Delinking Book

Samir Amin builds upon the argument presented in his previous works such as "Accumulation on World Scale" and "Unequal Development" to present a development path for the Third World countries which would avoid the pitfalls of what Frank called development of underdevelopment. Amin's proposal can be summarised as establishing value according to the socially necessary labour within national borders instead of using the global one which is bound to the productivity of the First World countries.

Evidently, the book reflects the historical circumstances in which it was written (1985.) and dedicates a lot of space to the discussion of what Amin calls non-capitalist statist societies such as USSR and China. While he goes at length to describe why those societies are not exactly socialist, he doesn't really set the ground by explaining what he thinks socialism should be. In passing, he does mention socialism in terms of abolition of classes.

While he describes the economic aspects of delinking, he does not consider political and military repercussions such policy would imply in terms of an imperialist intervention, international isolation, etc.