Axioms of capitalist accumulation: Deleuze and Guattari meet Samir Amin
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How to Cite

Axioms of capitalist accumulation: Deleuze and Guattari meet Samir Amin. (2025). Plí: The Warwick Journal of Philosophy, 36(1). https://doi.org/10.31273/pl.n1.2024.1726

Abstract

The goal of this article is to develop a critical comparison between Deleuze and Guattari's analysis of Capitalism on a “global scale” and the works of Samir Amin. This comparative approach is justified given the Deleuzoguattarian influence of Amin’s concept of "unequal exchange" in A Thousand Plateaus. However, one can identify two more theoretical affinities and a point of intersection in both analyses about the capitalist system in a broader sense: a) they offer an explanation of Capitalism’s historical accumulation processes that contradicts the evolutionist perspective of classical Marxism and Modern philosophies of History; b) both employ the concept of precapitalist social formations instead of the well know notion of modes of production – which involves the political debate about the State (discussed in Deleuze-Guattari's “Urstaat” and Amin's “Tributary Formations”); c) and, finally, an analytical consonance between dependency theory and Amin’s notion of peripherical social formations and Deleuze and Guattari's discussion of global polarities (i.e., the geopolitical organization between center-periphery and North/South).

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