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Samir Amin
Samir Amin
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Samir Amin (Arabic: سمير أمين) (3 September 1931 – 12 August 2018) was an Egyptian-French Marxian economist,[1] political scientist and world-systems analyst. He is noted for his introduction of the term Eurocentrism in 1988[2] and considered a pioneer of dependency theory.[3]

Biography

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Amin was born in Cairo, the son of a French mother and an Egyptian father (both medical doctors). He spent his childhood and youth in Port Said; there he attended a French high school, leaving in 1947 with a Baccalauréat.

It was at high school that Amin was first politicized when, during the Second World War, Egyptian students were split between communists and nationalists; Amin belonged to the former group. By then Amin had already adopted a resolute stance against fascism and Nazism. While the upheaval against British domination in Egypt informed his politics, he rejected the idea that the enemy of their enemy, Nazi Germany, was the Egyptians' friend.[4]

In 1947 Amin left for Paris where he obtained a second high school diploma with a specialization in elementary mathematics from the prestigious Lycée Henri IV. He gained a diploma in political science at Sciences Po (1952) before graduating in statistics at INSEE (1956) and also in economics (1957).

In his autobiography Itinéraire intellectuel (1990) he wrote that in order to spend a substantial amount of time in "militant action" he could devote only a minimum to preparing for his university exams. The intellectual and the political struggle remained inseparable for Amin all throughout his life. Rather than explaining the world and its atrocities he meant to highlight and to be part of struggles aimed at changing the world.[4]

After arriving in Paris, Amin joined the French Communist Party (PCF), but he later distanced himself from Soviet Marxism and associated himself for some time with Maoist circles. With other students he published a magazine entitled Étudiants Anticolonialistes. His ideas and political position were also strongly influenced by the 1955 Asian–African Bandung Conference and the nationalization of the Suez Canal. The latter even encouraged him to postpone his PhD thesis that was ready in June 1956 to take part in the political unrest.[4]

In 1957 he presented his thesis, supervised by François Perroux among others, originally titled The origins of underdevelopment – capitalist accumulation on a world scale but retitled The structural effects of the international integration of precapitalist economies. A theoretical study of the mechanism which creates so-called underdeveloped economies.

After finishing his thesis, Amin went back to Cairo, where he worked from 1957 to 1960 as a research officer for the government's "Institution for Economic Management" where he worked on ensuring the state's representation on the boards of directors of public sector companies while at the same time immersing himself in the very tense political climate linked to the nationalization of the Canal, the 1956 war and the establishment of the Non-Aligned Movement. His participation in the Communist Party that was clandestine at the time made for very difficult working conditions.[4]

In 1960 Amin left for Paris where he worked for six months for the Department of Economic and Financial Studies - Service des Études Économiques et Financières (SEEF).

Subsequently, Amin left France, to become an adviser to the Ministry of Planning in Bamako (Mali) under the presidency of Modibo Keïta. He held that position from 1960 to 1963 working with prominent French economists such as Jean Bénard and Charles Bettelheim. With some scepticism Amin witnessed the growing emphasis on maximizing growth in order to "close the gap". Although he abandoned working as a 'bureaucrat' after he left Mali, Samir Amin continued to act as an adviser for several governments, such as China, Vietnam, Algeria, Venezuela, and Bolivia.[4]

In 1963 he was offered a fellowship at the UN's Institut Africain de Développement Économique et de Planification (IDEP) in Dakar. Within the IDEP Amin created several institutions that eventually became independent entities. Among them one that later became the Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa (CODESRIA), conceived on the model of the Latin American Council for Social Sciences (CLACSO).

Until 1970 he worked there as well as being a professor at the University of Poitiers, Dakar and Paris (of Paris VIII, Vincennes). In 1970 he became director of the IDEP, which he managed until 1980. In 1980 Amin left the IDEP and became a director of the Third World Forum in Dakar. In Amin's life and thinking the three activities have been closely connected: work in economic management, teaching/research, and the political struggle.[4]

"Samir Amin has been one of the most important and influential intellectuals of the Third World".[4] Amin's theoretical pioneering role has been often overlooked because his thesis of 1957 was not published until 1970 in extended book form under the title L'accumulation à l'échelle mondiale (Accumulation at the global level).[4]

Amin lived in Dakar until the end of July 2018. On July 31 he was, diagnosed with lung cancer, transferred to a hospital in Paris. Amin died on August 12 at the age of 86.

Political theory and strategy

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Samir Amin is considered a pioneer of Dependency Theory and World System Theory, while he preferred to call himself part of the school of Global Historical Materialism, together with Paul A. Baran and Paul Sweezy.[3] His key idea, presented as early as 1957 in his Ph.D. dissertation, was that so-called 'under-developed' economies should not be considered as independent units but as building blocks of a capitalist world economy. In this world economy, the 'poor' nations form the 'periphery', forced to a permanent structural adjustment with respect to the reproduction dynamics of the 'centres' of the world economy, that is, of the advanced capitalist industrial countries. Around the same time and with similar basic assumptions the so-called desarrollismo (CEPAL, Raúl Prebisch) emerged in Latin America, which was developed further a decade later in the discussion on 'dependencia' – and even later appeared Wallerstein's 'world system analysis'. Samir Amin applied Marxism to a global level, using terms as 'law of worldwide value' and 'super-exploitation' to analyse the world-economy.[3][4] At the same time his critique extended also to Soviet Marxism and its development program of 'catching up and overtaking'.[4] Amin believed the countries of the 'periphery' would not be able to catch up in the context of a capitalist world-economy, because of the system's inherent polarization and certain monopolies held by the imperialist countries of the 'center'. Thus, he called for the 'periphery' to 'delink' from the world economy, creating 'autocentric' development and rejecting the 'Eurocentrism' inherent to Modernisation Theory.[3]

Global historical materialism

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Resorting to the analyses of Karl Marx, Karl Polanyi, and Fernand Braudel, the central starting point of Samir Amin's theories is a fundamental critique of capitalism, at the centre of which is the conflict structure of the world system. Amin states three fundamental contradictions of capitalist ideology: 1. The requirements of profitability stand against the striving of the working people to determine their own fate (rights of workers as well as democracy were enforced against capitalist logic); 2. The short-term rational economic calculus stands against long-term safeguarding of the future (ecology debate); 3. The expansive dynamics of capitalism lead to polarizing spatial structures - the Center-Periphery Model.[5]

According to Amin, capitalism and its evolution can only be understood as a single integrated global system, composed of 'developed countries', which constitute the Center, and of 'underdeveloped countries', which are the Peripheries of the system. Development and underdevelopment consequently constitute both facets of the unique expansion of global capitalism. Underdeveloped countries should not be considered as 'lagging behind' because of the specific - social, cultural, or even geographic - characteristics of these so-called 'poor' countries. Underdevelopment is actually only the result of the forced permanent structural adjustment of these countries to the needs of the accumulation benefiting the system's Center countries.[4]

Amin identified himself as part of the school of global historical materialism, in contrast to the two other strands of dependency theory, the so-called dependencia and the World Systems Theory. The dependencia school was a Latin American school associated with e. g. Ruy Mauro Marini, Theotônio dos Santos, and Raúl Prebisch. Prominent figures of the World Systems Theory were Immanuel Wallerstein and Giovanni Arrighi.[3] While they use a widely similar scientific vocabulary, Amin rejected, for example, the notion of a semi-periphery and was against the theorization of capitalism as cyclical (as by Nikolai Kondratiev) or any kind of retrojection, thus holding a minority position among the World System theorists.[5]

For Amin, the school of global historical materialism was Marxism understood as a global system. Within this framework, the Marxist law of value is central (see 2.1.1).[3] Nevertheless, he insisted that the economic laws of capitalism, summed up by the law of value, are subordinate to the laws of historical materialism. In Amins understanding of these terms that is to say: economic science, while indispensable, cannot explain the full reality. Mainly because it cannot account either for the historical origins of the system itself, nor for outcomes of class struggle.[6]

History is not ruled by the infallible unfolding of the law of pure economy. It is created by the societal reactions to these tendencies that express themselves in these laws and that determine the social conditions in whose framework these laws operate. The 'anti-systemic' forces impact and also influence real history as does the pure logic of the capitalist accumulation. (Samir Amin)[4]

Law of worldwide value

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Amin's theory of a global law of value describes a system of unequal exchange, in which the difference in the wages between labor forces in different nations is greater than the difference between their productivities. Amin talks of "imperial rents" accruing to the global corporations in the Center - elsewhere referred to as "global labor arbitrage".

Reasons are, according to Amin, that while free trade and relatively open borders allow multinationals to move to where they can find the cheapest labour, governments keep promoting the interests of 'their' corporations over those of other countries and restricting the mobility of labor.[6] Accordingly, the periphery is not really connected to global labour markets, accumulation there is stagnant, and wages stay low. In contrast, in the centres accumulation is cumulative and wages increase in accordance with rising productivity. This situation is perpetuated by the existence of a massive global reserve army located primarily in the periphery, while at the same time these countries are more structurally dependent, and their governments tend to oppress social movements which would win increased wages. This global dynamic Amin calls „development of underdevelopment".[7] The aforementioned existence of a lower rate of exploitation of labor in the North and a higher rate of exploitation of labor in the South is further thought to constitute one of the main obstacles to the unity of the international working class.[6]

According to Amin the "Global Law of Value" thus creates the "super-exploitation" of the periphery. Further, the core countries keep monopolies on technology, control of financial flows, military power, ideological and media production, and access to natural resources (see 2.1.2).[7]

Imperialism and monopoly capitalism

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The system of worldwide value as described above means that there is one imperial world system, encompassing both the global North and the global South.[6] Amin further believed that capitalism and imperialism were linked at all stages of their development (as opposed to Lenin, who argued that imperialism was a specific stage in the development of capitalism).[4] Amin defined imperialism as: "precisely the amalgamation of the requirements and laws for the reproduction of capital; the social, national and international alliances that underlie them; and the political strategies employed by these alliances".[6]

According to Amin, capitalism and imperialism reach from the conquest of the Americas during the sixteenth century to today's phase of what he referred to as "monopoly capitalism". Further, the polarization between Center and Peripheries is a phenomenon inherent in historical capitalism. Resorting to Arrighi, Amin differentiates the following mechanism of polarization: 1. The capital flight takes place from the periphery to the centre; 2. Selective migration of workers is heading in the same direction; 3. Monopoly situation of the central companies in the global division of labour, in particular, the technology monopoly and the monopoly of global finances; 4. Control of centres on access to natural resources.[5] The forms of the Center-Peripheries polarization, as well as the forms of expression of imperialism, have changed over time - but always towards the aggravation of the polarization and not towards its mitigation.[4]

Historically, Amin differentiated three phases: Mercantilism (1500-1800), Expansion (1800-1880) and Monopoly Capitalism (1880-today). Amin adds that the current phase is dominated by generalized, financialized, and globalized oligopolies located primarily in the triad of USA, Europe, and Japan.[6] They practice a sort of collective imperialism by means of military, economic, and financial tools such as the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and the World Trade Organization (WTO). The triad enjoys the monopoly of five advantages: weapons of mass destruction; mass communication systems; monetary and financial systems; technologies; and access to natural resources. It wishes to keep these at any cost and thus has engaged in the militarization of the world in order to avoid losing these monopolies.[4]

Amin further differentiated the existence of two historical phases of the development of monopoly capitalism: proper monopoly capitalism up to 1971, and oligopoly-finance capitalism after that. The Financialization and "deepened globalization" of the latter he considered a strategic response to Stagnation. Stagnation he considered as the rule and rapid economic growth as the exception under late capitalism. According to him, the rapid growth of 1945–1975 was mainly the product of historical conditions brought into being by the Second World War and could not last. The focus on Financialization, which emerged in the late 1970s, to him was a new more potent counter to stagnation "inseparable from the survival requirements of the system", but eventually leading to the financial crisis 2007-2008.[6]

According to Amin, as a result of imperialism and super-exploitation, political systems in the south are often distorted towards forms of autocratic rule. To maintain control over the periphery, the imperial powers promote backwards-looking social relations drawing on archaic elements. Amin argues for example that political Islam is chiefly a creature of imperialism. The introduction of democracy in the South, without altering the fundamental social relations or challenging imperialism, is nothing but a "fraud" and doubly so given the plutocratic content of the so-called successful democracies in the North.[6]

Delinking

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Amin forcefully stated that the emancipation of the so-called 'underdeveloped' countries can neither happen while respecting the logic of the globalized capitalist system nor within this system. The South would not be able to catch up in such a capitalist context, because of the system's inherent polarization. This belief led Samir Amin to assign significant importance to the project adopted by the Asian–African countries at the Bandoeng (Indonesia) Conference in 1955.[4]

Amin called for each country to delink from the world economy meaning to subordinate global relations to domestic development priorities, creating 'autocentric' development (but not autarky).[3] Instead of defining value by dominant prices in the world – which result from productivity in the rich countries – Amin suggested that value in each country should be set so that agricultural and industrial workers are paid by their input into the society's net output. Thereby a National Law of Value should be defined without reference to the Global Law of Value of the capitalist system (e.g. food sovereignty instead of free trade, minimum wages instead of international competitiveness, full employment guaranteed by government). Amin suggested that national states redistribute resources between sectors, and centralize and distribute the surplus. Full employment should be guaranteed, and the exodus from rural to urban areas discouraged.[7]

After the decolonization on a state level, this should lead to economic liberation from neo-colonialism. However, Amin underlined that it is almost impossible to delink 100% and estimated a delinking of 70% already a significant achievement. Relatively stable countries with some military power have more leverage in this regard than small countries.[citation needed]

China's development for example is, according to Amin, determined 50% by its sovereign project and 50% by globalisation. When asked about Brazil and India, he estimated that their trajectories were driven by 20% sovereign project, and 80% globalisation, while South Africa was determined by 0% sovereign project and 100% globalisation.[3]

It was also clear to Amin that such decoupling also requires certain political prerequisites within a country. His country studies, initially limited to Africa, taught him that a national bourgeoisie geared towards a national project, neither existed nor was it emerging. Rather, he observed the emergence of a 'comprador bourgeoisie', who benefited from the integration of their respective countries into the asymmetrically structured capitalist world market. Regarding the project of an auto-centered new beginning (the decoupling) he hoped instead for social movements, which is why he was committed to numerous non-governmental organizations until the end.[4]

Eurocentrism

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Amin proposed a history of civilization in which accidental advantages of the "West" led to the development of capitalism first in these societies. This then created a global rift, arising from the aggressive outward expansion of capitalism and colonialism.[6] Amin argues that it is a mistake to view Europe as a historical centre of the world. Only in the capitalist period has Europe been dominant.[citation needed]

For Amin, Eurocentrism is not only a worldview but a global project, homogenising the world on a European model under the pretext of 'catching-up'. In practice, however, capitalism does not homogenise but rather polarises the world. Eurocentrism is thus more of an ideal than a real possibility. It also creates problems in reinforcing racism and imperialism. Fascism remains a permanent risk, because to Amin it is an extreme version of Eurocentrism.[7]

Cambodia

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Amin was long an influence on and supporter of the leaders of Cambodia's Khmer Rouge regime, becoming acquainted with the Khmer Rouge's future leaders in post-World War II Paris, where Pol Pot, Khieu Samphan, and other Cambodian students were studying. Khieu Samphan's doctoral thesis, which he finished in 1959, noted collaborations with Amin and claimed to apply Amin's theories to Cambodia.[8][9] In the late 1970s, Amin praised the Khmer Rouge as superior to Communist movements in China, Vietnam, or the Soviet Union, and recommended the Khmer Rouge model for Africa.[10]

Amin continued to actively praise the Khmer Rouge into the 1980s. At a 1981 talk in Tokyo, Amin praised Pol Pot's work as "one of the major successes of the struggle for socialism in our era" and as necessary against "expansionism" from the Soviet Union or from Vietnam.[11] Some scholars, such as Marxist anthropologist Kathleen Gough, have noted that Khmer Rouge activists in Paris in the 1950s already held ideas of eliminating counter-revolutionaries and organizing a party center whose decisions could not be questioned.[11] Despite contemporary reports of mass killings committed by the Khmer Rouge, Amin argued that "the cause of the most evil to the people of Kampuchea" lay elsewhere:

The humanitarian argument is in the final analysis the argument offered by all the colonialists... Isn't [the cause of evil] first of all the American imperialists and Lon Nol? Isn't it today the Vietnamese army and their project of colonizing Kampuchea?[12]

Views on world order

[edit]

Samir Amin expressed view on world order and international relations: "Yes, I do want to see the construction of a multipolar world, and that obviously means the defeat of Washington's hegemonic project for military control of the planet."[13]

In 2006, he stated:

Here I would make the first priority the construction of a Paris – Berlin – Moscow political and strategic alliance, extended if possible to Beijing and Delhi … to build military strength at a level required by the challenge of the United States... [E]ven the United States pales beside their traditional capacities in the military arena. The American challenge, and Washington's criminal designs, make such a course necessary … The creation of a front against hegemonism is the number one priority today, as the creation of an anti-Nazi alliance was … yesterday … A rapprochement between the large portions of Eurasia (Europe, Russia, China and India) involving the rest of the Old World … is necessary and possible, and would put an end once and for all to Washington's plans to extend the Monroe Doctrine to the entire planet. We must head in this direction … above all with determination."[14]

He also stated:

The 'European project' is not going in the direction that is needed to bring Washington to its senses. Indeed, it remains a basically 'non-European' project, scarcely more than the European part of the American project … Russia, China and India are the three strategic opponents of Washington's project... But they appear to believe that they can maneuver and avoid directly clashing with the United States.[15]

Hence, Europe must end its "Atlanticist option" and take the course of the "Eurasian rapprochement" with Russia, China, India and the rest of Asia and Africa. This "Eurasian rapprochement" is necessary for the head-on collision with the United States.[16]

Views on political Islam

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While his personal religious beliefs are unknown, Samir Amin was a harsh critic of political Islam and Islamism.


According to Samir Amin, political Islam leads its struggle on the terrain of culture, wherein "culture" is intended as "belongingness to one religion". Islamist militants are not actually interested in the discussion of dogmas which form religion, but on the contrary are concerned about the ritual assertion of membership in the community. Such a world view is therefore not only distressing, as it conceals an immense poverty of thought, but it also justifies imperialism's strategy of substituting a "conflict of cultures" for a conflict between the liberal, imperialist centres and the backward, dominated peripheries.

Amin argued that this importance attributed to culture allows political Islam to obscure from every sphere of life the realistic social dichotomy between the working classes and the global capitalist system which oppresses and exploits them.[17]

Besides, beyond being reactionary on definite matters (such as that regarding women) and being responsible for fanatical excesses against non-Muslim citizen (such as the Copts in Egypt), political Islam even defends the sacred character of property and legitimises inequality and all the prerequisites of capitalist reproduction.[18]

Hence, political Islam aligns itself in general with capitalism and imperialism, without providing the working classes with an effective and non-reactionary method of struggle against their exploitation.[19]

It is important to note, however, that Amin was careful to distinguish his analysis of political Islam from Islamophobia, thus remaining sensitive to the anti-Muslim attitudes that currently affect Western Society.[20]

Awards

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Publications

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  • 1957, Les effets structurels de l'intégration internationale des économies précapitalistes. Une étude théorique du mécanisme qui an engendré les éonomies dites sous-développées (thesis)
  • 1965, Trois expériences africaines de développement: le Mali, la Guinée et le Ghana
  • 1966, L'économie du Maghreb, 2 vols.
  • 1967, Le développement du capitalisme en Côte d'Ivoire
  • 1969, Le monde des affaires sénégalais
  • 1969, The Class struggle in Africa[21]
  • 1970, Le Maghreb moderne (translation: The Maghreb in the Modern World)
  • 1970, L'accumulation à l'échelle mondiale (translation: Accumulation on a world scale)
  • 1970, with C. Coquery-Vidrovitch, Histoire économique du Congo 1880–1968
  • 1971, L'Afrique de l'Ouest bloquée
  • 1973, Le développement inégal (translation: Unequal development)
  • 1973, L'échange inégal et la loi de la valeur
  • 1973, 'Le developpement inegal. Essai sur les formations sociales du capitalisme peripherique' Paris: Editions de Minuit.
  • 1974, Neocolonialism in West Africa[22]
  • 1974, with K. Vergopoulos: La question paysanne et le capitalisme
  • 1975, with A. Faire, M. Hussein and G. Massiah: La crise de l'impérialisme
  • 1976, 'Unequal Development: An Essay on the Social Formations of Peripheral Capitalism' New York: Monthly Review Press.
  • 1976, L'impérialisme et le développement inégal (translation: Imperialism and unequal development)
  • 1976, La nation arabe (translation: The Arab Nation)
  • 1977, The lessons of Cambodia
  • 1977, La loi de la valeur et le matérialisme historique (translation: The law of value and historical materialism)
  • 1979, Classe et nation dans l'histoire et la crise contemporaine (translation: Class and nation, historically and in the current crisis)
  • 1980, L'économie arabe contemporaine (translation: The Arab economy today)
  • 1981, L'avenir du Maoïsme (translation: The Future of Maoism)
  • 1982, Irak et Syrie 1960–1980
  • 1982, with G. Arrighi, A. G. Frank and I. Wallerstein): La crise, quelle crise? (translation: Crisis, what crisis?)
  • 1984, 'Was kommt nach der Neuen Internationalen Wirtschaftsordnung? Die Zukunft der Weltwirtschaft' in 'Rote Markierungen International' (Fischer H. and Jankowitsch P. (Eds.)), pp. 89–110, Vienna: Europaverlag.
  • 1984, Transforming the world-economy? : nine critical essays on the new international economic order.
  • 1985, La déconnexion (translation: Delinking: towards a polycentric world)
  • 1988, Impérialisme et sous-développement en Afrique (expanded edition of 1976)
  • 1988, L'eurocentrisme (translation: Eurocentrism)
  • 1988, with F. Yachir: La Méditerranée dans le système mondial
  • 1989, La faillite du développement en Afrique et dans le tiers monde
  • 1990, with Andre Gunder Frank, Giovanni Arrighi and Immanuel Wallerstein: Transforming the revolution: social movements and the world system
  • 1990, Itinéraire intellectuel; regards sur le demi-siècle 1945-90 (translation: Re-reading the post-war period: an Intellectual Itinerary)
  • 1991, L'Empire du chaos (translation: Empire of chaos)
  • 1991, Les enjeux stratégiques en Méditerranée
  • 1991, with G. Arrighi, A. G. Frank et I. Wallerstein): Le grand tumulte
  • 1992, 'Empire of Chaos' New York: Monthly Review Press[23]
  • 1994, L'Ethnie à l'assaut des nations
  • 1995, La gestion capitaliste de la crise
  • 1996, Les défis de la mondialisation
  • 1997, 'Die Zukunft des Weltsystems. Herausforderungen der Globalisierung. Herausgegeben und aus dem Franzoesischen uebersetzt von Joachim Wilke' Hamburg: VSA.
  • 1997, Critique de l'air du temps
  • 1999, "Judaism, Christianity and Islam: An Introductory Approach to their Real or Supposed Specificities by a Non-Theologian" in "Global capitalism, liberation theology, and the social sciences: An analysis of the contradictions of modernity at the turn of the millennium" (Andreas Mueller, Arno Tausch and Paul Zulehner (Eds.)), Nova Science Publishers, Hauppauge, Commack, New York
  • 1999, Spectres of capitalism: a critique of current intellectual fashions
  • 2000, L'hégémonisme des États-Unis et l'effacement du projet européen
  • 2002, Mondialisation, comprendre pour agir
  • 2003, Obsolescent Capitalism
  • 2004, The Liberal Virus: Permanent War and the Americanization of the World
  • 2005, with Ali El Kenz, Europe and the Arab world; patterns and prospects for the new relationship
  • 2006, Beyond US Hegemony: Assessing the Prospects for a Multipolar World
  • 2007, 'A Life Looking Forward: Memoirs of an Independent Marxist'
  • 2008, with James Membrez, The World We Wish to See: Revolutionary Objectives in the Twenty-First Century
  • 2009, 'Aid for Development' in 'Aid to Africa: Redeemer or Coloniser?' Oxford: Pambazuka Press
  • 2010, 'Eurocentrism - Modernity, Religion and Democracy: A Critique of Eurocentrism and Culturalism' 2nd edition, Oxford: Pambazuka Press [1] Archived 22 July 2009 at the Wayback Machine
  • 2010, 'Ending the Crisis of Capitalism or Ending Capitalism?' Oxford: Pambazuka Press
  • 2010, 'Global History - a View from the South' Oxford: Pambazuka Press
  • 2011, 'Maldevelopment - Anatomy of a Global Failure' 2nd edition, Oxford: Pambazuka Press[24]
  • 2011, 'Imperialism and Globalization' : Monthly Review Press[25]
  • 2013, 'The Implosion of Contemporary Capitalism': Monthly Review Press[26]
  • 2016, 'Russia and the Long Transition from Capitalism to Socialism': Monthly Review Press[27]
  • 2017, October 1917 Revolution: A Century Later. Wakefield, Canada: Daraja Press.[28]
  • 2018, 'Modern Imperialism, Monopoly Finance Capital, and Marx's Law of Value': Monthly Review Press[29]
  • 2019, 'The Long Revolution of the Global South: Toward a New Anti-Imperialist International' - Memoirs (adapted translation of 'L'Éveil du Sud'): [30]
  • 2019, 'Only People Make Their Own History: Writings on Capitalism, Imperialism, and Revolution'

References

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Further reading

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Revisions and contributorsEdit on WikipediaRead on Wikipedia
from Grokipedia
Samir Amin (3 September 1931 – 12 August 2018) was an Egyptian-French Marxist economist and author specializing in the analysis of global , , and unequal development. Born in to an Egyptian father and a French mother, both physicians, Amin grew up in and pursued studies in and in , where he earned advanced degrees. His career included advisory roles in for the Egyptian government under and the Malian government under Modibo Keita, as well as positions at the and as director of the Third World Forum in , . Amin's seminal contributions to emphasized how peripheral economies are structurally subordinated to core capitalist centers through mechanisms like and the law of worldwide value, arguing that delinking from global was essential for autonomous development in the Global South. Key works such as Accumulation on a World Scale (1970) and Unequal Development (1973) critiqued the integration of economies into the imperialist , while his introduction of the term "" in 1988 highlighted ideological biases in Western historical narratives that obscure non-European modes of production, such as the . Though influential among anti-imperialist scholars and movements in , , and , Amin's advocacy for delinking and a "" of popular forces drew limited empirical validation, as peripheral states pursuing such strategies often faced economic isolation without achieving sustained industrialization or delinkage from global markets.

Early Life and Education

Family Background and Upbringing

Samir Amin was born on 3 September 1931 in , , to an Egyptian father and a French mother, both medical doctors by profession. His father's Egyptian heritage rooted the family in local professional circles, while his mother's French background introduced early elements, including exposure to European traditions. Amin's upbringing occurred primarily in Port Said, a northern Egyptian port city with significant international trade and colonial influences during the interwar period. This environment, shaped by the Suez Canal's strategic role under British control until 1956, likely fostered his later interest in global economic dependencies, though direct causal links remain interpretive. He received early education in French-medium schools, such as the Lycée Français, which emphasized bilingual proficiency and aligned with his mother's cultural origins. The familial emphasis on and professional achievement provided a stable, middle-class foundation, contrasting with the broader socioeconomic challenges in colonial , including and urban industrialization debates of –1940s. This setting, without evident financial hardship, enabled Amin's transition to higher studies abroad, though his emerging political awareness drew from observing Egypt's nationalist movements rather than personal deprivation.

Formal Education and Influences

Amin moved to in 1947 at the age of 16 to pursue higher education within France's academic system. He completed a in political science at the Institut d'Études Politiques de (Sciences Po) in 1952. This was followed by graduation in statistics from the Institut national de la statistique et des études économiques (INSEE) in 1956 and in economics in 1957, culminating in a PhD in economic sciences from the that same year. His formal training emphasized quantitative methods and economic theory, reflecting the interdisciplinary rigor of French institutions during the postwar period, where statistics and planning were prioritized amid debates. These studies equipped him with tools for analyzing development disparities, though Amin later critiqued mainstream economic models for overlooking imperialist structures. Intellectually, Amin's time in exposed him to Marxist frameworks, which he encountered through academic discourse and extracurricular engagement. He joined the as a , immersing himself in anti-colonial and critiques of that informed his lifelong emphasis on peripheral economies' subordination to core powers. This period marked his shift from toward a global , influenced by the era's intellectual currents including precursors, though he diverged from by stressing autonomous delinking strategies for the Global South.

Professional Trajectory

Development Planning in

Following his doctoral studies in , Amin joined Egypt's national planning agency in 1957, where he contributed to early post-independence economic strategies until 1960, when political persecution of communists under the Nasser regime compelled his departure. He then relocated to , serving from 1960 to 1963 as an advisor attached to the Ministry of Planning in the newly independent state, where he assisted in formulating development policies amid challenges of resource scarcity and infrastructural deficits. In the mid-1960s, Amin expanded his practical involvement in West African under auspices, with a particular focus on , emphasizing state-led industrialization and agricultural modernization to counter peripheral dependency. His efforts gained recognition for rigorous application of Marxist analytical frameworks to local contexts, prioritizing internal accumulation over export-oriented models that perpetuated with core economies. Appointed director of the African Institute for and Planning (IDEP) in , , in 1970—a role he held until 1980—Amin oversaw training programs for over hundreds of post-colonial African planners, bureaucrats, and policymakers, instilling approaches centered on control of resources and delinking from global capitalist circuits to enable autonomous national projects. Under his leadership, IDEP critiqued import-substitution industrialization's limitations in , advocating instead for popular mobilization and peasant-based as foundations for socialist-oriented development, though these ideas often clashed with prevailing comprador elites and . This period solidified Amin's influence on continental planning discourses, fostering networks that extended to founding institutions like the for the Development of Research in (CODESRIA) in 1973, where he served as inaugural executive secretary until 1975.

Academic and Institutional Roles

Amin served as a full of in beginning in 1966, maintaining this position while engaging in work. He lectured extensively at universities across and , including the in , , where he influenced generations of students on topics of dependency and . From 1970 to 1980, Amin directed the United Nations African Institute for Economic Development and Planning (IDEP) in Dakar, an institution focused on training African policymakers in economic planning and fostering self-reliant development strategies. Under his leadership, IDEP emphasized critiques of peripheral capitalism and promoted autocentric accumulation models tailored to African contexts. His tenure at IDEP bridged academic theory with practical policy advisory roles in Senegal and other African nations, though he later critiqued the limitations of such international bureaucracies in challenging global imperialism. Amin also contributed to institutional frameworks for social science research in Africa, including early involvement with the Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa (CODESRIA), where he helped shape its agenda toward radical economic analysis from 1973 onward. These roles underscored his commitment to integrating Marxist historical materialism into institutional training, prioritizing empirical studies of core-periphery relations over mainstream neoliberal paradigms prevalent in global academia.

Founding and Leading Think Tanks

In 1973, Samir Amin became the founding executive secretary of the Council for the Development of Research in (CODESRIA), a Dakar-based established to foster independent research across the , independent of state or donor influence. He held this position until 1975, during which CODESRIA organized its first general assembly in 1973 and began publishing the CODESRIA Bulletin, emphasizing pan-African intellectual autonomy amid post-colonial challenges. Amin co-founded the Third World Forum (Forum tiers-monde, FTM) in in 1975, an independent research and advocacy network focused on analyzing global capitalist inequalities and promoting Southern perspectives on development. Following his departure from the ' Institut Africain de Développement Économique et de Planification (IDEP) in 1980, he assumed directorship of the FTM, a role he maintained for over three decades until his death in 2018, during which the forum hosted annual symposia, published journals like Review of African Political Economy contributions, and critiqued neoliberal policies through empirical studies of peripheral economies. In 1997, Amin co-founded the World Forum for Alternatives (WFA), an international network linking think tanks from , , , and to counter dominant narratives and advocate for systemic alternatives to . He chaired the WFA, which organized assemblies in and , producing reports on delinking strategies and , drawing on data from over 40 member organizations to challenge Eurocentric economic models. These initiatives reflected Amin's commitment to institution-building outside Western-dominated frameworks, prioritizing empirical analysis of core-periphery dynamics over ideological conformity.

Theoretical Foundations

Global Historical Materialism

Samir Amin's global historical materialism reframes Marxist historical materialism as a framework for analyzing the evolution of human societies on a worldwide scale, emphasizing the expansion of capitalism as a unified world system rather than discrete national or regional trajectories. Developed through works such as Accumulation on a World Scale (1974) and Unequal Development (1976), this approach posits that capitalism's dynamics are inherently global, integrating peripheries into the system through unequal exchange and subordination from its inception, rather than as later appendages to European development. Central to Amin's theory is a critique of in , particularly Marx's five-stage model of historical progression (, , , , ), which Amin viewed as implicitly deriving universal laws from Europe's experience. Instead, he proposed a tripartite global historical schema: an initial phase of communal societies, followed by the " mode of production" spanning approximately 300 BCE to 1500 CE, characterized by centralized ideological and political structures in core regions like , , and the Hellenistic world, with decentralized peripheries including , , and . emerged not from the stagnation of these Asian cores but from the flexible, market-driven dispossession in peripheral , enabling its outward expansion and polarization of the world into autocentric centers and extraverted peripheries. In this global perspective, takes precedence over narrower economic laws like the , which Amin argued explains mechanisms of exploitation—such as "imperialist rent" extracted via undervalued peripheral labor—but fails to account for the system's origins, class struggles, or imperial alliances. He described as the fusion of capital's reproductive imperatives with social, national, and political strategies, perpetuating a "world-scale apartheid" between monopoly-finance capitals in the North and disarticulated economies in the . Primitive accumulation, far from a historical prelude, operates as a permanent feature sustaining unequal development, where peripheries accumulate outwardly for export rather than internally for self-sustaining growth. Amin's framework underscores causal processes of polarization, quantifying post-colonial exploitation—for instance, estimating that the Global North appropriated approximately $62 trillion from the Global South between 1960 and 2018 through mechanisms like super-exploitation. It rejects unilinear development paths, insisting that peripheries cannot replicate core trajectories without delinking from the capitalist world system's imperatives, thereby prioritizing multipolar, socialist-oriented transitions over Eurocentric teleology. This global lens integrates elements of dependency theory and world-systems analysis while rooting them in dialectical materialism, viewing history as driven by contradictions resolvable only through collective, internationalist agency.

Law of Worldwide Value

Samir Amin developed the Law of Worldwide Value as a framework extending Karl Marx's to the global system, positing that value production and realization occur on a worldwide scale rather than within isolated national economies. This law asserts that the international division of labor under generates a unified global value system dominated by the imperialist centers (), where levels and organic compositions of capital set the benchmarks for prices. In peripheral economies, lower wages—stemming from abundant surplus labor populations—enable higher rates of extraction per unit of labor compared to the centers, but global market prices undervalue peripheral outputs, enforcing a systematic transfer of northward. Central to Amin's analysis is the mechanism of , whereby peripheral producers receive less value in return for their exports than the labor embodied in them warrants, as prices are calibrated to the centers' higher technological efficiencies and norms. This disparity arises because peripheral commodities, often primary goods or low-value-added manufactures, compete in markets where exchange values reflect average worldwide conditions skewed toward the core's advanced . Amin quantified this through the concept of "imperialist rent," a superprofit accruing to the centers equivalent to the excess siphoned from the peripheries, which sustains higher , expanded reproduction, and monopolistic dominance in the North without eroding profitability. Empirical illustrations in Amin's work highlight how, for instance, post-colonial African economies in the exported raw materials at prices divorced from their full labor content, subsidizing industrial accumulation in and . Amin contended that this worldwide impedes autonomous development in the peripheries by locking them into extroverted accumulation patterns, where growth depends on integration into global circuits rather than internal or technological . Unlike classical Marxist national applications, Amin's global extension critiques the illusion of equal exchange under , revealing capitalism's inherent polarization: centers polarize internally toward oligopolies while extracting value externally to offset declining profit rates. He projected that without delinking from this value regime—via strategies prioritizing domestic markets and selective —peripheral stagnation would persist, as evidenced by persistent trade imbalances where, by the , developing countries supplied over 60% of global exports yet captured minimal value-added shares. This theory, detailed in Amin's 1978 (revised 2010), underscores causal links between global value hierarchies and , challenging neoclassical equilibrium models that abstract from power asymmetries.

Analyses of Capitalism and Imperialism

Monopoly Capitalism and Core-Periphery Dynamics

Samir Amin analyzed as a structural phase of global , extending beyond Lenin's depiction of as a highest stage to viewing it as an inherent, enduring feature inscribed in 's expansionary logic. In this framework, monopolies enable the centers—primarily the Triad of the , , and —to dominate high- sectors while consigning peripheries to low-value extraction, perpetuating through mechanisms like . gains in (averaging 4.5% annually) outpace wage increases (around 2.5%), generating surplus that requires absorption, partly via expanded non-productive consumption (reaching 50% of GDP by the early ) and transfers from the periphery. Central to Amin's theory are the five monopolies wielded collectively by the Triad: technological superiority (fueled by military R&D), control over natural resources, financial dominance, media and communication networks, and military power including weapons of mass destruction. These monopolies facilitate super-profits, or imperialist rent, extracted from peripheries comprising 80% of the global population but generating only marginalized shares of world . For instance, peripheral wages stagnate (near 0% growth in some models) relative to core levels, enabling value transfers equivalent to 17% of global GDP or 25% of core GDP, subsidizing Northern consumption and investment while blocking Southern industrialization. Core-periphery dynamics, in Amin's view, arise from 's polarizing tendencies, where integration into the world market distorts peripheral social formations, fostering dependent rather than balanced growth. Peripheries export raw materials or low-wage manufactures at undervalued prices due to productivity-wage disparities, importing core technologies and at inflated costs, thus transferring surplus northward via . This process, quantified as imperialist rent, reinforces disequilibrium: centers absorb global surplus through monopoly rents, while peripheries face and pauperization, as seen in cases like African land grabs for export crops or Mexican labor remittances funding U.S. deficits. Amin argued this polarization intensified post-1970s , with monopolies preventing catch-up development absent deliberate delinking.

Imperialism in the Modern Era

Samir Amin characterized in the post-World War II era, particularly from the onward, as evolving into a of generalized-monopoly , where global monopolies dominate productive s through control over , natural resources, , media, and weapons of mass destruction. This stage supplanted earlier national s with a collective exercised by the triad of the , , and , which coordinates to preserve its dominance over peripheries via neoliberal globalization and . Unlike classical focused on territorial conquest, modern variants prioritize extracting monopoly rent and imperialist rent from the South, marginalizing populations while siphoning resources and labor to sustain accumulation in . Central to this dynamic is the triad's imposition of , where peripheries produce goods at undervalued rates due to limited technological access, enabling core monopolies to capture through patents, branding, and financial mechanisms. For instance, in global value chains, firms like Apple appropriate up to 90% of value from products assembled in the , concentrating profits in and marketing phases controlled by Northern capital. Amin argued that institutions such as the and World Bank enforce this by privatizing essential services like water and health, deepening dependency and debt entrapment in the peripheries. , accelerating since the 1980s, amplifies this by channeling surplus from production to speculative circuits, rendering the system obsolescent and prone to crises that further pauperize the global . Geopolitically, contemporary imperialism deploys aggressive strategies, including U.S.-led military interventions in (2003) and , framed as but aimed at destabilizing sovereign states to secure resource access and prevent autonomous development. Amin emphasized that such actions serve not national rivalries but the unified interests of triad , as seen in the erosion of post-colonial independence where local elites—replaced by "profiteers"—align with foreign monopolies, fostering lumpen-development characterized by social disintegration, informal survival economies, and rural pauperization. In emergent cases like and , partial delinking from this system allowed industrial growth, yet Amin viewed global rivalries, such as U.S.- tensions, as struggles over economic territory within the imperialist framework rather than its transcendence. This structure perpetuates polarization, with the triad resisting Southern challenges through ideological and military primacy, ensuring peripheries remain sources of cheap inputs rather than equal partners. Amin contended that true counter-strategies require recognizing imperialism's systemic nature, beyond inter-state conflicts, to mobilize for delinking and autocentric accumulation in the .

Development Strategies

Delinking from the World Capitalist System

Samir Amin conceptualized delinking as the strategic refusal by peripheral nations to subordinate their development agendas to the dominant logic of the world capitalist system, enabling them to prioritize internal dynamics over externally imposed imperatives. This approach, articulated in works such as his note on the concept and expanded in his 1990 book Delinking: Towards a Polycentric World, posits that genuine from requires breaking the cycle of extraverted accumulation, where peripheral economies raw materials and manufactured goods under unequal terms dictated by . Amin argued that integration into global markets, even through import-substitution or export-oriented policies, reinforces dependency by aligning local production with the worldwide , which systematically devalues peripheral labor and resources. Central to Amin's rationale is the recognition that peripheral capitalism, unlike core accumulation, cannot generate sustained internal expansion without delinking, as it remains trapped in mono-cultural exports and financial subordination, exacerbating polarization between centers of high and marginalized peripheries. He contended that adjustment to world market fluctuations—such as those seen in the debt crises of the —merely deepens pauperization, with countries unable to raise living standards or industrialize meaningfully while submitting to these external pressures. Delinking, therefore, demands a political rupture involving state-led reconfiguration of , , and transfers to serve national priorities, including agrarian reforms and popular mobilization to counter elite interests. Amin clarified that delinking eschews autarky, instead advocating submission of external relations to internal requirements—the inverse of adapting domestically to global dictates—fostering autocentric models geared toward diversified production for endogenous markets. This selective disengagement aims at constructing a polycentric global order, where multiple poles challenge the unipolar dominance of Western capital, as evidenced in Amin's analysis of potential transitions in regions like East Asia, though he stressed its universal applicability to any periphery seeking sovereignty. Implementation hinges on ideological commitment to delink from imperialism's value extraction, with success predicated on building democratic popular alliances rather than relying on technocratic reforms alone.

Autocentric Development Models

Samir Amin defined autocentric accumulation as a pattern of rooted in the internal dynamics of a social formation, where the production of consumer is linked to that of capital , fostering self-sustained reproduction of capital through deepening and local . This model, detailed in his book Unequal Development, prioritizes endogenous growth with external trade subordinated to internal requirements, enabling high internal exchange density and integrated sectoral development between industry and agriculture. Unlike , autocentric development permits selective external engagement but rejects subordination to global capitalist imperatives, as Amin emphasized: "Autocentric accumulation does not mean autarchy... external trade is here subordinated to the requirements of autocentric accumulation." In contrast to peripheral accumulation—prevalent in economies—Amin argued that autocentric models destroy pre-capitalist modes of production entirely, commodify labor power with rising to sustain mass consumption, and centralize surplus reinvestment under national monetary and credit controls tailored to local needs. Peripheral formations, by comparison, exhibit , with export-oriented sectors (e.g., raw materials comprising 75% of exports from modern enterprises in 1966) generating surpluses largely transferred abroad via , estimated at $22 billion annually to centers in that era. Historical autocentric examples include 19th-century during the and Japan's Meiji-era industrialization (), where internal markets expanded alongside state-directed integration of . For peripheral countries to transition, Amin prescribed delinking from the world system's extraverted logic, involving state-led strategies such as , of banks and key industries (e.g., Egypt's 1952 agrarian reform and 1956–1961 ), protective tariffs, and planned prioritization of mass consumer goods using modern techniques. This requires isolating local price systems from global distortions, redirecting credit toward structural transformations like and domestic surplus retention, and pursuing a socialist orientation to surpass capitalist models, as "the periphery cannot just overtake the capitalist model; it is obliged to surpass it." Such measures aim to homogenize productivity, reduce foreign capital dominance (which exported 20–30% of rewards in pre-1952 Egypt), and build cohesive national states less beholden to elites. Amin's framework posits that autocentric development stabilizes extraction internally while challenging the falling tendency of the profit rate through balanced reinvestment, differing from peripheral reliance on super-exploitation and luxury-oriented demand among marginalized masses. Implementation demands popular-democratic mobilization to enforce these shifts, rejecting profitability criteria in favor of maximizing social labor time across sectors.

Critiques of Ideology and History

Eurocentrism and Its Structural Role

Samir Amin identified as a that constructs a fictitious universal history centered on , portraying its development from through the and Enlightenment as the inevitable path to and . This narrative, he contended, systematically excludes the autonomous histories of non-European societies, which operated under modes of production characterized by centralized states and ritualized economies rather than market-driven . Amin argued that such exclusion serves to naturalize Europe's ascendancy, ignoring how capitalist accumulation in the core relied on the forced integration and of peripheral regions via and . In Amin's analysis, Eurocentrism's structural role extends beyond mere to underpin the ideological reproduction of global capitalism's core-periphery dynamics. By framing European exceptionalism—rooted in supposed cultural traits like and —as the engine of , it disguises the violent of peripheral economies, where surplus extraction sustained metropolitan growth without reciprocal development. Amin emphasized that this is not accidental but inherent to capital's logic, as it rationalizes as a while perpetuating polarization: the core's overaccumulation contrasted with the periphery's stagnation. He rejected culturalist explanations that attribute these disparities to inherent non-European backwardness, instead tracing them to the worldwide expansion of value production post-16th century, which homogenized economies unevenly. Amin further posited that infiltrates by conflating capitalism's parochial features with universal human tendencies, such as in economistic models that universalize abstract labor without accounting for historical specificity. This structural embedding, he claimed, sustains by rendering alternatives—rooted in polycentric global histories—invisible, thereby blocking delinking strategies essential for peripheral autonomy. from Amin's framework highlights how 19th-century European industrialization, often mythologized as endogenous, depended on colonial markets and resources, with Britain's industry, for instance, reliant on slave-produced inputs from the , illustrating the periphery-core linkage obscures.

Rejection of Culturalist Explanations

Samir Amin critiqued as a theoretical framework that posits the permanence of distinct "cultures" (capital C), each with inherent originality unfolding through endogenous processes, thereby essentializing differences and obscuring material dynamics. In his 1988 book , he argued that combines universalist pretensions—claiming a singular human history—with particularist defenses of Western superiority, rendering non-European trajectories as deviations or failures rather than alternative paths shaped by economic forces. This approach, Amin contended, depoliticizes global inequalities by attributing them to immutable cultural traits instead of structural exploitation within . Amin's rejection stemmed from a commitment to , which prioritizes transformations in modes of production and class relations over . He viewed culturalist explanations of —such as notions of "cultural backwardness" in peripheral societies—as ideological veils that naturalize and imperialist domination, ignoring how integration into the world market as producers of low-value commodities perpetuates . For instance, in analyzing Africa's stagnation, Amin dismissed attributions to traditional cultural resistance to modernity, emphasizing instead the distortion of local economies by colonial legacies and core-periphery dynamics that extract without fostering industrialization. This stance extended to contemporary ideologies like Samuel Huntington's "clash of civilizations" thesis, which Amin, in a 1996 essay republished in 2024, described as a culturalist complement to , framing conflicts as eternal cultural antagonisms rather than struggles over resources and . He insisted that such narratives serve capitalist expansion by diverting attention from class-based resistance and the potential for delinking from global value chains. Amin's critique thus positioned culturalism not as neutral scholarship but as a mechanism reinforcing Eurocentric , which retroactively constructs Europe's "rational" culture as the engine of progress while consigning others to stasis. Empirical evidence from unequal development patterns, such as the persistent terms-of-trade decline for primary exporters since the , supported his materialist alternative over cultural .

Political Positions

Engagement with Political Islam

Samir Amin critiqued as a reactionary that primarily operates on the cultural terrain, substituting identity-based "belongingness" for genuine class-based social confrontations between popular classes and dominant elites. In his 2007 article " in the Service of ," Amin argued that this cultural focus allows Islamist movements to evade structural economic critiques, thereby aligning with dependent peripheral and the interests of global rather than challenging them. He contended that organizations like the function not as authentic opposition but as organic components of the ruling power systems in many Arab states, perpetuating neoliberal policies under a religious veneer. Amin's analysis framed as a post-colonial phenomenon exploited by imperial powers to fragment progressive, secular nationalist movements and prevent the emergence of socialist alternatives in the Global South. He rejected notions of as an anti-imperialist force, asserting instead that it accommodates capitalist by promoting conservative social hierarchies and masked as communal , often with tacit support from Western interventions. For instance, during the Arab Spring uprisings around 2011, Amin warned that electoral victories by Islamist parties, such as in and , represented temporary consolidations of the status quo rather than transformative change, as they avoided delinking from the world capitalist system. From a historical materialist perspective, Amin dismissed Islamist dogmas as secondary to their socioeconomic role, viewing militant groups not as theological innovators but as tools that reinforce peripheral accumulation by disaccumulation, ultimately serving to divide the working classes along confessional lines. He advocated for secular, popular democratic fronts to counter this, emphasizing that true emancipation required autocentric development and class alliances over cultural revivalism. Amin's uncompromising rejection extended to moderate variants, which he saw as failing to dissociate from terrorist fringes and complicit in maintaining elites.

Support for Revolutionary Regimes in Cambodia

Samir Amin viewed the regime in (1975–1979) as a pioneering effort to implement radical delinking from global , aligning with his broader theories on autocentric development and resistance to peripheral . He praised the regime's policies of forced agrarian collectivization, urban evacuation, and economic as necessary steps to dismantle comprador elites and feudal structures, thereby forging a classless peasant-based society independent of foreign influence. In his October 1981 article "The Struggle for National Independence and Socialism in Kampuchea," Amin argued that the revolution had achieved "a radical break with the imperialist system," crediting Pol Pot and his comrades with successfully eliminating old feudal and comprador classes through these measures. He framed the regime's approach as a bold socialist transition in a peripheral economy, superior in its anti-imperialist resolve to more compromised models like those in China or Vietnam, and dismissed contemporary reports of mass violence as distortions propagated by imperialist and Soviet-aligned forces to undermine genuine Third World revolutions. While acknowledging "excesses" and "sacrifices" in the process, Amin attributed them primarily to external aggressions, such as U.S. bombing campaigns from 1969–1973 (which killed an estimated 150,000–500,000 civilians) and subsequent Vietnamese intervention, rather than to systemic errors in Khmer Rouge voluntarism or ideology. Amin's endorsement extended to public forums; at a 1981 conference in titled "The Lesson of Cambodia," he described Pol Pot's work as "one of the major successes of the struggle for in our era," emphasizing its exemplary delinking despite the regime's overthrow by in January 1979. Khmer Rouge leaders, including , drew intellectual inspiration from Amin's underdevelopment theories, adapting concepts of peripheral to justify Cambodia's isolationist policies aimed at eradicating urban "parasitic" elements and foreign dependencies. This alignment reflected Amin's prioritization of anti-imperialist rupture over incremental reforms, even as of demographic collapse— including up to 25% of the population perishing from starvation, overwork, and executions—emerged from accounts and early investigations.

Visions for Global Order

Samir Amin advocated for a polycentric world order as a structural alternative to the monopolistic centered in the global North, arguing that peripheral nations must delink from unequal integration into the to foster autonomous development paths. In his 1990 book Delinking: Towards a Polycentric World, Amin posited that continued adjustment to global capitalist dynamics perpetuates in the Third World, necessitating a reconfiguration of economic based on national and popular foundations rather than the imposed from the centers of accumulation. This delinking involves prioritizing internal markets, , and social priorities over export-led growth, enabling the South to challenge the hierarchical division of labor. Amin's vision extended to a multipolar international system, where emerging powers in the South form alliances to counter U.S.-led unipolarity, emphasizing South-South cooperation as a pathway to renegotiate global relations. He critiqued globalization as an extension of imperialist control, proposing instead a "de-globalization" that reconstructs international exchanges on egalitarian terms, potentially leading to socialist transformations in multiple poles. Regarding the 1974 New International Economic Order (NIEO) initiative, Amin viewed its calls for resource sovereignty and trade reforms as insufficient without delinking, as they failed to dismantle the core-periphery asymmetry inherent in capitalism; nonetheless, he saw the NIEO's demands as a starting point for broader structural upheaval. Ultimately, Amin's global order prioritized the convergence of progressive forces across regions toward a post-capitalist framework, warning that without active delinking and popular mobilization, multipolarity risks reproducing capitalist inequalities rather than transcending them. He stressed the role of ideological struggle to prevent peripheral states from mimicking Northern models, advocating for autocentric strategies that integrate with democratic control to build resilient, diversified economies. This polycentric approach, in Amin's framework, demands vigilance against elites and external pressures, positioning delinking not as isolation but as a strategic reconfiguration for global .

Criticisms and Empirical Challenges

Flaws in Marxist Economic Assumptions

Critics of Samir Amin's economic framework, which builds on Marxist foundations, highlight flaws in core assumptions such as the (LTV) and the primacy of class struggle in accumulation processes. The LTV posits that commodity values derive primarily from socially necessary labor time, underpinning Amin's analysis of where peripheral economies export low-value goods due to suppressed wages and import high-value ones, perpetuating . However, empirical observations demonstrate that market prices often deviate significantly from labor inputs, as seen in the diamond-water paradox where scarce but labor-intensive water has low exchange value compared to labor-sparse diamonds, supporting subjective theories of value based on rather than embedded labor alone. This undermines Amin's extension of LTV to global , where he argued peripheral stagnation stems from distorted value transfers, ignoring how and scarcity drive pricing independently of labor quantities. Amin's reliance on Marxist dialectics, emphasizing inevitable contradictions leading to proletarian-led transformation, falters empirically in peripheral contexts. He assumed extroverted accumulation—tied to core demands—prevents autocentric growth, necessitating delinking to foster internal markets and class-based . Yet, post-1980s data reveal that integration into global trade, contrary to delinking prescriptions, correlated with rapid : the global rate fell from 42% in 1981 to 8.6% in 2018, driven by export-led strategies in and elsewhere, without the predicted deepening polarization. Countries like and transitioned from periphery to high-income status by leveraging foreign investment and markets, achieving average annual GDP growth exceeding 7% from 1960 to 1990, challenging the Marxist view that capitalist integration inherently blocks endogenous development. Furthermore, Marxist assumptions of extraction as the engine of crisis overlook incentive structures and information problems in non-market systems, issues Amin downplayed in advocating state-led delinking. Historical attempts at similar models, such as Tanzania's villages (1967–1976), resulted in agricultural output stagnation and GDP per capita decline, with collectivization disrupting price signals and private initiative. ' economic calculation argument—that central planning cannot rationally allocate resources without market prices—finds validation in the Soviet Union's eventual collapse in 1991, where misallocation led to chronic shortages despite abundant labor, contradicting expectations of superior socialist efficiency. Amin's framework, by prioritizing class antagonism over these microeconomic realities, failed to anticipate how hybrid market reforms in post-1978—yielding 10% annual GDP growth through 2010—outpaced pure delinking paths, suggesting causal realism favors decentralized incentives over rigid Marxist . These flaws extend to Amin's modification of Marxist value laws for the periphery, where he posited distorted accumulation due to low . Critics note this abandons orthodox LTV equalization of profit rates under , introducing ad hoc assumptions about monopoly preventing rational pricing, which lacks empirical rigor as peripheral firms increasingly compete globally via technology transfers. Dependency theory's broader Marxist inflection, including Amin's contributions, has been faulted for overemphasizing external exploitation while underweighting internal failures, such as and institutional weakness, which econometric studies link more strongly to than trade imbalances alone. Thus, while Amin innovated on Marx, the underlying assumptions proved vulnerable to evidence of market-driven convergence and planning's practical limits.

Failures of Delinking in Practice

Attempts to implement delinking and autocentric development in peripheral economies have frequently resulted in economic stagnation, inefficiency, and crises, undermining the strategy's viability despite its theoretical appeal. In , Julius Nyerere's policy from 1967 emphasized self-reliance through villagization, forcibly relocating millions into communal villages to foster internal markets and reduce import dependence. However, this approach disrupted agricultural production, leading to food shortages and a severe foreign exchange crisis by the late , as imports of essential inputs like fertilizers and spare parts became unsustainable. Real GDP declined sharply, with average annual growth falling to around 1% during the and early , exacerbated by bureaucratic inefficiencies and lack of market incentives that stifled productivity. The Lagos Plan of Action (LPA), adopted by the Organization of African Unity in 1980, represented a continental push for self-reliant industrialization and reduced external dependence, aligning with delinking principles by prioritizing intra-African trade and resource mobilization. Yet, it failed to achieve its targets due to insufficient political commitment, weak institutional capacity, and overriding debt burdens that compelled many governments toward externally imposed programs by the mid-1980s. Implementation lagged, with intra-African trade remaining below 10% of total commerce, and economic performance deteriorated amid falling commodity prices and fiscal mismanagement, confirming empirical barriers to autocentric isolation from global circuits. In , (ISI) policies from the 1950s to 1970s pursued partial delinking by protecting domestic industries from foreign to build internal accumulation. Initial growth in occurred, but systemic flaws emerged: overvalued currencies discouraged exports, fostering inefficiency and , while balance-of-payments deficits ballooned, culminating in the 1980s debt crisis with regional GDP contracting by 10% from 1982-1983. Countries like experienced exceeding 5,000% annually by 1989, attributable to unsustainable subsidies and lack of technological dynamism without global integration. These outcomes highlight how delinking efforts often amplified internal distortions, such as corruption and , rather than resolving peripheral vulnerabilities. Common factors in these failures include inadequate institutional reforms to enforce popular mobilization, as Amin advocated, and the difficulty of sustaining technological progress in isolation, leading critics to argue that selective global engagement—evident in East Asian successes—outperformed rigid delinking. from these cases underscores that without robust internal markets and , delinking devolved into autarky-like stagnation, prompting shifts toward export-oriented reforms that, despite inequalities, delivered higher growth rates post-crisis.

Controversial Defenses of Atrocities

Samir Amin defended the regime in , which under seized power on April 17, 1975, and implemented policies resulting in the , with death toll estimates ranging from 1.5 to 3 million people—about 20-25% of the population—primarily through execution, , , and forced labor in agrarian communes. In his 1977 analysis, Amin portrayed the Cambodian revolution as a radical experiment in "delinking" from imperialist structures, attributing its excesses to "voluntarist" overreach rather than core ideological flaws, while praising its aim to dismantle urban capitalist influences and achieve autarkic . Even after reports of widespread atrocities emerged in the late , Amin continued to endorse aspects of the regime's project into the 1980s, describing the era at a 1981 conference as "one of the major successes of the struggle for in our era" and an exemplary break from peripheral . This position aligned with his broader advocacy for third-world revolutions prioritizing systemic rupture over , framing Cambodian policies as necessary countermeasures to neocolonial dependencies, despite empirical evidence from accounts and defectors documenting systematic purges of intellectuals, ethnic minorities, and perceived class enemies. Amin's defenses extended implicitly to suggesting analogous radicalism for , where he argued that delinking required measures as decisive as those in to overcome elites and global integration, effectively endorsing a " option" for structural transformation amid the continent's underdevelopment. Critics, including historians analyzing declassified documents and evidence, have highlighted how such views overlooked verifiable causal links between regime ideology and mass killings, prioritizing theoretical over documented human costs exceeding 2 million by conservative demographic reconstructions.

Legacy and Influence

Impact on Dependency Theory and Third Worldism

Samir Amin advanced by extending Marxist analysis to the global scale, emphasizing how capitalist accumulation in perpetuates in the periphery through and superexploitation of labor. In Accumulation on a World Scale (1970), he argued that the "law of worldwide value" governs the international division of labor, where peripheral economies export low-value commodities while importing high-value goods, resulting in a net transfer of surplus to the center. This framework, building on earlier works like Paul Baran's The Political Economy of Growth (1957), posited that integration into the world market hinders autonomous industrialization in the Global South, as local production remains oriented toward extraction rather than self-sustaining growth. Amin's 1977 book Imperialism and Unequal Development further detailed how wage-productivity disparities enable imperial rent extraction, challenging diffusionist models that attributed to internal deficiencies rather than systemic exploitation. Amin's critique of , articulated in his 1989 book of the same name, reinforced by historicizing capitalism's uneven expansion, rejecting narratives of universal progress and highlighting ideological biases in Western social sciences that obscure peripheral realities. He demonstrated that development and are dialectically linked, with the former reliant on the latter's stagnation, as evidenced by persistent global inequalities where, between 1960 and 2018, approximately $62 trillion in value was appropriated from the via unequal . This structuralist approach influenced subsequent scholars in and , shifting focus from neoclassical reforms to radical reconfiguration of international economic relations. In the realm of Third Worldism, Amin's advocacy for "delinking" provided a strategic blueprint for peripheral nations to assert against imperialist integration, prioritizing national accumulation over submission to global market imperatives. Delinking, as theorized in his writings from the onward, entails refusing extroverted growth models that enrich classes while impoverishing broader populations, instead fostering autocentric development through state-led in and South-South alliances. Drawing from mid-20th-century anti-colonial movements like the 1955 , Amin envisioned unity as a counter-hegemonic force, capable of challenging U.S.-dominated oligopolies by delinking up to 70% of economic activity from capitalist logic to enable endogenous transformation. His ideas resonated in radical circles, inspiring critiques of neoliberal and calls for polycentric world orders, though they emphasized over romanticized to avoid pitfalls of bourgeois-led projects.

Posthumous Publications and Recent Evaluations

Following Amin's death on , 2018, two major volumes were published posthumously in 2019. Only People Make Their Own History: From the Struggle for Liberation to a New Revolutionary Project, edited by A. M. Kaloo and issued by the International Development Economics Associates (IDEAs), collects ten essays from the final decade of Amin's life, addressing themes of , of , and the necessity for popular revolutionary movements to transcend national boundaries. The Long Revolution of the Global South: Toward a New Anti-Imperialist International, the second installment of his memoirs and published by Press, extends his autobiographical reflections on anti-imperialist organizing, advocating for a polycentric world order led by Southern alliances against Northern . These works have been reviewed in outlets affiliated with Marxist and dependency scholarship, with Science & Society praising their synthesis of Amin's lifelong critique of Eurocentrism and monopoly capital while noting their reliance on historical materialism over empirical case studies. Scholarly evaluations since 2020 have underscored Amin's continued relevance in analyzing uneven global development, though often from perspectives aligned with anti-imperialist frameworks. A 2021 analysis in Review of African Political Economy affirmed the applicability of his delinking strategy to post-neoliberal dependencies, arguing it offers tools for resisting financialized extraction in Africa and Latin America despite practical implementation hurdles in states like Algeria and Tanzania. In 2022, an Aeon essay positioned Amin's economic theories—emphasizing peripheral accumulation and law of worldwide value—as foundational for substantive decolonization, critiquing cultural decoloniality for overlooking structural capitalist integration. By 2024, commemorations in Global South advocacy circles, such as those from Brazil's , lauded Amin's six-decade output as a bulwark against neoliberal dissolution of , citing his warnings on fascism's resurgence via oligarchic polarization. A January 2025 peer-reviewed reflection in Development in Practice applied Amin's framework to the 50th anniversary of the , faulting its dilution into market-led reforms for perpetuating core-periphery imbalances, while crediting Amin's polycentrism for anticipating multipolar shifts like expansion. These assessments, predominantly from progressive economic networks, attribute to Amin a catalytic role in Third Worldist thought but rarely engage counterarguments on delinking's autarkic risks or overemphasis on class abstraction versus institutional .

References

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