Samir Amin: A Short Intellectual Portrait

It is a good way to start with Samir Amin’s family background to understand his development as a fiercely committed Marxist who all his life tried to change the world. All the disappointments and defeats of the cause he espoused only sharpened his determination. His first autobiography is titled A Life Looking Forward (Amin 2006). As he says on the first page of that memoir, ‘to the extent that the culture and ideology of which they (meaning Samir’s ancestors) were part have been transmitted across generations’. Samir’s father was a Coptic Egyptian and his mother was French, with Jacobin blood in her ancestors. In the nineteenth century, the Coptic Egyptians had built their social position and their landownership on the basis of modern education. His father was a Wafdist and strongly secular and republican in his beliefs. Both his parents were doctors. When his father was posted in Port Said, Samir, aged five or six, getting out of the car, saw a child searching in a rubbish heap. Samir asked what the child was doing. His father replied, that theirs was a bad society, so a poor child had to scrounge for food. Samir then said, ‘I will change the society.’