Ernest
Mandel died on the 20th of July 1995, in the middle
of the last decade of the 20th century. This was a
time of ebb for the world Marxist movement: the neoliberal
offensive of global capitalism was so pervasive that, even
though they owed their election to a backlash against its
effects, Clinton was continuing Reagan’s work and European
Social Democrats were soon to carry on what their conservative
competitors had started. The Stalinist states of the former
Soviet bloc had collapsed in the most striking and least
expected illustration — in reverse — of the “domino
theory.” A vast array of political ideologues sharing the view
that the USSR and Marxism were as inextricably tied together as
the Vatican and Catholicism — whether they hated Moscow or
were among its fans and supporters — had proclaimed that Marx,
this time, was really dead.
This
political and ideological context weighed heavily on the
reception of Mandel’s death. There was a natural tendency to
see in him mainly a representative of a generation
overdetermined by living through the experience of the Soviet
Union — people born in the early years of the Russian
“communist” regime and passing away at the time of its final
demise. Mandel could thus be easily perceived as a
representative of a specifically 20th-century Marxism
whose main trends were very much concerned with the Soviet
Union, whether supportively or critically. Those wishing to
carry on a Marxist-inspired fight against capitalism were
advocating a return to Marx (who, of course, was alive and
kicking, as everyone noticed fairly quickly). For some, this
meant more or less leaping past the legacy of both “Soviet
Marxism” and its critics, while others sought to combine a
new-look Marx with brands of critical philosophical thought that
were as remote from the issue of the USSR as they were from the
actual class struggle — and therefore unaffected by the great
historical shift.
In
reality, any view confining Ernest Mandel’s legacy to a
chapter in the history of Marxism that is related to the
existence of the Soviet Union can only stem from sheer ignorance
of his writings. For however one rates Mandel’s numerous
contributions on the Soviet Union — which actually could be
deemed the least original part of his work, as they were devoted
in large part to an orthodox defence of Trotsky’s analysis —
these were but a small fraction of his voluminous body of
writings. Ernest Mandel always protested energetically — and
rightly so — against any attempt at defining the theoretical
and political profile of the international movement he inspired,
and hence his own profile, as mainly — if not merely —
“anti-Stalinist.” He always insisted that the most essential part of the fight he waged with
his comrades was against capitalism, and that Stalinism was a
much more ephemeral phenomenon than capitalism.
The
truth of the matter is that if the “return to Marx” is to be
considered as the defining feature of modern-day Marxism, then
Ernest Mandel is the most relevant of late Marxists. The main
body of Mandel’s work is in fact based on a direct
re-appropriation and reappraisal of original Marxism. Many of
his main theoretical works fall into this category, especially Marxist
Economic Theory, The
Formation of the Economic Thought of Karl Marx and the
introductions to the Penguin edition of the three volumes of
Marx’s Capital.
Mandel thus established himself as one of the key modern
interpreters of Marx’s economic theory, and no serious
“return to Marx” — in the economic sphere at the very
least — could spare itself the obligation of reading Mandel as
a most useful and informative companion to Marx’s economic
thought.
If
Mandel had only written the above-mentioned works, his relevance
to modern-day Marxism would already be obvious. But he did much
more than that: Ernest Mandel was the author of what Perry
Anderson, the most knowledgeable practitioner of the history of
Marxist ideas, has described in his
Considerations on Western Marxism as “the first
theoretical analysis of the global development of the capitalist
mode of production since the Second World War, conceived within
the framework of classical Marxist categories.” As a matter of
fact, Late Capitalism, Mandel’s masterpiece, though it was not the first
attempt at interpreting the dynamics of post-Second World War
capitalism, is the first — and to this day the only —attempt
to deal with this daunting task in a comprehensive manner.
Mandel strove to update Marx’s categories and use them to
analyse not the economic sphere alone, but also the social,
political and ideological spheres — veritably producing an
analysis of the post- Second World War “capitalist mode of
production” in the most inclusive sense of this Marxist
formula.
Moreover,
Mandel developed key instruments for the analysis of the stage
that global capitalism entered after the long post-war boom,
especially through the crucial role he played in rehabilitating
and updating the theory of the “long waves” of capitalist
development. He also formulated a major analysis of the nature
of the protracted recession of global capitalism that has been
in progress since the 1970s. His interpretation is one of the
most stimulating and serious attempts at explaining the
historical dynamics of global capitalism over the long haul, and
thus one that could only be ignored at the cost of missing a
crucial piece of Marxist theoretical discussion in economics.
One of Mandel’s most important contributions in this regard
consisted in putting a very great emphasis on class struggle and
forms of bourgeois rule as major factors in the historical
dynamics of the capitalist economies.
He
rightly saw that the success of capitalist efforts to impose a
new form of (de)regulation on the global economy — what is now
commonly referred to as capitalist “globalization” — would
depend largely on the balance of social forces. With his eye on
the European fraction of global capitalism, he concluded the
last of his books to come out before his death, the updated 1995
edition of Long Waves of
Capitalist Development, with the following, still very
relevant prognosis:
If
long periods of prosperity create more favourable conditions for
compromise and “consensus,” long periods of depression
favour conflicts in which all contenders refuse to make
important concessions. Not successful regulation but growing
contradictions and strife tend to prevail.
So
there will be no “soft landing” from the long depression,
only business cycles upturns followed by new recessions, with a
steady increase in unemployment and long-term average rates of
growth much lower than those of the “postwar boom.”
Mandel,
most faithful in this regard to Marx, regarded the class
struggle as a major factor in economic history and prognosis,
instead of producing a Marxist adaptation of the bourgeois
classical economics’ belief in the omnipotence of the
“invisible hand” of market forces or of the mercantilists’
vision of a world economy where contending states are the
determining factor. He shared Marx’s vision because like Marx
he was himself deeply immersed in the class struggle: Mandel was
as far removed from armchair Marxism as anyone could be. He was
a dedicated militant of the workers movement throughout his
life, devoting the major part of his time to political
intervention in the actual movement in various ways.
It
was unfortunate that Mandel did not live long enough to witness
the rise of the new global movement against neoliberalism and
imperialist wars. Had he still been with us and in good health,
there can be no doubt that he would have contributed powerfully
to building the movement, bringing to it not only his immense
erudition and experience, but also his unquenchable
revolutionary enthusiasm. In many ways, he would have been very
much in tune with the new movement and the new wave of youth
radicalization, as he was so fully in tune with the 1968 wave at
a time when he was already 45 years old.
Ernest
Mandel’s legacy is actually much more in harmony with the
young component of the new global movement than many of its
older components are. This is because his revolutionary
commitment was always deeply ethical: far from the cynical view
of the world of bureaucrats and professional grafters,
Mandel’s inspiration was highly ethical. His revolutionary
humanism — a characteristic that he shared with that icon of
juvenile revolutionary ardour that he came to befriend and with
whom he also shared a first name, Ernesto Che Guevara — was
one of the defining features of Mandel’s personality and
theoretical production.
Moreover,
he was very much in harmony with the younger generation insofar
as freedom and democracy were among the highest values he
adhered to. In this regard Mandel was probably, among Marxists
of the second half of the 20th century, one of the
closest spiritually to the woman he admired profoundly and who
has stood the test of time admirably: Rosa Luxemburg. Any person
familiar with Mandel’s political writings knows that he was in
many ways a “Luxemburgist,” not only in his deep belief in
the revolutionary potential of the masses, but also in his
intensely felt internationalism and his conviction that
democratic freedoms are as necessary to the revolutionary
movement as breathable air is to human beings.
Ernest
Mandel is an indispensable source for the development of a 21st-century
Marxism.
29
June 2005
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