Arab Marxism and National Liberation: Selected Writings of Mahdi Amel

The article reviews the recently published volume, Arab Marxism and National Liberation: Selected Writings of Mahdi Amel, edited by Hicham Safieddine, translated by Angela Giordano. The focus of the review is to argue that Amel’s Marxian analysis is reducible neither to the project of National Liberation, nor to theories of uneven development, but has to be considered in relation to the influences of 20th century French epistemology and structuralism. Amel’s work opens up major conceptual problems that are crucial to contemporary Marxism such as: the relation between idealism and materialism, and structuralism and dialectics. Most importantly, Amel did not simply prioritize anti-colonialism over anti-capitalism, rather he aimed to provide a systematic theory for the analysis of colonization from within the mechanisms of capitalist domination.