I'm super honored to have been given the chance to write a legacy piece for Samir Amin. Thanks @DevandChg & @AndrewM_Fischer!
In it, I unpack Amin's intellectual legacy, including on unequal exchange, eurocentrism and delinking, as well as his activism.👇
onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.11…
In it, I unpack Amin's intellectual legacy, including on unequal exchange, eurocentrism and delinking, as well as his activism.👇
onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.11…
@DevandChg @AndrewM_Fischer I argue that few scholars oppose disciplinary conventions & boundaries the way that Amin did. He was an economist, but opposed the mainstream; he was a Marxist, but was deeply critical of contemporary Marxism; he wrote on Eurocentrism, but believed in universal, material truths.
@DevandChg @AndrewM_Fischer When evaluating Amin's legacy, it's important to discuss both his activism and intellectual contributions alongside each other. He achieved more in both spheres than most activists and academics, but it's the combination that sets him apart.
@DevandChg @AndrewM_Fischer I argue that a lot of Amin's work can be considered extensions of Unequal Development (1976) & Eurocentrism (1988). An important underlying thread tying these together is Amin's focus on geography/nationhood, which is rare for Marxists who often see the world as divided by class.
@DevandChg @AndrewM_Fischer While Amin, Arrighi, Frank and Wallerstein were apparently referred to as the "Gang of Four," there are important differences between them that I try to tease out in this piece.
While they agreed on the unit of analysis being the capitalist world economy, the importance of the global division of labour, the intertwinement of political, economic and social variables, and the historical objectives of world socialism, democracy and equality...
...they also had several disagreements, some of which were substantial and with important political implications, although most often it was more a matter of emphasis.
For example, while Amin and Arrighi were more concerned with the specificity of the latest long‐term economic cycle, Frank and Wallerstein were concerned with establishing the recurrence of a pattern throughout history.
The approach of Wallerstein and Frank led Amin and Arrighi to criticize them for "excessive economism". They also disagreed on the likely effectiveness of Amin's approach to "delinking" and they differed in their approach to imperialism.
Amin argued that uneven development leads to unequal exchange, building on Prebisch's observation of the rigidity of wages in the core, as well as Kalecki's view that a rise in monopoly in the core meant a squeeze on producers in the periphery.
While Uneven Development was about interpreting the world, Delinking was about assessing possible ways forward. Despite his gloomy analysis of the polarizing tendencies of global capitalism, Amin maintained an optimistic view of the possibilities for achieving global socialism.
The widely misunderstood term "delinking" is not synonymous with autarky, but rather the refusal to submit national‐development strategy to the imperatives of globalization.
Amin argued that delinking entailed countries developing their own productive systems and prioritizing the needs of the people rather than the demands of international capital. Substantial parts of his book on delinking were based on his study of China.
However, at a time when developing countries' economies are so closely tied to global production and finance, determining a separate law of value with a national foundation appears difficult to say the least.
Also, while Amin neatly lays out how national surplus accumulated can be redistributed according to sectorial needs of growth, the political economy implications and challenges related to determining the distribution of surplus need to be more carefully interrogated.
Amin saw Eurocentrism as a prejudice that distorted all social theories, as it disguised the true nature of the capitalist system, including its imperialist, racist foundations and ideological nature. @DivDecEcon
@DivDecEcon Amin's work was at the time a part of cutting edge scholarship critiquing Eurocentric depictions of world history and its by‐products in politics, policy, economics and development models — and it has since become a classic of radical thought.
@DivDecEcon Eurocentrism was an important response to post‐colonial literature dismissing Marxist analyses almost a priori for being Eurocentric. Amin was in agreement with some of the post‐colonial critiques, and made the case for how historical materialism could provide its own critique.
@DivDecEcon In line with his materialist outlook, Amin's solution was to pursue a universal project free from European particularism, a "modernity critical of modernity", as an alternative to Eurocentrism.
@DivDecEcon It's remarkable how relevant many of Amin's ideas still are despite the fact that more than half a century has passed since he first formulated their core. Many scholars still draw on and adapt his ideas, although they do not always explicitly acknowledge it.
@DivDecEcon Thanks to everyone who took the time to either read drafts of this piece and/or discuss Amin's ideas with me, including @mariadyveke @ushehweduk @platanomics @KaiKodden @Jayati1609 @ajl_max @_kevinroesch @nssylla and @megiraudo ✊🙏
