by
May 05, 2018
Originally published: Frontline by Jipson John and Jitheesh P.M. (May 11, 2018)
Samir Amin is one of the world’s greatest radical thinkers alive today. At least for the last five decades, he has been a great source of inspiration for those who dream of an alternative and better world. A Marxist thinker of profound originality and theoretical innovation, Amin continues to intellectually equip us to comprehend, analyse and critique the “obsolete” nature of present-day capitalism, the unequal North-South divide between countries, the continued operation of imperialism, the status quoist ideologies of capitalism, etc.
Amin was born in Cairo, Egypt, in 1931. He pursued his higher education at Institut d’Etudes Politiques de Paris (“Sciences Po”), receiving his diploma in 1952. He obtained his PhD on “The origins of underdevelopment—capitalist accumulation on a world scale” in 1957 at the Sorbonne in Paris and a diploma in mathematical statistics from L’institut national de la statistique et des etudes economiques. Amin worked in the planning agency of Egypt from 1957 to 1960, until the Gamal Abdel Nasser regime’s persecution of communists forced him to leave. From 1960 to1963, he was attached to the Ministry of Planning in Mali. After becoming a full professor in France in 1966, Amin chose to teach in Paris-Vincennes and Dakar, Senegal, where he has been based for over 40 years. He has been the director of Third World Forum since 1980 and the Chair of the World Forum for Alternatives since 1997.
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