Ernest Mandel Archive

Concern for the environment appeared strongly in Mandel’s writings only from the 1970s. It hardly appears, for example, in Marxist Economic Theory (1962). It is true that we already find, in this “inaugural” work, the idea of “stopping growth” under socialism: “When society has a supply of automatic machines large enough to cover all its current needs (…) it is likely that “economic growth” will be slowed down or even temporarily halted. Man, completely free from all material and economic concerns will be born".

In recent years, discussion on the definition and explanation of the class nature of the bourgeois state has expanded considerably. Although still mainly conducted in the GDR, France, Great Britain and Italy, the ‘Stamocap’III theory and debates on the class nature of the ‘national democratic state’ (in some former colonies in Africa and AsiaIV) make it a debate that is truly global. We do not want to talk here so much about the specific content of the most important works on this subject that have appeared so far. Rather, our intention is to raise some general problems related to the application of the historical-materialist method to the problem of the class nature of the bourgeois state. Directly or indirectly such problems play an important role in this discussion. [1]

This article was originally published as ‘La Dialectique de la Croissance’, Mai, November 1972, pp. 7-14. This translation is based on the Dutch version published in the reader of a 1973 congress on the ‘Crisis in economic theory’, VESVU-kongreskommissie (ed.) Krisis in de ekonomiese theorie: lezingen en diskussies van het vesvu kongres vu-amsterdam (Nijmegen, 1973), pp. 55-76, available online in the Marxists Internet Archive here. Translation by Alex de Jong.
In these notes, remarks in (…)

This paper was submitted to the Bertrand Russel Centenary Symposium, Linz, Austria, September 11th to 15th, 1972. First published in: Ken Coates (ed.) Spheres of influence in the age of imperialism (Nottingham, 1972).

This paper first appeared in a collection of essays from the Cavtat Conference in Yugoslavia, Socialism on the Threshold of the Twenty-First Century, Milos Nicolic, ed., London 1985.

Originally published in: Ossip K. Flechtheim (ed.), ’Marx Heute. Pro und Contra’ (Hamburg, 1983). This translation is based on the version published in Ernest Mandel, Karl Marx–Die Aktualität seines Werks (Frankfurt am Main, 1984).

Only by starting from the centrality of class struggle can we explain the development of nationalism. However, that the theory of historical materialism gives class struggle a primary place in history does not mean class struggle is the only factor in history. In fact, at different times in history other factors can become primary. But whenever we ask why other factors can become primary, we are lead back to the question of class struggle. The development of nationalism is a case in point.

Writing in the aftermath of May 68, this was a discussion that for Mandel had direct political implications.

This is the text of Ernest Mandel’s contribution to a symposium on the Nazi genocide held in Brussels in 1988. It was first published in French in Yannis Thanassekos and Heinz Wismann, eds., Révision de l’Histoire: Totalitarisme, crimes et génocides nazis, Editions du Cerf, Paris 1990, pp. 169-74.
The English translation was published in Gilbert Achcar. ed., The Legacy of Ernest Mandel, Verso, London 1999, pp. 225 - 232.

“Historical materialism elevates the principle of the dialectical relationship between the particular and the general, which reveals the essence of phenomena, to the theoretical foundation of the dialectical understanding of history.”- Leo Kofler, Geschichte und Dialektik