Liberation School introduction The original French text, available here, is a transcription of an oral interview, and it is clear that the person doing the transcription was unsure of a few of the formulations. We therefore did our best to render the text as coherent...
VIDEO: We need your help to build the movement for socialism
We started the Party for Socialism and Liberation (PSL) with a small handful of members, determined to build a multi-national, multi-generational and large-scale socialist party in a country that seemed to have mostly rejected socialism. The task seemed daunting. We...
“George Jackson: Black Revolutionary”
Editor's note The following article was written by Walter Rodney for a 1971 issue of Maji Maji, the quarterly journal of the youth wing of the Tanganyika African National Union. The text is held at the Robert W. Woodruff Library in Atlanta, Georgia, under the...
The Russian Revolution: a view from the Third World (study guide)
The Russian Revolution: A View from the Third World by Walter Rodney offers an excellent example of basing one's conclusions and assessments on of all available evidence, data, and contextual information. As a radical historian, Rodney’s example has much to offer the...
Walter Rodney: A people’s professor
Introduction In a recent book on the ongoing relevance of Walter Rodney’s work, Karim F. Hirji notes that, “as with scores of progressive intellectuals and activists of the past, the prevailing ideology functions to relegate Rodney into the deepest, almost...
Study, fast, train, fight: The roots of Black August
Introduction In August 1619, enslaved Africans touched foot in the first permanent English settlement in what is now the United States. The centuries since witnessed the development of a racial system more violent, extractive, and deeply entrenched than any other in...
Studying society for the working class: Marx’s first preface to “Capital”
Introduction In the preface to the first edition of volume one of Capital, dated July 25, 1867, Marx introduces the book’s “ultimate aim": “to lay bare the economic law of motion of modern society” [1]. Looking back 155 years later, it’s clear the book not only...
The U.S. state and the U.S. revolution
It is no exaggeration to say that the principal disputes between activists, organizations and political trends in U.S. social movements have hinged on different understandings of, and attitudes toward, the state. What distinguishes a revolutionary communist...
The history of class struggle from 1789-1917: An interview with Jacques Pauwels
Editor’s note: The latest installment in our Liberation School interview series provides a general overview of class struggle from the French Revolution of 1789 to the Russian Revolution. PSL member Gabriel Rockhill and historian Jacques Pauwels discuss the class...