Walter Rodney and the method of political economy: retrieving a critical-historical IPE

Abstract

Walter Rodney is a household name in IPE. Traditionally, scholars place Rodney in the tradition of dependency theory. More recently, scholars of ‘racial capitalism’ have identified Rodney as a foundational analyst of the empirical and conceptual relationship of racism and capitalism. However, while Rodney’s work is often invoked in contemporary literature, it is rarely discussed. This paper offers a detailed engagement with Rodney’s major works and situates them in their broader intellectual context in the history of IPE. In doing so, the paper highlights three major contributions. First, Rodney locates processes of working-class formation within the historical emergence and structural constraints of the capitalist world economy, breaking down conventional divides between domestic and international political economy. Second, Rodney demonstrates the centrality of unfree labor to the extension and reproduction of capitalism on a world scale. Third, Rodney highlights the integral role of race and racism in working-class formation, but stops short of positing these relations as functionally necessary to capitalist reproduction – a nuance which distinguishes him from current fashions. The paper argues that retrieving these three contributions can help renew a critical-historical IPE centered on the development of – and challenges to – working-class power in the global economy.

Keywords:

• Capitalism
• class formation
• empire
• global development
• history
• labor
• method
• race and racism

Acknowledgments

Previous versions of this article were presented at the annual convention of the International Studies Association (ISA), the ISA-Northeast, and the Arrighi Center for Global Studies at Johns Hopkins University. I thank all participants for their engagement. For reading and commenting on previous drafts I would like also to thank Maha Rafi Atal, Robbie Shilliam, Emma Kast, Ben Taylor, Thomas Mann, Adriana Guerra, Mikael Omstedt, Kevin Funk, Smriidhi Waadhwa, and two anonymous reviewers. None of the above-mentioned are responsible for the final product, but as Rodney might say, it is the work of a community.

Notes

1 While Robinson’s Black Marxism first appeared in 1983, it was the 2000 edition that catalyzed the upsurge of scholarly work organized around the concept of ‘racial capitalism’.

2 As Go astutely remarks, ‘this is a functionalist argument that is not functionalist enough, for it effaces the logical possibility of functional substitution’ Go, Go (2021, p. 44).

3 Brenner placed Rodney’s work beside British imperial historian A. G. Hopkins, which was quite misleading. For Rodney’s own critique of Hopkins’ work see Rodney and Patterson (1979, pp. 279–280).

4 This is not to imply that there was a linear development from slavery to indenture. For a review of recent scholarship on indenture see Allen (2017); for an insightful global synthesis see Lowe (2015).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

David Kenneth Johnson

David Kenneth Johnson is a Ph.D. Candidate in Political Science at Johns Hopkins University. His dissertation research examines U.S. global development policy from the Spanish-American War to the Bretton Woods system.