Obeng-Odoom (2026): Progress and Poverty — Walter Rodney's Legacy

Overview

"Progress and Poverty: Walter Rodney's Legacy" is a 2026 article by Franklin Obeng-Odoom in the American Journal of Economics and Sociology, doi:10.1111/ajes.70021.[1] Obeng-Odoom is a Ghanaian-Australian political economist already cited on the wiki for his comparative treatment of George and Elinor Ostrom on the commons.[2] Semantic Scholar records this article as genuinely open access (CC BY, hybrid), but the wiki was unable to retrieve the full text — Wiley's site blocks automated retrieval regardless of license. This page is built from the published abstract only; claims beyond it are marked [VERIFY].

The Argument (per abstract)

Obeng-Odoom's starting point is Henry George's "progress and poverty" paradox — that material progress and entrenched poverty rise together, which George attributed to "the private appropriation of socially created value."[1] The paper's contribution is that George "failed to consider race as a variable in the formation of the paradox," and it uses Walter Rodney (1942–1980), the Guyanese historian and author of How Europe Underdeveloped Africa, to supply that missing analysis.[1] Rodney's own scholarship, per the abstract, "demonstrated that the creation of property in labor during slavery was reproduced after emancipation in the production of landed property relations" — i.e., racialized property in people became racialized property in land.[1] The paper's specific claim is that socially produced value was captured not only by White in-groups but also by "non-Black in-groups (White and East Indian) who controlled land" — language that situates the analysis in Guyana's own post-emancipation racial-economic structure (Afro- and Indo-Guyanese), rather than the US-specific case the wiki's existing racial-wealth-gap narrative documents.[1]

The paper's normative conclusion is unusually direct for a Georgist-tradition venue: "Neither socialism nor a Georgist single tax can remedy the situation."[1] Its proposed remedy instead combines the two traditions the wiki's reparations-vs-rent-capture analysis already treats as complements rather than substitutes: "an effective remedy for George's paradox can be found by combining Georgist taxation with a reparations program derived from the legacy of Walter Rodney," invoking a recent International Court of Justice ruling that states are obliged to pay reparations for internationally wrongful acts attributed to them.[1] (D-claim; interpretive/normative, attributed to the author — presented, not endorsed by the wiki.)

Relation to the Wiki's Existing Coverage

This is new territory. The wiki's Land and the Black–white wealth gap narrative already argues, independently, that rent capture addresses the land-rent channel only going forward and is not a substitute for reparations targeting a specific historical debt — reaching a similar structural conclusion (rent capture alone is insufficient) via US evidence (Darity & Mullen).[3] Obeng-Odoom's paper extends the same insufficiency argument to a different setting (Guyana/the wider post-colonial Caribbean, via Rodney) and grounds it explicitly in a racialized theory of land appropriation that includes a non-Black landholding "in-group" (East Indian) as well as White colonizers — a three-way racial-economic structure the wiki's existing US-focused narrative does not cover. It is best read as international corroboration, from within the Georgist scholarly tradition itself, that the single tax is not a sufficient racial remedy on its own.

Standing and Limits

• Abstract-only scan. [VERIFY: the wiki has not read this paper's body text.] The specific evidentiary basis for the Guyanese racial-property claims, and how directly Obeng-Odoom draws on Rodney's own texts versus extending them, cannot be assessed from the abstract alone.
• Normative/interpretive claim, attributed. "Neither socialism nor a Georgist single tax can remedy the situation" is Obeng-Odoom's conclusion, not an empirical finding — it is presented here as his argument, consistent with the wiki's existing, independently-reasoned position that rent capture is not reparations.
• Single scholarly source for the Guyana/East-Indian dimension. No other source on the wiki addresses the tri-racial (Black/White/East Indian) property structure Rodney and Obeng-Odoom describe for Guyana; this page should not be treated as establishing that history in the depth the wiki's US material has.

See Also

• Land and the Black–white wealth gap — the wiki's US-focused version of the same rent-capture-is-not-reparations argument
• The Great Land Robbery — the general dispossession-justice narrative this paper's Guyana case extends internationally
• Henry George — the "progress and poverty" paradox this paper argues is incomplete without race
• Land as Commons — cites Obeng-Odoom's earlier (2016) George/Ostrom comparison

Sources

1. Franklin Obeng-Odoom, "Progress and Poverty: Walter Rodney's Legacy," American Journal of Economics and Sociology, 2026, doi:10.1111/ajes.70021 — used for all claims on this page (abstract only; confirmed CC-BY/hybrid open access per Semantic Scholar, but full text was not retrievable this session due to Wiley's bot-detection blocking automated access). Crossref record · Semantic Scholar record
2. Franklin Obeng-Odoom, "The Meaning, Prospects, and Future of the Commons: Revisiting the Legacies of Elinor Ostrom and Henry George," American Journal of Economics and Sociology 75(2), 2016 — used for the author's established standing in Georgist scholarship. wiki mention
3. William A. Darity Jr. & A. Kirsten Mullen, From Here to Equality (2020) — used, via the wiki's existing narrative, for the parallel US argument that rent capture is not reparations. wiki summary