Dear Editor,
Walter Rodney was blown to bits in 1980 when he foolishly went to a rendezvous with an officer of the Guyana Defence Force, who handed him a parcel that was supposed to contain top secret informtion. The parcel turned out to be a bomb, sent, it was widely believed, on the orders of the socialist dictator, Forbes Burnham.
Rodney was naive in political beliefs because he accepted the socialist oversimplification of the causes of poverty, ie it is caused by capitalist exploitation and the best solution is to tear down capitalism in violent revolution.
The basic cause of poverty is underdevelopment, which has be addressed by prudent management and patient striving. But socialists want overnight transformation through the barrel of a gun. Religion, socialists say, is the opium of the people, but socialism is the opium of intellectuals.
Rodney appealed to the students at Mona in 1968 to confront the authorities and burn down the university and take guns into Kingston's streets. When that was not enough, he went to Marcus Garvey Drive to recruit Rastas for his revolution.
Then Prime Minister Hugh Shearer handled the matter very clumsily, and it led to a riot that caused a million of dollars in damage. Rodney was a journeyman scholar. His opus magnus, How Europe underdeveloped Africa, describes the despoilation without offering any practical solution and it is not very well written.This is the man who is lionised, canonised and beatified in Rodney lectures at the UWI, and I had to bite my tongue when I heard his praises sung on Sharon Hay-Webster's morning show while I was home on a visit. How shallow the thinkers on the left!
Orville Brown
Bronx NY
storyline6000@gmail.com
Don't be naive about Walter Rodney
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Walter Rodney was blown to bits in 1980 when he foolishly went to a rendezvous with an officer of the Guyana Defence Force, who handed him a parcel that was supposed to contain top secret informtion. The parcel turned out to be a bomb, sent, it was widely believed, on the orders of the socialist dictator, Forbes Burnham.
Rodney was naive in political beliefs because he accepted the socialist oversimplification of the causes of poverty, ie it is caused by capitalist exploitation and the best solution is to tear down capitalism in violent revolution.
The basic cause of poverty is underdevelopment, which has be addressed by prudent management and patient striving. But socialists want overnight transformation through the barrel of a gun. Religion, socialists say, is the opium of the people, but socialism is the opium of intellectuals.
Rodney appealed to the students at Mona in 1968 to confront the authorities and burn down the university and take guns into Kingston's streets. When that was not enough, he went to Marcus Garvey Drive to recruit Rastas for his revolution.
Then Prime Minister Hugh Shearer handled the matter very clumsily, and it led to a riot that caused a million of dollars in damage. Rodney was a journeyman scholar. His opus magnus, How Europe underdeveloped Africa, describes the despoilation without offering any practical solution and it is not very well written.This is the man who is lionised, canonised and beatified in Rodney lectures at the UWI, and I had to bite my tongue when I heard his praises sung on Sharon Hay-Webster's morning show while I was home on a visit. How shallow the thinkers on the left!
Orville Brown
Bronx NY
storyline6000@gmail.com
Don't be naive about Walter Rodney
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