GLOBAL HISTORY

Rather than the five stages of the mode of production as noted by Marx, (primitive communism, slavery, feudalism, capitalism, socialism) Amin proposes three: communitarian, tributary, and capitalism (Amin 2010b: 4). Dating from 300 BC to 1500 AD, tributary societies existed where “the surplus is directly tapped from peasant activity through some transparent devices associated with the organisation of the power hierarchy (power is the source of wealth, while in capitalism the opposite is the rule). The reproduction of the system therefore requires the dominance of an ideology – a state religion – which renders opaque the power organisation and legitimizes it" (Amin 2010b: 13). Some examples of the dominated ideology in these societies include “Hellenism (300 BC), Oriental Christianity, Islam (600 ad), Zoroaster, Buddha, and Confucius (all three 500 BC)” (Amin 2010b: 31).

According to Amin, the conquest of the Americas around 1492 was the “birth of capitalism and the capitalist world system (Amin 2010b: 17). This gave rise to the “mercantilist transition (1500-1800)” where capitalism rapidly developed in Europe and through sheer domination, launched the capitalist world-system. (Amin 2010b: 83-84). Note, that it was Europe’s backwardness as a peripheral tributary zone that heightened the contradictions within feudalism (underdeveloped, fragmented, etc.) that brought with it its end. Peasants struggled against feudal lords, bringing about agrarian capitalism. Merchants struggled against feudal lords, bringing about factories (Amin 2010a: 256). Thus, grew a sizable capitalist class and a mass of wage labor (Amin 2010a: 253). Finally, European colonialism “blocked the evolution of the other societies of the world which were gradually marginalized in the new global system” (Amin 2010b: 44).

UNEQUAL EXCHANGE AND UNDERDEVELOPMENT

Central to the separation of the core and periphery are “transfers of value” from the latter to the former (Amin 1974: 3). Of chief importance is unequal exchange which emerges from differing rates of exploitation, differences in wages between the core and the periphery (Amin 1977: 113). Thus, in sectors with which productivity rates are comparably equal in the core and the periphery such as mining, oil extraction, and commercial agriculture, lower wages in the periphery account for lower export prices (enforced through foreign monopolies) and thus a transfer of value to the core. In sectors where productivity divergences are much more distinct, such as in traditional agriculture, unequal exchange emerges from the larger gaps between wages and productivity (i.e. the unit labor costs) in the periphery than in the core (Amin 1974: 57). According to Amin’s calculations of unequal exchange, the transfer of value from the periphery to the core amounts to 15 percent of the GDP of the periphery (Amin 1974: 59).

The prolonged underdevelopment of the periphery exists for numerous factors, three of which identified by Amin are: (1) unevenness of produc­tivity as between spheres, (2) disarticulation, and (3) economic domination from outside (Amin 1974: 262). That is, the productivity gap between sectors is much larger in the periphery than the core, linkages between sectors are far less pronounced in the periphery than in the core due to the former’s ‘extraverted’ (external) orientation of the economy versus the latter’s ‘autocentric’ (internal) orientation, and the periphery is subjected to foreign monopolies (Hout 1992: 102). These monopolies based in the core play a fundamental role in the governance of the capitalist world-system. Their price-setting power is one of the primary mechanisms that places downward pressure on labor and thus export prices in the periphery (Amin 1974: 123). In addition, the monopolies the core has over technology, natural resources, finance, media, and weapons of mass destruction further cements its dominance (Ghosh, 2021).

EUROCENTRICSM

Amin forcefully rejects Weber’s claim that the Protestant Reformation was a “prime cause” of the transition to modern capitalist society. In contrast, he argues that the Reformation was “more the product of the necessities of the social transformation than their cause” (Amin 2010a: 8). He states that these cultural arguments are “perfectly reversible”, analogizing Weber’s argument to those who claim that Confucianism was to blame for China’s underdevelopment and then years later claim to credit Confucianism for China’s economic success (Amin 2010a: 25).

Instead, Amin has a materialist view of the Protestant Reformation (Amin 2010a: 26):

There was a “reformation by the dominant classes,” which resulted in the creation of national Churches (Anglican, Lutheran) controlled by these classes and implementing the compromise among the emerging bourgeoisie, the monarchy, and the great rural land owners, brushing aside the threat of the working classes and the peasantry who were systematically repressed. This reactionary compromise—which Luther represented and Marx and Engels analyzed as such—enabled the bourgeoisie of the countries in question to avoid what happened in France: a radical revolution.

Amin makes it even more clear about his distaste for cultural or ideological explanations for societal change when he states: “It is capital alone that makes all the decisions that suit it, and the mobilizes ideology into its service” (Amin 2010a: 50).

Amin relegates these cultural explanations of European superiority or uniqueness to the term, Eurocentrism: “a theory of world history and…a global political project” to usher in modernity (Amin 2010a: 161). This provides an ideological justification for the capitalist mode of production. Eurocentrism puts on its pedestal the exclusivity of European character traits (white supremacy), European history, qualities that non-Europeans lack. This further provides justification for claiming that capitalism could have only grown in Europe, and that global inequality is explained not by the brute force of European colonialism but through mere “internal causes” (Amin 2010a: 162). Thus, Eurocentrism legitimizes the capitalist world-system.

DELINKING

Samir Amin’s solution to the question of underdevelopment was delinking. That is, periphery capitalist formations seizing control over the accumulation process from the core. This includes measures such as (Amin 1990: 10-11):

1) Food Sovereignty

2) Control over Finance

3) Infant Industry Protection

4) Control over Natural Resources

5) Control over Technology

The overreaching goal is to transition from an extraverted economy to an autocentric one. Taking influence from Maoism, Amin aspires for a model of development where private ownership of land and the means of production are abolished, a relatively equal income distribution, and where peasants are not forcibly dispossessed from the land (Amin 1990: 63). Towards the end of his life, Amin called for the construction of a “transnational alliance of working and oppressed people” (Amin and Manji 2019). This initiative aimed to unite all laborers (as workers in the core “become conscious that the imperialist monopolies are indeed their common enemy” (Amin 2011), peasants, and farmers around the world to unite and usher in a socialist and multipolar world.

AMIN AND DU BOIS

Samir Amin’s analysis of the global economy overlaps nicely with the contributions of W.E.B. Du Bois. Both believe that western capitalism engulfed the world violently, super-exploited the labor of the Global South, and that Europe and its offshoots justified it through white supremacy.

While Amin used the term Eurocentrism, Du Bois called it whiteness. Du Bois (1920: 2) states that “the discovery of personal whiteness among the world’s peoples is a very modern thing—a nineteenth and twentieth century matter, indeed.” This whiteness was certainly supremacist in that its global objective was “to divide up the darker world and administer it for Europe’s good” (Du Bois 1920: 13)

Thus, “Black labor became the foundation…of buying and selling on a world-wide scale” (Du Bois 1998: 5). And through the twentieth century, “the world market most wildly and desperately sought today is the market where labor is cheapest and most helpless and profit is most abundant. This labor is kept cheap and helpless because the white world despises ‘darkies’” (Du Bois 1920: 19). In Black Reconstruction, Du Bois’ summary of the global economy includes much in common with Amin’s conceptions of unequal exchange, Eurocentrism, and underdevelopment:

That dark and vast sea of human labor in China and India, the South Seas and all Africa; in the West Indies and Central America and in the United States—that great majority of mankind, on whose bent and broken backs rest today the founding stones of modern industry—shares a common destiny; it is despised and rejected by race and color; paid a wage below the level of decent living; driven, beaten, prisoned and enslaved in all but name; spawning the world’s raw material and luxury—cotton, wool, coffee, tea, cocoa, palm oil, fibers, spices, rubber, silks, lumber, copper, gold, diamonds, leather—how shall we end the list and where? All these are gathered up at prices lowest of the low, manufactured, transformed and transported at fabulous gain; and the resultant wealth is distributed and displayed and made the basis of world power and universal dominion and armed arrogance in London and Paris, Berlin and Rome, New York and Rio de Janeiro. (Du Bois 1998: 15-16)

Here Du Bois’ notions of “universal dominion” parallels nicely with Amin’s conception of the power of core-based monopolies. These monopolies demand exports from the periphery to be sold “at prices lowest of the low.” As a result, labor in the periphery is subjected to brutal working conditions and “paid a wage below the level of decent living.” The dehumanization of labor in the periphery is further justified through “race and color,” just as for Amin, Eurocentrism legitimizes the capitalist world-system.

Similar to Amin, Du Bois finds wage arbitrage to be a significant driver of the movement of capital from one space to another. For example, he observes that even with the same capital outlay, by relocating to the South, Northern manufacturers reap billions of dollars in additional profits through the relatively low wages of the Southern white worker and the even lower wages of the Southern Black worker (Du Bois 1953: 624).

Amin also comments about the role of race and class in the United States and development of regional inequalities in core countries:

Analogous to this process is the mobilization of the internal colonial reserves, as with the proletarianizing of blacks in the United States, who have become the majority of the proletariat in a number of large industrial towns…Thus, the world system is increasingly mixing up together the masses it exploits, rendering the need for internationalism greater than ever. At the same time, of course, it makes use of this mixing process to stir up for its own advantage racialist and jingo moods among the white workers…the development of capitalism is everywhere a development of regional inequalities. Thus, each developed country has created its own underdeveloped country within its own borders… (Amin 1974: 27)

Like Du Bois, Amin notes the importance of racism in maintaining a cheap and expendable army of labor in the core. Thus, though the structure of the world-system elevates the living standards of the working class in the core relative to the periphery, this does not mean that a homogenous labor aristocracy has developed in the core. Rather, there is mass differentiation among the working class in the core, which for Amin sets up opportunities for international solidarity between labor in the Global North and Global South.

Hence, Du Bois and Amin share a mostly common strategy to escape the capitalist world-system—that is, the embrace of socialism and the liberation of the Global South. For Du Bois (1920: 20) “If the uplift of mankind must be done by men, then the destinies of this world will rest ultimately in the hands of darker nations.” In the core, Du Bois (1953: 625) stresses that for socialism to progress the color line must be addressed. Only then will you have a conscious, socialist-oriented working class in the North that can unite with the working class in the South. This global solidarity will then usher in a free and equal global order.

And lastly, it may be appropriate to further clarify Du Bois’ Marxist convictions as clearly as possible to fully synthesize him and Amin. For the fiftieth anniversary of the publication of The Souls of Black Folk in 1953, Du Bois reflected about of the “tremendous impact on the modern world of Karl Marx”:

My college training did not altogether omit Karl Marx. He was mentioned at Harvard and taken into account in Berlin. It was not omission but lack of proper emphasis or comprehension among my teachers of the revolution in thought and action which Marx meant. So perhaps I might end this retrospect simply by saying: I still think today as yesterday that the color-line is a great problem of this century. But today I see more clearly than yesterday that back of the problem of race and color, lies a greater problem which both obscures and implements it: and that is the fact that so many civilized persons are willing to live in comfort even if the price of this is poverty, ignorance and disease of the majority of their fellowmen [emphasis added]; that to maintain this privilege men have waged war until today war tends to become universal and continuous, and the excuse for this war continues largely to be color and race. (Du Bois 2008: 208).

As has been documented extensively, Du Bois’ relationship with Marx, Marxists, and socialist and communist movements alike shifted in both assertive and ambivalent directions over the course of his life (Saman 2020). He wrestled greatly with questions on how to thread the needle between race and class that his radical contemporaries were uncaring or worse, hostile about (Heideman 2018). Du Bois was particularly cautious about Black workers sacrificing themselves as “shock troops” for a white socialist revolution. (Lindberg 2013). Given his confrontation with white Marxists and his equivocal and evolving stances, some scholars thus position Du Bois as socialist, “independent” from Marxism (Rabaka 2007).

Whether to consider Du Bois a pioneer in a particular branch of anti-imperial, racial Marxism is another matter, but Du Bois’ contributions to Marx’s description of the materially founded social world are quite obvious today. Du Bois’ additions were, consciously or unconsciously, shared by Marxists (Samir Amin, no less) in the Global North and Global South who agreed that race and imperialism played a fundamental role in the capitalist world-system. And though within contemporary Marxism there is still a contentious debate on these matters it is no question that by and large what we could consider to be an “anti-imperial Marxism” is one of the more popular strands of Marxist thought evidence by the stances of long-time socialist magazines such as the Monthly Review. And even within this “anti-imperial Marxism” discussions are rich as well as divisive on theory and practice where the works of figures such as Du Bois and Amin are heavily cited. There is no question today that if he were alive today, or even a few decades later with Amin as his contemporary, Du Bois would be much more welcomed in more “mainstream” socialist movements—though of course, as is so frequent on the left, not without some derision. But I do believe that given his incredible contributions to the left, and to Marxism specifically, there is no reason to shy away from posthumously gifting him the “Marxist” label—though not even Marx was “Marxist” either (Engels 1882).

CONCLUSION

Samir Amin delivers several impressive contributions to our understanding of the social world. First, is developing a unique global history that traces the transition from communitarian to tributary, and to a capitalist world-system. Second, is his examination of the world through both ideology and materialism while stressing the importance of the latter. He brilliantly lays out the problem of Eurocentrism and its relevance to the endurance of the capitalist world-system. Third, is a well detailed theory of global inequality and the distinct features of core and peripheral capitalist formations. And fourth, is a proposal for a way out via delinking. This would require the effort of a global coalition of laborers, peasants, intellectuals, and political leaders to ultimately establish a socialist global order.

Amin’s detailed conception of the world-system had several omissions—most notably a shallow analysis of the gendered division of labor (Scott 2021). This leaves a lot of questions unanswered on how delinking will change the labor of women in the formal economy, in the household, and its overall impact on social reproduction and gender relations.

Further, Amin’s commitment to delinking led him to idealize socialist projects in the periphery—most infamously, the Khmer Rouge. In part, this was due to Amin’s personal relations with the leaders of the revolutionary government. The Khmer Rouge’s head of state, Khieu Samphan, “studied with” Amin in Paris while working on his doctoral thesis on Cambodia’s underdevelopment (Samphan 1976). Of course, Du Bois too was susceptible to similar blind faith with his defense of the Japanese Empire

This is not to suggest Amin was an antidemocrat. He did acknowledge that the concentration of power under vanguard parties did have a role in the demise of socialist projects (Shivji 2020). Though, democracy, especially in its bourgeois form (what he called “democracy-as-farce”) was certainly of peripheral importance to his political strategy (Amin 2011). “Truly meaningful elections can take place only after victory, not before,” declared Amin. For what ultimately matters is a socialist revolution from the popular classes.

Regardless of his deficiencies, Samir Amin proved himself to be one of the greatest global thinkers of twentieth and into the twenty-first century. He provided an apt and much needed critique of mainstream modernization theories that saw development as mostly the result of and the answer through endogenous factors (education, finance, local corruption, government policy supporting free trade and a healthy business environment, etc.). It was Amin who observed how the periphery is contained (with few exceptions) in an everlasting state of underdevelopment. That ultimately only through a transnational response can the majority of the world’s people including in the core live in a global society where they are free from exploitation, prejudice, and other injustices.

For a general audience, in the same forcefulness of Du Bois before him, Amin encourages us to think critically about the world and how big problems require big solutions—how we must think globally and act globally. This macro view of problem solving, hopefully encourages activists, social scientists, and everyday people to seek power through numbers and transnational coalition building. This is becoming ever more urgent as the world feels more interconnected than ever, and challenges such as climate change, Covid-19, food insecurity, and financial instability will require swift global action if a dent is going to made in creating a prosperous, inclusive, and sustainable planet.

REFERENCES

Amin, Samir. 1974. Accumulation on a World Scale: A Critique of the Theory of Underdevelopment. Monthly Review Press.

Amin, Samir. 1977. Imperialism and Unequal Development. Monthly Review Press.

Amin, Samir. 1990. Delinking: Towards a Polycentric World. Bloomsbury Academic.

Amin, Samir. 2010a. Eurocentrism. NYU Press.

Amin, Samir. 2010b. Global History: A View from the South. Fahamu/Pambazuka.

Amin, Samir. 2011. “The Democratic Fraud and the Universalist Alternative.” Monthly Review. Retrieved December 20, 2022 (https://monthlyreview.org/2011/10/01/the-democratic-fraud-and-the-universalist-alternative/).

Amin, Samir, and Firoze Manji. 2019. “Toward the Formation of a Transnational Alliance of Working and Oppressed Peoples.” Monthly Review. Retrieved December 20, 2022 (https://monthlyreview.org/2019/07/01/toward-the-formation-of-a-transnational-alliance-of-working-and-oppressed-peoples/).

Du Bois, W. E. B. 1920. “The Souls of White Folk.”

Du Bois, W. E. B. 1953. “Negroes and the Crisis of Capitalism in the United States.”

Du Bois, W. E. B. 1998. Black Reconstruction in America 1860-1880. Simon and Schuster.

Du Bois, W. E. B. 2008. The Souls of Black Folk. Oxford University Press.

Engels, Frederick. 1882. “Frederick Engels To Eduard Bernstein 1882.” Retrieved December 21, 2022 (https://marxists.architexturez.net/archive/marx/works/1882/letters/82_11_02.htm).

Ghosh, Jayati. 2021. “Interpreting Contemporary Imperialism: Lessons from Samir Amin.” Review of African Political Economy48(167):8–14.

Heideman, Paul M. 2018. Class Struggle and the Color Line: American Socialism and the Race Question 1900-1930. Haymarket Books.

Hout, Will. 1992. National Development, Dependence and the World System.

Lindberg, Kathryne V. 2013. “W. E. B. Du Bois’s ‘Dusk of Dawn’ and James Yates’s ‘Mississippi to Madrid.’” The Massachusetts Review 54(3):410–32.

Rabaka, Reiland. 2007. W.E.B. Du Bois and the Problems of the Twenty-First Century: An Essay on Africana Critical Theory. Lexington Books.

Saman, Michael J. 2020. “Du Bois and Marx, Du Bois and Marxism." Du Bois Review: Social Science Research on Race 17(1):33–54.

Samphan, Khieu. 1976. Indochina Chronicle 51-52; Sept.- Nov. 1976 “Underdevelopment in Cambodia.” Berkeley, Calif.; Indochina Resource Center.

Scott, Catherine. 2021. “The Gender of Dependency Theory: Women as Workers, from Neocolonialism in West Africa to the Implosion of Contemporary Capitalism.” Review of African Political Economy 48(167):66–81.

Shivji, Issa G. 2020. “Samir Amin on Democracy and Fascism.” Agrarian South: Journal of Political Economy 9(1):12–32.