Capitalism is going senile. Its ambition is now restricted to maintaining the wealth of the wealthy in the world, while the poor, condemned to remain out of the loop, are increasingly demonized as the enemy. This is the theme of Samir Amin's major new book, in which the celebrated analyst presents a synoptic view of capitalism's future. He depicts a world in which NATO and so-called coalitions of the willing have taken over the role of the United Nations, in which US hegemony is more or less complete, in which millions are condemned to die in order to preserve the social order of the US, Europe and Japan. Samir Amin's analyses of the Gulf War, the wars in former Yugoslavia and the war in Central Asia reveal the scope of US strategic aims. He explains why Macdonald's hamburgers need McDonnell-Douglas's F-16s, arguing that the political and military dimension of US dominance is as significant as US economic preponderance in determining the future of capitalist development - with the recent US invasion and occupation of Iraq being a confirmation of Amin's prescient thesis.

The Arab Spring uprisings comprise an integral part of a massive « second awakening » of the Global South. In his latest book, Samir Amin examines the complex interplay of nations regarding the Arab Spring and its continuing, turbulent seasons. Amin sees the United States, in an increasingly multi-polar world, as a victim of overreach, caught in its own web of attempts to contain the challenge of China, while confronting the staying power of nations such as Syria and Iran. The growing, deeply-felt need of the Arab people for independent, popular democracy is the cause of their awakening. This is what the United States fears most, since real self-government by independent nations would necessarily mean the end of U.S. empire, and the economic liberalism that has kept it in place. The way forward for the Arab world, Amin argues, is to take on, not just Western imperialism, but also capitalism itself.

Is it possible for the Third World to escape from the constraints imposed by the world's economic system? Does not attempting to do so lead inevitably to the stagnation of barrackroom socialism? What room for manoeuvre do Third World states have? Are they condemned to dependence? These are some of the questions Samir Amin confronts in this major development of his theoretical ideas. He argues that Third World countries cannot hope to raise living standards if they continue to adjust their development strategies in line with the trends set by a fundamentally unequal global capitalist system over which they have no control. The only alternative, he maintains, is for Third World societies to « delink » from the logic of the global system - each country submitting its external economic relations to the logic of domestic development priorities, which in turn requires a broad coalition of popular forces in control of the state. Delinking, he shows, is not about absolute autarchy, but a neutralizing of the effects of external economic interactions on internal choices. With its global approach and illuminating grasp of new realities, Samir Amin presents a fresh attempt - bound to provoke intellectual controversy - to understand the changing nature of global capitalism in the 1980s, as well as to explore the strategic development dilemmas it poses for Third World countries.

Out of early twentieth century Russia came the world's first significant effort to build a modern revolutionary society. According to Marxist economist Samir Amin, the great upheaval that once produced the Soviet Union also produced a movement away from capitalism - a long transition that continues today. In seven concise, provocative chapters, Amin deftly examines the trajectory of Russian capitalism, the Bolshevik Revolution, the collapse of the Soviet Union, the possible future of Russia - and, by extension, the future of socialism itself. Amin combines an analysis of class struggle with geopolitics - both crucial to understanding Russia's complex political history. He first looks at the development (or lack thereof) of Russian capitalism. He sees Russia's geopolitical isolation as the reason its capitalist empire developed so differently from Western Europe, and the reason for Russia's perceived « backwardness. » Yet Russia's unique capitalism proved to be the rich soil in which the Bolsheviks were able to take power, and Amin covers the rise and fall of the revolutionary Soviet system. Finally, in a powerful chapter on Ukraine and the rise of global fascism, Amin lays out the conditions necessary for Russia to recreate itself, and perhaps again move down the long road to socialism. Samir Amin's great achievement in this book is not only to explain Russia's historical tragedies and triumphs, but also to temper our hopes for a quick end to an increasingly insufferable capitalism.

The Arab Economy Today is a detailed account of the present economic situation of the Arab World. Samir Amin presents a wealth of statistical information to show how oil revenues are being spent, which economic sectors are developing, the allocation of skilled labour, the distribution of national income, and the region's patterns of external trade. He concludes that the oil-rich Gulf states are squandering their income to shore up the international monetary system; the more populous oil states are making little effective provision for the day when the oil runs out; and all of them are increasingly integrated into a dependent and subordinate position in the world capitalist system. In short, Samir Amin argues that, given the existing class distribution of power in the Arab World, no real effort is being made to employ the massive oil revenues to open up an independent path towards a mature industrial economy in the Middle East. A major introductory essay to the book focusses on the vast number of Samir Amin's more empirical writings. Written by British sociologist Aidan Foster-Carter, who has specialized in the field of theories of underdevelopment, this essay introduces the reader to the scope and multiplicity of themes with which Amin has concerned himself during nearly 30 years of scholarly work. A Complete Bibliography of Samir Amin's publications is also included. This specially compiled Bibliography is the first compre­hensive listing of all Amin's writings: books; articles and papers; theses and reports - as well as debates, critiques etc of Amin, in English and French, 1955-80. It is an invaluable guide to the massive corpus of Samir Amin's theoretical and empirical work.

The Arab world's encounter with capitalism in the last 100 years has raised basic issues as to the nature of Arab identity. Why did Arab civilisation, which so surpassed feudal Europe, never develop a capitalism of its own? Why did communism fail to find popular roots during the renaissance of Arab nationalism? What role will the Arab nation play in a world dominated by the two superpowers? Taking full account of the differences between the various Arab countries, Samir Amin analyses their transition from a non-feudal tributary mode to state capitalism and the hegemony of a state bourgeoisie. Nasserism, the Baath, the Arab-Israeli conflict and Sadat's new policies are all explored. This brief history of the Arab people's struggle is both a political pointer to the future and a controversial theoretical innovation.

This book is being republished after a decade, where Samir Amin analyses the role and future of Maoism in China and the implications of its success or failure for the entire Third World. In the frist part, Amin outlines three models of accumulation-socialist, capitalist, and statist - and projects the long-term implications of each for an underdeveloped country. The second part is then devoted to an examination of China's economic performance during successive phases of development under Mao. A third and final part compares the Maoist to the revisionist approach to development, particularly regarding revolutionary class alliances, linking the future of Maoism to the nature of worldwide revolution. In a postscript written for this volume, Amin, discussing the « Chinese model », proposes a method of analysis which, while emphasising the social, political and ideological struggle in China, places the debate in the context of the discussion about the challenges posed by the « long transition from world capitalism to world socialism. » This volume also contains a stimulating foreword by Vaskar Nandy, a leading communist revolutionary of India and a rejoinder to him by Samir Amin on what should constitute the Marxism of the 21st century and the prospects of « delinking » for the periphery.

Renowned political economist Samir Amin, engaged in a unique lifelong effort both to narrate and affect the human condition on a global scale, brings his analysis up to the present -the world of 2013. The key events of our times- financial crisis, the emerging nations, globalization, financialization, political Islam, Euro-zone implosion- are related in a coherent, historically based, account. Changes in contemporary capitalism require an updating of definitions and analysis of social classes, class struggles, political parties, social movements and the ideological forms in which they express their modes of action in the transformation of societies. Amin meets this challenge and lays bare the reality of monopoly capitalism in its general, global form. Ultimately, Amin demonstrates that this system is not viable and that the implosion in progress is unavoidable. Whether humanity will rise to the challenge of building a more humane global order free of the contradictions of capital, however, is yet to be seen.

The challenges facing Algeria, Tunisia and Morocco after the departure of the colonists are as great as those surmounted by the native fighters in winning their freedom. They are not military, though, but economic, the basic question being : how really do we become economically independent, as well as politically independent? And beyond that the alarming questions arise : is it possible for there to be true political independence with economic dependence? Where have the struggles against the foreign oppressors led to? Samir Amin considers the social and economic problems of Algeria, Tunisia and Morocco today. His picture of present realities and trends shows many achievements, but some serious flaws. In his opinion not enough strength and resistance to outside pressure is yet being generated by the societies themselves. However there is a hope of greater industrialization and less bureaucracy; with this the Maghreb will be able to consolidate its hard-won freedom.

These memoirs were largely written during the 1990s. I did not consider it useful to update the book to take into account later events. The reader may find such considerations in my recent writings.

We all live on a planet whose destiny we collectively determine, or so we are told. And it is undeniable that the globalization which began five centuries ago with the European conquest of the Americas has passed into a new stage during the past forty years, as a consequence of the heightened intensity of international exchanges and the global spread of the means of destruction. Shall we conclude from this observation that all societies on the planet must subordinate themselves to the criteria of rationality that govern the global expansion of capital? This view, though dominant today, is not merely illogical and erroneous but infinitely dangerous.

This book brings together various contributions I have written for the elaboration of a global history. They have been published in French and English in different periodicals and on different dates, some of them a while ago. 1 Their collection into one volume highlights their originality. First, because this enables the reader to identify precisely the theses that I put forward in my early critique of « Eurocentric » history (see my book Eurocentrism, 1989), which still predominates the « modern » capitalist ideology that shapes contemporary social thought. And, second, because I propose to treat these « questions of the past » not as separate from the challenges of the present or from the alternatives for possible futures, including, indeed, the question of a « socialism for the 21st century ». I was an early reader of Marx. I very carefully read Capital and the other works by Marx and Engels that were available in French during my university studies between 1948 and 1955. I also decided to read the authors who were criticised by Marx (including Smith, Ricardo, Bastiat and Say). All this certainly gave me the utmost intellectual pleasure and convinced me of the power of Marx's thought. But at the same time, I remained unsatisfied. For I had posed one central question, that of the « under-development » (a new term beginning to be widely used) of the societies of contemporary Asia and Africa, for which I had found no answers in Marx. The texts that were published for the first time in French in 1960, the Grundrisse, also left me unsatisfied.

With great clarity, this updated edition explains 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 anddespite the West riding on the crest of new technologiesits materialist goals being increasingly questioned by new social movements including the Greens. Written by a well-known political economist, this analysis addresses problems specific to the third world, with particular emphasis on the crisis of the African continent. As it examines the failure of development from a political standpoint, this account argues that the world needs to be remade on the basis of an alternative social system that is national, popular, and based on cooperation between the countries of the southern hemisphere.

Samir Amin is an Egyptian national and one of the leading scholars in the world in this era. He has written many books particularly on the subject of political economy, twelve of these having been translated from the French into English. He is currently Director of the Third World Forum's Strategies for the Future of Africa Project in Dakar, Senegal.

Marx is not a philosopher, a historian, an economist, a political scientist, or a sociologist. He is not even a scholar of the first rank in any of those disciplines. Nor even a talented professor who prepared a good multidisciplinary dish cooked with all these ingredients. Marx's place is quite outside all that. Marx is the beginning of the radical critique of modern times, starting with the critique of the real world. This radical critique of capitalism demands and allows discovery of the basis of market alienation and, inseparable from it, the exploitation of labor. The foundational status of the concept of value derives from this radical critique. It alone allows a grasp of the objective laws that govern the reproduction of the system, underlying those surface movements perceptible through direct observation of reality. Marx links to this critique of the real world the critique of discourses about that reality : those of philosophy, economics, sociology, history, and political science. This radical critique uncovers their true nature which, in the last analysis, is always an apologetic one, legitimizing the practices of capital's dominating power.

TOWARDS THE END OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY a sickness struck the world. Not everyone died, but all suffered from it. The virus which caused the epidemic was called the « liberal virus. » This virus made its appearance around the sixteenth century within the triangle described by Paris-London-Amsterdam. The symptoms that the disease then manifested appeared harmless. Men (whom the virus struck in preference to women) not only became accustomed to it and developed the necessary antibodies, but were able to benefit from the increased energy that it elicited. But the virus traveled across the Atlantic and found a favorable place among those who, deprived of antibodies, spread it. As a result, the malady took on extreme forms. The virus reappeared in Europe towards the end of the twentieth century, returning from America where it had mutated. Now strengthened, it came to destroy a great number of the antibodies that the Europeans had developed over the course of the three preceding centuries. It provoked an epidemic that would have been fatal to the human race if it had not been for the most robust of the inhabitants of the old countries who survived the epidemic and finally were able to eradicate the disease.

Capitalism is a world system. Its victims can effectively face its challenges only if they are also organized at the global level. However, the unequal development associated with the global spread of capital has always presented serious difficulties for the internationalism of peoples. Here, I propose to identify the origin and nature of the obstacles that impede a convergence of today's diverse struggles against capitalist domination and exploitation.

Amin defends Marx's theory of value against its critics and also tackles some of its trickier aspects. He examines the relationship between Marx's abstract concepts - such as « socially necessary labor time » - and how they are manifested in the capitalist marketplace as prices, wages, rents, and so on. He also explains how variations in price are affected by the development of « monopoly-capitalism », the abandonment of the gold standard, and the deepening of capitalism as a global system. Amin extends Marx's theory and applies it to capitalism's current trajectory in a way that is unencumbered by the weight of orthodoxy and unafraid of its own radical conclusions.

In this volume the authors engage in a provocative discussion of the history and contemporary dilemmas facing the movements that are variously described as antisystemic, social or popular. The authors believe that these movements, which have for the past 150 years protested and organized against the multiple injustices of the existing system, are the key locus of social transformation. Immanuel Wallerstein begins by presenting a historical overview of the range and interrelations what he calls antisystemic movements. tracing their development out of the French Revolution. Giovanni Arrighi focuses on those movements that have been based in the working class, while Samir Amin concentrates on the movements particularly in the periphery, that have placed « national liberation » at or near the top of their agenda. Finally, Andre Gunder Frank and Marta Fuentes look at the « new social movements » (particularly the women's, peace, and ecology movements), which they argue are not new. While the authors' points of agreement are many, so are their points of divergence. In the final chapter, they outline both, and discuss the ways in which these movements are transforming the revolutionary process itself.

Only at the end of the nineteenth century did a worldwide civilization begin to take shape. During the first seventy years of the twentieth century, however, which have been marked by a speeding up of the historical process, the division of the world into « developed » and « underdeveloped » countries has not become less pronounced; on the contrary, the gap between them continues to grow larger and has brought about the first crises of a capitalist system that had only just begun to be a world system. The Russian Revolution of 1917, the Chinese Revolution that took place between 1930 and 1950, the revolutions in Vietnam and Cuba are all so many stages in a process of development beyond capitalism, in the name of socialism. The fears that Marx expressed in the middle of the last century, to the effect that a socialist Europe might find itself up against a capitalism still on the upgrade in Asia, have not proved justified. The opposite, indeed, has occurred. At the very center of the system, however, in the advanced capitalist countries, an all-round challenging of this system has begun, through a thousand indirect and unexpected channels.(...)

I begin with a « personal note : I first read Marx when I was 20 years of age and then reread him every twenty years at moments that corresponded to major changes in the course of history. In 1950, hidden behind the East-West conflict, was taking shape the first Southern awakening--which was to be revealed in the 1955 Bandung Conference; in 1970, as director of the IDEP in Dakar, I formed the project of making it a center for training and discussion that would contribute to radicalization of the way forward opened by the African and Asian peoples' reconquests of their independences; in 1990 the problem was to know what could be salvaged from the shipwreck of the twentieth century's historic socialism; in 2010 the implosion of the system that had declared itself « the end of history » opens new possibilities for new ways forward whose outcomes are yet to be discovered. My readings at each of those moments were directed by my concern to respond to the current challenge. And every time I discovered that Marx was coming to our aid with incomparable power. Obviously, on condition of extending the radical social critique that he had begun, rather than to be content with exegesis of his texts.(...)

Samir Amin remains one of the world's most influential thinkers about the changing nature of North-South relations in the development of contemporary capitalism. In this highly prescient book, originally published in 1997, he provides a powerful analysis of the new unilateral capitalist era following the collapse of the Soviet model, and the apparent triumph of the market and globalization. Amin's innovative analysis charts the rise of ethnicity and fundamentalism as consequences of the failure of ruling classes in the South to counter the exploitative terms of globalization. This has had profound implications and continues to resonate today. Furthermore, his deconstruction of the Bretton Woods institutions as managerial mechanisms which protect the profitability of capital provides an important insight into the continued difficulties in reforming them. Amin's rejection of the apparent inevitability of globalization was prophetic, as years later we have seen markets and supply chains more integrated than ever. A landmark work by a key contemporary thinker.

With his usual verve and sharpness Samir Amin examines the factors that brought about the 2008 financial collapse and explores the systemic crisis of capitalism after two decades of neoliberal globalisation. He lays bare the relationship between dominating oligopolies and the globalisation of the world economy. The current crisis, he argues, is a profound crisis of the capitalist system itself, bringing forward an era in which wars, and perhaps revolutions, will once again shake the world, Amin examines the threat to the plutocracies of the US, Europe and Japan from decisions of recent G20 meetings. He analyses the attempts by these powers to get back to the p re-2008 system, and to impose their domination on the peoples of the South through intensifying military intervention by using institutions such as NATO. Amin presents original proposals for the way forward : an alternative strategy which, by building on the advances made by progressive forces m Latin America, would allow for a more humane society through both the North and the South working together. « With his constantly critical eye on the foundations of capitalism Samir Amin has modified and reformulated his ideas through a score of works... [He foresaw] the world crisis and presents solutions that benefit the people... « It is what I call privatising the losses, » he told AI Ahram « the opposite of the present model which aims at socialising the losses, while respecting the privatising of the profits.' » Al-Ahram weekly Author.

Europe and the Arab World is a wide-ranging assessment of the prospects for a new relationship between Europe and the Arab world in the coming years. Samir Amin and Ali El Kenz take as their starting point the significantly shifting balance of political forces within the various Arab countries, including the rise of both political Islam and civil society. They argue that the strategic global hegemony of the United States constitutes a major element affecting the Euro-Arab relationship. They then focus on the European Union initiative, originally launched in Barcelona, to put its relations with the Arab countries of the Mediterranean and Gulf regions on a new footing of equality and mutually beneficial cooperation. The authors provide a detailed empirical account of the initiative as well as an historically contextualized, intellectually critical and politically perceptive analysis of the various realities impacting on it. Samir Amin and Ali El Kenz conclude that, while considerable dialogue and even institution-building have taken place in order to give substance to this attempt to go beyond the colonial legacy of inequality and dependence, little of a concrete kind has been achieved in transforming the underlying economic and political relationships between the Arab Islamic and European Christian worlds of the Mediterranean. Among the many obstacles identified are the overriding and economically deleterious impact of globalized capitalism, and the determination of the United States to impose its own political objectives on the Middle East. The timeliness of this book's argument is highlighted by the new tensions that have accompanied the U.S. military occupation of Iraq and the Bush administration's political pretensions to 'bring democracy' to the whole region.

This collection of essays elaborates and applies the ideas developed by the author in Accumulation on a World Scale (MR Press, 1974) and Unequal Development (MR Press, 1976). Marxism, according to Samir Amin, « is neither an economic theory, a sociological theory, nor a philosophy, but the social science of revolutionary socialist praxis. » It follows that the renaissance of Marxism that has characterized recent years has had its origins in those parts of the world which have been and continue to be the scene of decisive revolutionary struggles- the exploited and oppressed periphery of the world capitalist system, primarily Asia, Africa, and Latin America. And it is this renaissance of Marxism with which the author deals and to which he makes a vital contribution in these lively and eminently readable essays. The book is divided into three parts, entitled, respectively, « Historical Materialism : Capitalism and Socialism, » « Imperialism and Underdevelopment, » and « Problems of Transition and the Construction of Socialism. » The range of topics is thus extraordinarily wide, and in every case the treatment has the freshness and originality that readers have come to expect from Amin. His overall conclusions can be summed up in the following words, occurring near the end of the last essay : « The societies of the capitalist centers are sufficiently rich, the interlocking of interests sufficiently complex, the feeling for the privileges which imperialism stimulates sufficiently shared, for these societies to be able to wait for some decades yet in a kind of slow decomposition. On the other hand, the societies of the dominated periphery no longer can wait. With every passing year, the material conditions of their vast masses becomes more intolerable, while the palliatives of capitalist integration become increasingly worthless. ».

Un point fait aujourd'hui largement débat : faut-il soutenir ou au contraire rejeter la souveraineté nationale? Or pour l'auteur, cette question de stratégie fait l'objet de graves malentendus, tant que son contenu de classe n'est pas identifié. En effet, dans les sociétés capitalistes, le bloc social dominant conçoit toujours la souveraineté nationale comme un instrument pour promouvoir ses intérêts de classe. On comprend dès lors pourquoi le discours national faisant l'éloge des vertus de la souveraineté - tout en cachant les intérêts de classé qu'elle sert - a toujours été inacceptable pour tous ceux qui défendent les classes travailleuses. Pourtant, nous ne devrions pas réduire la défense de la souveraineté à cette modalité. Cette défense n'est pas moins décisive pour la protection d'une alternative populaire. Elle constitue même une condition incontournable d'avancées dans cette direction. La question agraire, l'accés à la terre pour tous, la souveraineté alimentaire sont au cour des problèmes à résoudre. Et l'agriculture paysanne s'impose comme la voie de l'avenir!

This fascinating history of ideas presents a theoretical overview of each new stage of the past half-century by an outstanding intellectual, grounded in a wide knowledge of economic theory and the practical problems of transforming post-colonial societies. Beginning in the 1960s, Samir Amin was one of a handful of economists who challenged the « development » ideology that dominated universities, research institutes, and governments at the time. His work was a major breakthrough for intellectuals in the third world who were seeking an alternative theoretical structure. Since then, he has continued to test his theory against changes in the real world : the interrelationship between theory and practice has been central to his work. Reflecting on his writing on the postwar period, Amin here reconsiders his theses concerning capitalism and socialism in the light of recent events. In separate chapters, he re-examines his views on the theory of capital accumulation on a world scale, on the polarization inherent in such accumulation, on the creation and erosion of the project of the national bourgeoisie in the third world, on the concepts and practices of development, on the crisis of the Soviet system, and on the collapse of the regulatory mechanisms of the capitalist system. He ends with a discussion of the challenges posed by the post-Soviet era of globalized capital and proposes a program for the renewal of a popular internationalism.

Is there anything inherently wrong with Africa that the continent has remained immobilized in a milieu characterized with rapid transformation in other parts of the globe? Is Africa caught in a web of conflicting ideologies of development from which it cannot extricate itself? Is Africa a victim of ineluctable constraints and conspiracies? Is Africa doomed? Or, should we hope for better days ahead? How soon? These and related questions are taken up in this collection of essays by Professor Samir Amin. Amin shows how the interplay of economic, political and cultural forces, in and around Africa, has conditioned the African crisis. He also proffers solutions.

A reader once remarked that my works deal with three sets of problems : (a) concrete analyses of the situation of third world countries (Egypt, the Maghreb, West Africa, the Congo), (b) a theory of capitalist accumulation on a world scale, and (c) an interpretation of historical materialism. Indeed, this classification also corresponds to the sequence of my work. Doubtless, concrete analysis of a situation is never neutral; it always implicitly entails a theory. The first of my analyses (Nassarian Egypt, West Africa, the neocolonial Congo and Maghreb, and allegedly socialist attempts to break with imperialist domination) were in large part based on a theoretical interpretation of imperialism. This interpretation, formulated between 1954 and 1957, was questionable, due to the inadequacies of the Marxism which prevailed in the 1950s, inadequacies which marked my own intellectual and political formation.

Since its first publication twenty years ago, Eurocentrism has become a classic of radical thought. Written by one of the world's foremost political economists, this original and provocative essay takes on one of the great « ideological deformations » of our time : Eurocentrism. Rejecting the dominant Eurocentric view of world history, which narrowly and incorrectly posits a progression from the Greek and Roman classical world to Christian feudalism and the European capitalist system, Amin presents a sweeping reinterpretation that emphasizes the crucial historical role played by the Arab Islamic world. Throughout the work, Amin addresses a broad set of concerns, ranging from the ideological nature of scholastic metaphysics to the meanings and shortcomings of contemporary Islamic fundamentalism. Consistently subversive of the established pieties of the West, this book breaks new theoretical and historiographical ground by outlining a compelling non- Eurocentric vision of world history. This second edition contains a new introduction and concluding chapter, both of which make the author's arguments even more compelling.

Samir Amin, one of the most influential economists today, has produced another groundbreaking work. Spectres of Capitalism cuts through the current intellectual fashions that assume a global capitalist triumph, taking the occasion of the 150th anniversary of Marx and Engels' classic tract, the Communist Manifesto, to focus upon the aspirations of the destitute millions of the post-Cold War era. In this succinct theoretical text, Amin examines the changing notion of crisis in capitalism; misconceptions of the free market model; the various distortions of Marx's method; the role of culture in revolutions; the decline of the « law of value » in economics; the philosophical roots of postmodernism; how telecommunications affect ideology; and the myth of « pure economics. » Amin has a broad following among students of economics, who value his analyses of the intricacies of capitalist development, both in the major powers and in the third world.

Ce volume réunit trois conférences de grande qualité délivrées par des universitaires de renommée. Ces conférences ont constitué un des moments forts de la 10e Assemblée générale du CODESRIA qui s'est tenue en 2002, à Kampala, Ouganda. Les conférences, qui sont parties intégrantes de l'Assemblée générale triennale du CODESRIA, sont présentées par d'éminents universitaires, dont le travail a largement contribué à façonner le paysage intellectuel africain. La Conférence Claude Ake, traditionnellement réservée au président sortant du Comité exécutif, a été livrée par Mahmood Mamdani. L'auteur a, entre autres, développé une perspective africaine du 11 septembre, en faisant remarquer que les racines du terrorisme sont à rechercher en Amérique, et dans l'épisode de la guerre froide. Il a également souligné le rôle du « culture talk » dans l'émergence du terrorisme. Ce même thème est également celui de la Conférence Cheikh Anta Diop délivrée par Samir Amin. Celui-ci nous en donne un aperçu critique, ainsi qu'une exploration des diverses alternatives à la mondialisation néolibérale et au militarisme. La Conférence Léopold Sédar Senghor a été honorée par la présence de Fatou Sow, qui a souligné le besoin de redéfinition du développement africain selon une perspective qui tient compte du genre. Elle a également regretté la lenteur de la procédure d'intégration des femmes dans les différentes sphères d'activités, malgré le fait que les femmes ont acquis le droit de cité; « les femmes ont le droit d'avoir des droits », dit-elle.