Samir Amin

Samir Amin, born in Cairo in 1931, is a world-renowned Marxist economist, intellectual, and revolutionary. In this candid, autobiography he describes his childhood and his parents, an Egyptian father and French mother, both medical doctors, in illuminating detail. We learn of his school days and studies at the Lycee Francais in Port Said, and later his attempts to master political science, mathematics, statistics, and economics at the University of Paris. Amin's doctoral thesis, which he defended in 1957, was groundbreaking. It analyzed economic underdevelopment and development, not as successive stages, but as two sides of the same coin: the globalized expansion of capitalism; accumulation on a world scale. Dedicated to Marx's concept of going beyond interpreting the world to changing it, Samir Amin lays out his methods of theoretical reflection alongside accounts of militant action. This dual devotion is, of course, the reason why his analyses of the stark realities confronting the world's poor have had such a lasting, international impact. Amin also brilliantly recounts the stages of his ongoing dialogue with popular movements in Africa, the Arab World, and Asia, struggling for a better future. A fascinating, original read, full of enlightenment, rich with useful lessons.