On Samir Amin's contribution to globalization

International Journal of Business Research, May, 2007 by Adil H. Mouhammed

ABSTRACT

This paper intends to review and analyze Amin's contribution to the globalization process. He analyzes the global capitalist system through its evolution over five centuries and has found that its process of capital accumulation is exploitative and destructive of many Third World countries. The monopoly global capitalist model has created underdevelopment, stagnation, disintegration, marginalization, exclusion, polarization, pauperization, inequality of income and wealth, bureaucracy and dictatorship, immorality and corruption, and cultural and ethnic divisions. Accordingly, the Third World countries, the peripheries, need a new strategy of development grounded in a new model characterized by liberation, auto-centric economies, and full and effective participation in the global system, which can help in shaping and changing the imperialist global system. Amin's contribution has provided such a model for change and development, which makes it relevant for many countries.

Keywords: Capital accumulation; Rate of Profit; Rate of Exploitation; Imperialism; Monopoly Capitalism; Auto-centric Economies; Peripheries; Polarization; Pauperization; A New Road for Development.

INTRODUCTION

Samir Amin was born in Egypt in 1931, and received his Ph.D. at Paris in 1957. He is a revolutionary economist because he was taught that "surrender to an unjust order is not acceptable" (Amin 1994:21). He (1994:21) supports socialism for a reason of "a revulsion against the wretchedness to which local children ... were condemned." He (1994:22) believes in a world society that must "ensure genuine equality for all human beings in all countries of the world". He is anti-imperialist because he (1994:22) saw "the connection between the wretched social institutions of the Egyptian people and the country's submission to imperialist domination." Amin has written many books and articles over the last forty years, analyzing capitalism, globalization, and imperialism as well as their institutions. He has concluded that these forms do exploit the majority of people over the globe and create chaos. Accordingly, he rejects the bourgeois economics because of its tendency to legitimize capitalism by formulating models devoid of power and social conflict. Consequently, economic policy based on this science is the "art of managing capitalist expansion" (Amin 1994:68).

The purpose of this paper is to review and analyze Amin's contribution to globalization in order to demonstrate its relevance to the process of economic development in the Third World. Amin (1996: 231) defines globalization as, "The establishment of a global market for goods and capital, the universal character of competing technologies, the progression towards a global system of production, the political weight that the global system carries in the competition for global or regional hegemonies, the cultural aspect of universalization, etc." Globalization does not mean the global expansion of capitalist production, but it means power relations according to which the most powerful nation on the earth, the United States of America, imposes its cultural system on other nations.

Section 2 reviews some basic literature on Amin's political global economy. Section 3 analyzes Amin's fundamental model of capital accumulation. Section 4 explains Amin's analysis of the stages of capital accumulation on a global scale, and section 5 provides some empirical facts associated with global capitalism, pointing clearly toward the rejection of the capitalist road of development. Section 6 is devoted to tackle Amin's developmental road for the Third World as the best alternative option for development. A summary and conclusions will be provided in the last section.

REVIEW OF SOME IMPORTANT LITERATURE

Various economists and sociologists have critically evaluated Amin's work. Gerstein (1977: 15) argues that Amin ignores production relations and considers only market exchange relations. He thinks that Amin's belief in the argument of unequal exchange has convinced him that taking production over circulation is an ideological alibi. Sica (1978) thinks that the study of the world economy must start with Amin's work. Sheila Smith (1980) accuses Amin of ignoring the national level, because he concentrates on central capitalism as the standard and peripheral capitalism as the distortion. Schiffer (1981) thinks that Amin's theories simply do not fit the facts.

Chilcote (1984) provides a rigorous analysis of Amin's contribution for explaining underdevelopment and the world system. Phelps (1999) points out that Amin has extended the dependency theory that Paul Baran initiated, arguing that modern imperialism has generated underdevelopment of the Third World. That is, Amin's work is a central part of the Monthly Review School. Foster (2002) contends that Amin's Accumulation on a global Scale is indeed path-breaking in showing that imperialism, the global face of capitalism, is the drive for capitalist profits and marginalization and exclusion of many nations. Similarly, this paper concludes that capitalist globalization contributes significantly to the underdevelopment of many Third World countries, as their economic resources are looted by imperialist nations.