Peter Hudis is professor of philosophy at Oakton Community College and the author of Frantz Fanon: Philosopher of the Barricades.
When Germany pledged to oppose South Africa’s genocide case against Israel, the Namibian government reminded German politicians of their state’s genocidal record in Africa. Rosa Luxemburg exposed the crimes of German colonialism while they were happening.
Rosa Luxemburg’s work The Accumulation of Capital described the havoc that capitalism wreaked upon what we now call the Global South. Today’s socialist and environmental activists can draw valuable insights from Luxemburg’s understanding of the world system.
A new edition of Rosa Luxemburg’s writings, most of which have never appeared in English before, gives us a unique perspective on her thought. Luxemburg believed that a socialist revolution would have to be democratic or else it would be doomed to failure.
There was nothing abstract about Frantz Fanon’s political vision for the Global South: it was forged in the Algerian liberation struggle. Fanon’s role in that struggle convinced him that national independence would be hollow without social revolution.
Frantz Fanon was one of the most influential revolutionary thinkers of the last century. His work, produced in the heat of anti-colonial revolution, is full of insights for the struggle against racism and capitalism today.
The Russian-born thinker Raya Dunayevskaya was an important and influential figure on the US radical left. At an early stage, she recognized the need to combine struggles against racism and capitalism — two oppressive structures that were intimately linked.
The philosopher, psychiatrist, and revolutionary militant Frantz Fanon was a key figure in the struggle against European colonialism. Fanon’s innovative thinking on racism and its relationship to class oppression still speaks vividly to the present.