Samir Amin, Global History and the critique of Eurocentrism

Samir Amin is regularly put together with three other progressive, left academic intellectuals, Immanuel Wallerstein, Andre Gunder Frank and Giovanni Arrighi. And indeed, he collaborated closely with them especially during the 1970s, when they were known within academia as the ‘Gang of Four’. Nevertheless, his book Global History: A View from the South (Pambazuka Press, 2011) makes clear that Samir Amin has adopted independent positions on a number of key issues, which differentiate him from the others and provide the basis for an important criticism of Eurocentrism.

Globalisation, labour and the manufacturing of insecurity

The book ‘Grounding Globalization: Labour in the Age of Insecurity’ by Eddie Webster, Rob Lambert and Andries Bezuidenhout is an excellent engagement with labour’s current role in the global economy. It not only outlines well the challenges faced by trade unions in view of neo-liberal globalisation, it also explores new ways of resistance.

The historical challenge of the Greek Left!

‘The Greek Left is facing an enormous historic challenge’, writes Panagiotis Sotiris. ‘Two years of intense struggle and bitter austerity measures have led many people to ask for a radical alternative. This cannot be simply a “progressive government” that will attempt to avoid austerity while remaining within the embedded neoliberalism of the Eurozone and the systemic violence of debt. It must be an attempt towards forming a new “historical bloc”, a broad social and political alliance around an anti-capitalist program of radical social change’ (The Press Project).