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

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.