### MANDEL
1923-1995
Ernest
WHAT was Ernest Mandel's dream? We asked three different analysts about Ernest Mandel, the author of Marxist Economic Theory, The Third Age of Capitalism and Delightful Murders, the member of the Fourth International and one of Trotskyism's most prestigious leaders.
They all said that Mandel had "never renounced utopia", , far less his desire and will to construct that utopia. Right until the end, he kept in view the question "what can humanise this world we live in?". And he consistently answered "the proletariat, a revolutionary socialist transformation of capitalism". His dream always took the form of revolution, the transformation of society, democratic by Angélica Abelleyra As for the dream revealed in Power and Money, Sergio de la Peña believes that, "for Mandel, the project of human socialism kept all its value as an alternative to real socialism' and capitalism. He thought that a deep, radical transformation would offer everyone a rich, creative. human life. He never renounced utopia, far less his desire to build that utopia. His passion for utopia was the principle force animating his immense capacity for work Like Ernest Mandel, we should be able to dream of utopias, and to be irresponsible enough to try to realise them, and to suffer defeats. Defeats from which we can learn something. 'Real sociahave more in common with the militant revolutionaries of the first half of the century, and their conflict, than with the leftwing intellectuals of the post-war period". Flores Olea admits to "genuine admiration and praise" of Mandel, who, even when deep in economic and political problems of the second half of the century, "maintained the optimism, the vision of history - and of course the theoretical training — of those who first struggled to establish the principles of revolutionary socialism".
One thing never varied for Mandel: confidence in the capacities of the proletariat - in the USSR as well as in the capitalist countries - to socialism, and human socialism. LaJornada RESEARCHER Sergio de la Peña stresses Mandel's contribution to political thought, with his series of analyses and critical proposition concerning the functioning of capitalism and the nature of real socialism'. In economic theory, his thought represents a creative elaboration, a reflection on "the problems that preoccupy all of us: the globalisation of capitalism and the alternatives, in terms of the formulation of a social project superior [to capitalism] which would end the conflict and prejudice which that ferocious system inflicts on humanity"
lism' has left one lesson:
its existence has obliged the world to change. We cannot discard that reality. We must make it our starting point. The first socialist project lasted 60 years. Capitalism is 800 years old. We have plenty of time.
UNIVERSITY PROFESSOR Victor Flores Olea claims that, with Mandel gone, a whole "human, intellectual and revolutionary type is unfortunately becoming extinct. His image, his legend even, transform bureaucratic dictatorship into a democratic socialist regume in the USSR, and to arrive at the same point in the capitalist world through carrying through the socialisation which developed capitalism itself already make possible. "It would be easy to comment that Mandel's vision failed in both parts of the world," says Flores. "The socialist regime in the USSR has disappeared. It was not transformed. And in the rest of the world, the proletariat seems to have exhausted its reserves of revolutionary energy. But are
Ernest -1995 MANDEL
International Viewpoint n° 269 — September1995 23 things this simple? Who else will humanise this world we live in? A complex question, and one which Mandel wrestled with until the day he died. A question to which he always gave the same answer: the transformation of society will be the work of the proletariat, despite all the metamorphoses which it has undergone and will undergo in the future. POLITICAL SCIENTIST Octavio Rodriguez Araujo believes that the Belgian theorist's critique of the USSR's Manual of Scientific Economy. "He built his critique on the basis of Western — i.e. non-Soviet - sources on the construction of capitalism. A remarkable work, which he was one of the first Marxists to attempt".
As for Mandel's conception of the dictatorship of the proletariat, as discussed in The Formation of the Economic Thought of Karl Marx, Rodriguez stresses that this was "a very different conception that that of the Soviets, who privileged the role of the Party, which they conceived as an avant-garde. Mandel insisted on the role of the social classes, and conceived of the political leadership as something which meets the demands of the workers.
Despite Mandel's "faulty" — because "euro-centric" - conception of the state, Rodriguez supports his critique of Euro-communism, "which liquidated itself by becoming social-democrat, thus provoking the collapse of several Communist Parties. I am not a Mandelist, but I think he was one of the most lucid and critical theoreticians. History has shown him to have been right." And he concludes with the comment that the author of Delicious Murders had a "very solid theoretical base, and hardly ever made concessions... but he was not dogmatic. Dogmatism kills criticism and protects the status quo". And Mandel's dream? Revolution, the transformation of society, and democratic, human socialism. Which means a project of the mass, not of the elite.
Waiting for World Revolution:
On the Death of Ernest Mandel
Süddeutsche Zeitung, Germany, 22 July 1995
I FIRST MET Ernest Mandel at the beginning of the 1960s, at a seminar organised by the Socialist Union of German
Students (Sozialistischer Deutscher Studentenbund, SDS) in Munich. He was making a presentation on the theory of
Karl Marx. An impressive event in the
Adenauer period, when there was little talk of Karl Marx at German universities. Mandel's theoretical critique of capitalist society - perspicacious and brilliant in its rhetorical qualities - was by Elmer Altwater opposition. They sent him to a concentration camp. A vehement critic of capitalism, he joined the Trotskyist International after the war. He soon came to be considered as its leading theoretical leader. To the point where one identified the Fourth International with him rather than him with the Fourth International.
Throughout his life he remained strengthening of the revolutionary 'workers and peasants'. At the world scale I heard him say this again a year ago, in a passionate speech in Brazil. WHAT ILLUSIONS, one might think nowadays. But Mandel represented such a political danger to the governments of the United States, France, and to the SocialLiberal coalition [in West Germany] that they forbid him entry to their territory throughout the 1970s. He had just presented a doctoral thesis to the Department of
Süddeutsche Leitung something quite unusual in that period of the 'economic
MÜNCHNER NEUESTE NACHRICHTEN AUS POLITIK, KULTUR, WIRTSCHAFT UND SPORT material'. And it was an important contribution to the elaboration of a theoretical basis for what would develop as the students' movement of the 1960s and early
1970s.
Mandel was born in Frankfurt. As a young man he was active in the anti-Nazi convinced of the need, and the possibility, of world-wide revolution. Whence his enthusiasm for the 1968 movement. Each strike, be it in Mexico or in Bangladesh, was to his eyes a contribution to the
Political Science of the Free University of Berlin. It was his work Late Capitalism, a work in tune with the times. The Jury had to move to Brussels to hear him defend his thesis. Which he did brilliantly. The bar on entry to Germany could not stop him passing his doctorate. But it did make it impossible for him to present himself for the post of professor at Berlin and Osnabrück.
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24 International Viewpoint n° 269 — September 1995
All the west did, during the cold war, was copy what had always been common currency in the camp of actually existing socialism'. As a leader of the Trotskyist international, Mandel was persona non grata. You could only find his works on the "cursed bookshelves' dealing with the radical left and Trotskyism. AND YET, Mandel's works, written in French and translated into all the languages of the world, were distinguished by their scientific rigour. Mandel had the spirit of an encyclopaedia, the erudition of a vast personal culture, in the traditional sense of the world. He was a brilliant intellectual. His analysis of the world capitalist economy are as evergreen as his critique of Soviet bureaucracy. And the fact that he wrote a social history of the crime story, that he was interested in this domain too, shows the breadth of the fields he was interested in.
Having said this, there was never the shadow of a doubt about the essential goal of his writing: the revolutionary overthrow of the domination of the Soviet bureaucracy and the capitalist system. He considered the end of 'actually existing socialism' in 'the revolutionary year of 1989' as the confirmation of his analysis. But the fact that capitalist society comes out reinforced in the 'new world order', rather than weakened, this did not really fit in his political thinking
Long Waves: On the Death of the Trotskyist and Revolutionary Ernest Mandel
Frankfurter Rundschau, Germany, 23 July 1995 ERNEST MANDEL wrote penetrative analyses of the long waves of growth of capitalism, and of the rise and fall of Stalinism. He studied the social phenomenon of bureaucracy, and the social history of the crime story, with the same engagement. Ernest Mandel was a brilliant thinker, an incisive polemicist, a patient teacher and an impatient revolutionary.
The man all the dogmatists loved to hate, he carried a triple condemnation: Jew, Communist, and Trotsky-style Communist to boot. Thrice condemned, thrice distinguished: by the hate of the orthodox Communists, by the fear of the bourgeois conservatives (which earned him a ban on entering Switzerland, the USA, France, Australia and above all the Federal Republic of Germany, and by the recognition of broad-minded specialists in all the domains he expressed himself upon. IT IS STRANGE, and revealing, that out of his abundant scientific work, the established media has touched almost exclusively his social history off the crime story (Exquisite Murder) .One rarely finds references to his other books, but there are many reviews of Exquisite Murder. And among these we find those Marxist-Leni-
### Par Karl Grobe nists who refuse to see in the book anything more than ideology, since the author was not one of their own.
Born in Frankfurt in 1923, Ernest Mandel emigrated to Belgium with his family to escape the Nazi dictatorship. It was in Belgium that Mandel began his political activity. Nazi executioners arrest him as a militant of the resistance against the occupation of Belgium. He survived prison and the concentration camp. Settling in Belgium after the war, he taught most recently at the Free University of Brussels.
His German comrades, Communists and anti-Stalinists, knew him under various names, including Ernest Germain' and 'Walter'. '. He was a man who could never exclude the possibility that one day he would again have to live underground, if the political situation deteriorated. For this reputed theoretician was also a thinker of the International founded by Lev Trotsky after his expulsion from the Soviet Union.
But Ernest Mandel was never an ideologue of Trotskyism. He committed himself to an impressive examination of the 'dark years' of Lenin's companion and critic. [footnote in particular during the Wuppertal seminar on Trotsky] How did we arrive at Trotsky's 'dark years' of 1917-1923? As early as 1905 Trotsky had foreseen the possibility of the centralism of the party's leading bodies and its general secretary developing behind the centralism of the party as such. How could he have supported such centralism, for years, knowing what he knew? Why dic he keep what he had understood about the bureaucracy and the "Thermidor' to himself for so long?
Mandel further developed the critique which Trotsky developed after these "dark years'. This is the origin of Mandel's theory of the bureaucracy (Power and Money, 1993). This is not simply an academic work. Mandel was one of those who had recognised that after the Stalinist 'Thermidor' the proletarian revolution itself had been betrayed. He defended the concept of political revolution. He diagnosed the first signs of this political revolution in 1956, in Hungary and Poland, in 1968 in Czechoslovakia, and again in 1980 in Poland. These processes of upheaval would have tipped out of power the bureaucratic elite directed and incarnated by Stalin, but which in turn produced Stalin and the Stalinists
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MANDEL Ernest 1923-1995
International Viewpoint n° 269 — September1995 25
### Ernest
1923-1995
MANDEL
sis at the Free University of Berlin in quite exceptional circumstances, without infringing the Fundamental Law? Why the ban on entering German territory (which finished by costing a Minister of the Interior his post in 1978)? What was the motivation for the resignation of conservative spirits from the PEN-Club in 1977, when Mandel was admitted to membership? Certainly not by fear of the force of his convictions. By fear of revolution? If so, we can be calm. This is not a period where that kind of revolution is
Brussels, June 1979. International meeting hosted by the SAP/POS to discuss the | forthcoming European Parliament elections BUT MANDEL was far from any simple opposition of democracy' and "Stalinism'. His goal was the overthrow of capitalism, and the construction of a society free from class domination, in which, for the first time, equality and consciously planned social, ecological, economic and democratic policies would become possible. This is what distinguishes "Trotskyism' from al the other forms of anti-Stalinism.
This kind of position required an exceptional intellectual discipline. He had to struggle against the seductive power of an uncritical 'defence of the Soviet Union, and with the same rigour, oppose ment. At other moments he attempted to discuss with those prone to dogmatism. In his international meetings with students, manual workers, university professors and political leaders he, who shone in many languages, knew how to listen patiently And he argued with all his force of conviction, but without arrogance.
What made this man so dangerous that in 1972 he was only able to defend his theimminent. And the groups which identify with Ernest Mandel are small, and carry less influence than he did.
An Optimistic Critic of Capitalism any "defence of democracy equally lacking in critical spirit. One the one hand he was intransigent in his opposition to the
The Guardian, Great Britain, 23 July 1995
Gulag and to the political and material expropriation of the people of the Soviet by Tarig Ali
Union. And on the other hand he was intransigent in his opposition to the exploitation, racism, imperialism which he understood to be inherent to capitalism. He had to recognise the gains of the
Russian revolution, and 'save' them against Stalinist deformation, and at the same time defend the gains of the French revolution and the social struggles in the industrialised countries.
Mandel fought at every level to achieve these objectives. At the last World
Congress of his movement, he turned passionately against those dogmatists of all kinds, and of whom there has never been a lack in the periphery of his move-
ERNEST MANDEL, who has died in Brussels aged 72, was one of the most creative and independent-minded revolutionary Marxist thinkers of the post-war world. His writings on political theory, world history and Marxist economics were translated into 30 languages and in every continent. In a series of specialist works — Late Capitalism (1975), The Second Slump (1978), The Long Waves of Capitalist Development (revised and reissued in 1995) - he analysed the functioning of capitalism in the West.
Mandel had been a prominent leader and theoretical n of the Fourth International Fourth International from the late fifties onwards, but even those on the left who were not sympathetic to his Trotskyist politics acknowledged his influence and demonstrated a respect for his razorsharp intelligence. Only a few years ago. Mandel shared a platform in Madrid with the Prime Minister Felipe Gonzales and subjected his host to a severe tonguelashing for arresting young people who were resisting conscription.
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LONE HEVOLUTIOONAIRE DES TRAVALLENN ARBEIDERS LIGA REVOLUTIDMAIRE
26 International Viewpoint n° 269 — September 1995
### MANDEL
1923-1995
Ernest
He was born in Belgium and educated at Brussels University and the Ecole Practique des Haute Etudes in Paris. His father Henri, a left-wing socialist, had opposed the first world war and fled from Belgium to Holland to avoid conscription. Here he met the German communist Wilhelm Pieck, and both men rushed to Germany after the fall of the Kaiser.
Henri Mandel worked in Berlin for several months as a journalist for the newly-organised Soviet Press Agency. He became friends with Karl Radek, the Bolshevik emissary dispatched by Lenin to speed up the German revolution. Demoralised by the repression which followed the execution of Rosa Luxembourg and Karl Liebknecht, Henri remained a member of the German Communist Party for only a few more years. Then he dropped out of active politics and moved to Antwerp. It was here that his second son, Ernest, was born. MANDEL WAS 10 when Hitler came to power. Years later he told me: "My father made some very sharp comments at the time on the incapacity of the social-democrats and the communists to resist fascism. I remember him saying "This will end very badly. It could be the end for our
Jew. The Nazis sent him to a transit camp for prisoners en route to Auschwitz. HE ESCAPED. The circumstances in which he freed himself are revealed and made a permanent mark that fuelled his optimism about the capacity of ordinary people to emancipate themselves. Always a strong believer in his own capacity to convince anyone of the merits of socialism. Mandel started talking to the warders. The other Belgium and French prisoner were anti-German and treated the warders, veteran employees of the German state, as sub-humans. Mandel started talking to them and discovered that some had been members of the now-banned social-democratic and Communist parties in Germany. The warders, on their part, were impressed by the precocity of the
16-year-old boy in their charge and actually hel-
R
crimes of Stalinism or the capitulation of social-democracy. During the late sixties and seventies, his polemical and oratorical skills (he spoke all the major languages of his continent) together with governmental paranoia led to his being barred from entering the United States. France, West Germany, Switzerland and Australia. He was deemed a threat to "national security" THE RESTRICTIONS on his movements sent him back to his old typewriter. Pamphlets and books emerged at an amazing speed. He was a great educator. His pamphlet, An Introduction to Marxist Economics, sold half-a-million copies. And yet a great deal of his life was spent on dealing with the views of rival Trotskyist groupings. Often, when I rang him during the seventies, and asked a polite "How are you?" the reply was never the del joined a small Trotskyist group in Antwerp and was TheGuardian tance during the occupation. He had been disgusted by the capitulation of the Belgian Socialist Party, whose leader, the deputy Prime Minister, made a public appeal to collaborate with the Nazis and was supported by an important section of the trade union apparatus. The official Communists published a legal paper under the Occupation, basking in the deadly rays of the Stalin-Hitler pact.
Mandel was arrested for the first time for distributing seditious leaflets to the occupying German soldiers. He had subsequently hidden to observe the effect of anti-fascist propaganda on the uniformed Germans. He was a revolutionary and a
Sped him to escape. Even though he was soon re-arrested, the experience had made He steadfastly refused to write off a whole nationality because of the crimes of its leaders. A lesson learned when our century was engulfed in what seemed then to be a permanent midnight was applied more recently in the war in former Yugoslavia. Mandel refused to permit his loathing of Milosevic and Tudjman to lead to a blanket condemnation of
After the war, Mandel devoted most of his energies to building the Fourth International as a world party for the socialist revolution. He genuinely believed that conditions would favour the rebirth of a movement not tarred with the same: "I'm just finishing off a draft reply to the sectarians in Ceylon on the Tamil question" or "Fine. Have your read my reply to the IS Group on state-capitalism?" or "Those sectarian idiots in Argentina have caved in to Peronism. Crazy people. Don't they understand?" They never did. But Mandel never stopped trying to convince "crazy people" to tread the true path.
I was very close to him for the most important years of my life. Even after I left his movement in 1981, we remained close friends, despite our disagreements. Friendly relations were abruptly broken off for a year after the appearance of Redemption, my fictional satire on Trots-
The central character, Ezra Einstein, was loosely based on him. something," he said when peace had
Ernest 1923 -1995 MANDEL
International Viewpoint n° 269 — September1995 27 finally been restored, "why did you make me out to be so obsessed with sex?" I tried to explain that a true political Utopian would also be a sexual Utopian and that in fiction one had the right to imagine anything, but he shook his head in disapproval. He was capable of theorising on any subject under the sun, but not sex. This divide with the generation of '68 was never overcome. HE SUFFERED a serious heart-attack a few years ago, which left him extremely frail, but up to the last he was thinking of new projects. "I can't decide what book to write," he told me last year. "A history of the European workers' the permanent and eternal links between capitalism and crime." In the event he
Like many of his generation he was shaken by the restoration in Russia, though he tried to mask the fact with heady rhetoric. He knew the game was up for another four or five decades, but was fearful of "demoralising the cadre" and a pretence was maintained that nothing fundamental had changed. Life and the struggle went on just as before. The truth was that in the changed mood of present times his optimism had ceased to be
Ernest Mandel, Economist and Trotskyist Leader
El País, Spanish State, 21 July 1995
ERNEST MANDEL, the economist and leader of the Fourth International has died in Brussels at the age of 72. Born into a
Jewish family in Frankfurt, his life and work were consecrated, from the moment in his youth when he became active in the anti-nazi resistance, to the reconstruction of a radical, open Marxism, neither social democratic nor Stalinist. Mandel was also director of the Centre for Political Studies of the Free University of Berlin - by Jaime Pastor conceived within the categories of classic Marxism"
Other important titles include: El significado de la Segunda Guerra Mundial, Sur le fascisme ; Contrôle ouvrier, conseils ouvriers et autogestion ouvrière ; Critique de l'Eurocommunisme ; De la Commune à Mai 68 and Marxismo
Expelled from the Belgian Socialist Party for "Trotskyism" in 1964, he was to later support the Cuban revolution, and showed his solidarity with Che [Guevara] in his polemic with Charles Bettelheim. In 1968 Mandel was expelled from France for his participation in May 1968. He was latter expelled from both the Germanys for the same reason. In Spain he participated in several university and political forums of all kinds, giving a particular support to the Revolutionary Communist League,
In his numerous writings, particu- EL PAIS larly those concerning the up-dating of the elementary concepts and categories of Marxism, he consistently rejected all form of dogmatism. Marxist Economic Theory, first published in 1962 [as Traité d'économie marxiste] enjoyed a wide distribution in several languages, and influenced an not insignificant minority among the new generation of critical economics. His other works include: La formation de la pensée économique de Karl Marx, El Capital: cien años de controversia en torno a la obra de Karl Marx, Las ondas largas del desarrollo capitalista, and above all Le troisième âge du capitalisme. Perry Anderson has called this last work "the first theoretical analysis of the post-war global development of the capitalist mode of production
WITH THE ARRIVAL of perestroika, Mandel wrote Où va l'URSS de Gorbatchov?, and later on Power and Money: A Marxist Theory of Bureaucracy. In these two works he exposes the contradictions of the Soviet system, and argues for a "third way", an alternative to bureaucratic planning and the restoration of capitalism.
His whole intellectual activity was intimately linked to his practical engagement in the Fourth International, of which he was one of the principle leaders.
today Izquierda Alternativa (Alternati-
His double investment, as economist and as revolutionary, implied an intense level of activity, which had an effect on his health, particularly in the last years of his life. His rigour in the defence of his convictions, free of all sectarianism, and his admirable "optimism of the spirit" enabled him to win considerable affection and sympathy among all those who had the chance to come to know him. Despite any political differences.
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The Trotskyist thinker dies of a heart attack at the age of
73: Ernest Mandel, the itinerary of an obstinate militant
Le Soir, Belgium, 22-23 July 1995
28 International Viewpoint n° 269 — September 1995
### MANDEL
1923-1995
Ernest
ERNEST MANDEL faded away in Brussels this Thursday, the victim of a heart attack. Marxist theoretician, economist, tireless militant, he was one of the most famous and prestigious members of the Fourth International, founded by Lev Trotsky in 1938. He took the wheel of the Belgian section after the second world war, and remained a militant until the end of his life, particularly within the Socialist Workers' Party (POS/SAP).
Through his political activities and his scientific work, Ernest Mandel was without a doubt one of the Belgian intellectuals the best know abroad.
Several months after his birth in Frankfurt, his family moved to Antwerp. He would later study in the capital, but also in the ULB (Flemish university in Brussels), at the Sorbonne (Paris), and in Berlin. Perfectly quadrilingual, he also understood Russian, which helped him to study the classical texts of socialism in the original.
At the age of 16 he became active in the workers' movement, and in 'the Fourth'. Later on he joined the resistance. He was arrested three times, and sent to a concentration camp.
Shortly after the liberation of Belgium, he joined the international leadership of the Trotskyist movement. From 1954 to 1963 he was a member of the economic commission of the Belgian General Labour Federation (FGTB/ABVV). He also wrote for Le Peuple and La Wallonie. But his relationby Jean Pierre Stroobants ship with the classical left was always stormy. Mandel fustigated social democracy for what he considered to be its wheeler-dealing with the bourgeoisie and with capitalism. This no doubt explains why his thinking has never found real support or a real echo on the Belgian left, which has been traditionally suspicious of the Trotskyists. Nor was Mandel much more favourably disposed to the fleeting 'Eurocommunist' trend, which he demolished in a book in 1978.
LE SOIR
Stifled in Belgium, Mandel attracted considerable audiences abroad. He was a friend of the revolutionary leader Che Guevara. In 1963 he was invited to participate in the debate on reforms under way in Cuba. He subsequently participated in numerous revolutionary meetings round the world, attracting the thunder of Germany, Australia, the United States, Switzerland and France, all of whom closed
His books too would make him famous far beyond Belgium's borders. Books like Marxist Economic Theory were presented at the time as a successful attempt to modernise the thinking of Karl Marx. Mandel taught economics at the
Vrije Universiteit Brussel, where he also studied the structure of capitalism and its crises (La Crise 1974-1978, Flammarion).
In 1984 he told Le Soir "After the liberation, the bourgeoisie, concerned with social peace and reformism, deliberately chose the path of expansion, full employment and social security. Nowadays, they are tempted to return to the ideas and practices of the 19th century, with the secret hope that the weakening of the labour movement by the economic crisis will enable them to avoid paying the price of this operation. In other words, the end of consensus".
At the time of his death, he was working on a book on the relationship between capitalism and criminality.
Advocate of self-management, how did he explain its disastrous results in Yugoslavia or Poland? "The self-management which failed was a system without political democracy"
More than any other cause, Mandel wanted to defend the cause of Trotsky. For over four decades, Mandel demanded of the USSR that it admit that Trotsky was neither a Gestapo spy nor a terrorist, as Stalinist propaganda had claimed.
The militant's last demand before his death was to be buried in Père Lachaise cemetery in Paris, near the wall of the Communards. A family ceremony will be held in Antwerp next week.
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Mandel, a great figure of Trotskyism
Le Monde, France, 22 July 1995 by Laurent Mauduit
International Viewpoint n° 269 — September 1995 29
ONE OF THE GREAT NAMES of post-war Trotskyism has disappeared: the reputed economist Ernest Mandel, leader of the United Secretariat of the Fourth International (of which the French Revolutionary Communist League (LCR) of Alain Krivine is member), died following a heart attack in Brussels on 20 July.
Born 5 April 1922 in Frankfurt, Germany, Mandel's story is much much more than the story of the organisation he was an activist in. Not that he didn't participate in any of its struggles. He participated in the resistance against the Nazi occupation of Belgium, alongside Abraham Leon, author of A Materialist Conception of the Jewish Question. Deported to a labour camp, Mandel managed to escape. After the liberation, he organised one of the currents of the Belgian trades union and socialist movement.
In the following years, his path matches that of his movement. As a supporter of the proletarian revolution against the bourgeoisie and the political revolution against the Stalithe student movement of the 1960's. A professor at the Free University of Brussels, he was involved in every struggle in
He published an increasing number of articles in France-Observateur under the pseudonym Ernest Germain, to show the continued relevance of the Marxist critique of political economy.
The best-known of his many publications are Marxist Economic Theory, translated into 20 languages, and Le troisième age du capitalisme. He was animated by one conviction: the technological revolution, presented by some of his critics as a way out for capitalism in fact only gives the system a passing breath of oxygen, because the massive substitution of dead labour — in other words forced automatization - undermine the very foundations of capitalism, which is governed by the law of value, or in other words by the exploitation of salaried labour.
irnest
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His curious spirit drew him towards many other fields. He was always to be seen in a three-piece suit worthy of a petty-bourgeois, though he played more the role of travelling salesman of the permanent revolution. He was also a passionate reader of police and detective novels, devoted to the point of writing Exquisite Mur-
He was seriously ill for the last two years of his life. During his last visit in France he participated in a debate organised by the review Politis concerning Jacques Kergoat's book on Marceau Pivert.
Se Monde nist bureaucracy, he visits Yugoslavia to show that Tito is not the "fascist" Moscow claims. Later on he is in Cuba, discussing with 'El Che' [Guevara] and advising
After the events of May 1968, which he participated in Mandel was barred from entering France. He was excluded again from 1972 to 1981. But he took a crafty pleasure in playing cat and mouse with the police, holding dozens of secret press conferences in Paris.
Ernest Mandel was much more than one of the great figures of the post-war European far left. He was also an intellectual. His general cultural level was impressive. Which had an effect, not only on his own movement, but on the spirit of
Power, money,
Marxist theory