Mahdi Amel’s Colonial Mode of Production and Politics in the Last Instance

The article discusses Lebanese Marxist philosopher Mahdi Amel’s formulation of the concept of “colonial mode of production” as a differential mode from capitalism that is linked to it through “structural causality.” Amel theorized the colonial mode of production as a singular mode that was seen to be specific to some social formations like Lebanon, Algeria, and Egypt. The article draws out the Althusserian influences in Amel’s theoretical work and explains the contours of his main argument to show how the colonial mode of production was employed as a critique of national liberation movements in the 1970s. In his theoretical works, Amel also provides a substantive critique of structuralism by arguing for a notion of political practice as the determinant of social struggle in the last instance.