The Law of Value and Historical Materialism

by Samir Amin

This short book deals with one of the most important and controversial problems of Marxist theory, the relation between the political economy of capitalism and the much broader doctrine of historical materialism. Illustrations are only mathematical equations dealing with economic theory provided in the appendix and in several instances throughout the text. The text is all-but-exclusively in English (translated from the French); titles of source books and articles are frequently cited in French in the notes at the end of the book (pp.127-133); otherwise, the notes are in English translation.

133 pages, Hardcover

First published November 1, 1978

About the author

Samir Amin (Arabic: سمير أمين) (3 September 1931 – 12 August 2018) was an Egyptian-French Marxian economist, political scientist and world-systems analyst. He is noted for his introduction of the term Eurocentrism in 1988 and considered a pioneer of Dependency Theory.

Reviews

[Massimo Andolfatto · Rating 5 out of 5]

In this work, Samir Amin has helped me to understand the more complicated parts of Capital Volume 3, in particular by showing how absolute rent and the rate of interest are determined by historical processes—theorizing them as objective laws, such as the law of value, is unscientific. Also, I like how he attributes the setting of the rate of interest to the state—representing the average capitalist. My main critique is that he should include a legend for the algebraic symbols—for the benefit of those who aren’t trained “economists”—for when he references Sraffa’s models, etc.