Contents
Part I On Samir Amin
1 Biographical Notes.......................................................................................... 3
1.1 Higher Education in Paris.....................................................................
31.2 Political Orientation.............................................................................. 4
1.3 Professional Activities.......................................................................... 5
1.4 The Egyptian Experience...................................................................... 5
1.5 The Parisian Experience........................................................................ 6
1.6 The Malian Experience......................................................................... 6
1.7 Teaching and Research.......................................................................... 8
1.8 The IDEP Experience............................................................................ 8
1.9 The ENDA, CODESRIA and FTM Experience..................................... 9
1.10 Intellectual Production.......................................................................... 9
1.11 Capitalism as a Global System........................................................... 10
1.12 Capitalism and Imperialism................................................................ 11
1.13 Polarization and Ways Toward Emancipation for the South......... 12
1.14 The Bandoeng Project......................................................................... 13
2 Bibliography only of Main Books................................................................ 15
2.1 Main Books in French......................................................................... 15
2.2 Main Books in English........................................................................ 17
2.3 Main Books in Spanish........................................................................
18Part II Texts by Samir Amin on the Theory of Historical Capitalism
3 Theoretical Model of Capital Accumulation and Development
in the Contemporary World....................................................................... 23
3.1 The Determining Articulation in an Autocentric System................... 24
3.2 The Main Articulation in the Peripheral Model................................. 26
4 Unity and Change in the Ideology of Political Economy.......................... 31
5 Is Social History Marked by Overdetermination
or Underdetermination?............................................................................. 43
6 Multipolarity in the Twentieth Century................................................... 49
6.1 The Drama of the Great Revolutions................................................ 50
6.2 The Weight of Imperialism, the Permanent Stage
of the Global Expansion of Capitalism......................................................... 50
6.3 Defence of the Post-revolutionary States Central
to the Vanguard’s Strategic Choices............................................................. 51
6.4 Nation-Building and/or Socialist Construction in the Radical
Countries of the Periphery............................................................................ 52
6.5 Opening Debate on the Long Transition
to World Socialism........................................................................................ 54
Part III The Contemporary Challenge
7 The Center Will Not Hold: The Rise and Decline
of Liberalism................................................................................................ 59
7.1 The Centrality of the French Revolution.......................................... 59
7.2 The Emergence of the Liberal Center............................................... 60
7.3 The France/England Parallel............................................................. 62
7.4 The Formation of the Social Sciences...............................................
637.5 The Nineteenth Century, Apogee of Historical
Capitalism...................................................................................................... 64
7.6 The Impossible Stabilization of the Liberal Center
in the Peripheries of the Capitalist/Imperialist World System.... 66
7.7 There is no Possible Clear-cut Answer to this Question.................... 68
References..................................................................................................... 69
8 The Countries of the South Must Take Their Own
Independent Initiatives............................................................................... 71
9 The Democratic Fraud and the Universalist Alternative....................... 75
9.1 The Democratic Fraud Challenges us to Invent Tomorrow’s
Democracy..................................................................................................... 75
9.2 The Democratic Farce’s Stage Scenery............................................ 76
9.3 Theories and Practices of the Vanguards and of the
Enlightened Despotisms................................................................................ 78
9.4 The Ideology of Cultural Nostalgia, Enemy of Democracy................ 81
9.5 The Universalist Alternative: Full and Authentic Democratization
and the Socialist Perspective......................................................................... 84
9.6 Three Conclusions............................................................................. 87
References..................................................................................................... 89
10 Land Reforms: Desirable Land Tenure Reforms in Africa
and Asia........................................................................................................ 91
10.1 Introduction........................................................................................ 91
10.2 Land Access and Tenure Status.........................................................
9210.2.1 Land Tenure Based on the Private Ownership
of the Land............................................................................................................ 92
10.2.2 Land Tenure Systems not Based on the Private
Ownership of the Land......................................................................................... 94
10.3 Forms of Organisation of Agricultural Production
and Land Tenure............................................................................................ 98
10.4 Alternative Land Tenure.................................................................. 101
10.4.1 Agricultural and Food Production, and Land:
No Ordinary ‘Merchandise’............................................ 102
10.4.2 Northern Double Standards Towards People
of the South......................................................................................................... 103
11 Transnational Capitalism......................................................................... 107
11.1 Is Transnational Capitalism in the Process
of Emerging?............................................................................................... 107
11.2 National Capitalisms and Collective Imperialism.......................... 109
11.3 One Europe or Many Europes: Under Construction
or Deconstruction?...................................................................................... 113
11.4 Europe is Still Conjugated in the Plural.......................................... 113
11.5 Faced with this Challenge, Are the Peoples’ Responses
Effective? Under Which Conditions?......................................................... 114
12 Africa 50 Years of Independence............................................................. 119
12.1 Interview by RFI: Afrique: 50 Ans D’independance
Africa’s Failing and The Global System.................................................... 119
13 Aid for Development.................................................................................
12513.1 Aid for What Development?........................................................... 125
13.2 From the Paris Declaration (2005) to the Accra
Declaration (2008)....................................................................................... 126
13.2.1 Legitimacy....................................................................... 126
13.2.2 What Constitutes Aid?..................................................... 126
13.2.3 Poverty, Civil Society, Good Governance:
The Weak Rhetoric of Dominant Aid Discourse............................................. 128
13.3 Geo-Economic, Geo-Political and Geo-Strategic Aid.................... 129
13.4 The Contours of an Aid Alternative................................................ 131
13.4.1 An Abrupt Rupture from the Current Aid Architecture
is, Alas, Not Desirable........................................................................................ 131
13.4.2 Alternative Aid is Inseparable from the
Conceptualisation of Alternative Development.............................................. 132
13.4.3 We Should, Taking as a Point of Departure
the Criteria in the Preceding Section, Do
an Inventory of the Aid that Countries Receive.............................................. 135
13.4.4 North-South Cooperation is not Exclusive..................... 136
References................................................................................................... 137
14 Emergence and Lumpen Development................................................... 139
14.1 What Is ‘Emerging’?....................................................................... 139
14.2 Emergence and Lumpen Development........................................... 141
15 Synthesis and Reflections......................................................................... 143
The Third World Forum (TWF) - Le Forum deu Tiers Monde (FTM)... 153
About the Author.............................................................................................. 159
About the Book.................................................................................................. 161