The Bandoeng Project
For Samir Amin, this experience represented a major turning point for two main reasons. The first was that for the first time, countries of the South, and not the least important ones, had decided to defy the existing global order and the hegemonic system inherited from the Second World War.
In other words, Bandoeng was an attempt at a coordinated reply by the countries of the South to the challenges of the imperialist system of the time.Moreover, and this is probably the most important factor for Samir Amin, Bandoeng determined the cornerstones of a national autonomous project, albeit a bourgeois project, but one which had a profound impact in the countries of the South. According to him, and probably to many other analysts, Bandoeng’s influence was broad, giving birth among others to the Non-Aligned Movement and defining the key elements that led the countries of the South to demand the institution of a New International Economic Order (NIEO) in the 1970s.
For this reason, Samir Amin calls this time stretching from 1955 to 1980 the ‘Bandoeng period’, which he also named the “Awakening of the South”, the title of the book he dedicated to the political and economic developments that took place in the countries of the South.
Despite its limits and its loss of vigour, the Bandoeng project represents, in Samir Amin’s opinion, the path to follow in attempts that could lead to a real emancipation of the countries of the South. For him, this real emancipation can obviously only take place within a context disconnected from the global capitalist system in order to open the way for the long transition to socialism.