Peter Lawrence - search results

In a celebration of the life of John Saul, his friend and comrade Peter Lawrence remembers a tireless revolutionary, activist, and writer. One of the founding editors of ROAPE, Saul worked in Tanzania and Mozambique, where he analysed the struggles and possibilities for real independence and socialism. Later, he was a leading member and founder of Southern African liberation organisations in Canada. Lawrence marks a remarkable life and contribution to socialist politics.

In this review essay ROAPE’s Peter Lawrence discusses Alex Callinicos’ new book The New Age of Catastrophe. Callinicos has written a book that admits to the mind-numbing scale of the catastrophe that confronts humanity but provides enough ammunition to those who want to see a more optimistic future. Lawrence argues that Callinicos makes a strong case for socialism as the solution and mass mobilisation from below of the organised working class as the only way to achieve it. 

ROAPE’s Peter Lawrence argues that there are strong echoes across Africa of the recession of the late 1970s and early 1980s. The reappearance of recession, debt and structural adjustment to the continent reminds us of the fundamental contradiction of capitalism. Based on his editorial in the forthcoming ROAPE issue 174, Lawrence concludes that there are alternatives to the continent’s enduring entrapment in a global financial system that works for the global financial corporates that dominate it.

ROAPE’s Peter Lawrence writes how Covid-19 has hit capitalism when it was already confronting systemic problems. The pandemic has helped to connect the dots between environmental degradation and the development of global capitalism. Lawrence argues that only with organised pressure from below can a way through be found.

From the editorial to issue 156 of ROAPE, Peter Lawrence discusses articles that examine the state and global capitalism. Included in the issue are papers which look at how the colonial and post-colonial states in Malawi have pursued policies that have been in the interests of the tobacco industry, state capture in South Africa's motor industry and the history of capital controls. While the Debates section is devoted to the ROAPE/Third World Network workshop on radical political economy and industrialisation in Africa held in Accra last November.

At a ROAPE organised workshop at the ASAUK in September on 'African capitalist society' speakers reflected on the state of scholarship on capitalism in Africa and the dynamic and development of capitalism on the continent. Kate Meagher (LSE), Stefan Ouma (Frankfurt) and Jesse Ovadia (Windsor) were speakers, and Jörg Wiegratz (Leeds) and Peter Lawrence (Keele) chairs.

In this extended report on a far-reaching and radical workshop held in Ghana in July 2015 on equitable development and transformation, Peter Lawrence and Yao Graham describe the debates and discussions that took place on Africa's political and economic future.

Peter Lawrence reflects on the early days of the Review of African Political Economy, the role Ruth First played in the Review's first issues and an important argument about Cuba's involvement in Angola that divided the editorial group.

For 50 years, ROAPE has brought our readers pathbreaking analysis on radical African political economy in our quarterly review, and for more than ten years on our website. ROAPE’s founding editor, Peter Lawrence, explains that from January 2024, all of our readers will be able to access every part of ROAPE as well as its archive without a paywall. This will make ROAPE accessible to a much wider readership, especially in Africa. We need subscriptions and donations to make this revolutionary intiative work. Sign up now!

Reflecting on African studies, the neo-liberal university, decolonisation and resistance, Ray Bush discuses in an interview with Richard Borowski about what it means to be a scholar-activist working on Africa, and how his teaching and research have been informed by a commitment to the radical transformation of the continent, and the world.