The Egyptian Experience
His return to Egypt in 1957, after defending his thesis in Paris, coincided with a time of extensive nationalization in his country. His first job was, as he says himself, “in the bureaucracy-technocracy of the national administration”, that is, in public sector administration.
This job essentially consisted in ensuring the state’s representation on the boards of directors of public sector companies. In their role of state representative, he and his colleagues had to take on the work of the board of directors, while respecting the directions given by the Plan, in other words the orientation of macroeconomic policy. This experience taught him amongst other things how to translate macroeconomic orientation into microeconomic political choices in companies.Nevertheless, this experience took place under very difficult conditions. Samir Amin had already joined the Communist Party, which was clandestine. The director of the Economic Management Organization, where he worked and which was in charge of the public sector, was a communist himself. A great wave of arrests, including that of his director, took place in 1959. Afterwards, he kept his job for 1 year and continued as an underground communist militant. However, in January 1960, he left Egypt for France.
1.5