SAMIR AMIN AND THE CHANGE OF THE WORLD

Annamaria ARTNER
Dr. Habil, C. Sc.
senior research fellow
Centre for Economic and Regional Studies Institute of World Economics
1097 Budapest, Tóth Kálmán utca 4. Hungary
artner.annamaria@krtk.hu

Abstract
Samir Amin, the well-known theorist of the Third World, was born 90 years ago. This is an
occasion to examine what answers he gave to three questions: why, how and by whom the system
of global capitalism must be changed. The author outlines, among others, Amin’s theory on the
law of worldwide value, maldevelopment, the generalized monopolies, the five aspects of the
privileges of the centre, Eurocentrism, delinking, long transition, progressive nationalism, and the
global class structure, as well as Amin’s participation in the fight for the emancipation of
developing countries and all oppressed social classes of the world, including his last call for their
global alliance.

Keywords: Samir Amin, delinking, Eurocentrism, generalized monopolies, long transition,

maldevelopment

Introduction
As Marx stated, people are born into settled social relations but still, may further develop those
through their activity. Samir Amin’s parents were quite critical of the existing order and they were
taking good care of their son’s education. The family and educational background significantly
determined Amin’s responsiveness to social issues. He was five years old when in Port Said,
getting out from their car, he saw a child searching for food in a rubbish heap. The little Samir did
not understand why the child was doing that and when his mother told him because the society
was bad, Samir answered “I will change society” (Amin 2006:6). And indeed, he devoted his
whole life to this goal both as a scientist and activist. The horizon of his project expanded very
soon, when he realized that all societies are interwoven in a global world system.
The core of the world system theory, namely the “dependency theory”, was being developed by
André Gunder Frank and Samir Amin practically independently from each other at the beginning
of the 1970s. What Frank found in connection with Latin America, was concluded by Amin based
on the experiments of the historical development of Asia and Africa. The two intellectuals
naturally agreed with the “World System Theory” introduced by Immanuel Wallerstein about that
time, and together with Giovanni Arrighi, who began his scientific work with studying the roots
and effects of colonialism in Africa, they formed the “gang of four” – as Amin (2005) called it –
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and worked together for decades both in intellectual fields and in social movements. Concerning
the latter, the most active of the four was, undoubtedly, Samir Amin.
Amin spent his childhood in Egypt and his youth in – at that time – strongly left-wing Paris. Thus,
he not only had the chance to refine his intellect but also to get close to both the capitalist world’s
periphery and centre. Amin became a member of the French Communist Party very soon, already
at the age of 16. In the French capital, inspired by the centre countries’ critical thinker, François
Perroux, he could master the world system theory along with others. Later, he travelled a lot over
the world, read much and took part in several conferences as well as capitalism critical civil
events.
Amin’s work was rooted in the problems of the most exploited continent, namely Africa, where
capitalism is still showing its specific “King Midas nature” most openly. In Africa, for centuries,
the abundance of natural resources has been turning into poverty because these resources are
extracted and exported by multinational corporations and also, due to the long-lasting effects of
colonialism – the reign of the local comprador bourgeoisie and the lack of its accountability what
is called “governance deficit” – are having significant resonance within the institutions serving for
rent seeking (see Biedermann 2017a és 2017b, Biedermann & Orosz 2017). For this, despite some
undoubtful institutional development in the last decades, the abundance of natural resources is
rather a curse than a blessing for the continent, be it as valuable mineral as oil or diamond (Doro
& Kufakurinani 2018, Barczikay et al. 2020).
Beside doing analytical research on the world order, Samir Amin was also an active participant in
the struggle of developing countries for independence and socialist orientation in his own various
ways and means: as a professor, lecturer and debater (from mass assemblies to workshops) or as a
consultant. Amongst other, he worked in the economic planning committee of Egypt and Mali as
well as the UN’s African Institute for Economic Development and Planning (Dakar). Furthermore,
he was founder and for-life director of the Dakar based Third World Forum that is functioning
independently from governments, initiator of the “network of networks” radical left think tank,
World Forum for Alternatives, established in 1997, and he was also one of the most active
members of the World Social Forum movement initiated in Porto Alegre, Brazil, in 2001.
In what follows, we are examining three questions that stood in Amin’s life: why the world must
be changed, how this change can be performed and who can do that.

1. Why to change the world?

Amin wrote more than 30 books in which he thoroughly described the features and mechanisms of
the modern capitalist world. It is impossible to reproduce all details of this rich analysis, but we
can highlight six elements that are probably the most important ones. These are the following: the
global capitalism is inherently polarizing (1) and therefore makes catching-up impossible (2); the
system is ruled by generalized monopolies (3); the Triad (the United States, Western and Central
Europe and Japan) enjoys an imperialist rent by controlling the key resources and conditions of
development (privileges in five aspects) (4); the ruling cultural-economic ideology of the centre is
“Eurocentrism” (5), which helps submitting the periphery to interests of the global capital that
leads to a structural deformation (called maldevelopment) in the periphery (6). As the above-
mentioned theses satisfactorily explain why Amin thought the world must be changed, we
examine them in more detail below.
It is probably not well-known that Amin was very good at mathematics and statistics and by using
this knowledge, he developed Marx’s value theory and applied it to the world market. Based on
that, he stated: “according to the simple law of value, identical level of productivity – in theory –
should coincide with identical level of labour incomes. However, when the global law of value is

2
in effect, it may result that the identical level of productivity is accompanied by different level of
labour income while product prices and capital incomes are being equalised globally. The
polarization is the result of this constellation. This is the reason why the aspects of the rational
economic decisions during the slow transition to the world-socialism must be separated from the
rules of the globalized law of value” (Amin, 2009a,19). Capitalism, since its genesis “is inherently
polarizing and is remaining so; excludes ‘catching-up’.” (Ibid)
With the denial of possibility for catching-up in frames of capitalism as well as emphasizing the
necessity of delinking (the opposite of integration – discussed later), Amin represented a
diametrically opposing view to mainstream economics. He was not alone in this issue. Giovanni
Arrighi (1990), Maria Mies (1993) was also sharing this opinion, as well as Artner (2018), who
exemplified the impossibility of catching up in the case of Eastern Europe. These authors,
similarly to Amin, found that the so-called “success stories” of catching-up within the capitalist
frame are doubtful from several aspects: they either resulted from a significant dependence on
foreign capital (e.g. Ireland) or have been financed with the resources of the developed nations
(e.g. South Korea). Besides, these “success stories” are originating from the pre-globalization era,
in the 1960s and 1970s, when the state intervention in the economy was much deeper than today,
and also, when the role of state is limited to satisfy the interests of the transnational corporations,
which rule the world through their – as Amin called – generalized monopolies.
By generalized monopolies Amin meant that “monopolies are now no longer islands (albeit
important) in a sea of other, still relatively autonomous companies but are an integrated system.
Therefore, these monopolies now tightly control all the systems of production”. Those companies
that are not in a monopolistic position “are nothing more than subcontractors of the monopolies.
This system of generalized monopolies is the product of a new phase of centralization of capital in
the countries of the Triad (the United States, Western and Central Europe and Japan) that took
place during the 1980s and 1990s” (Amin 2013b:21 – emphasis added).
This system, day by day, reproduces the hierarchy in which the above-mentioned Triad is enjoying
global privileges in five aspects. They possess exclusive control over technology, access to natural
resources of the planet, the global systems of finances, communication and information and last
but far not least, weapons of mass destruction (Amin 2013b:28) It is not surprising then, that any
country which dares to jeopardize one of these positions (like e.g., China, Iran and North Korea
etc.) is treated as an enemy.
In his book, “The law of worldwide value” (2010), Amin underlined that the essence of the global
capitalist system is the imperialist rent that is extracted from the developing countries leaving
them without sufficient source to develop. This extraction maintains the global hierarchy not only
by hindering the advancement of the periphery but also by financing the high standard of living of
the working class of the centre. But it is not all. The development of the periphery is deformed
also by the neoliberal economic policy hammered out by the centre. This policy is based on
liberalisation, deregulation and privatization and forcing export orientation. To increase exports,
the developing countries must import capital and allow transnational corporations to use their
resources to satisfy the needs of the developed countries – instead of their own population.
Hereby, the economic structure of the periphery becomes subordinated to the requirements of the
centre instead of serving their own national socio-economic advancement. Amin named this
distortion of the developmentalist logic “maldevelopment”. The first facet of this distortion is the
prevalence of “economism” that believes in the eternal and omnipotent nature of the market laws,
while the technological progress is imagined as an autonomous external force. The second facet of
the distortion is that with its logic the worldwide expansion of production and trade seems to be
unavoidable and eternal. This view was identified by Amin as a Eurocentrist and colonialist way
of thinking.

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For Amin, “Eurocentrism” is the key ideology of global capitalism/imperialism that originates in
the colonial past and the neo-colonial presence and explains the racist element in the European
way of thinking. In the same time, Eurocentrism means favouring liberal democracy (the
representative democracy) and free market (unlimited competition) over independence. This view
has also captured the European political left, which has accepted the neoliberal course and
therefore lost its revolutionary capability. “This path was chosen by the dominating large capital
since this was the only mean for it to destroy the social power that had been created by European
labourers (primarily the working class) during their two-hundred-year long struggle. The collapse
of the Soviet regime provided the expected opportunity… What is completely absurd, is the
behaviour of the European socialist and social democratic parties who believed that they could
take advantage of the communist parties’ collapse while the aim of the liberal strategy was exactly
to annihilate them all” (Amin, 2008:103). Desai (2019) went further and illuminated that by
abandoning anti-imperialism and writing the Third World “out of the script”, the Western Left and
Western Marxism has lost its ability to construct a plan for socialism, left the peoples of the Third
World without solidarity and exposed the western working class to the right-wing ideologies.
The main consequences of the above discussed mechanisms are that accumulation is carried out at
a global scale, the centre-periphery contrast is deepening, both the working classes of centre and
the periphery are suffering from the process of lumpenization and the people are faced by the two
intertwined tasks: first, to overcome the aggression of the imperialist Triad against the attempts of
advancement of people and governments of the periphery, and second, to defeat the military
power of the centre (Amin, 2015).
These are the reasons in a nutshell, why the world must be changed. The question is then, how.
Amin outlined the answer that we discuss in the next section.

2. How to change the world?

As being a revolutionary thinker from his age of 5, when first meeting deep poverty and deciding
to change society, Amin always investigated the present global world from the perspective of a
possible better future. He believed that a society beyond capitalism’s illnesses should be based on
solidarity instead of competition. In such society, natural resources, culture, education and
healthcare are not goods, the democratisation process is not facing barriers and the union of the
developed “North” and the underdeveloped “South” could result in anti-imperialist
internationalism. As a true “philosopher of practice”, Amin was most concerned with the question
of how to get to this phase.
Based on the above outlined analysis of global capitalism, he laid three main pillars as the
conditions of overcoming global capitalism: delinking (1), collaboration of the peoples (2) and
long transition (3). Beneath, we discuss these issues in detail.
Observing the exploitative mechanisms of the capitalist world system from the very beginning of
his education – he wrote his PhD thesis in 1957 about accumulation on a world scale – Amin came
to the conclusion that underdevelopment can be eliminated only if the channels of the value
drainage from the developing countries are eliminated. This break from the capitalist system he
called déconnexion or delinking (Amin 1985). Delinking does not mean autarky, it means “the
refusal to submit national-development strategy to the imperatives of ‘globalization’” (Amin,
1987:435), and can be considered as a “concrete geo-political and geo-economic strategy of the
global South to bypass the structure of mal-development under imperialism” (Juego 2019:1113)
Until the 1980s, when neoliberalism took over the ground, the socialist project collapsed in
Eastern Europe and China began marketizing its economy, the transnational companies’ value
chain networks were not as developed as today and there was some ground for indigenous

4
development. Even in these cases there have been only a limited number of catching ups in GDP
per capita within the framework of the capitalist world system and all of them had particular
circumstances and led to an increasing dependence on external economic forces (Artner 2018,
2020). However, in the course of recent era of generalized monopolies, only those few catching-up
attempts could survive and yield tangible results, which had not been integrated by the global
capitalist system (e.g. China, North Korea and at least in social dimensions, Cuba). For this, the
theory of delinking proved to be true in practice, although the apologists of the current global
capitalist regime are constantly trying to distort it in the usual ways (as if delinking would mean
autarky) and making it ridiculous as well as excluding it from the mainstream social and political
economic discourse. The main cause of this method lies in the revolutionary message of the
delinking theory that follows from the logic: if the polarization is immanent to capitalism and so,
catching-up with the opulent countries is impossible, then “something else must be done; it is
called following the socialist path.” (Amin 2016a:10, underlining added).
However, the success of delinking is conditional. First, given that delinking means the reduction
of the traditional economic contacts with the centre countries, such an attempt must be
accompanied with an extended friendly collaboration of countries that choose a similar way out of
the exploitative world of capital. Second, delinking can be undertaken only by politically bold
governments with mass support. Third, on the socialist road a broad social alliance is needed, a
union of those aching for a socialist society and those who believe that capitalism might be
reformed (Amin 2018a, 29). As for most of the countries the long road to socialism begins with an
anti-imperialist fight, the revolution that opens it could only be a “national, popular, democratic,
anti-feudal and anti-imperialist revolution, run by the communists” – Amin here is quoting the
words of Mao Tse-tung (Amin 2016b: 74). Of course, Amin was not longing for the “war-
mongering” “bourgeois-capitalist sovereignty”, or the retrograde, far-right close, discriminatory,
xenophobe “demagogic, ‘populist’, unrealistic, chauvinistic, out-of-date, nauseating” nationalism.
He was rather urging “the authentic ‘nationalism’”, which is “populist in the true sense of that
term: serving, not deceiving, the people” and as such, anti-neoliberalist and internationalist as
well. “The nationalism of the peoples of the peripheries is progressive only on this condition: that
it be anti-imperialist, breaking with global ordo-liberalism.” (Amin 2012a, Amin 2016c).
This thesis has been proved by the history of China, Vietnam and other developing countries that
have fought for independence. Amin described several times the proceeding of the developing
countries’ emancipatory attempt with the Afro-Asian Bandung Conference in 1955 that later
became the base for the non-aligned nations’ movement (Belgrade 1961, Havana 1966), and the
Group of 77 (in 1964) and their efforts for a New International Economic Order. While also
criticizing these efforts for not being enough radical, he stated in the late 1970s “This is the
reality: the struggle of the Third World against the dominant imperialist hegemony. For many
reasons, this struggle is still today the main force for the transformation of the world” (Amin
1989[1977]:219). He was convinced that Bandung was not at all the idea of such nationalist
leaders as Nehru, Sukarno and even less, Nasser – as the mainstream approaches are trying to
interpret nowadays. As a witness of the origin of the fight of the Global South for its
emancipation, Amin stated that the cradle of the Bandung Conference was originally the radical
left-wing critique of capitalism, which had been forged in the communist parties’ workshops
(Amin, 2009b).
Delinking and cooperation based on the alliance of people and their control over their
governments is still not all what the epochal change of the global system requires. It needs
something else in addition: time.
In agreement with Marx’s and Lenin’s opinion, Amin warned us that socialism might be achieved
through a long transition period. “The transition will take a long, perhaps a very long time – even

5
a century? This is because the new society being constructed will emerge from the putrid entrails
of capitalism, as Marx had already understood and proclaimed.” (Amin 2017a:376).
This very long post-capitalist but still not socialist transition period will be “marked by permanent
conflict between free poles determining society’s internal trends, local capitalism (responding to
the needs shown by the development of the forces of production), socialism (expressing the anti-
capitalist aspirations of the mass of the people), and statism (produced by the autonomy of the
authorities in the light of capitalist and socialist forces and expressing at the same time the
aspirations of the new class in control of the state)” (Amin 1990:72). By this, Amin argued that the
class struggle, which takes different forms, as well as the contradiction between the equally
important popular democracy and centralized state power are integral part of the transition period.
This conclusion can be instrumental also when evaluating the achievements of the pre-1989
Eastern European systems (Artner 2021).
Amin understood the long transition not only on national level, i.e., a transition of the mode of
production within the framework of a nation state, but in the context of the world order as well. It
is not surprising, given that a successful transition of any nation from capitalism to socialism is
hardly possible without a similar transformation on an international level. Hence, for Amin the
experiences and failures of all struggles against capitalism, including the history of the Soviet
Union and its allies, form part of the historical transformation of global capitalism, which, as he
believed, is in its final, chaotic phase, and characterized by “the internal conflict of all the societies
in the system between the trends and forces of the reproduction of capitalistic relations and the
(anti-systemic) trends and forces whose logic has other aspirations—those, precisely, that can be
defined as socialism” (Amin 2016b:18-19). Therefore, “The question that the Russians posed in
1917 is […] a question that is now posed to the whole of humankind.” The transition is a
permanent fight and “the revolt of the peoples who are victims of this development, which is
necessarily unequal, has to continue as long as capitalism exists” (Amin 2016b:17, emphasis
added).
On such a base, can we assume that delinking has already started on a massive scale through the
outbreaks of anti-globalization movements both in the centre and the periphery in the 1990s
(Artner 2004) and the returning protests afterwards against the impoverishing and oppressing
effects of the crises and management of capitalism? To a certain extent, the massive opposition
against the impacts of globalization is absolutely the waiting room of delinking. It might be
viewed as an opposition against the neoliberal – and mainstream – economic dogmas, an attempt
to overcome the field of economics by adding some relevant social- and environment-based
aspects as essential components of successful and inclusive development and at the same time, a
desperate cry for a change: a change of the reigning global system, or just a more conscious
behaviour and state of mind of governments and people towards the challenges posed by the 21 st
century.
As far as property relations are concerned, Amin believed that in the first phase of transition from
capitalism to socialism there is a wide variety of common and private properties (from state to
transnational capital corporations), but the limits of private property are precisely defined by the
worker-peasant state. The continuous expansion of the socialist forms of ownership as well as the
effects of socialist values should be provided by the extension of democracy at all levels of
decision-making (Amin 2013a). Hence, the long transition as described by Amin, 1) a period of a
mixed and dynamically changing society; 2) where the capitalist as well as socialist forms of
properties and ideologies exist; 3) the popular democracy is continuously being developed thanks
to the people’s control over the state and 4) which has an unsure outcome (can lead either to
socialism or back to the capitalism – called as “bifurcation” by Wallerstein).

6
This description is close to Ervin Rozsnyai’s, a Hungarian Marxist philosopher’s approach.
Rozsnyai is, however, giving much more relevance to the theoretical competence of the
communist party that leads the transition. According to him, the proper theoretical basis of the
vanguard party is the key factor of success of the grandiose society-metamorphose (see e.g.
Rozsnyai 2002 and 2007). It follows, that the struggle within the movement aiming at socialism
should inevitably take place first of all, in the field of the theory. It might sound strange in our
practice-oriented world, where Deng Xiaoping’s “Cat theory” (that is: it does not matter whether
the cat is black or white, as long as it catches mice) is so popular, but after more consideration it is
definitely true, given that all action is preceded by a thought that must be carefully taken to help
the action to reach the expected outcome.
Thus, if we accept that the present world order reproduces repressions, inequalities and
maldevelopment and it must be changed by delinking and undertaking the long and contradictory
transition towards socialism, there is only one question remained: who will initiate such a risky
and difficult change? Let us see in the following chapter what answer Amin gave.

3. Who will change the world?

From the foregoing it could be seen that Amin’s consistency and commitment to the seizing of
global exploitation did not boggle at any taboos. As mentioned, he criticised the Eurocentric social
democracy, and he also indirectly revealed the apologetic nature of the “green” movements
aiming, eventually, to save capitalism. He got a good look at the fact that the harmonic
coexistence of nature and society is impossible without changing the system of capitalist
accumulation. He believed that the Paris Climate Agreement is “a zero agreement”, “just wishful
thinking, nothing more”, “[b]ecause to make it effective we need a gigantic transfer of finance
from North to South, which is against the very logic of the system” (Amin 2018a, 29). This view
is supported by the fact that the US has withdrawn from the Paris Agreement, which could not
perform well: global greenhouse gas emissions have continued to grow and reached a record high
in 2019 (UNEP 2020).
So, neither social democracy nor the green movements are likely to change the world. Who then?
Like his analysis concerning the global economy, Amin’s description of the global society was
clear and well-structured. Based on his work on the global law of value, Amin differentiated six
main classes of the global capitalism: the imperialist ruling class (1), the proletariat of the centre
(2), the bourgeoisie of the developing countries (3), the superexploited working class of the
periphery (4), the peasantry of the periphery (5) and the pre-capitalist exploiting classes of the
periphery (6).
Engels recognized already in the 19th century that the working class of England lost its
revolutionary character. A little more than a decade after he finished his famous work on the
misery of this working class and its revolutionary mission (The Condition of the Working Class in
England, 1845), Engels wrote to Marx: “the English proletariat is actually becoming more and
more bourgeois, so it seems that the ultimate aim of this most bourgeois of all nations would
appear to be the possession, alongside the bourgeoisie, of a bourgeois aristocracy and a bourgeois
proletariat. In the case of a nation which exploits the entire world this is, of course, justified to
some extent.” (Engels 1858: 343). Later Lenin called the working class of the centre “the
aristocracy of the working class of the world” and connected this to the explanation of why the
revolution triumphed in the semi-peripheral Russia instead of the more developed Western
Europe.
It is not surprising that in the age of the generalized monopolies and global law of value, when the
working class of the centre is enjoying an even more privileged position than one/one-and-half

7
century ago, European social movements gave up the antiimperialist solidarity and traded
internationalism for the “so-called aid and humanitarian interventions” (Amin 2018a, 30). Based
on this, Amin got to the conclusion that the upcoming revolution can only be led by the working
class of the periphery with the peasantry of the periphery as its ally.
Amin was aware that in the age of the extreme centralization of power of global capital, changing
the world needs a concentration of forces of the oppressed as well as reliable and competent
leaders, more than ever. He worked actively for the building of an organization that could
integrate the anti-capitalist forces and coordinate their common campaigns. To this end he tried to
push, although unsuccessfully, the World Social Forum into this direction (Gills & Chase-Dunn
2019).
Just before he died, Amin wrote an open letter to his comrades, workers, activists and friends, in
which he urged the establishment of the Fifth International (International Alliance of Workers and
Peoples) of the working class that could serve as an intellectual leadership – or a vanguard – of the
movement and a coordinator of the activities. “There is no alternative – he wrote – in Europe, as
elsewhere, to the setting up of national, popular and democratic projects (not bourgeois, indeed
anti-bourgeois) that will begin the delinking from imperialist globalisation. It is necessary to
deconstruct the extreme centralisation of wealth and the power that is associated with the system.”
This alliance should be really organized, he reminded, as global capital itself. “The aim should be
to establish an Organisation (the new Internationale) and not just a ‘movement’. This involves
moving beyond the concept of a discussion forum. It also involves analysing the inadequacies of
the notion, still prevalent, that the ‘movements’ claim to be horizontal and are hostile to so-called
vertical organisations on the pretext that the latter are by their very nature anti-democratic: that the
organisation is, in fact, the result of action which by itself generates ‘leaders’. The latter can aspire
to dominate, even manipulate the movements. But it is also possible to avoid this danger through
appropriate statutes.” (Amin 2018b)
Although it is evident that only such a strong formal international organization of the broad
alliance of working classes, which sets clear goals and strategy, can challenge the global capital
and prevent its move towards the extreme Right (Moghadam 2019), Amin’s appeal seems to be in
vain, so far. His letter had been written almost three years earlier then these words, and there is
nothing like this alliance on the horizon currently. In 2019 there was an initiative aimed at
organizing a kick-off meeting of the 5th International (Habashi 2019) but without an outcome yet.

4. Conclusion
Samir Amin has kept his promise that he made at the age of 5: he indefatigably worked for
changing the world to a better one, where every form of exploitation is eliminated. To this end he
thoroughly criticized the development theories that do not go beyond the nation state dimensions,
comprehensively depicted today’s global capitalism and he sought to describe the main features of
the post-capitalist society as well as the path leading there with due regard to the practice.
Amin also created new terms that served for the better understanding of the examined object’s
mechanism (globalized theory of value, generalized monopoly capitalism, imperialist rent,
delinking, long transition etc.). His commitment to social progress was manifesting itself also in
the fact that since secondary school he was openly considering himself a communist (Amin
2017b). Every manifestation of Amin was aimed at radical social progress and the termination of
the exploitive nature of globalization of the capitalist reproduction and its ecologic destruction. He
was evaluating the struggles and the emancipation attempts of the world’s working class during
the last century from the above-mentioned perspective and he sought to provide strategic as well
as tactical guidelines to this end.

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Therefore, when we are attempting to make judgements over Amin’s approach toward the global
capitalism – considered too combative and “anti-North” by many – and his recommendations for
future society, it is perhaps advisable to keep in mind that we are dealing with such a person who
not only theoretically but also in practice – through his movement-based activities – became the
witness of the antiimperialist fight of developing countries beginning and also of the – according
to him, far not satisfying – role that the Soviet Union and its allies had played in this struggle.
Amin was steadily trusting that we are standing at the coast of Rhodes where we should jump
because there is a possibility to change the world: “… capitalism has started its phase of senility
which might bring enormous massacres. In such an age, political movements, social activities and
protests will cause political changes, the best and the worst, fascistic or progressive ones. Will the
victims of this system manage to create a positive, independent and radical alternative? This is our
today’s political challenge.” (Amin, 2012b).

References
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Amin, Samir 1990. Maldevelopment: Anatomy of a Global Failure. Zed Books Ltd., London.
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