, 1996, exclamation marks in original, p. 58). Accordingly, Arthur Lewis resigned twice.
In the first case, “Dr., Eric Williams, an old friend of Lewis, made his resignation an issue of Federal politics, while a young Guyanese student and activist Walter Rodney, led protests by the Guild of Undergraduates for Lewis to remain” (Lalljie, 1996, p. 72, see also Lalljie, 1996, p. 76). Rodney also called for a student vote on the motion whether Arthus Lewis should resign or continue. As it turned out, 270 students voted for Lewis’ stay, 14 voted against Lewis, and 13 abstained. So, while there were clear opponents of Lewis, the majority of people preferred his continued stay. Former classmates of Lewis also wrote to him, urging him not to give up on his own people (Tignor, 2006, pp. 224–225).
Lewis remained, actively building structures to realize his vision of the outstanding scholar.
For this commitment to education excellence, Lewis was knighted in 1963. It has been argued that “Rodney was to follow Lewis’ address more than any other student” (Lalljie, 1996, p. 72). In the second case, Lewis did not only resign, but he also left the region for Princeton. Lady Lewis noted: “If he had not left the Region, he would have been a very sick man” (Lalljie, 1996, p. 79). The criticisms and opposition to Lewis had become unbearable, with academics, particularly political economists, refusing to teach anything about his work (Lalljie, 1996, pp. 79–80). Not Rodney: even though his politics were clearly radical, it was also principled, recognizing excellence, whether it came from the Left or the Right, Black or White, or people of varying identities.
Walter Bgoya, an editor at Tanzania Publishing House, noted Rodney’s rejection of peer review, arguing that the intellectual traditions of reviewers justified Europe’s underdevelopment of Africa (Bgoya, 1981, p. 7). Rodney trusted those with firsthand experience of the problem, seeking to express the collective aspirations of the community in which his work was created:
Many colleagues and comrades shared in the preparation of this work. Special thanks must go to comrades Karim Hirji and Henry Mapolu of the University of Dar es Salaam, who read the manuscript in a spirit of constructive criticism … The purpose has been to try and reach Africans who wish to explore further the nature of their exploitation, rather than to satisfy the “standards” set by our oppressors and their spokesmen in the academic world. (Rodney, 1972, p. vii–viii)
Walter Rodney’s Theory of Social Stratification
Most writers overlook Rodney’s theory of why Africa has remained poor and underdeveloped while Asia and Latin America have made significant progress, and why Asians, people from the Middle East, and non-Africans in Africa hold so much more wealth than Africans even in Africa. This social stratification within Africa and Africans typically at the bottom cannot be explained by underdevelopment theories generally, nor can it be addressed by general postcolonial or post-development theories. Both development economics (Lewis, 1985) and development studies more broadly (Kothari, 2006) have long struggled with explaining racial questions. W. Arthur Lewis (1985) attempted to address the hiatus with his book, Racial Conflict and Economic Development. But the issue is not simply about race or racism; it is about social stratification more broadly (Darity & Triplett, 2008).
Many mainstream economists explain the differences with human capital theory, pointing out that other races have more education and exposure than Africans (Bauer, 1971; for a critical review, see Obeng-Odoom, 2019, 2020a). Others claim that it is not simply human capital but rather that others have more social capital than Africans or that African or particularly Black social capital is defective or problematic; African institutions best explain the racial wealth gap (Loury, 2024). From these claims arise the following well-known desiderata: The more Africans can mimic other races, the greater progress Africans can make. The more Africa can import institutions from the “winners,” the more “progress” Africa can make. And the parts of Africa with vestiges of settler colonialism are those that are more developed (Acemoglu & Robinson, 2012).
Rodney explained social stratification differently. Contrary to the conventional focus on income, poverty, income poverty, or development goals, economic, sustainable, or social development, Rodney saw the central problem in comprehensive terms: the capacity for dealing with the environment, which is contingent on economic, technological, and scientific freedom. Development, in this sense, is “universal” (Rodney, 1972/2011, pp. 4–5). The challenge is that it has been “uneven.” Income measures hide the complexities of underdevelopment (the state of being exploited by other countries and regions). He considered the development gap as a more accurate measure of development and underdevelopment (Rodney, 1972/2011, e.g., p. 15) and developed a theory of institutionalized racial discrimination to explain it. Theorizing racism was central to his work. In How Europe Underdeveloped Africa, he referenced race (e.g., Rodney, 1972/2011, pp. 21, 89, 180, 188, 208, 273, 277, 286), racism (e.g., Rodney, 1972/2011, pp. 10, 88, 89, 90, 140, 141, 191, 196, 200, 241, 249, 253, 272, 277), or (racial) discrimination (Rodney, 1972/2011, pp. 217, 277, 243, 254) or discrimination (Rodney, 1972/2011, pp. 188, 208), multiple times. “White racism” is part of the entries in the Index (Rodney, 1972/2011, p. 312). Racism was integral to his theorizing.
According to Rodney, White Europeans’ political-economic advance depended on persistently putting Black people at the bottom of the social strata and keeping them there through a reproduction of particular political-economic institutions. Slavery originated this system of racism. But “Pervasive and vicious racism was present in imperialism as a variant independent of the economic rationality that initially gave birth to racism” (Rodney, 1972/2011, p. 141), but it gave way to invisible chains that kept Black people in their place. Even out of Africa, the connection to Africa cemented this racism, such that people associated with Africa and Africans were seen as backward. That was evidently the experience of Black people outside continental Africa. Leading Pan-Africanists like W. E. B. Dubois found that “their inferior status in the societies of America was conditioned by the fact of being Black and the weakness of Africa” (Rodney, 1972/2011, p. 277).
Rodney sought to dismantle this model. Even within Africa, Black people were economic second-class citizens. When there were opportunities given:
rarely were they Africans, and more usually they were a minority group brought in from outside and serving as intermediaries between the White colonialists and the exploited African … In West Africa, the Lebanese and Syrians played this role; while in East Africa the Indians rose to this position. Arabs were also in the middleman category in Zanzibar and a few other places on the East African coast. (Rodney, 1972/2011, pp. 154–155)
Despite some minor clashes between the colonialists and the middlemen, the two were part and parcel of the same apparatus of exploitation. Overall, the Lebanese and Indians did the smaller jobs which Europeans could not be bothered with. They owned things such as cotton gins, which separated the seed from the lint, while, of course, Europeans concentrated on the cotton mills in Europe. The middlemen also went out to the villages, while Europeans liked to stay in towns. In the villages, the Indians and Lebanese took over virtually all buying and selling, channeling most of the profits back to Europeans in the towns and those overseas (Rodney, 1972/2011, p. 155).
“It is fairly obvious,” Rodney wrote, “that capitalists do not set out to create other capitalists, who would be rivals.” The tendency was to use competition, elimination, and monopoly to advance European interests. Of course, “some local capitalists did emerge in Asia and Latin America,” Rodney acknowledged. But he insisted on the exceptionalism of Africa. “Africa is a significant exception in the sense that, compared with other colonized peoples, far fewer Africans had access even to the middle rungs of the bourgeois ladder in terms of capital for investment” (Rodney, 1972/2011, p. 216). There would be conflict between the middlemen of Asian and Latin America and Europeans but, in the grand scheme of events, Africans were rarely preferred. Businessmen from Sierra Leone and Uganda were discouraged from economic advancement. Where legislation allowed minorities to own business interests, that legislation disallowed Black Africans from doing the same. The discrimination was blatant and written into legal codes (Rodney, 1972/2011, pp. 216–217).
Racial discrimination was prevalent in schools, too. Examining that discrimination helps to see the limitations of mainstream human capital theory. For starters, most Africans were not allowed to obtain any education. If they obtained an education, it was basic. If advanced education was given, it was intended to educate Black people out of Africa through confusion and mystification, including propagating the greatness of the oppressor and awareness of the oppressor’s power, while making the wonders of Africa itself invisible. The best education was reserved for White people, followed by others. Black Africans gained little or no skills, only for their oppressors to turn around and point to their lack of “human capital.” But this is a bad theory because it cannot explain the phenomena of which it is a part (Rodney, 1972/2011, pp. 244–247). The real problem was discrimination as a tool in an institutionalized social stratification system.
This was a model developed in Uganda, Kenya, and across Africa. Lebanese, Syrians, Arabs, and Indians became middlemen in businesses such as moneylending that entrapped Africans in debt. This usurious system was so destructive, pushing Africans further out and keeping them down, that even Europeans intervened with their “Native Credit Ordinance” (Rodney, 1972/2011, pp. 154–155), as Rodney put it, “to protect Africans from Asian businessmen” (Rodney, 1972/2011, p. 155). The drain from these middle traders was small compared to the substantial drain to Europe through Europeans and their business interests, including the United African Company (UAC), controlled by Britain and the Compagnie Fraçaise d’Afrique Occidentale (CFAO) and Société Comerciale Ouest Africane (SCOA). Additionally, the Europeans declared Kenya highlands “Crown Land” to drain rent, and the Americans drained Liberia of rents through Firestone in an intricate system of underdevelopment. These historical insights about the racial wealth gap and its logical consequences of underdevelopment have been validated by more recent research in stratification economics, whether in Kenya (Gĩthĩnji, 2015), South Africa (Chelwa et al., 2024), or Africa more widely (Obeng-Odoom, 2020a).
Epistemology and Autonomy
George Lamming once described Rodney’s epistemology “critical realism” (Lamming, 1981, p. xvii)—not typical “historical materialism.” This is significant. Rodney was an evolutionary institutional analyst. If there are stages of development, he saw such a development process as temporary, transitory, and co-existent with socialism and capitalism existing side-by-side, where these “modes of production cannot simply be viewed as a question of successive stages” (Rodney, 1972/2011, p. 11).
In pursuit of these alternatives, he rejected the cost-benefit approach to the evaluation of slavery, colonialism, and imperialism. Instead, he prioritized the autonomy of Africans regardless of costs or benefits:
The only positive development in colonialism was when it ended … In contrast to a subjective interpretation of what was good about colonialism on the one hand and what was bad on the other hand, there is the approach which follows closely the aims and achievements of the colonizers and the counter aims and achievements of the African people. … certain fundamental contradictions arose within colonial society, and they could only be resolved by Africans’ regaining their sovereignty as a people. (Rodney, 1972, p. 261)
Does this mean that Rodney was not a Marxist? No, but it suggests that Rodney embodied the underappreciated tradition of evolutionary materialism, briefly referenced but not elaborated in Nelson and Winter’s (1982, p. 44) An Evolutionary Theory of Economic Change. This reading of Rodney gravely undermines poststructuralist criticisms of Rodney’s materialism as structuralist and Eurocentric. For Rodney, materialism was the most formidable challenge to the prevailing idealism and individualism of his time. He saw “[i]n Europe … individualism led to … Europe’s conquest of the rest of the world” (Rodney, 1972/2011, p. 255). Economics provided the rationale, racism dictated the form of control, and idealism offered a camouflage (Rodney, 1972/2011, p. 141). In one remarkable case, Rodney reflects (1972/2011, p. 21), a mainstream economist even quoted the Bible as explanation for the persistent development gap between Africa and the rest of the world: “For unto everyone that hath shall be given, and he shall have abundance; but from him that hath not shall be taken away even that which he hath” (a quotation from Matthew xxv, verse 29). Saying “Amen” to this would mean accepting this ahistorical approach (Rodney, 1972/2011, p. 21). Rodney not only rejected this ahistoricism, but he also provided a fiery response to it:
People seem to have no difficulty in deciding that they are going to use facets of the material culture that originated in the West, whether it originated in capitalist or socialist society. People have no difficulty relating to electricity, but they say: “Marx and Engels, that’s European!” Was Edison a racist? … Our interpretation of the social reality can similarly derive a certain historical law and hence scientific law of society which can be applied irrespective of its origin or its originators. (Rodney, 1975), n.p.
He contended that his Marxist methodology is not dogmatic. If he were studying the societies from which that approach had been applied, he would “adopt” that approach. But if he was studying other contexts, he would “adapt” the methodology as he deemed fit (Rodney, 1975). In this sense, he argued, Marxism is not tied to any country, nation, or region. He brought this evolutionary methodology to the Working People’s Alliance, the political party that he co-founded.
There is still a preference among many of the Third World Marxists and/or radicals for orienting themselves toward a specific body of theory and analysis, and at an international level, to the point at which it becomes an identification with a particular nation-state. We have attempted to avoid this, and we believe it is the correct position. (Rodney, cited in Campbell, 1981, p. 32)
But Rodney’s love for cricket was also labeled as Eurocentric. As Black Tanzanians were not playing cricket, Rodney would play cricket with non-Black “parochial” and “exclusive” Asian business tycoons. Karim Hirji, who leveled this criticism against Rodney, later regretted taking this view, saying that, after reading C. L. R. James’ book on cricket, he learned that in the West Indies “cricket, though a colonial import, was internalized into the local culture and had become a pastime of the masses” (Hirji, 2017, p. 96). Hirji advised others who accused Rodney of Eurocentrism: “Seek the meaning of an act … not in the abstract but in the social context in which it occurs” (Hirji, 2017, p. 96). Marxist methodology, as Rodney (1975) put it, is that social problems were not of God. Context and institutions matter. Classes develop and evolve, even if they do not form in the same way around the world. Class denialism, he argued, misled Nkrumah, who later, after being overthrown by the petty bourgeoisie as a class, accepted that classes exist in Africa, writing the book Class Struggle in Africa (Nkrumah, 1970).
Rodney was a revolutionary and evolutionary analyst. Reflecting on A History of the Upper Guinea Coast, 1545–1800 (Rodney, 1970), Rodney signaled his evolution as an analyst. “Looking at that work now, I would certainly not see it as a strong statement of Marxist scholarship by any means” (Rodney, cited in More, 2022, p. 41). Rodney’s evolutionary work also became more institutional as, over time, he abandoned spontaneous action for planned and organized change through institutions, including working to change the rules for political parties and politics generally (Chukwudinma & Kallon, 2025). It is an approach that has inspired “Stratification economics,” defined by William Darity Jr., the pioneering stratification economist, as a field of study that “examines the structural and intentional processes generating hierarchy and, correspondingly, income and wealth inequality between ascriptively distinguished groups” (Darity, 2005a, p. 144). The approach has been used to study ethnic wealth differences in Kenya (Gĩthĩnji, 2015), the racial wealth gap in South Africa (Chelwa et al., 2024), and the development gap within Africa or between Africa and the rest of the world (Obeng-Odoom, 2020a).
This racial wealth gap is not simply a measure of inequality, social stratification, or cumulative disadvantage, but it is also an institution for reproducing social stratification from generation to generation (Wang, 2025; Williams, 2025). Often, the racial wealth gap interacts with another institution: “rent theft.” It arises from and further triggers the private appropriation of socially created rents (Obeng-Odoom, 2020a, 2021, 2025a) grounded in a property theory of power (Darity, 1992, 2024; Obeng-Odoom, 2023a, 2024). The institution of property in land and the resulting private appropriation of socially created rent are used by the in-group to reproduce itself (Obeng-Odoom, 2020a, 2020b, 2020c). These violent processes are reinforced by ecological imperialism, privatization, monopolization, and manipulation of nature to maintain and extend the position of the in-group. Darity’s many works empirically show that, through White privilege, intergenerational transmission effects, the racialized wealth gap, and lower-order ladder, stratification becomes even more entrenched (see, for a review, Darity et al., 2017).
Stratification economics is evolutionary, but it is also revolutionary in many respects. For instance, in its diagnosis of the problem, especially when juxtaposed with existing theories that emphasize defects internal to the out-group. These existing theories emphasize nature, social forces such as rational choices, deficient cultures, or problematic behavioral attributes of the out-group and positive attributes of in-group members. Stratification economics, on the other hand, stresses strategies by the in-group to keep the out-group as “outcastes.” The focus of stratification economics is relative, not absolute, comparison, although stratification economics has also been used as a guide for the empirical study of intra-group stratification based on colorism, patrarchy, and, their interlinkages (Paul & Darity, 2022). These internal analyses are typically situated within a wider inter-group framework (e.g., how transnational corporations manipulate colorism to sell skin-whitening products). That is also evidently the case of urban and regional development (e.g., oil and non-fossil cities and their “glocal” stratification), migration and immigration (Hamilton, 2018; Obeng-Odoom, 2022).
It was from this standpoint that Rodney consistently prioritized autonomy and self-reliance as alternatives. Rodney’s theory of development, that underdevelopment is an externally driven system of violence, logically means that development must mean a system change. “Flag independence” alone is not enough to address the ills from four centuries of slavery to one century of independence. Rodney worked tirelessly for (a) a non-capitalist path to economic independence, (b) development outcomes that promote inclusion and (c) mass conscious actions for development (Rodney, 1972/2011, p. 280). These amount to developing a well-organized united, multi-racial challenge to monopoly capitalism and imperialism. The Walter and Patricia Rodney Commission on Reparations sees this alternative as inclusive of seeking reparative justice, as do many inspired by his work. This reading of Rodney is consistent with his challenge of “exploitation without compensation.” Demanding reparations and restructuring African economies with fiscal and monetary tools, land commons can create the conditions for the inclusive and autonomous development Rodney sought for both system and sustainable change (Darity, 1992, 1998, 2005; Darity & Triplett, 2008; Obeng-Odoom, 2020a, 2023b, 2026b). This analysis helps to address not only “why is Africa still poor” but also “what steps must Africa take to reverse this situation,” the two-barreled questions that this special issue seeks to resolve.
Conclusion
The persistence of the development gap within and beyond Africa invites further reflections on global inequalities and social stratification. With this journal putting the question as “Why is Africa still poor and what steps must Africa take to reverse this situation?” this article has tried to address the questions: “Why does the development gap persist and what is the stuff that is unsaid in our writings—what are our silences? Are we over-relying on the colonial library that silences the underdogs? What alternative methodologies should be thought about?” (Msindo, 2019, p. 20). By returning to the work of Walter Rodney within and beyond the postcolonial Walter Rodney National Archives, I have shown how Rodney attempted to address these questions, the challenge that remains and how Black economists, inspired by Rodney’s work, have developed stratification economics as a distinctive political-economic school of thought to study Africa and beyond. My intellectual biography of Rodney and an examination of Rodney’s own writings show that Rodney questioned the “the enemy within” outsized theory that the out-group (Africa and Africans) are responsible for their own predicaments. Instead, he highlighted the “enemy without” theory, the role of institutions of power controlled by the in-group (Europe, the Global North generally, transnational corporations from the Global North). While he was politically conscious, he came to these conclusions by careful, empirical studies, probing the nature of institutions such as land and law. This analysis an original appreciation of Rodney’s legacy, a robust critique, and a vision for applying his insights to present and future challenges.
Black intellectuals and activists have often been subjected to caricature and mischaracterization. Figures like Andaiye, Toni Morrison, bell hooks, Wangari Maathai, and Nawal El Saadawi were courageous leaders who transformed history but faced such challenges. Once upon a time, W. E. B. Du Bois was even denied as a pioneering sociologist. Today, he is more generally accepted, but he continues to be dismissed as merely a pawn for Marxist sociology (Morris, 2025). Justice Clarence Thomas was long considered just a poor shadow of Justice Antonin Scalia. This caricature is visceral. W. Arthur Lewis was condemned as a crude mainstream development economist fixated on dualism. Ironically, the mainstream saw him as nothing more than a Black man without utility:
and the Economist would not take him into their firm as a journalist. … They said that they could not hire a Black journalist since he would have to interview people who might refuse to see him because of his color. (Tignor, 2006, p. 19)
These critiques, rooted in various motivations, ultimately belittle the intellectual ingenuity of Black people. Walter Rodney also faced such challenges, with his personality, politics, scholarship, and activism under scrutiny.
Rodney found that sources of accumulation and deprivation were external institutions controlled by the Global North. The state, plantations, and transnational corporations are forerunners in creating and shaping the status quo. Historiographically, Rodney developed an approach to history that countered the in-group account, which paid little attention to land, the plantation, and imperialism. His study of underdevelopment brought him face-to-face with imperialism, colonialism, slavery, emancipation, and the continuing importance of land, its molding by the plantation, and the web of interdependencies among these forces. Rodney’s approach was anything but mainly Marxist historiography. While he studied “class,” he recurrently referenced “strata” as well. His study ultimately focused on social stratification from the standpoint of the out-group. “Imperialism extinguished the rights of subjugated peoples to make their own autonomous history … Self-expression on the part of oppressed working people in that era therefore constitutes a definite historical achievement” (Rodney, 1981, p. 222), providing both an approach to history and history itself.
The attempt to reduce Rodney to merely a Marxist must fail because it contradicts the weight of the evidence. Rodney publicly acknowledged that his first book, A History of the Upper Guinea Coast, 1545 to 1800, was not Marxist (Rodney, cited in More, 2022, p. 41). Yet, it painted a picture of the out-group that would guide Rodney’s subsequent steps in his short life. As Rodney (1969, p. viii) noted, “such a picture provides the indispensable basis for analyzing the impact of external forces.” Scott (2023, p. 75) recently wrote, “I believe this is an extraordinarily important text for understanding what Rodney was about.” As demonstrated elsewhere (Obeng-Odoom, 2026a), Rodney’s last book challenged Marxism on multiple counts. What does this set of facts say about the place of Marxism in Rodney? Marx is “there,” but a more fundamental force drives Rodney, akin to methodologies espoused by evolutionary institutionalists. Andaiye proposed “Rodneyite” as an apt descriptor (cited in Scott, 2004, p. 196). Rodneyites must obviously build on this Walter Rodney approach to explain and address underdevelopment and to develop and advance stratification economics within and beyond Africa.
Footnotes
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.