SAMIR AMIN: DELINKING

November 27, 2006 at 4:51 am | In Books, Economics, Financial, Globalization, History, Philosophy, Research | Leave a Comment

Samir Amin

Samir Amin (b. 3 September 1931) is an Egyptian
political author. He currently lives in Dakar,
Senegal.

Amin was born in Cairo, the son of an Egyptian father and a
French mother (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. From 1947 to 1957 he studied in Paris, gaining a diploma in
political science (1952) before graduating in statistics (1956) and economics (1957). In
his autobiography Itinéraire intellectuel (1990) he wrote that in order to spend
substantial time in "militant action" he could devote only a minimum of work
preparing for university exams.

Arriving in Paris, Amin joined the French
Communist Party (PCF), but he later distanced himself from Soviet Marxism and
associated for some time with Maoist circles, and even
influenced future leaders of the Khmer Rouge for some
years. He also published with other students a magazine, Étudiants Anticolonialistes.
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 was from 1957 to 1960
manager of Études de l’Organisme de Développement Économique. Subsequently Amin
left Cairo, to become advisor in the Ministry of Planning in Bamako (Mali) from 1960 to
1963. In 1963 he was offered a fellowship at the Institut Africain de Développement
Économique et de Planification (IDEP). 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 a chief 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.

He has written more than 30 books including Imperialism & Unequal Development,
Specters of Capitalism: A Critique of Current Intellectual Fashions, Obsolescent
Capitalism: Contemporary Politics and Global Disorder and The Liberal Virus.
His memoirs are to be published in October of 2006.

Main books by Samir Amin

(1957): Les effets structurels de l’intégration internationale des économies
précapitalistes. Une étude théorique du mécanisme qui a engendré les éonomies dites
sous-développées (thesis)

(1964): L’Egypte nassérienne

(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

(1970): Le Maghreb moderne (translation: The Magrheb 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) Neocolonialism in West Africa

(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): L’impérialisme et le développement inégal (translation: Imperialism and
unequal development)

(1976): La nation arabe (translation: The Arab Nation)

(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, with G. Arrighi, A. G. Frank und I. Wallerstein): La crise, quelle crise?
(translation: Crisis, what crisis?)

(1982): Irak et Syrie 1960 – 1980

(1984): Transforming the world-economy? : nine critical essays on the new international
economic order.

(1985): La déconnexion (translation: Delinking: towards a polycentric world)

(1988): L’eurocentrisme (translation: Eurocentrism)

(1988, with F. Yachir): La Méditerranée dans le système mondial

(1988): Impérialisme et sous-développement en Afrique (expanded edition of 1976)

(1989): La faillite du développement en Afrique et dans le tiers monde]

(1990) Transforming the revolution: social movements and the world system

(1990): Itinéraire intellectual; regards sur le demi-siecle 1945-90 (translation:
Re-reading the post-war period: an Intellectual Itinerary)

(1991, with G. Arrighi, A. G. Frank et I. Wallerstein): Le grand tumulte

(1991): L’Empire du chaos (translation: Empire of chaos)

(1991): Les enjeux stratégiques en Méditerranée

(1994): L’Ethnie à l’assaut des nations

(1995): La gestion capitaliste de la crise

(1996): Les défis de la mondialisation

(1997): Critique de l’air du temps

(1999): Spectres of capitalism: a critique of current intellectual fashions

(2000): L’hégémonisme des États-Unis et l’effacement du projet européen

(2002): Mondialisation, comprehendre 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

Some writings by Samir Amin available on-line

The American Ideology [1]

Third World Forum: An interview with Samir Amin [2]

Imperialism and Globalization [3]

Empire of chaos challenged: an interview with Samir Amin [4]

Maldevelopment: Anatomy of a global failure [5]

U.S. Imperialism, Europe, and the Middle East [6]

India, a Great Power? [7]

Imperialism and Globalization [8]

World Poverty, Pauperization & Capital Accumulation [9]

U.S. Hegemony and the Response to Terror [10]

Empire and Multitude [11]

A Note on the Death of André Gunder Frank (1929-2005) [12]

The Political Economy of the Twentieth Century [13]

Africa: living on the fringe [14]

The lesson of Kampuchea [15]

Writings about Samir Amin

Aidan Forster-Carter: The Empirical Samir Amin, in S. Amin: The Arab Economy Today,
London 1982, pp. 1 – 40

Duru Tobi: On Amin’s Concepts – autocentric/ blocked development in Historical
Perspectives, in: Economic Papers (Warsaw), Nr. 15, 1987, pp. 143 – 163

Fouhad Nohra: Théories du capitalisme mondial. Paris 1997

Gerald M. Meier, Dudley Seers (eds.): Pioneers in Development. Oxford 1984