What form does social inequality take without classes? How does the ecology of an area, in particular the Zaire basin, interact with social organization? What forms of production existed in different areas? What were the effects of mercantile capitalism on tribal production? These questions and more are tackled with a view to increasing our understanding of industrial development in precolonial Africa.

“A call to arms in the class struggle for racial equity”—the hugely influential work of political theory and history, now powerfully introduced by Angela Davis (Los Angeles Review of Books). This legendary classic on European colonialism in Africa stands alongside C.L.R. James’ Black Jacobins, Eric Williams’ Capitalism & Slavery, and W.E.B. Dubois’ Black Reconstruction. In his short life, the Guyanese intellectual Walter Rodney emerged as one of the leading thinkers and activists of the anticolonial revolution, leading movements in North America, South America, the African continent, and the Caribbean. In each locale, Rodney found himself a lightning rod for working class Black Power. His deportation catalyzed 20th century Jamaica's most significant rebellion, the 1968 Rodney riots, and his scholarship trained a generation how to think politics at an international scale. In 1980, shortly after founding of the Working People's Alliance in Guyana, the 38-year-old Rodney would be assassinated. In his magnum opus, How Europe Underdeveloped Africa, Rodney incisively argues that grasping "the great divergence" between the west and the rest can only be explained as the exploitation of the latter by the former. This meticulously researched analysis of the abiding repercussions of European colonialism on the continent of Africa has not only informed decades of scholarship and activism, it remains an indispensable study for grasping global inequality today.

This book aims to restore Marx’s original emancipatory idea of socialism, conceived as an association of free individuals centered on working people’s self- emancipation after the demise of capitalism. Marxist scholar Paresh Chattopadhyay argues that, Marx’s (and Engels’s) ideas have been deliberately warped with misinterpretation not only by those who resent these ideas but more consequentially by those who have come to power under the banner of Marx, calling themselves communists. This book challenges those who have inaccurately revised Marx’s ideas justify their own pursuit of political power.

Spanning more than two thousand years of African history, from the African Iron Age to the collapse of colonialism and the beginnings of independence, Hosea Jaffe's magisterial work remains one of the few to do full justice to the continent's complex and diverse past. The great strength of Jaffe's work lies in its unique theoretical perspective, which stresses the distinctive character of Africa's social structures and historical development. Crucially, Jaffe rejects all efforts to impose Eurocentric models of history onto Africa, whether it be liberal notions of 'progress' or Marxist theories of class struggle, arguing instead that the key dynamics underpinning African history are unique to the continent itself, and rooted in conflicts between different modes of production. The work also includes a foreword by the distinguished economist and political theorist Samir Amin, in which he outlines the contribution of Jaffe's work to our understanding of African history and its ongoing post-colonial struggles.

Mahdi Amel (1936–87) was a prominent Arab Marxist thinker and Lebanese Communist Party member. This first-time English translation of his selected writings sheds light on his notable contributions to the study of capitalism in a colonial context.