Full Description
The first comprehensive overview of the theoretical and political contributions of Belgian Trotskyist, Ernest Mandel.
Ernest Mandel (1923-1995) was one of the best-known Marxist scholars of the second half of the twentieth century. He participated in the underground resistance to the Nazi occupation of Belgium, became a leading member of the Fourth International, and his books on capitalist economics, bureaucracies in the workers' movement, and power and socialist strategy were translated into dozens of languages.
In Against Capitalism and Bureaucracy, Manuel Kellner examines Mandel's life and work, finding that a red thread of democratic self-organization of workers ran through all of his thinking. Kelnner argues that this insistence on working class activity, and Mandel's work in general, remain of paramount importance for the debates on a socialist alternative in the twenty-first century.
Contents
Foreword
Introduction
1 Theory and Practice
1 Occupational Ban and Refusal of Entry 1972
2 Captured by the Nazis
3 Role Model Abraham Leon
4 Political Work in the Belgian Workers' Movement
5 Role in the Fourth International and Contribution to Theory
2 Critique of Contemporary Capitalism
1 Mandel's Historical-Genetic Critique of Capitalism
2 Mandel's Contribution to Marxist Crisis Theory
3 Late Capitalism
4 Long Waves of Capitalist Development
5 Worldwide Inequality
3 Socialism: The Utopian Dimension in Mandel's Work
1 The Free Association of Producers: A Stateless, Classless Society
2 Socialist Council Democracy and Transition to Socialism
3 The Material Prerequisites for Universal Emancipation
4 Critique of Bureaucracy
1 Mandel's Explanation and Critique of Bureaucracy in the Workers' Movement
2 Critique of Stalinism
3 Breaking up Stalinist Monolithism and the 'Socialist Camp'
4 The Temptation of Substitutionism: The Roots of Surrogate Politics
5 Socialist Strategy
1 Prefigurative Forms of the New Society: Mass Strike and Self-Organisation from below
2 Strategy of Transitional Demands
3 The Dual Character of the Trade Unions
4 Class Consciousness and Building Revolutionary Parties
5 Critique of Reformism and United Front Policy
6 Permanent Revolution and the International Dimension of Socialist Strategy
6 Emancipation and Social Catastrophe
1 Mandel on Trotsky's Theory of Fascism
2 Mandel and the Holocaust
7 Evaluation and Prospects
1 Openness and Coherence: A Field of Tension
2 The Revolutionary Potential of Western Europe
3 Reaction to Gorbachev
4 World Historical Rupture 1989-1991
5 Weaknesses of the Concept of 'Bureaucratised Workers' States'
6 Historical Determinism
7 Karl Marx's 'Categorical Imperative'
8 Aporias of Marginality: Mandel's 'Last Word' on Sectarianism
9 The Self-Organisation of the Working Class
Eyewitness Testimony (Tape Recordings from the Author's Own Archive)
Bibliography
Index
