Tribute to Samir Amin

A model for three generations of African and, indeed, radical scholars globally, Professor Amin was that giant Baobab tree whose grandeur of intellect and spirit made him a worthy role model.

To start with, I have never read Samir Amin except for articles and interviews that have show up on Monthly Review over the years.

The list of institutions that Samir Amin built and /or led is very long: The Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa (CODESRIA), Environment Development Action in the Third Word (ENDA), Third World Forum, the World Forum for Alternatives, the United Nations Institute for

On Sunday 12 August, Samir Amin died. With him went a generation of Egyptian Marxists who came of age in the time of Nasserism and departed with the world in tatters. Amin was born in 1931 in Cairo.

A critique of the capitalist world-system/imperialism, the ultra-right regimes and reactionary forces across the world, Amin had talked and written about strategies of transforming the world through political action and social interventions.

The editorial continued: “It provides us with an ideal starting point: a general view of international capitalism, identifying the crucial differences in the dynamic of accumulation at the centre and at the periphery: differences which promote develo

Samir Amin (1931-2018) was one of the world’s greatest radical thinkers – a “creative Marxist” who went from Communist activism in Nasser’s Egypt, to advising African socialist leaders like Julius Nyerere to being a leading figure in the World Social Forum.

I won’t say we knew each other well, never living in the same town nor even, very often, on the same continent; instead we tended to meet more by chance and then much too briefly.

He was trenchant in his defence of the working class and peasantry, full of energy and ideas and he was engaged with not only theory and concepts but with people and those downtrodden by capitalism.

Samir Amin (3 September 1931-12 August 2018) was a visionary: someone with his own very strong ideas of what the future should be like, and consumed by the need to mobilise people to work for bringing about such a future.