Ernest Mandel Archive

The Fourth International was founded on 3 September 1938. We are publishing for the first on International Viewpoint this article by Ernest Mandel published for the fiftieth anniversary, in 1988.

“However, Ernest was also a practical revolutionary convinced of the need to build revolutionary organizations, both the section in Belgium and the Fourth International worldwide.”

Sunday, 20 July 1995, marks three decades since the death of Ernest Mandel (1923-1995) "the most creative economist of our time," in the words of the Pakistani socialist Tariq Ali. Thus ended a whole life informed by the passion of revolutionary militancy and an intense activity in the construction of Marxist organizations and of the international itself.

We have particularly highlighted this aspect of the international dimension that every socialist strategy needs because it emerges unequivocally from the experiences and struggles of the European proletariat.

“For Mandel, the hope for such a future was based on the spark of rebellion that had always made people rebel against oppressive and alienating conditions. The task of socialists was to fan that spark into a flame by supporting all such rebellions and by presenting an alternative way forward.”

“Mandel’s main fault, several speakers at the commemorative meeting claimed, was over-optimism. But he left us with writing on the history and economic grounding of capitalism, analyses of bureaucracy and alienation, and an account of the underlying structural preconditions for the world we live in today.”

This article was first published under the pseudonym of Louis Couturier in La Gauche, the journal of the Belgian section of the Fourth International, on 19 September 1990.

Using insights from Belgian Marxist thinker Ernest Mandel, economist George Kerevan argues capitalism will suffer profound breakdown this century.

Ernest Mandel (1923-1995), who died a quarter of a century ago, has left us a significant theoretical legacy. It is unavoidable for anyone who wishes to make a balance sheet of the 20th century and contribute to the elaboration of revolutionary perspectives for the 21st century.

A quarter of a century after the death of Ernest Mandel, this article is not intended as a tribute. In the spirit of living Marxism that he embodied, we will limit ourselves rather to showing how his economic writings are still relevant, while sketching the questions, old or new, that they suggest.