200 years after Marx’s birth, 101 years after the October revolution, and 50 years after thetumult of 1968, Samir Amin is dead. To the torrent of tributes that is surely pouring in at this time, I would like to add my own reflections on my engagement with Amin’s life and work.Due to the timing with which I came into contact with professor Amin’s work, it has had a most profound impact on me, both intellectually and existentially. I think my experiences reflect those of many young people from the Global South who – having grown up in the era of neoliberal triumphalism – found their way to professor Amin’s work, and there discovered an incubator for their critical minds and egalitarian hearts.
But we among Amin’s last cohort of students are only one in a long line. Quite apart from simply leaving behind a profound intellectual legacy, professor Amin has been a pedological tour de force in his lifetime – right up to the end he was mobilizing hearts and minds, always with the same enthusiasm, the same inspiring zeal. A historical irony encapsulates the point well: in the mid-70s, a generation of Indonesian dependency scholars – typified by Sritua Arief and Adi Sasono – were inspired by Samir Amin’s early works – Unequal Development, Class and Nation, Accumulation on a World Scale etc. (Hadiz, 2004, 60). Close to half a century later, his new works have inspired me, a 21st century Indonesian.
There will surely be generations upon generations to come. Inspired, informed, and emboldened by Samir Amin’s life and work. May we redouble our efforts in his honor!
October Christening
I had noticed a copy of Amin’s Obsolescent Capitalism perched up on the top shelf of the ‘radical’ aisle in UCI’s Langson Library as early as my sophomore year of undergraduate studies – about three years ago. I think Amin would have been happy to know that they have him sandwiched between Arrighi and Marx, and that Frank and Wallerstein are close by as well – next aisle, one shelf down, beneath Braudel.
What eventually enticed me into exploring professor Amin’s work more deeply was the centenary of the October revolution. Being a young man of vague liberal dispositions (but strong anti-capitalist inclinations deep down) I was then intending to go into welfare state studies – historical institutionalism, varieties of capitalism, and the like. But the centenary was an opportunity I could not pass by – a once in a lifetime opportunity to learn about communism 100 years after the first long lasting communist state was set up. So, I picked up two books: one was Steinberg’s The Russian Revolution 1905-1921, and the other was Amin’s October 1917 Revolution: A century later.
The two complemented each other extremely well. Steinberg’s was an experiential history of October – told through poems, diary entries, letters, photographs etc. The most micro of micro histories possible. Amin’s on the other hand was the most macro of microhistories possible. Not only does he deal with the entire ‘red October century’ rather than just the event of October itself, he framesthe ‘red October century’ in relation to the long history of civilizations. Amin compares the Soviet experiment to proto-capitalist experiments in the 8 centuries preceding the Industrial Revolution, and argues that just as capitalism “was not miraculously constituted all at once in the 16th century” but rather emerged out of successive ‘waves of modernity’ that occurred in Sung China, the Abbasid Caliphate, and the Italian cities, socialism will emerge from a successions of revolutionary waves, of which the red October century was merely the first (Amin 2017, ch.1).
The argument Amin put forth in October 1917 gave me a far better appreciation of history than I had had previously. Moreover, it bolstered my ‘optimism of the will’ and convinced me to give up the notion that the improbability of system change necessitated capitulation to the center. I began to think about social change on a higher order of time. I began to realize that the project was not ‘socialism or bust’ in one’s own lifetime. But doing everything possible to lay the groundwork for future generations to come. I began to see the contribution I could make to humanity’s emancipation from exploitation and alienation. It turned me from a left liberal into a communist in short.
Eager to learn more, I read Russia and the Long Transition from capitalism to socialism. In many ways, it reads like a sequel to October 1917, even though it was published earlier. I had seen in October 1917 how a historical lens could add tremendous amounts of meaning to a social phenomenon– especially if the lens was calibrated to longue duree. What my reading of Russia and the Long Transition added to that understanding was geography. For instance, Amin observes at one point in the book that wage rates were identical across the Soviet Union – from Moscow to Tashkent. Geographically, this implies capital outflow from the rich Russian core to the poor central Asian periphery.Historically, this is significant because no other regionalism in the history of civilizations – except perhaps the Chinese tribute trade system – featured net capital outflow from the core to the periphery. Something as simple as wage rates, could have so much meaning when viewed in a historical and geographical lens. And even more meaning could be derived when the political implications were drawn, which Amin proceeded to do. He argued that notions of a Machiavellian‘Soviet Empire’ are untenable given that capital was flowing out from the core to the periphery. Soviet regionalism reversed the typical extractive relationship between core and periphery that prevailed in virtually all other regionalisms in human history.
Seeing this very basic application of a ‘world-systems’ analysis was extremely instructive. I no longer felt like complex political-economic phenomena were beyond my grasp, and if I could understand the world, then I could change it – in time. I think this is the way many young people feel when they read Amin. It’s the perfect synthesis in a way, of inspiration and instruction. On the one hand, his audacious language emboldens one to engage with one’s critical thoughts, not simply push them aside. On the other, his sharp delineation of theory pulls one back from adventurism, prompting one to think rigorously.
Having glimpsed how Amin analyzed the world, I wanted to know what Amin thought about changing it. How does he apply his global historical materialist analysis to contemporary issues? In the winter of 2017-18I began to read Amin’s more overtly political work, looking for answers to questions of Praxis.
From theory to praxis: how to think about politics as a socialist
The first of Amin’s books I read during the winter of 2017-18 wasModern Imperialism, Monopoly Finance Capital, and Marx’s Law of Value. Too deep did I dive. Lacking background reading on Marxian economics, I was lost. So, I just read and re-read the less technical sections like Marx’s Project andConcluding Political Remarks, while waiting for The World we Wish to See arrive. From those sections, I learned the basic theses of monopoly capitalism as delineated by Baran and Sweezy, as well as Amin’s own additions to them, including of course his reformulation of the law of value as the globalized law of value. Moreover, seeing Amin use this critical theory to arrive at critical conclusions was hugely informative. For instance, Amin uses the globalized law of value to arrive at the political conclusion that ‘catch up’ is impossible. He argues that since wages rise with labor productivity in the core but lag behind them in the periphery (globalized law of value), so long as the capitalist world-economy remains, developing countries will remain systemically barred from ‘catching up’ – notwithstanding temporary reductions in the gap due to special circumstances of course. Needless to say, my ‘taste for theory’ as Prabhat Patnaik would call it – grew exponentially. But so did my taste for history. Amin’s summary of the political economic history of the 20th century in section 4 of Concluding Political Remarks was especially stimulating. The neoliberal narrative I had grown up was torn asunder of course. But even the liberal narrative of ‘market failure’ and poorly implemented globalization – evident in books like Stiglitz’s globalization and its discontents – was challenged. There were much more systemic factors at play that the ‘market failure’ narrative glossed over.In addition, Amin’s history emphasized the global south – bringing the experiences of myself and my parents into the limelight.
The World we Wish to See was much more accessible than Modern Imperialism fortunately. It reads like a100-page map of the political landscape of the early 21st century. A truly massive sweep of issues is covered – from the militarization of geopolitics, to the food sovereignty question, to the struggle for women’s liberation in the 21st century (especially in the oft neglected rural hinterland of the peripheries). Moreover, all of the policies outlined in the Bamako appeal – reprinted in appendix B – are linked back to a set of corresponding principles. The importance of these political principles was the main lesson I learned from this book. I had seen in October 1917, Modern Imperialism and elsewhere how Amin derived political positions from political economic theory. But the normative principles he had used to go from the latter to the former had been assumed and rarely specified. Here in the World we Wish to See, the normative principles were specified – cooperation over competition, socialization through democracy over market socialization, and so on. And they were essential to translating theoretical analysis into political conclusion. Muddled, unspecified principles, render theory useless, like a waterlogged musket.
Besides the importance of political principles, The World we Wish to See also very helpfully spells out some of the major contradictions within the broader left anti-capitalist movement. Amin pays the most attention to the convergence vs. diversity dialectic. On the one hand, convergence (through organization) facilitates collective action, and collective action opens the road to power. On the other, bureaucratization foments depoliticization and introduces exploitative hierarchies. Amin at one point synthesizes convergence and diversity by arguing for‘building convergence while respecting diversity’.Of course, he stops short of providing a detailed blueprint on how to implement this synthesis, but nonetheless, it is very useful for a young person like me to be able to see dialectical thinking applied to political issues of enormous contemporary relevance.
Obsolescent Capitalism was next. And here I must digress to a somewhat amusing anecdote that probably reflects the experience many people have reading Samir Amin. As I mentioned above, Obsolescent Capitalism was the first book of Amin’s I ever consciously took note of. Two things stuck out to me at first, the title and the cover (not very original I know). The title was very attractive – Obsolescent Capitalism– who would dare to write that! I had been secretly thinking the same two words for the past ten years.The cover howeverwas very ugly. The ugliest I’ve ever seen in fact. While I didn’t dismiss the book because of the ugly cover, I did do so for other, no less superficial reasons. I ignored Amin’s words and focused on his google scholar citations. To my everlasting shame, I shelved Amin because I thought it too indulgent to spend time reading radical literature. Better to spend the time reading the Kathleen Thelen or Joseph Stiglitz. What can I say? I was still infatuated with the welfare state. But the irony of it is, I would not only come to own my own copy of the world’s ugliest paperback, but I would have the pleasure of flipping to appendix 1 while waiting for the bus one day, and find there the following quote: “[The] progress of society [is] summed up in the term emancipation”. Emancipation. I hadusedexactly the same word to describe both the aspirations behind, and the project of, October 1917. Which, writ large, I perceived to be the project of all human history – the project of creating an emancipatory society. Of course, what Amin means by emancipation and what I mean by it might be a little different, but nonetheless it was a moment of intellectual affinity. I had the pleasure of laughing at myself all the way to school for ignoring my intuition and being too careerist.
I did not finish Obsolescent Capitalism – I got busy with classes and fell behind. Then,The Implosion of Contemporary Capitalism arrived, so I decided to read that instead of finishing Obsolescent Capitalism. I have to say, Implosion is the cleanest of Amin’s books that I’ve readthus far. Amin writes in a stream of consciousness style. His ideas can be disjointed and scattered. Implosion has much more structure than the typical Amin book. Like The World we Wish to See, Implosion is a map of the contemporary conjuncture. But it focuses more on the political economics of the contemporary conjuncture, rather than the politics. Therefore, I’ve found it helpful to read Implosion and The World we Wish to See, as two parts of the same book.
The main lessons I took from Implosion are first, the importance of the Agrarian Question, and second the importance of China in the contemporary conjuncture. Both appear to be crux issues that will shape the ongoing restructuring of the capitalist-world economy. Amin devotes two subsections to in two separate chapters. In a book of only 5 chapters that is saying something. Moreover, Amin’s argument as to why the contradictions of world agriculture are fomenting systemic rupture are very interesting. Amin argues, in a nutshell, that the increase in the north/south agricultural labor productivity ratio, from about 10/1 pre 1940 to 100/1 today, implies that the ongoing development of capitalism in the rural sectors of developing economies must entail massive job destruction in the rural sector and correspondingly massive levels of rural outmigration. This would be no problem per se, were it not for the fact that mechanization is simultaneously reducing the number of available jobs in the urban sector, and there no longer exists a colonial outmigration fix. Thus, labor gets absorbed into the informal sector fomenting the growth of a ‘planet of slums’ to use Mike Davis’ term. The growth of increasingly immiserated slums is a completely unstable situation politically. But will the rupture that ensues see the slum-dwellers usher in an embryonic socialism? Or will the capitalist world-economy ‘fall right’ into a new age of barbarism? How we address the AQ today will decide, Amin contends. My interest was peaked. I began surveying the works of other scholars of the AQ. I discovered Agrarian South, Prabhat Patnaik, Sam Moyo and countless others as a result of Amin’s provocation.
The second substantive issue that Implosion peaked my interest in is the hegemonic rise of China. Amin dedicates an entire chapter to it – again, in a five-chapter book that is saying something. I grew up in Hong Kong for many years and saw some of what the East Asian Miracle entails. But I had always assumed, rather lazily, that the rise of China was due to the opening up to free markets, and that far from representing an alternative to neoliberalism the East Asian NICs were driving full steam toward convergence with the western model of Capitalism. More, they were combining the worst parts of capitalism with the worst parts of bureaucratic socialism. I wanted to study alternatives to capitalism, not the latest and most brutal form of it, so I looked to the European welfare state and ignored East Asia for a long time. Amin’s chapter on China changed that. It introduced me to the debates on Chinese state-economy relations. Is China ‘market socialist’? ‘Market Stalinist’? Amin argues neither. He argues that China has been pursuing a ‘sovereign project’ – one which certainly features markets, and capitalists, and trade, but which subordinates all these to the needs of its internal development. This is different form the market socialist thesis in that Amin emphasizes the geopolitical opposition of China to the prevailing ‘world-system’. In this sense Amin contends, China is the only emerging nation. The other BRICS being at best emerging markets. But even more interesting than the Chinese state-economy debates are Amin’s thoughts on China and the restricting of the capitalist world-economy. Amin argues that China could act as a catalyst – uniting with the other BRICS to restructure the capitalist-world economy in a way that would lay the groundwork for further advances toward global communism. However, China could also ally itself with Washington. And there are dozens of different possibilities in between. The point is however, that the outcome of the struggle over China’s developmental path will play a major role in determining how the capitalist world-system will be restructured in the coming decades. How could a person with my politics and my intimate knowledge of the East Asian region pass that by? I began my explorations into Andre Gunder Frank, Giovanni Arrighi, Bunker and Ciccantell etc. off of Amin’s primer on China.
A word here is appropriate I believe on the probable impact of Amin’s work is having on the ‘east Asian miracle generation’ – of which I am a part. I can only speak of my own experiences of course, but interacting with international students from Asia at UCI, I noticed that most on the left – or at least those with progressive inclinations – are wholly uninterested in Asia. The one exception was Yudi Liu. He grew up in rural China and was keenly aware of, and very critical towards, the gross inequality in China today. He is now studying to get his master’s in planning before going back to China to be a city planner. But other than that, most progressively minded students were like me – interested in the European welfare state, European history, European literature etc. Only those on the right were interested in Asia. Students in the business school, in international finance etc. If the situation at UCI is at all indicative of the overall situation, then progressively minded members of the ‘miracle’ generation are hugely underrepresented in the discourse on the Asia-Pacific. Amin’s work goes a long way towards correcting this potential imbalance. It encourages the left wing of the ‘miracle generation’ to look more closely at Asia, and see the opportunities there. Moreover, even if no such imbalance exists in the aggregate, the miracle generation is still a key demographic for the left. Many of us are critical of the contradictions between the triumphalist neoliberal discourse and the brutal neoliberal reality in our countries. Moreover, those of us who are lucky enough to get a western education, usually have ample funding and familial support to pursue a long and thorough education. Would it be possible to create a cadre of organic intellectuals from this stock? Amin has helped to keep that possibility open to us.
I will skip Amin’s 2006 autobiography A Life Looking Forward for now, because I want to address that in the next section where I talk about how Amin the man has shaped my thinking on questions of career, family, life choices etc. For now, I want to talk a bit about the last two books of his I read – the classic, Unequal Development, and the newerGlobal History: A view from the South. These two books got me very interested in the history of capitalism and the Chinese tribute trade system in particular. I mentioned above that Amin places the East Asian region at the center of the restructuring of the capitalist world-economy in the 21st century. Well, he makes that point very explicit in Global History,
“If Asia remains in the global system, we again find here the law of value, the five monopolies and the new polarization. Or, of course Asia could delink itself in the sense I use the term. This is not impossible” (Amin 2011, 115).
And why must Asia delink according to Amin? Because the capitalist world-system is systematically polarizing, rendering catch-up within the system impossible. But how did it become so? This is the extra dimension Amin reveals in Global History. Amin sketches the decline of the Chinese tribute trade system and the rise of the European colonial empire in chapter 5. A myriad of absolutely fascinating factors are touched upon: the use of phonetic (as opposed to conceptual) writing in Europe constraining tributary trade, the differing responses Europe and China made to the Peasant Question, the similarities of their renaissances – one extricating Christianity, the other Buddhism. But what peaked my interest the most was the discussion of the tribute trade system. My ancestors made their living from this system. And today, Chinese-Indonesian capitalists are again mediating relations between a growing China and the resrouce rich SEA hinterland.
Unequal Developmentgot me interested in historical capitalism in a much more general way. Reading about the modalities of the tributary system and how different they were to the modalities we live with today was extremely fascinating. For instance, Amin contends that in tributary societies the political instance dominates the economic instance. This is exactly the opposite of what I had seen growing up in Hong Kong, where the economic instance was hegemonic. It is just the same as reading German Ideology.
Having surveyed some of Amin’s thoughts on Praxis, I became curious about the man himself. If my affinity with Amin’s ideas had yielded such a fruitful study of his thoughts on political economy, might not a study of his thoughts on political economists, usefully inform my own thinking about career, life choices and the like? I intended to find out, and so purchased his 2006 autobiography in the Spring of 2018.
Socialism and man in Samir Amin
In ‘Socialism and Man in Cuba’ Che talked about the way in which socialism was about much more than supporting a certain set of policies. It was about embodying a certain set of values as well. Amin’s A Life Looking Forward painted a picture of a man who did just that. And in so far as it did, it was very instructive to a young person like me. I could mine it for ideas on how to become a better socialist myself.
The first lesson I drew from A Life Looking Forward was that egalitarian ideals are legitimate. One can and should live by them. It is a simple lesson. The most basic of all in some ways. But many of us are socialized into thinking otherwise. Amin acknowledges that life circumstances force many (most even) to travel a “well-worn path”’. But those of us who have a degree of choice, and still “out of fear, timidity or worse, let [ourselves] be carried along by what seems to be the prevailing current bear a grave historical responsibility, for [that] choice.” (Amin 2006, 36). Moreover, it is not at all true that ethics should be kept out of career choices. For instance, Amintells the story of how he quit his position at IDEP because he could not accept IDEP’s uncritical application of Rostow’s modernization theory to developing countries. Rostow’s was a self-proclaimed ‘non-communist manifesto’ and stipulated that development could be accelerated by encouraging introducing capitalist practices into semi-feudal developing economies. In his resignation letter Amin made it clear that he quit because of IDEP’s uncritical acceptance of modernization theory which falsely assumed that all countries go through identical stages of development. It appeared as though he had lost the job for good, but a few years later, a UN commission was set up to restructure IDEP and the commissions mandate was to make IDEP more sensitive to local specificities. Amin’s resignation letter criticizing IDEP’s universalization was found and he was made top pick for the job. After an interview he accepted his new position as IDEP’s director. Who says sticking to your convictions doesn’t pay?
The second lesson I drew from A Life Looking Forward has to do with being an organic intellectual. How does one go about ‘class suicide’? Throughout his life, Amin was constantly in dialogue with progressive groups – whether it be the ‘anti-colonial milieu’ in Paris during his student days, or the Malian left while he was a planner in Bamako, or Nadi Whafdi club members in Egypt. But dialogue is not enough. Amin criticizes the French intellectuals who fled Paris in 1968 when things became heated, emphasizing the importance of getting in the thick of organizing. That Amin certainly did. He helped organize many institutions of the left including the third world forum, world forum for alternatives, and CODESRIA. Moreover, he tailored his studies to the problems he saw on the ground. For instance, his studies of Mao’s New Democracy were geared toward resolving the crisis of Egyptian communism. Similarly, his study of Ph.D. thesis was in many respects a response to the split between the PCF and the non-communist anti-colonial students. When Amin tried to organize the latter under a united front. Members of the PCF tried to have him expelled for opportunism and rightist deviation. Amin recalls in a very critical tone those PCF members who openly proclaimed that developing countries could not aspire to socialism before the civilized French had turned Europe red. A Marxian analysis of the world-economy was needed. Amin provided it in his Ph.D. thesis. A final point. While Amin always put ‘politics in command’, he never abandoned academic rigor. Far from it he attempted to introduce more academic rigor into the many discussions he had (142). These are a few good pointers on being an organic intellectual.
A third lesson I drew from A Life looking forward, was to do with humor. It is impossible to miss the many humorous anecdotes and jokes Amin intersperses throughout his autobiography. One of my favorites is the story about how his grandfather took him to see the Italian fascists sail through port Said on their way to Ethiopia. How did Amin’s grandfather instruct him to react to the fascists shouting their slogans and raising the fascist salute? He gave Amin two options. One option was the peace sign. The other, was to turn around and unleash an enormous fart just as the winds were blowing out to sea. I suspect these sorts of experiences sowed the seeds of a sense of humor in Amin, which would sustain him for many decades to come in the very bleak struggle that the fight against capitalism can sometimes become.
A fourth and final lesson I drew from A Life Looking Forward has to do with another likely source of Amin’s stamina – singleness of purpose. Marx famously claimed that this was his favorite of all the virtues. And Amin seems to have possessed it. While in Paris as a student for instance, he never went out as a student in Paris except for political activity. He would eat dinner with his future wife Isabelle in a cheap Chinese place, where one ‘Comrade Long’ would overcharge his rich customers and give them double portions. While rest and recuperation were of course taken care of – taking holidays to the interior of Mali for instance – there was none of that compensatory consumption one hears so much about these days. Work was pleasure. In his interview with the Real News Network Alexander Buzgalin gave the following definition of communism: ‘Communism is where you like your work. Because it is creative labor. Because you are working with your comrades to build a better world. In socialism we are builders of our world. We can build it how we like. But we must work hard. What is it to build socialism? To work 12 hours a day on the basis of enthusiasm’. I suspect Amin lived close to this ideal – something we can all aspire to.
Concluding Remarks
It pains me to bring this essay to an end. Perhaps that is why I’ve gone on so long. With the tying of the last line, Samir Amin will be well and truly gone. Though I’m one of his newest readers, the fortuitous timing with which I came into contact with his life and works has perhaps amplified the impact he has had on me. Intellectually, and existentially, I am in his debt.
Fortunately, Samir Amin left us all with an enormous corpus, my own bibliography of which is included below. It only includes English language titles however – but even then, 30 plus books!Amin’s articles can also be found in journals like Monthly Review, International Critical Thought, Agrarian South: Journal of Political Economy, Review of International Political Economy, Review, and International Journal of Middle Eastern Studies. For anyone with a particularly strong interest I highly recommend taking a look at the Monthly Review archives, where one can find Amin’s articles dating back to the mid-70s – one of the earliest article available there is dated 1st September 1974, and titled In Praise of Socialism, that should be enough to entice you.
There are also many YouTube videos of Amin giving talks, speeches, interviews and lectures. In the past four days since his death, over 10 new videos have surfaced. I highly recommend all of them. But for those specifically interested in Amin’s theoretical work the SOAS lecture series is excellent. For those wanting to enjoy Amin’s audacious style I recommend his speech on ‘weltnetzTV’. And for fascinating stories about 20th century communism – Amin’s interviews for ‘Global University for Sustainability’ are excellent.
I want to end with a quote in October 1917, some of the first words of Amin’s I ever read, “Great revolutions make history…These revolutions are great precisely because they are bearers of undertakings that are far ahead of the immediate demands of their time.” (Amin 2017, 1). As a socialist, an organic intellectual, and a teacher Samir Amin went far beyond immediate necessities in his lifetime. He was a great man who helped humanity move many miles down the long road to socialism. May we continue in his footsteps!
References
Amin, S. (1971). Neocolonialism in West Africa. Monthly Review Press.
Amin, S. (1974). Accumulation on a World Scale: A Critique of the Theory of Underdevelopment. Monthly Review Press.
Amin, S. (1976). Unequal Development. Monthly Review Press.
Amin, S. (1979). Imperialism and Unequal Development. Monthly Review Press.
Amin, S. (1979). The Law of Value and Historical Materialism. Monthly Review Press.
Amin, S. (1980). Class and Nation, Historically and in the Current Crisis. Heinemann
Amin, S. (1981). The Future of Maoism. Monthly Review Press.
Amin, S., Arrighi, G., Frank, A.G., Wallerstein, I. (1982). Dynamics of a Global Crisis. Monthly Review Press.
Amin, S. (1987). Empire of Chaos. Monthly Review Press
Amin, S. (1990). Delinking: Towards a Polycentric World. Zed Books.
Amin, S. (2011 [1990]). Maldevelopment: Anatomy of Global Failure. Pambazuka Press.
Amin, S. (1994). Re-Reading the Postwar Period: An Intellectual Itinerary. Monthly Review Press
Amin, S. (2014 [1997]). Capitalism in the Age of Globalization: The Management of Contemporary Society (Critique Influence Change). Zed Books
Amin, S. (1998). Specters of Capitalism: A Critique of Current Intellectual Fashions. Monthly Review Press
Amin, S. (2003). Obsolescent Capitalism. Zed Books
Amin, S. (2004). The Liberal Virus: Permanent War and the Americanization of the World. Monthly Review Press.
Amin, S. (2005). Eurocentrism: Modernity, Religion, and Democracy: A Critique of Eurocentrism and Culturalism. Monthly Review Press
Amin, S. (2006). A Life Looking Forward: Memoirs of an Independent Marxist. Zed Books
Amin, S. (2006). Beyond US Hegemony? Assessing the Prospects for a Multipolar World. Zed Books
Amin, S. (2008). The World We Wish to See: Revolutionary Objectives in the Twenty First Century. Monthly Review Press.
Amin, S. (2010). The Law of Worldwide Value. Monthly Review Press.
Amin, S. (2011). Global History: A view from the South. Pambazuka Press
Amin, S. (2011). Ending the Crisis of Capitalism or Ending Capitalism. Pambazuka Press.
Amin, S. (2013). Europe and the Arab World: Patterns and Prospects for the New Relationship. Zed Books
Amin, S. (2013). The Implosion of Contemporary Capitalism. Monthly Review Press.
Amin, S. (2013). Three Essays on Marx’s Value Theory. Monthly Review Press.
Amin, S. (2016). Russia and the Long Transition from Capitalism to Socialism. Monthly Review Press
Amin, S. (2016). The Reawakening of the Arab World: Challenge and Change in the Aftermath of the Arab Spring. Monthly Review Press.
Amin S. (2017). October 1917 Revolution: A Century Later. Daraja Press
Amin, S. (2017). Arab World: Roots and insights of the crisis. Ruth House.
Amin, S. (2018). Modern Imperialism, Monopoly Finance Capital, and Marx’s Law of Value. Monthly Review Press.
Amin, S. (2018). Samir Amin: Memoirs of an Independent Marxist, Volume 1. Monthly Review
Amin, S. (2014). Samir Amin: Pioneer of the Rise of the South. Springer
Foster, J.B. (2011). Samir Amin at 80: An Introduction and Tribute. Monthly Review
Hadiz, V. R. (2004). The rise of neo-Third Worldism? The Indonesian trajectory and the consolidation of illiberal democracy. Third World Quarterly, 25(1), 55-71.
Justin Theodra belongs to UC Irvine Contact: [email protected]. Web: justintheodra.wordpress.com
