Samir Amin

Samir Amin (Arabic:سمير أمين) (born 3 September 1931) is an Egyptian economist. He currently lives in Dakar, Senegal.

Biography

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. 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 research officer at the government "Institution for Economic Management". 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 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.

Work

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 were published in October 2006. How to be small

For Samir Amin (1997), ascent and decline is largely being determined in our age by the following ‘five monopolies’
# the monopoly of technology, supported by military expenditures of the dominant nations
# the monopoly of control over global finances and a strong position in the hierarchy of current account balances
# the monopoly of access to natural resources
# the monopoly over international communication and the media
# the monopoly of the military means of mass destruction

Performance over the last teaches us an important lesson about the evolving mechanisms of the future Kondratieff cycle, that began in the mid-1980’s. Let us recall, that for dependency and world system theory in the tradition of Samir Amin (1975), there are four main characteristics of the peripheral societal formation:
* the predominance of agrarian capitalism in the ‘national’ sector
* the formation of a local bourgeoisie, which is dependent from foreign capital, especially in the trading sector
* the tendency of bureaucratization
* specific and incomplete forms of proletarization of the labor force

In partial accordance with liberal thought, (i) and (iii) explain the tendency towards low savings; thus there will be
* huge state sector deficits and, in addition, their ‘twin’
* chronic current account balance deficits In the peripheral countries. High imports of the periphery, and hence, in the long run, capital imports, are the consequence of the already existing structural deformations of the role of peripheries in the world system, namely by
* rapid urbanization, combined with an insufficient local production of food
* excessive expenditures of the local bureaucracies
* changes in income distribution to the benefit of the local elites (demonstration effects)
* insufficient growth of and structural imbalances in the industrial sector
* and the following reliance on foreign assistance

The history of periphery capitalism, Amin argues, is full of short-term ‘miracles’ and long-term blocks, stagnation and even regression.

Publications 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
* 1973, 'Le developpement inegal. Essai sur les formations sociales du capitalisme peripherique' Paris: Editions de Minuit.
* 1973, L’échange inégal et la loi de la valeur
* 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, 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, 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, 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.
* 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, Haupauge, 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, 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

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

External links

Some writings by Samir Amin available on-line
* The American Ideology [http://www.williambowles.info/guests/am_ideology.html]
* Third World Forum: An Interview with Samir Amin http://www.zmag.org/zmag/viewArticle/13656]
* Imperialism and Globalization [http://www.rrojasdatabank.org/impglob.htm]
* Empire of Chaos Challenged: An Interview with Samir Amin [http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2002/609/intrvw.htm]
* Maldevelopment: Anatomy of a Global Failure [http://www.rrojasdatabank.org/uu32me00.htm#Contents]
* U.S. Imperialism, Europe, and the Middle East [http://www.monthlyreview.org/1104amin.htm]
* India, a Great Power? [http://www.monthlyreview.org/0205amin.htm]
* Imperialism and Globalization [http://www.monthlyreview.org/0601amin.htm]
* World Poverty, Pauperization & Capital Accumulation
* [http://www.monthlyreview.org/1003amin.htm]
* U.S. Hegemony and the Response to Terror [http://www.monthlyreview.org/1101amin.htm]
* Empire and Multitude [http://www.monthlyreview.org/1105amin.htm]
* A Note on the Death of André Gunder Frank (1929-2005) [http://www.monthlyreview.org/0405amin.htm]
* The Political Economy of the Twentieth Century [http://www.monthlyreview.org/600amin.htm]
* Africa: Living on the Fringe [http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1132/is_10_53/ai_84184716#continue]
* Samir Amin: The New Challenge of the Peoples’ Internationalism [http://www.humaniteinenglish.com/article826.html]