Maldevelopment

Anatomy of a Global Failure, 2nd edition

Samir Amin

In this updated edition of his 1990 book Samir Amin explains with great clarity the complex changes of the late 20th and early 21st centuries, including the transformations in Eastern Europe and in the world economy, the growth of capitalism in China and, despite the West riding on the crest of new technologies, its materialist goals being increasingly questioned by new social movements including the Greens.

In this context, Amin examines the failure of development from a political stand-point. He addresses problems specific to the Third World, with particular emphasis on the crisis of the African continent. The capitalist state in the peripheries is unable to provide a basis for further development; it can only exacerbate inequalities. This means, says Amin, that the world needs to be remade on the basis of an alternative social system that is national, popular and based on South-South cooperation and that delinks the South from the North. This could lead to a genuinely polycentric world that provides Asia, Africa and Latin America with real scope for development.
 

Contents

• Introduction: why a political analysis?
Part 1 Africa’s economic backwardness
Part 2. The decade of drift: 1975–1985
Part 3. The crisis of state
Part 4. Complexities of international relations: Africa’s vulnerability and external intervention
Part 5. Alternative development for Africa and the third world
Part 6. Political and social conditions for alternative development in the third world
Part 7. Inter-African and south-south co-operation
Part 8. A polycentric world favourable to development: a possibility?
 

About the Author

Samir Amin is an economist currently based in Dakar, Senegal, where he is the director of Forum du Tiers Monde (Third World Forum). Amin is also the chair of the World Forum for Alternatives. He is one of the best-known thinkers of his generation, both in development theory as well as in the relativistic–cultural critique of the social sciences. He is widely published, with titles including Spectres of Capitalism: A Critique of Current Intellectual Fashions, Beyond US Hegemony: Assessing the Prospects for a Multipolar World, A Life Looking Forward: Memoirs of an Independent Marxist and Capitalism in the Age of Globalization: The Management of Contemporary Society.