Samir Amin - search results

Following the publication of the special issue on Samir Amin, we post short interviews by the authors on the influence of Amin on their lives and research. The articles by Sabelo J. Ndlovu-Gatsheni, Francisco Pérez, Ndongo Sylla, Francesco Macheda, Roberto Nadalini, Fathimath Musthaq and Max Ajl are available to read until the end of the month.

In this blogpost, Annamaria Artner examines how Samir Amin was read, studied, and understood in pre-1989 Eastern Europe. She argues that Amin understood that the transition of the world system from capitalism to socialism, what he referred to as a long transition, would make use of the historical experiment of the USSR-led Eastern Europe.

Introducing ROAPE’s special issue on Samir Amin (available to access for free until 31/03 - see links in blogpost), the editors, Ingrid Harvold Kvangraven, Maria Dyveke Styve, Ushehwedu Kufakurinani and Ray Bush, argue Amin’s legacy provides a lighthouse for those who not only want to understand the world, but fundamentally change it, by combining rigorous scholarship with political commitment and action.

Samir Amin, a ROAPE contributor and comrade, died last week, we post tributes from some of his comrades, students and friends. Ray Bush, Peter Lawrence, Issa Shivji, Ndongo Sylla, John Saul and Natasha Shivji celebrate the work and life of a rebel in the Marxist citadel. As Ndongo Sylla points out, Amin's life quest was to mark out what alternative paths can lead the ‘wretched of the earth’ towards an authentic human civilisation that capitalism can only refuse them.

roape.net interviews Samir Amin, the Marxist economist, writer and activist. Amin is one of the continent’s foremost radical thinkers, who has spent decades examining Africa’s underdevelopment and Western imperialism. With great originality and insight he has applied Marxism to the tasks of socialist transformation in Africa.

In August 2015 Patrick Bond was invited to speak at a meeting in Harare organised by TrustAfrica’s ‘Stop the Bleeding’ project run by Briggs Bomba, this is a summary of his presentation.

Caroline Cornier argues that economic and financial turmoil in Africa could be a favourable moment for fundamental monetary reform. Cornier reflects on a conference held in Dakar that focused on the challenges facing the continent in the context of ecological, economic, and political crisis.

Habib Ayeb and Abeer Abazeed celebrate the life of Helmi Sharawy. Born in Egypt in 1935, Sharawy saw Africa as one with all its own coherence. He spent his life campaigning for African unity, with empirical knowledge of Africa he was a committed anti-racist and anti-colonial scholar and activist. The idea of two Africa-s was a colonial and racist lie – the continent was one and must unite.

In an interview with ROAPE’s Leo Zeilig, writer, researcher and activist Ndongo Samba Sylla speaks about his work, French imperialism in Africa, and the struggle for economic and political liberation in Senegal and the continent. Ndongo continues Samir Amin’s search for anti-capitalist political alternatives, grounded in a radical analysis of trends and developments across Africa, and the Global South.  

In this extensive interview, socialist activist and writer Issa Shivji discusses the peasantry, capitalist development and socialism. In a discussion with Freedom Mazwi he argues that those who predicted the end of history, have been proven woefully wrong. Capitalism and the planet are in deep crisis. For the first time in decades people in both the South and the North are openly using the ideas and slogans of socialism – even if they have divergent ideas. Shivji argues, we must let a hundred socialist flowers bloom.