A very important book ,a real critic to Eurocentrism
It gives a meaning to all struggles all over the world to make a new humanitarian society

Why did Western Europe achieve an industrial revolution and not China? Why did Western Europe achieve a scientific revolution while the Islamic World failed to do so? Conventional theories, from Adam Smith to modern authors such as David Landes and Eric Jones, concentrate on the innate cultural superiority of the West. Amin, on the other hand, takes a more global, and in my view, more accurate view. In Amin's view, the transition from tribal societies to agricultural "world empires", and then to industrial capitalism was a "global relay race" in which Western Europe was simply "the last runner". Amin traces the economic, political and cultural aspects of the transitions from tribal societies, to world empires (Amin's term is "tributory form"), to industrial capitalism and the modern nation state. This book is the best brief exposition of global history that I have seen.

a feast of inspirational ideas and theories hidden in an incomprehensible text.

Samir Amin's analysis of the political economy of the world system is as precise as a set of mathematical theorems and, indeed, if any work in the field of IPE can lay claim to being a work of science, this is it. This is not an easy book to be casually read in the hope of securing instant gratification or wisdom; it is a serious work which the reader will have to read through quite a few times, and think through even more. At the end, though, the reader will be rewarded with a profound understanding of the reasons behind the societal collapse in large parts of the third, fourth and Soviet worlds; of why Europe remains, and could continue to remain, politically a pygmy; of why the "free market" will keep the majority of the world's peoples and nations "free to stagnate"; and why the folks living in "God's own country" can bid goodbye to the good old days of carefree plenty.

In this offering Samir solidifies his position in the field of IPE. Center/periphery polarization is concomitant with an antidemocratic constuction of a global political system that subverts the once auto-centerd nation state. By virtue of the five monopolies, the West has controlled both the political and economic development of the world and given rise to a market economy that, in collusion with the political sphere, has subverted political rights and powers to the advantage of capital and its minnions. Hope can only be found when democratic and auto-centered political influence reigns in it's bastard son- the market, and defines it's parameters.

Although I enjoyed Amin's book, I was quite frustrated with it. Most of its content deals with questions that go unanswered and many different reasons as to why he wont "go further" into a subject. Although the book contains analysis, it seems to be a review and and explanation of Marx's communist mannifesto. However, despite the lack of analysis, the book contains many significant facts and helps explain Marx's theory and why it applies to the current world.