Ernest Mandel

Ernest Ezra Mandel, also known by various pseudonyms such as Ernest Germain, Pierre Gousset, Henri Vallin, Walter etc. (b. Frankfurt April 5, 1923 - d. Brussels July 20, 1995). He was recruited to the Belgian section of the Fourth International in his youth in Antwerp. His parents, Henri and Rosa Mandel, were a Jewish emigres from Poland, the former a member of Rosa Luxemburg's and Karl Liebknecht's Spartacus League. Ernest's entrance to university studies was cut short when the German occupying forces closed the university down. Image File history File links File history Legend: (cur) = this is the current file, (del) = delete this old version, (rev) = revert to this old version. ... (?) [ˈfraÅ‹kfÊŠrt] is the largest city in the German state of Hesse and the fifth-largest city in Germany. ... April 5 is the 95th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar (96th in leap years). ... 1923 (MCMXXIII) was a common year starting on Monday (link will take you to calendar). ... Emblem of the Brussels-Capital Region Flag of The City of Brussels Brussels (Dutch: Brussel, French: Bruxelles, German: Brüssel) is the capital of Belgium and of the European Union. ... July 20 is the 201st day (202nd in leap years) of the year in the Gregorian Calendar, with 164 days remaining. ... 1995 (MCMXCV) was a common year starting on Sunday of the Gregorian calendar. ... The Fourth International has been the international organisation of Trotskyist communists. ... The Cathedral of our Lady (Onze-Lieve-Vrouwekathedraal, Antwerp) in the Handschoenmarkt, in the old quarter of Antwerp is the largest cathedral in the Low Countries and home to a number of triptychs by Renaissance Belgian painter Rubens. ... The word Jew ( Hebrew: יהודי) is used in a wide number of ways, but generally refers to a follower of the Jewish faith, a child of a Jewish mother, or someone of Jewish descent with a connection to Jewish culture or ethnicity and often a combination of these attributes. ...

During World War II, he escaped twice after being arrested in the course of resistance activities, and survived imprisonment in the German concentration camp at Dora. After the war, he became a leader of both the Belgian Trotskyists and the youngest member of the Fourth International secretariat, alongside Michel Pablo and others. He gained respect as a prolific journalist with a clear and lively style, as an orthodox Marxist theoretician, and as a talented debater. He wrote for numerous newspapers in the 1940s and 1950s including Het Parool, Le Peuple, l'Observateur and Agence-France Presse. At the height of the cold war he publicly defended the merits of Marxism in debate with the social democrat and future Dutch premier Joop den Uyl. World War II was a truly global conflict with many facets: immense human suffering, fierce indoctrination, and the use of new, extremely devastating weapons such as the atom bomb. ... A concentration camp is a large detention center created for political opponents, aliens, specific ethnic or religious groups, civilians of a critical war-zone, or other groups of people, often during a war. ... Trotskyism is the theory of Marxism as advocated by Leon Trotsky. ... Michel Pablo (August 24, 1911 - February 17, 1996 ) was the pseudonym of Michel N. Raptis, a Greek Trotskyist leader. ... For the generic term for a high-tension struggle between countries, see cold war (war). ... Marxism is the social theory and political practice based on the works of Karl Marx, a 19th century German philosopher, economist, journalist, and revolutionary, along with Friedrich Engels. ... Prime Minister of the Netherlands Dr. Johannes Marten Joop den Uyl (August 9, 1919 - December 24, 1987) was a Dutch politician, prime minister of the Netherlands from 1973 until 1977, as a member of the socialist PvdA party. ...

After 1946 World Congress of the Fourth International, Mandel was elected into the leadership of the International Secretariat of the Fourth International. In line with its policy, he joined the Belgian Socialist Party where he was a leader of a militant socialist tendency, becoming editor of the socialist newspaper La Gauche (and writing for its Flemish sister publication, Links), a member of the economic studies commission of the General Confederation of Labour of Belgium and an associate of the Belgian syndicalist André Renard. He and his comrades were expelled from the Socialist Party not long after the Belgian General Strike for opposing its coalition with the Christian Socialists, and its acceptance of anti-strike legislation. Initially the title International Secretariat of the Fourth International was the name given to the executive committee responsible for the regular operation of the Fourth International (FI) founded in 1938. ...

He was one of the main initiators of the 1963 reunification between the International Secretariat and the majority of the International Committee of the Fourth International, a public faction led by James Cannon's Socialist Workers Party that had withdrawn from the FI in 1953. The regroupment formed the United Secretariat of the Fourth International (USFI or "Usec"). Until his death in 1995 Mandel remained the most prominent leader and theoretician of both the USFI and of its Belgian section, the SAP-POS(Socialist Workers' Party). 1963 (MCMLXIII) was a common year starting on Tuesday (link will take you to calendar). ... The International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI) is a Trotskyist international. ... James P. Cannon (1940) James Patrick Cannon (1890-1974) was an American Communist and then Trotskyist leader. ... The Socialist Workers Party is a small communist political party in the United States. ... The United Secretariat of the Fourth International (USFI) is the largest Trotskyist international organisation. ...

Until the publication of his massive book "Marxist Economic Theory" in French in 1962, Mandel's Marxist articles were written mainly under a variety of pseudonyms and his activities as Fourth Internationalist were little known outside the left. He resumed his university studies and graduated from what is now the Ecole Pratiques des Hautes Etudes in Paris in 1967. Only from 1968 did Mandel become wellknown as public figure and Marxist politician, touring student campuses in Europe and America giving talks on socialism, imperialism and revolution.

Although officially barred from West Germany (and several other countries at various times, including the United States, France, Switzerland, and Australia), he gained a PhD from the Free University of Berlin in 1972, published as Late Capitalism, and he subsequently gained a lecturer position at the Free University of Brussels. In 1978 he delivered the Alfred Marshall Lectures at the University of Cambridge, on the topic of the long waves of capitalist development. Satellite photo of Berlin. ... The Free University of Brussels is the name of two Belgian universities both in Brussels: the Dutch-speaking Vrije Universiteit Brussel, and the French-speaking Université Libre de Bruxelles This is a disambiguation page — a navigational aid which lists other pages that might otherwise share the same title. ... The University of Cambridge is the second-oldest university in the English-speaking world, with one of the most selective sets of entry requirements in the United Kingdom. ... In economics, Kondratiev waves, also called cycles or surges, occasionally also referred to as the K-waves, are the term for a regular S-shaped cycle in the modern world economy. ...

Mandel campaigned on behalf of numerous dissident left-wing intellectuals suffering political repression, championed the cancellation of the third world debt, and in the Gorbachev era spearheaded a petition for the rehabilitation of the accused in the Moscow Trials of 1936-38. As a man in his 70s, he travelled to Russia to defend his vision of a free and democratic socialism. Third World debt is external debt incurred by Third World countries. ... Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev (Russian: ; Pronunciation: mih-kha-ILL ser-GHE-ye-vich gor-bah-CHOFF) (born March 2, 1931), was leader of the Soviet Union from 1985 until 1991. ... The Moscow Trials were a series of trials of political opponents of Joseph Stalin during the Great Purge. ... The color red and particularly the red flag are traditional symbols of Socialism. ...

In total, he published approximately 2,000 articles and around 30 books during his life, which were translated into many languages. In addition, he also edited or contributed to many books, maintained a voluminous correspondence, and went on speaking engagements worldwide. He considered it his mission to transmit the heritage of classical Marxist thought, deformed by the experience of Stalinism and the Cold War, to a new generation. And to a large extent he did influence a generation of scholars and activists in their understanding of important Marxist concepts. In his writings, perhaps most striking is the tension between creative independent thinking and the desire for a strict adherence to Marxist doctrinal orthodoxy. Stalinism is a brand of political theory, and the political and economic system implemented by Joseph Stalin in the Soviet Union. ... For the generic term for a high-tension struggle between countries, see cold war (war). ... Look up Creative in Wiktionary, the free dictionary The term creative can refer to: Creativity is defined as the ability to be creative. ... The word orthodoxy, from the Greek ortho (right, correct) and doxa (thought, teaching), is typically used to refer to the correct theological or doctrinal observance of religion, as determined by some overseeing body. ...

He is probably remembered most of all for being an indefatigable rationalist populariser of basic Marxist ideas, for his books on Late Capitalism and Long-Wave theory, and for his moral-intellectual leadership in the Trotskyist movement. His critics however claim that he was 'too soft on Stalinism', eclectic and unsystematic in his economic theorizing, an over-optimistic politician, a supporter of reforms within capitalism, or simply that he wrote more than he could do well. A satirical novel featuring among others Ernest Mandel (in the guise of the encyclopedic, computer-brained genius Esra Einstein) is Tariq Ali's Redemption (Picador, 1991). Trotskyism is the theory of Marxism as advocated by Leon Trotsky. ... Tariq Ali Tariq Ali (born 1943) is an author, filmmaker, and historian. ...

Bibliography of Ernest Mandel's main books

• Marxist Economic Theory (2 vols.).
• The Formation of the Economic Thought of Karl Marx, 1843 to Capital
• La Longue Marche de la Revolution
• Introduction to Marxist Economic Theory
• Europe versus America: Contradictions of Imperialism
• Decline of the Dollar': a Marxist view of the Monetary Crisis
• The Second Slump
• Revolutionary Marxism Today
• Revolutionare Strategien im 20e Jahrhundert
• Trotsky: A Study in the Dynamic of his Thought
• From Stalinism to Eurocommunism
• Late Capitalism
• Verveemding en revolutionaire perspectieven
• Offener Marxismus
• Réponse à Louis Althusser et Jean Elleinstein
• Long Waves of Capitalist Development
• Introduction to Marxism
• Delightful Murder: A social history of the crime story'
• De la Commune à Mai 68: Histoire du mouvement ouvrier international
• Karl Marx: die Aktualitat seines Werkes
• La Crise
• The meaning of the Second World War
• Beyond Perestroika: the future of Gorbachev's USSR
• October 1917: Coup d'état or Social Revolution?
• Trotsky as Alternative
• Kontroversen um "Das Kapital"
• Power and Money: A Marxist Theory of Bureaucracy
• The Place of Marxism in History
• Cash Krach & Krisis: Profitboom, Börsenkrach und Wirtschaftskrise
• Revolutionary Marxism and Social Reality in the 20th Century
• Why they invaded Chzechoslovakia

books (co-)edited by Ernest Mandel

• 50 Years of World Revolution 1917-1967: an International Symposium
• Arbeiterkontrolle, Arbeiterrate, Arbeiterselbstverwaltung
• Ricardo, Marx, Sraffa: the Langston Memorial Volume
• New Findings in Long-Wave Research

External links

• USFI's Ernest Mandel Website
• a Dutch historian currently researching a biography of Ernest Mandel
• [1]
• [2]
• [3]
• [4]
• Bibliography of Ernest Mandel by Wolfgang and Petra Lubitz, presented on the Lubitz TrotskyanaNet
• Symposia on Mandel's work (see also Gilbert Achcar (ed.), The Legacy of Ernest Mandel [London: Verso, 1999])
• http://rrojasdatabank.info/agfrank/mandel_tribute.html Obituary Andre Gunder Frank]
• Ernest Mandel Center