Table Of ContentSamir
Class and Nation,
A Historically and in
1 l l l l the Current Crisis
Class and Nation
Historically and in
the Current Crisis
by Samir Amin
Translated by Susan Kaplow
London
Heinemann
Ibadan Nairobi
Heinemann Educational Books Ltd
22 Bedford Square, London WC1B 3HH
P.M.B. 5205, Ibadan P.O. Box45314, Nairobi
EDINBURGH MELBOURNE AUCKLAND
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0 435 96050 4 (cased)
0 435 96051 2 (paper)
First published 1980
© Monthly Review Press 1980
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Contents
Introduction vii
Chapter 1
Classes, Nations, and the State
in Historical Materialism 1
Chapter 2
Communal Formations 36
Chapter 3
Tributary Formations 46
Chapter 4
Unequal Development in the Capitalist Transition
and in the Bourgeois Revolution 71
Chapter 5
Unequal Development in the Capitalist Centers 104
Chapter 6
Center and Periphery in the Capitalist System:
The National Question Today 131
Chapter 7
National Liberation and the Socialist Transition:
Is the Bourgeoisie Still a Rising Class? 182
vi Contents
Chapter 8
The Theory of Imperialism
and the Contemporary Crisis 225
Conclusion
Revolution or Decadence? Thoughts on the Transition
from One Mode of Production to Another 249
References 257
Index 283
Introduction
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, inade
quacies which marked my own intellectual and political formation.
The theory in question enabled me to criticize bourgeois theo
retical explanations of underdevelopment but did not enjoin a
practical political elaboration of substituting national liberation
movements for bourgeois nationalist politics. I produced my first
works, concerning the Arab and African countries indicated, be
tween 1960 and 1967; they suffered from this limitation. This
unsatisfactory state of affairs obliged me to reexamine the theory of
imperialism, which in turn brought me to rewrite (Unequal Devel
opment) and to further explore (Unequal Exchange and the Law of
Value) the theory of accumulation in the years 1968-1973.
vii
viii Introduction
This was also the time of the clear failure of revisionist Marxism
and, with the cultural revolution in China, of the elaboration of a
global alternative. These favorable conditions led me to reconsider
the most basic questions of historical materialism. Imperialism and
Unequal Development, The Arab Nation, The Law of Value and
Historical Materialism, written, as was this work, between 1973
and 1978, contain my interpretations of historical materialism.
They also reexamine, in light of these interpretations, the concrete
situations which most interest me: those of the third world in
general and of Africa and the Arab world in particular.
If I were to summarize what seems essential to me in this study, I
would emphasize the following points.
From the beginning, there have been two competing interpreta
tions of historical materialism. The first virtually reduces the
method to a linear economic determinism: the development of the
productive forces automatically brings about the necessary adjust
ment in the relations of production by means of social revolutions,
the makers of which lay bare historical necessity. Then the politi
cal and ideological superstructure is transformed to meet the re
quirements of the reproduction of the relations of production. The
other interpretation emphasizes the double dialectic of forces and
relations of production on the one hand and of these latter and the
superstructure on the other.
The first interpretation assimilates laws of social evolution to
laws of nature. From Engels' attempt at a Dialectics of Nature to
the positivist interpretation of Kautsky, from Bolshevism itself to
the Soviet dia-mat (dialectical materialism), this interpretation pur
sues the philosophical work of the Enlightenment and constitutes
the radical bourgeois interpretation of Marxism. The second in
terpretation contrasts the objective character of natural laws with
the combined objective-subjective character of social laws.
The first interpretation either fails to deal with alienation or
extends it to all of human history. Alienation thus becomes the
product of a human nature which transcends the history of social
systems; it has its roots in anthropology, that is, in the permanent
Introduction ix
relation between humanity and nature. History develops by “the
force of circumstance.” The idea which people (or classes) have
that they make history is naive: the scope of their apparent freedom
is narrow because the determinism of technical progress weighs so
heavily. The second interpretation leads us to distinguish two
levels of alienation: (1) that which results from the permanence of
the humanity-nature relation, a relation which transcends social
modes, defines human nature in its permanent dimension but does
not have a direct role in the evolution of social history; i.e., anthro
pological alienation, and (2) that which comprises the ideological
superstructure of societies, or social alienation.
Attempts to detail the successive contents of this social aliena
tion led to the conclusion that all precapitalist social class systems
had the same type of social alienation, which I consider to be
alienation in nature. Its characteristics derive, on the one hand,
from the transparency of the economic relations of exploitations
and, on the other hand, from the limited degree of mastery over
nature at the corresponding levels of development of the produc
tive forces. This social alienation necessarily had an absolute,
religious character, due to the dominant place of ideology in social
reproduction. In contrast, social alienation under capitalism is
produced in part by the growing opacity of economic relations due
to the generalization of commodity relations and in part by the
qualitatively higher degree of mastery over nature. Commodity
alienation thus replaces nature, with the economy as the external
force which determines social evolution. The struggle for the
abolition of exploitation and of classes entails liberation from
economic determinism. Communism must put an end to social
alienation, although it cannot abolish anthropological alienation.
This interpretation reasserts the unity of universal history. This
unity is not to be found in an overly detailed succession of modes of
production. The classic line of development—slavery-feudalism-
capitalism—is not only peculiar but is also largely mythical. The
opposition between a European and a so-called Asian line belongs
to a family of Eurocentric philosophies of history. Unity is re
x Introduction
created by the necessary succession of three families of modes of
production: the family of communal modes, that of tributary
modes, and the capitalist mode, the first to have universal charac
teristics. The unity of the family of tributary modes is expressed in
the universal character of social alienation in nature, in contrast to
the social commodity alienation of capitalism.
The peculiarity of Western history in this perspective resides
exclusively in the incomplete character of its specific form of the
tributary mode, the feudal mode, which was produced by its
combination with communal modes.
My intention in developing these general reflections on history
is to propose a number of conclusions of a general and theoretical
nature concerning the relations among class struggles—classes
being defined in the framework of the economic formations which
control the major, successive social systems and within which the
dialectic of class struggle operates. This framework seems to be
defined primarily by the state, the reality of which may cross-cut
other realities depending on circumstances, either those of the
nation or those of the ethnic group.
Current political preoccupations furnish inspiration. Recent
developments in our world everywhere underline the importance
of the nation and of the state: the class struggle is the motive force of
history but it occurs within a state-national framework which sets
its scope, its modalities, and its outcomes.
This book first presents a system of theoretical concepts concern
ing these questions, then a series of accounts which follow the
historical sequence of evolution. This is the reverse of the order in
which I did research, as I began with reflections and observations
about the contemporary world (imperialism, national liberation,
socialist construction) and went back to the theoretical analysis of
capitalism (and particularly of the dialectic between class struggle
and economic laws in the capitalist mode) and then to the history
of its gradual establishment (the mercantilist and then the pre
imperialist periods during which the laws of unequal development
operated in the then forming state-national framework). The les-
Introduction xi
son s derived from this twofold series of experiences (the transition
to socialism and the transition to capitalism) have suggested certain
theses which seem to throw new light on earlier periods, those of
precapitalist societies and those of transitions to class societies.
This second test of principles in the light of facts enables me to
further elaborate them.
The first chapter presents the system of concepts and the rela
tions among state, nation, and economy. The rest analyzes un
equal development: Chapters 2 and 3 as it occurred in precapitalist
formations, Chapters 4 and 5 as it took place in the bourgeois
revolution and the capitalist centers, and Chapters 6, 7, and 8 as it
takes place in the imperialist system and the socialist transition.
