It is not possible even for European people to go 'Beyond Eurocentrism' because the thing hasn't existed for longer than any of us can remember.
Consider the following sentence- 'If you really want decolonisation, go beyond cultural criticism to the deep structural insights of economist Samir Amin'
It is very strange. Algeria wanted 'decolonisation' and got it too. Did it go to the 'deep structural insights of some half Egyptian dude with a Doctorate in doo doo? Fuck off! If you want 'decolonisation' kill Whitey. Nothing else will do.
A separate point could be made about Bhagwati 'Immeserizing growth' and Chichilnisky's work on North South dynamics and the motivation behind the Brandt Commission but that was forty years ago. Once the Soviets gave up on 'socialist division of labor', open markets were the only game in town. Development meant three thing
1) Tardean mimetics- imitate guys doing better than you
2) Increase Supply and Demand elasticities so as to reduce 'rent' and 'rent contestation'
3) use money transfers to provide a Social safety net to promote robustness, attain scope and scale economies, and 'minimize regret'.
Ignoring all this, Ingrid Harvold Kvangraven, who, I'm guessing is a poor black woman from the Global South, writes in Aeon-
When Samir Amin
whose Mom was French and dad was a Christian Copt and who went to French high school and Uni.
defended his PhD thesis at Sciences Po in Paris in 1957, it was a time when it was possible to obtain a doctorate in economics by extending Marxist concepts at elite institutions.
One could do that better later on with increased employability. Why? Marxist econ is mathematical. You derive results about Pontyragin duality or Ito integrals or fluid dynamics or stuff like that and then make a pot of money in O.R or I.T or Futures markets or whatever.
Ignoring all this, Ingrid Harvold Kvangraven, who, I'm guessing is a poor black woman from the Global South, writes in Aeon-
When Samir Amin
whose Mom was French and dad was a Christian Copt and who went to French high school and Uni.
defended his PhD thesis at Sciences Po in Paris in 1957, it was a time when it was possible to obtain a doctorate in economics by extending Marxist concepts at elite institutions.
One could do that better later on with increased employability. Why? Marxist econ is mathematical. You derive results about Pontyragin duality or Ito integrals or fluid dynamics or stuff like that and then make a pot of money in O.R or I.T or Futures markets or whatever.
It should be emphasized that Amin did not study anything we'd recognize as Economics. His first degree was in Poli Sci and his second in Statistics. His thesis was that Whitey be forcing Turd World countries to adjust their structure and get rid of their turbans and purdahs and shit. This was simply false. Muslim reformers like Ataturk, the first Shah, Amanullah of Afghanistan etc. did that sort of thing. The French and the English and so forth preferred their darkies to have chieftains who'd maintain corvee labor and cowrie shells for currency and so forth. Why? That made it much cheaper to extract resources. His second idea was 'polarisation' which had happened when the Iron Curtain fell and the Soviet bloc went for 'socialist division of labor' while the West went down the road of inter-industry trade and diminishing trade barriers and increased integration into, in Europe, a Common Market.
Amin, post Suez, was useful to the French. Those guys were determined to do to their African colonies the same thing they'd done to Haiti- i.e. leave but drain wealth as reparation for 'investment'. Obviously they'd promote some half caste French dude who was talking bollocks about 'Dependency' because that was what France did in Africa- drained wealth from 'independent' countries and made their elites as dependent as little babies.
Amin, post Suez, was useful to the French. Those guys were determined to do to their African colonies the same thing they'd done to Haiti- i.e. leave but drain wealth as reparation for 'investment'. Obviously they'd promote some half caste French dude who was talking bollocks about 'Dependency' because that was what France did in Africa- drained wealth from 'independent' countries and made their elites as dependent as little babies.
It should be noted that Amin had briefly worked for the Egyptian department which controlled industries nationalized by the Government- including former French concerns. Obviously, this sector turned loss making and the Egyptian Ministry, which was corrupt and incompetent, could not finance it. Thus the 'expropriated' found means to expropriate the expropriators by the clever use of 'Development' finance. This sort of financial chicanery, worthy of a Statistician, not an Accountant, got Amin a short spell of work with the French Government after which he went off to do 'economic planning' in the new Marxist-Leninist one party state of Mali. He got all his information from two other Frenchmen and drew up a plan. Clearly Mali wasn't 'dependent' at all because Amin was half Coptic. One other problem was that Customs officers had the bad habit of setting fire to the new national currency. This was not because they were followers of Milton Friedman. They just didn't get the concept of paper money. Naturally the implementation of Amin's farcical plan was yet more farcical. Amin left Bamako so as to help the whole of Africa in the way that he'd helped Mali. An African Institute of Development and Economic Planning was set up in Darkar and he became a Professor there. Amin soon complained to the UN that the place was little better than a technical College. Thus Amin was put in as its head. The thing was utterly useless. After ten years of this Amin quit to head up the Turd World Forum which he co-founded along with Altaf Gauhar. For obvious reasons it quickly shifted from Karachi to Darkar. Was it funded with BCCI's money? The truth is back then it seemed plausible that petrodollars might be recycled within the Turd Worlds by a Pakistani or Egyptian or other such crooks and conmen. Altaf was a Civil Servant who'd been close to Ayub but who had fallen from grace. It is said that he became a born again Muslim when Bhutto chucked him in jail. Then he and Amin founded some Turd World Foundation with the crook Abedi's money. Talk about 'Dependency' theory!
Just a few years earlier, in 1951, Baran, a Marxist economist,
a Russian, educated in Germany, who fled to America in 1938. He worked for the Federal Govt. during the war. Even Eisenhower's America needed to maintain a reserve army of economists with experience of running the War Economy just in case the Cold War hotted up. The 'Transformation Problem' arises under all administered or fix-price regimes- Communist or Corporate. The Cowles Commission was doing the same thing as Kolomogorov and Kantorovich. Both America and the Soviets developed the same theory of shadow prices.
As for 'rent'- Public Finance is based on extracting it because that's the only way allocative efficiency doesn't suffer. Furthermore, to improve the working of elected legislatures you need a theory of rent seeking as well as Game theoretic notions- e.g. Shapley values- which predict how the cake might be carved up. Baran was a cultured guy in the Schumpeter or Gerschenkron mould. That's why he
had been promoted to full professor at Stanford University in California, shortly after Sweezy, another Marxist economist, retired from Harvard University in Massachusetts in 1947
Sweezy didn't retire, he quit with 2 years remaining on his contract. He was 37. Incidentally he'd been with the OSS during the War. The fact is, Leftists (New Dealers) were useful to the new American Imperium. In India, it was the American fucking Ambassador who was pushing for Taiwan or Japan type land reform. Americans didn't want to end up feeding the Turd World. They wanted reduced Dependency not yet more tax dollars going to Big Ag on the excuse of feeding starving darkies who might otherwise turn into Reds.
In that moment, radical scholars across the world were putting forward new and competing explanations for the polarising tendencies of capitalism.
But they were all utterly shit. Nobody gave a toss about 'radical scholars'. The sons and daughters of Turd World power-elites watched Marlon Brando in the Godfather. They immediately recognized that this was how political power actually works. Fuck going into the mountains with a bunch of students and then toppling Batista. Do what Castro did next. Bump off rivals who might want to bump you off. Keep around some 'radical scholars' by all means. They may serve the same purpose as, in Godfather III, venal Vatican priests end up serving.
There was a particular interest in re-interpreting Marx from a perspective of the postcolonial world, from scholars in India
who were desperate to get the fuck out of India at any price or else, if comfortably ensconced at JNU or some other such relatively prestigious place where your students wouldn't knife you if you looked at them funny, they wanted grants and invitations to international junkets.
I should mention it was American 'free money' which kept Indian mathematical econ in business though the chief utility of economists on the Planning Commission was rubber stamping corruption.
to Brazil. It was also a time when the Bandung conference – a gathering in Indonesia in 1955 of representatives from 29 newly independent Asian and African countries to build alliances around economic development and decolonisation – offered optimism for those who opposed colonialism and neocolonialism.
It was a shit show. Everybody involved lost. Nehru patronized Chou En Lai who got his revenge in 1962. In 1965, Sukarno supported Pakistan but his commie pals were soon to get their throats slit in a heart-warming display of Hindu-Muslim solidarity.
By 1975- the year I began my study of Political Economy- it was widely acknowledged that having a PhD made you as stupid as shit- look at Lohia!- even a Masters degree or two or three made you a fucking clown- look at Krishna Menon or JP or anyone else. That's the reason when RSS types got dewy eyed about Subramaniyam Swamy- youngest Econ PhD from Harvard- I'd shoot them down ruthlessly. The guy was and is a fucking clown. His wife was a smart lawyer and it is by his nuisance law suits that Swamy retained salience after Rajiv died and there were no vacancies for useless idiots of his sort. Manmohan and Minhas and Montek weren't useless but they were Punjabi and, clearly, had only got PhDs because they thought they were in the queue for chole bhaturae. Fuck that. Those Punjabi dudes may have been conned into studying Econ thinking it would benefit the country but, because they were Punjabi, they just went ahead and benefitted the country- if the non-Punjabi gobshites gave them half a chance.
The mid-20th-century debates about Eurocentrism evolved from real material struggles against colonial and neocolonial relations,
Just a few years earlier, in 1951, Baran, a Marxist economist,
a Russian, educated in Germany, who fled to America in 1938. He worked for the Federal Govt. during the war. Even Eisenhower's America needed to maintain a reserve army of economists with experience of running the War Economy just in case the Cold War hotted up. The 'Transformation Problem' arises under all administered or fix-price regimes- Communist or Corporate. The Cowles Commission was doing the same thing as Kolomogorov and Kantorovich. Both America and the Soviets developed the same theory of shadow prices.
As for 'rent'- Public Finance is based on extracting it because that's the only way allocative efficiency doesn't suffer. Furthermore, to improve the working of elected legislatures you need a theory of rent seeking as well as Game theoretic notions- e.g. Shapley values- which predict how the cake might be carved up. Baran was a cultured guy in the Schumpeter or Gerschenkron mould. That's why he
had been promoted to full professor at Stanford University in California, shortly after Sweezy, another Marxist economist, retired from Harvard University in Massachusetts in 1947
Sweezy didn't retire, he quit with 2 years remaining on his contract. He was 37. Incidentally he'd been with the OSS during the War. The fact is, Leftists (New Dealers) were useful to the new American Imperium. In India, it was the American fucking Ambassador who was pushing for Taiwan or Japan type land reform. Americans didn't want to end up feeding the Turd World. They wanted reduced Dependency not yet more tax dollars going to Big Ag on the excuse of feeding starving darkies who might otherwise turn into Reds.
In that moment, radical scholars across the world were putting forward new and competing explanations for the polarising tendencies of capitalism.
But they were all utterly shit. Nobody gave a toss about 'radical scholars'. The sons and daughters of Turd World power-elites watched Marlon Brando in the Godfather. They immediately recognized that this was how political power actually works. Fuck going into the mountains with a bunch of students and then toppling Batista. Do what Castro did next. Bump off rivals who might want to bump you off. Keep around some 'radical scholars' by all means. They may serve the same purpose as, in Godfather III, venal Vatican priests end up serving.
There was a particular interest in re-interpreting Marx from a perspective of the postcolonial world, from scholars in India
who were desperate to get the fuck out of India at any price or else, if comfortably ensconced at JNU or some other such relatively prestigious place where your students wouldn't knife you if you looked at them funny, they wanted grants and invitations to international junkets.
I should mention it was American 'free money' which kept Indian mathematical econ in business though the chief utility of economists on the Planning Commission was rubber stamping corruption.
to Brazil. It was also a time when the Bandung conference – a gathering in Indonesia in 1955 of representatives from 29 newly independent Asian and African countries to build alliances around economic development and decolonisation – offered optimism for those who opposed colonialism and neocolonialism.
It was a shit show. Everybody involved lost. Nehru patronized Chou En Lai who got his revenge in 1962. In 1965, Sukarno supported Pakistan but his commie pals were soon to get their throats slit in a heart-warming display of Hindu-Muslim solidarity.
By 1975- the year I began my study of Political Economy- it was widely acknowledged that having a PhD made you as stupid as shit- look at Lohia!- even a Masters degree or two or three made you a fucking clown- look at Krishna Menon or JP or anyone else. That's the reason when RSS types got dewy eyed about Subramaniyam Swamy- youngest Econ PhD from Harvard- I'd shoot them down ruthlessly. The guy was and is a fucking clown. His wife was a smart lawyer and it is by his nuisance law suits that Swamy retained salience after Rajiv died and there were no vacancies for useless idiots of his sort. Manmohan and Minhas and Montek weren't useless but they were Punjabi and, clearly, had only got PhDs because they thought they were in the queue for chole bhaturae. Fuck that. Those Punjabi dudes may have been conned into studying Econ thinking it would benefit the country but, because they were Punjabi, they just went ahead and benefitted the country- if the non-Punjabi gobshites gave them half a chance.
The mid-20th-century debates about Eurocentrism evolved from real material struggles against colonial and neocolonial relations,
No. If the French or the Dutch were the colonial master you may have had to fight. Otherwise, there was no 'real material struggle'.
Back when the Bretton Woods straitjacket still applied and rich countries had Exchange Control or forbade gold ownership to their citizens, there were bilateral deals of various types. Then OPEC rebelled. I suppose you could call that a 'real material struggle' but guys like the Shah or Iran or Sheikh Yamani aren't the sort of peeps Ingrid has a hard on for.
Second, Amin can help us see the ideological foundations of mainstream economics, as well as social science theorising at large.
which stand in contrast to the contemporary field of economics, where analysis has been reduced to what can be studied within the framework of neoclassical economics
there were and are plenty of other varieties especially at Cambridge and on the Continent.
and with certain accepted econometric methods.
Accepted by the private sector because they can help increase profits. Otherwise, Econ is shit. We know this. But Amin was an economist. How does shit enable us to be done with shit? The cunt was French. That's fucking Eurocentric. Which book did he write in Arabic?
From an Aminian perspective, decolonising the university
Accepted by the private sector because they can help increase profits. Otherwise, Econ is shit. We know this. But Amin was an economist. How does shit enable us to be done with shit? The cunt was French. That's fucking Eurocentric. Which book did he write in Arabic?
From an Aminian perspective, decolonising the university
meant, in ex-colonies, the Nationalists took over. The radicals got their turn but fucked up. Then the Soviet Union collapsed.. Universities were taken over by the religious Right though, no doubt, there were some relatively safe, relatively elite, places from which one could emigrate to the West. There you could pretend to be so fucking stupid you didn't know that decolonization happened before you were born. This meant that you qualified for intellectual affirmative action because being brown meant you lacked a fucking brain.
would need to make space for the kinds of radical scholarship – which critically scrutinises the role of the capitalist system itself in producing global inequalities and injustices –
if some people are better than others at making money there will be inequality. But the same is true if some people are more attractive or funny or fun to be with than others. Only a complete and utter loser, like me, would consider this unjust.
that was possible in the mid-20th century.
Why stop there? Why not demand votes for women? How about putting an end to the Transatlantic Slave Trade? Why is there such a conspiracy of silence regarding the atrocities being committed by the Spanish Inquisition?
Second, Amin can help us see the ideological foundations of mainstream economics, as well as social science theorising at large.
No he can't. The marginal revolution was mathematical. It assumes 'continuous symmetries'- i.e. Lie groups and algebras. The problem is that 'topological holes' and phase transitions and turbulent flow dynamics and all sorts of other weird and wonderful stuff feature in Development econ. The best one can do is to say first there must be mimetics- imitation- then methexis- participation- and then, maybe, koinonia- community and a brief parousia, or presence, of harmony and justice. In other words, political econ or philosophy still has the same problems it did in the time of Plato.
The question is did gobshites like Amin help or hinder Developing Countries? The answer was always obvious. They harmed the poor and productive classes though particular unproductive elites may have benefitted.
In this, he gives us the necessary starting point to challenge a field that remains Eurocentric.
What is the point of challenging stupidity? China will overtake the US as the world's largest economy by the end of the decade. Russia, along with the rest of Europe will shrink in significance. The MENA has long forgotten Amin. The Left has all but disappeared in South Asia. South Africa might be a place where this shite can still fly but, in that case, it will turn into Zimbabwe.
Third, we may also learn important lessons from Amin when it comes to strategy. He did not engage much with elite universities in the core. He was a pan-Africanist and a citizen of the developing world, and he focused his life on building up political and intellectual institutions in Africa.
That sure worked a treat. Senegal produces plenty of Doctors and so forth and I know Dakar has a good Business School but it aint the place to go if you want to whine about Whitey unless you are White.
This contrasts with many initiatives from universities in the core that try to incorporate scholars from the periphery into their (often Eurocentric) institutions, rather than supporting Southern institutions and epistemologies.
'Universities in the core' need cheap darkies to teach worthless shite which, however, is very very cheap to teach. This permits cross-subsidization of stuff that pays- the football team, research for the Pentagon, Frankenfood experimentation, stuff like that.
Incidentally, Rahul Gandhi has an MPhil in Development Studies from Cambridge. Worse, he may actually have heard of this Amin bloke. No wonder he is so utterly shite.
Finally, Amin always tied his work to real material struggles
Finally, Amin always tied his work to real material struggles
did he fight the Franco-British-Israeli coalition at Suez? That was a 'material struggle'. What about Algeria? Was he shooting French soldiers there along with his Arab brothers? Fuck off. This white dude advanced France's agenda among sub-Saharan darkies. The Americans were cool with that. Why is Ingrid pretending Amin was a brown Muslim fighting against the Whitey's War on Terror?
– the need to oppose Eurocentric social science was important because it would expose the colonial dimension of the global economic system.
But the global economic system had a colonial dimension hundreds of years before there was any sort of Social Science! It was bleeding fucking obvious that some White people were enslaving and robbing some Brown people though, no doubt, some Whites were enslaved or robbed by some people of a darker complexion.
This is important in the context of calls to decolonise the university
But those calls are from shitheads who might also call to defund the Police and ban penises and cancel English and Spanish and French in favor of Nicaraguan Sign Language.
often being carried out in isolation from broader social struggles related to decolonisation.
Very true. Nigel Farage struggled to regain British freedom. The Scottish National Party may achieve a like success. Ingrid herself may participate in a broad social struggle to let Red States secede from the Union.
Colored immigrant populations in Europe are often a legacy of Colonialism. Decolonization will only be complete when guys wot look like me are deported from Blighty. That's a good reason for me to back Priti and Kemi against Ingrid on this.
Amin’s work, thus, serves as a crucial reminder that colonisation was about material resources, and decolonisation, thus, cannot be accomplished through changes in epistemology alone.
It will involve the reversal of population transfers linked to Colonialism. Material resources will go to China. Financial flows will disintermediate a Sanctions prone West.
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