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Africa's Pioneering Marxist Political Economist, Samir Amin (1931-2018)
Bond, Patrick
http://www.counterpunch.org/2018/08/17/africas-pioneering-marxist-political-economist-samir-amin-1931-2018/Date Written: 2018-08-17 Publisher: Counterpunch Year Published: 2018 Resource Type: Article Cx Number: CX22874 A look at the pioneering work of Egyptian-French Marxian economist Samir Amin, who died on August 12, 2018. Abstract: -- Excerpt: I last visited Amin six months ago, at his old-fashioned Dakar home-office in a dilapidated bank building. He was busy with a stream of new essays and books, and although expressing far less confidence in statist counter-hegemonic prospects than in prior eras, he maintained faith that new waves of people's movements were emerging across Africa as neoliberal austerity returns. Unique among intellectuals, I’d seen his central role in advisory sessions over the prior two decades with the likes of Castro, Chavez and the world's most respected grassroots activists – and there is truly no one to take his place. Amin's best-known books came at the height of dependency theory's popularity during the 1970s: Unequal Development; Accumulation on a World Scale; and Imperialism and Unequal Development. His book Eurocentrism hit a nerve in 1988, and in 1990, Delinking summed up why the still young era of globalisation would further underdevelop Africa, and why a more self-reliant strategy was necessary. Subject Headings |