Capitalism as a Global System
In order to understand Samir Amin’s reasoning, one must keep in mind that he adheres to a Marxist concept of the history of human societies. Such a concept is by far superior to a conventional bourgeois analysis, since it is a holistic approach of the problems in social formations.
In his opinion, economy cannot be separated from politics and from social issues. This position was already seen in his PhD thesis, in which he used tools developed by Marxism to analyse capitalist accumulation conceived on a global scale.On the basis of this analysis, he affirmed that capitalism and its evolution could only be understood as a single and unique global system, composed of ‘developed countries’, which constitute the Cores, and of ‘underdeveloped countries’, which are the Peripheries of the system. The origin and the nature of this polarization has occupied him in his entire intellectual output. Development and underdevelopment consequently constitute both facets of the unique expansion of global capitalism. Underdeveloped countries should not be considered as lagging behind because of the specific—social, cultural, or even geographic—characteristics of these so- called ‘poor’ countries. Underdevelopment is actually only the result of the forced permanent structural adjustment of these countries to the needs of the accumulation benefiting the system’s Core countries.
The conceptualization of capitalism as a global system is the guiding thread of Samir Amin’s thinking, including that concerning the socialist experience in the former USSR, in China, and in other countries.
1.12