Mumbai: Sitting on the shady patio of a seaside hotel in Colaba, Samir Amin speaks in fluent English with a French accent . It's difficult to imagine a more global citizen than this disarming economist. Born in Egypt, to Egyptian and French parents, and educated at the Sorbonne, Amin has worked in several African countries , and is now director of the Third World Forum in Dakar, Senegal. He is best known as co-founder of the "World Systems' ' school of thought, which produced landmark critiques of global capitalism.

Amin was in the city to give the first lecture on Thursday in memory of Anuradha Gandhy, a noted left activist who died in April. He also took time out for an interview with TOI.

For the lecture, the University of Mumbai's convocation hall was packed with academics, students and activists. Karl Marx and Mao Zedong provide the best tools to analyse and critically assess the oppression resulting from globalisation , Amin told his audience.

The latest financial collapse is symptomatic of a deeper crisis in the capitalist global structure, Amin said. "Capitalism is obsolete because it was patently superfluous. It believed in plundering natural resources and perpetuating a system which vested in a handful the authority to take political and economic decisions for mankind," he added.

A social system must integrate the common will and aspirations of the people , he said, adding, "If it fails to respond to the people, then it has to be changed, because it has turned obsolete... Marx and Mao will soon be back."

Amin warned that the superpowers would do everything to restore the financial system, to maintain their profits and continue the exploitation of cheap labour and natural resources. He said a constant journey to democratisation alone would strengthen developing countries . "Democratisation should mean social progress... upholding the right to food, education, shelter and health care." Trade, he added, should not be equalised with free trade. Responding to a question , Amin said the choice was not between socialism and capitalism, but between socialism and barbarism.

Earlier in the day, Amin told TOI that China had fared much better than India at reducing poverty. In his writings, he has described China as a poor country where one doesn't see many poor people. But in India, Amin said, despite a high growth rate, only about 20% benefit from development, while the majority is either excluded or worse off.

Liberal capitalism, Amin said, is as much an ideology as dogmatic Marxism. The conviction that markets are self-regulatory "should make anybody laugh today ," Amin said. Amin, who has travelled extensively in India and China, says, "China has achieved enormous things which India has not." Its radical agrarian effort had guaranteed all peasant families access to land on an almost equal footingan achievement maintained through China's export-oriented growth in the 1990s. In China, one doesn't see the destitution that one sees in India, he noted.

(c) 2008 The Times of India. Provided by ProQuest LLC. All rights Reserved.

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