Samir Amin, a major actor and thinker of decolonization

Gustave Massiah
August 11, 2020

I met Samir Amin in 1965 in Dakar. He was a professor at the University of Dakar, I worked at the Ministry of Planning and Development. We were both born in Egypt and that was a starting point for us. I had heard of him, of his book on Nasserian Egypt, published under the name Hassan Riad, of his work in Mali for the Plan and of his first publications on Africa. We soon became friends and began fifty years of common struggles and fraternal friendship. This friendship has never weakened. Even if we sometimes did not completely agree and even disagreed, trust and friendship always prevailed.

During these fifty years, there has been no shortage of adventures together. I will only recall a few of them. From 1970 to 1980, Samir Amin was director of IDEP (United Nations Institute for Development Planning) where he was a professor. He made IDEP an extraordinary centre for the creation of African thought and also a place of support for African intellectuals in danger as soon as they freely expressed their critical thinking. In 1975, Samir asked me to propose a reorganization of IDEP, of which he says in his Memoirs "I did not implement his recommendations because of the attacks of my opponents".

Samir organized numerous seminars that were major forums for debate on global development thinking. I was fortunate enough to participate in several of them. As an extension of his book "Accumulation on a world scale", he invited the great authors of a renewed world history, notably Immanuel Wallerstein, André Gunder Franck, Giovanni Arrighi. His book, The Unequal Development, published in 1973, served as a basis for the launch of an alternative way of thinking about development.

In 1975, on Samir's initiative, we published a joint book, The Crisis of Imperialism, at Editions de Minuit. With four contributions: that of Samir Amin, a structural crisis; that of Alexandre Faire, inter-imperialist conflicts in the crisis, that of Mahmoud Hussein on the active role of the periphery, the Arab example and mine on the international division of labour and class alliances.

Samir Amin has never been afraid of going against the tide. In 1989, after the fall of the Berlin Wall, Samir proposed to organize a seminar in Dakar in 1990 on the future of socialism. He asked me to write a provocative contribution on the future of socialism in Europe.

In 1997, we started out on new adventures. Samir considers that the Third World Forum should be complemented by a World Forum for Alternatives. He launches it with François Houtart and here we are involved in preparatory meetings in Brussels. The World Forum for Alternatives was launched in Cairo in 1997. In 1999, we organised with Attac, which was created in Paris in December 1998, a counter-summit in Davos. From then on, we became involved in the adventure of the World Social Forums, and the first of them, in Porto Alegre in 2001.

Samir Amin was one of the major thinkers of decolonization, of this alliance between the struggles for social and cultural emancipation and national liberation. Decolonization is not over; its first phase is completed with the independence of States whose limits we can see; its second phase, that of the liberation of peoples, is based on individual and collective emancipation, and the construction of a common humanity.

Samir Amin was a thinker, in movement and involvement; a Marxist from the South. A point of view from the South, beyond the change of perspective, is an alternative point of view of the world: starting from the blind corner to clarify and make visible the whole.

Samir Amin has mixed in his work a "political economy of decolonization" and a " critique of the political economy of globalisation". Since the early 1960s, he has placed his work on development in the perspective of globalization, on the one hand, and in the debate on transition, on the other. His approach peripheral and dependent capitalism reaches its full depth when it is inscribed in the analysis of the global accumulation of capital and in the attempt to surpass capitalism.

This theoretical and strategic contribution of Samir Amin has given him a particular stature; it is not understandable if we cut him off from his political commitment. This commitment has been concretized at all levels. He was present in all the major world mobilizations and demonstrated that his indignation capacity, always intact, did not weaken the sharpness of his analyses and the relevance of his proposals. Its radical analyses always sought to highlight the roots of the problems posed. His proposals were powerful because they did not seek to make cosmetic changes, which were often illusory, but because they were part of a desire for long-term structural reforms and highlighted the importance of the ruptures and upheavals that were necessary if we really wanted to change the situation.

Samir Amin could have been an intellectual privileged by those in power; he had chosen not to be and preferred to denounce obstinately Western-centrism. He could have been the reference and alibi of the state bourgeoisies; he had chosen not to be one and preferred to criticize without concessions the impasses of regimes built on the confiscated heritage of national liberation. His deep and vivacious Egyptian culture allowed him to combine his contained anger at injustice, the century-old patience of the peoples of the Nile and a devastating sense of humour. Samir Amin was an example of a vigorous and creative mind, a free and committed man.