SAMIR AMIN

SAMIR AMIN(3 September 1931 – 12 August 2018)

World acclaimed Marxist thinker Samir Amin dies

 

World acclaimed Egyptian econimist and thinker, Samir Amin, has died on Sunday in Paris. He was 86.

SAMIR AMIN was one of the world’s greatest radical thinkers. At least for the last five decades, he has been a great source of inspiration for those who dream of an alternative and better world. A Marxist thinker of profound originality and theoretical innovation, Amin continues to intellectually equip us to comprehend, analyse and critique the “obsolete” nature of present-day capitalism, the unequal North-South divide between countries, the continued operation of imperialism, the status quoist ideologies of capitalism, etc.

Amin was born in Cairo, Egypt, in 1931. He pursued his higher education at Institut d’Etudes Politiques de Paris (“Sciences Po”), receiving his diploma in 1952. He obtained his PhD on “The origins of underdevelopment—capitalist accumulation on a world scale” in 1957 at the Sorbonne in Paris and a diploma in mathematical statistics from L’institut national de la statistique et des etudes economiques. Amin worked in the planning agency of Egypt from 1957 to 1960, until the Gamal Abdel Nasser regime’s persecution of communists forced him to leave. From 1960 to1963, he was attached to the Ministry of Planning in Mali. After becoming a full professor in France in 1966, Amin chose to teach in Paris-Vincennes and Dakar, Senegal, where he has been based for over 40 years. He has been the director of Third World Forum since 1980 and the Chair of the World Forum for Alternatives since 1997.

As a Marxist based in the South or what is called the “Third World”, Amin began his intellectual explorations by analysing the “development of underdevelopment” in Third World countries under capitalism. He attributes this pattern of development to capitalism. According to Amin, the world economy under capitalism functions in a hierarchical, unequal and exploitative way where the “First World” countries of the North dominate and develop at the cost of the pauperisation of the Third World countries of the South.

For Amin, this pattern of capitalist development always necessitates the countries of the North resorting to the mechanism of imperialist control of the South. “Imperialism is not a stage, not even the highest stage of capitalism. It is inherent in capitalism’s expansion,” argues Amin. He calls contemporary imperialism the “imperialism of the triad” and argues that this imperialism pauperises and victimises the people in the Global South. Through this theoretical proposition, he rejects the argument that imperialism in the world scene is now muted and what we have now is “empire”.

As a pioneer of dependency theory, from the 1970s, Amin has shown with great acumen how resource flow from the countries of the periphery enriches the core countries of the North. He calls the surplus expropriation from the periphery “imperialist rent”. He believes that this imperialist exploitation of the South paved the way for and caused the emergence of liberation struggles in the South in the 20th century, and he hopes for a repeat of the same in the monopoly finance capital of the 21st century also.

This phase of monopoly finance capital of the contemporary era came on to the scene in the 1970s. According to him, this financialisation arises as a counter to the stagnation and accumulation tendency of capitalism. Amin explains that from 1971 the world capitalist system has entered into another long crisis, probably the last as capitalism has reached a dead end. According to him, in its long history, capitalism has had two long crises: first from 1871 to 1945, and the second crisis began in 1971 and we are living in this period. His conclusion and warning to the world is that capitalism has become an “obsolete social system”.

It is this material condition and concrete situation of the obsolete stage in which capitalism reached that demands and keeps alive the necessities of socialism as a choice before humanity. Amin declares that if we are to come out in the end from this “long tunnel’’, it will be into socialism, a society aimed at transcending “the legacy of unequal development inherent to capitalism” by offering to “all human beings on the planet a better mastery of their social development”.

Amin is the author of a number of books on different themes, including political economy, socialism, political Islam, and culture. Eurocentrism, published in 1988, is a path-breaking work by him. “Rejecting the dominant Eurocentric view of world history, which narrowly and incorrectly posits a progression from the Greek and Roman classical world to Christian feudalism and the European capitalist system, Amin presents a sweeping reinterpretation that emphasises the crucial historical role played by the Arab Islamic world.” Eurocentrism remains a classic in critical studies and scholarship. Amin’s other important books include The Liberal Virus (2004), The Implosion of Contemporary Capitalism (2013), The Law of World Wide Value (2010) and Ending the Crisis of Capitalism or Ending Capitalism (2010).

RED SALUTE.