International Viewpoint - online socialist magazine

Lessons of the Defeat in Indonesia

Alex de Jong, Ernest Mandel — 2025-09-30T04:36:21Z

Sixty years ago, on October 1, 1965 the Indonesian army set in motion its plans to seize power from president Sukarno and to destroy the Indonesian Communist Party (PKI), one of the main forces supporting the president. In the article below, dated November 1965, Mandel criticized the political approach of the PKI in the preceding period. 

- Features / Indonesia, Historical events and figures

The Reasons for Founding the Fourth International

Ernest Mandel — 2025-09-03T11:17:00Z

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.

- Ernest Mandel Archive / Fourth International, Ernest Mandel, Historical events and figures

The strategy of transitional demands

Ernest Mandel — 2024-12-31T17:00:35Z

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.

- Ernest Mandel Archive / Marxism, Fourth International, Ernest Mandel

1990: The assassination of Trotsky

Ernest Mandel — 2020-08-28T17:47:36Z

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.

- Ernest Mandel Archive / Fourth International, Ernest Mandel, Historical events and figures

1980: Methodological problems in defining the class nature of the bourgeois state

Ernest Mandel — 2020-07-19T16:11:39Z

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 â€˜Stamocap'III theory and debates on the class nature of the â€˜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]

- Ernest Mandel Archive / Marxism, Ernest Mandel

1973: The dialectic of growth

Ernest Mandel — 2020-06-29T20:30:25Z

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 (…)

- Ernest Mandel Archive / Marxism, Ecology and the Environment, Ernest Mandel

1972: The Driving Forces of Imperialism

Ernest Mandel — 2020-06-29T17:20:44Z

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).

- Ernest Mandel Archive / Marxism, Ernest Mandel

1985: The Actuality of Socialism

Ernest Mandel — 2020-05-23T15:20:48Z

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.

- Ernest Mandel Archive / Marxism, Ernest Mandel

1983: Emancipation, science and politics in Karl Marx

Ernest Mandel — 2020-05-23T15:20:25Z

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 AktualitÃ¤t seines Werks (Frankfurt am Main, 1984).

- Ernest Mandel Archive / Marxism, Ernest Mandel

1971: On the dialectic of nation and class struggle

Ernest Mandel — 2020-05-23T15:20:08Z

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.

- Ernest Mandel Archive / Marxism, Ernest Mandel, National question