Editorial Note, Sep-Oct, 2018

Samir Amin who passed away recently was an outstanding Marxist thinker of our time. An economist by training, he did not confine himself to armchair theorising; he was deeply and passionately engaged till his last breath in praxis for changing the world, always maintaining a close link with the Communist movement, whether in Egypt where he was born, or in France where he had his university education, or in Senegal where he spent much of his life. The originality of Amin’s theoretical work, for which he will be remembered, lay in the integration of the phenomenon of imperialism into Marxist theory. The lead article in the current issue of Social Scientist is an obituary piece on Amin by his close friend Amiya Bagchi who discusses his intellectual contributions.