Tribute to Samir Amin

“We are thus at the point where in order to open up a new field for the expansion of capital (modernisation of agricultural production) it would be necessary to destroy – in human terms – entire societies.

It was 1973. My sequel to the first essay Tanzania: The Silent Class Struggle, called “The class struggle continues” (which later became Class Struggles in Tanzania) was making rounds of comrades “underground” in a mimeograph form.

Rhyming along the sound of guitar

Cascades my ode to Comrade Samir

You have left us, Dear Samir, but your spirit remains

Whilst I do my yogic meditation to ancient gods

Next to me I see you musing in revolutionary study

Introduction

I first met Samir in the early 1960s. I had read his early works, and they resonated with me.

I was passing through Dakar, [Senegal] and asked if we could meet. I don’t think he knew who I was or had read any of my writings.

Samir Amin’s celebrated life was amongst the most trying, but also rewarding, of his generation’s left intelligentsia. Following Amin’s death in Paris on Sunday (12 August), his political courage and professional fearlessness are two traits now recognised as exceedingly rare.

Dear Samir Amin,

I have read his Unequal Development (Le développement inégal, 1973) over a summer holiday before I met him in person. Certainly, the world has changed in the 45 years since the book’s first publication, however, to me, many of the assertions still hold true.

As much as the Marxist intellectual/Communist militant was exceptional with an uncompromising ethical commitment, Samir was also humble, obliging and generous.

The sad news of the passing on of Samir Amin found me reading Karim Hirji’s brilliant new book The Enduring Relevance of Walter Rodney’s ‘How Europe Underdeveloped Africa’. Samir Amin appears, as one would expect, in pages of the book.