The Implosion of Contemporary Capitalism

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.

Samir Amin was born in Egypt in 1931 and received his Ph.D. in economics in Paris in 1957. He is director of the Third World Forum in Dakar, Senegal. His numerous works include The Law of Worldwide Value, Eurocentrism: Second Edition, The World We Wish to See, The Liberal Virus, Accumulation on a World Scale, Unequal Development, and Spectres of Capitalism.