Ernest Mandel - Böcker

The question of whether 40-60-year Kondratieff long waves in economic growth actually exist has been controversial since the 1920s. The authors of this book apply new methods of time series analysis and report evidence of long waves in the 19th and 20th centuries. In the second section of the book, contributions from Russia, the USA and France show that there is a long wave pattern in the aggregate profit rates of several highly industrialized countries. Although there is still a lot to be discussed about the properties of various profit rate estimates, this research sheds new light on the discussion of the famous Marxian law of the falling tendency of the aggregate profit rate. The third section of this book provides theoretical discussions and attempts at modelling the role of social, economic and technological factors in the long-wave process, besides presenting new data on long-run patterns of labour unrest. While answers to a number of old questions come within reach, interesting new hypotheses emerge.

Was October 1917 a coup d'etat or a social revolution? Writing as both a historian and political activist, Ernest Mandel vigorously reasserts the deep legitimacy of the Russian Revolution. He considers mistakes made by the Bolshevik leadership in 1917-21 and sets out lessons to be learnt.David Mandel's 'Factory Committees and Workers' Control in Petrograd in 1917' draws on Russian-language archives to tell the story from below. Petrograd workers did not dream at first of 'socialist experiments'. Factory committees met fierce resistance from owners, they were driven to take management into their own hands and to seek the nationalisation of industries. Common conceptions about the 'utopian' and 'anarchistic' impulses supposedly behind the October Revolution are reassessed and refuted.The introduction by Paul Le Blanc, provides a new evaluation of the events one century on. He discusses recent scholarship and debates, new ways of comprehending class, the centrality of women and that of ethnicity, race and national identity, as well as Lars Lih's reassessment of the role of Kamenev and Zinoviev.Paul Le Blanc considers 'what went right: the revolution that brought 'bread, peace and land' to millions, and 'what went wrong'. Were the Bolsheviks elitist, sectarian and authoritarian? He assesses what is still relevant today and what is not.

Ernest Mandel's book is a study of Eurocommunism unlike any other. Written in the polemical tradition of Trotsky, its sweep extends well beyond the immediate prospects of the Communist Parties of Western Europe. Mandel traces the long historical process which has transformed the once embattled detachments of the Third International into the constitutionalist formations of "historic compromise" and "union of the people" today. He then goes on to argue that the national roads to socialism of contemporary Eurocommunism are the "bitter fruits of socialism in one country" in the USSR.Mandel's book contains trenchant and documented criticisms of the ideas of Santiago Carrillo in Spain, the economic policies of the PCI in Italy, and the PCF's theories of the State in France. But it also sets these Western developments in the context of European politics as a whole-discussing the Russian response to Carrillo, the organizational attitudes of the CPSU to the Western parties, and the emergence of major dissident currents in Eastern Germany sympathetic to Eurocommunism.From Stalinism to Eurocommunism represents the first systematic and comprehensive critique from the Marxist Left of the new strategy of Western Communism. It can be read as a barometer of the storms ahead in the European labour movement.

Analyses of bureaucratic power and privilege have an academic pedigree but have also long preoccupied socialists. The collapse of communist rule in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe puts to a new test the classical theories concerning the relationship between bureaucracy and class. Power and Money is a timely contribution to this renewal of theory, exploring the social and historical roots of bureaucracy, both within the capitalist state and in workers' mass organizations.Ernest Mandel draws on archival and contemporary accounts in an analysis of both capitalist administration and the ideology and practice of bureaucratic dictatorship in the communist bloc. He measures the actual performance of western and eastern societies against the forecasts of Lenin and Trotsky, Ludwig von Mises and Roberto Michels, or the more recent reflections of Amitai Etzioni and Alvin Gouldner. This lucid study challenges those theories-Stalinist, Weberian or social-democratic-which claim that an autonomous officialdom is a necessary feature of modern societies. It also furnishes a perceptive account of the specific dynamics of communist and post-communist society.

The changes taking place in the Soviet Union under Gorbachev have generated a host of interpretations. In this controversial book, Ernest Mandel shows that commentators have signally failed to provide lasting insight into Soviet society in the age of perestroika. To begin with, most were so dazzled by Gorbachev's charisma and his bold tactics that they failed to investigate the barriers to change which still existed, or to consider the social forces capable of bringing about a revolutionary transformation.Although glasnost has made spectacular advances, the power of the Soviet nomenklatura has so far survived intact. Despite the spread of democratic debate and the growth of nationalist movements, a formidable bureaucracy - based on the top levels of the Party, state administration and security forces - has never relinquished its grip. Mandel argues that, without broad popular involvement and a willingness to concede basic democratic rights like national seIf-determination, the whole project of reform will be doomed. However, he remains optimistic that a newly awakened workers' movement and public opinion may yet seize the initiative and drive the bureaucracy beyond perestroika.Distinguished not only by its original analysis of events which have confounded so many analysts but also by the mass of information on Soviet economic problems, on bureaucratic privilege, and on the forms of worker resistance to which they have given rise, this substantially revised edition will be indispensable reading.

This book presents new methods for the analysis of time series and the identification of long waves. In Part One it is shown that new time series analyses confirm the existence of Kondratieff long waves in economic growth for the 19th and 20th centuries.

In this republication of the 1971 original, Ernest Mandel traces the development of Marx's economic ideas from the Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts to the completion of the Grundrisse. In a series of focused chapters he provides an overview of debates and discussions of subjects that are central to Marxist economic theory. Mandel focuses onMarx's concept of "alienation" which gained much currency among Marxists in the twentieth century, traces the development of debates surrounding the labor theory of value, Marx's writings on communism and "crisis." These debates and discussions started by Marx have not ended and remain evermore pertinent to the present day. These writings are vital not just to academics but also to those who wish to interpret and to change the world.

Late Capitalism is the first major synthesis to have been produced by the contemporary revival of Marxist economics. It represents, in fact, the only systematic attempt so far ever made to combine the general theory of the 'laws of motion' of the capitalist mode of production developed by Marx with the concrete history of capitalism in the twentieth century. A landmark in Marxist economic literature, Late Capitalism is specifically designed to explain the international recession of the 1970s and is an invaluable guide to understanding the nature of the world economy today. This edition includes a new introduction by Cédric Durand assessing the book's continued relevance.

The very scale of the 1939-45 war has often tempted historians to study particular campaigns at the expense of the wider panorama. In this readable and richly detailed history of the conflict, the Belgian scholar Ernest Mandel (author of the acclaimed Late Capitalism) outlines his view that the war was in fact a combination of several distinct struggles and a battle between rival imperialisms for world hegemony. In concise chapters, Mandel examines the role played by technology, science, logistics, weapons and propaganda. Throughout, he weaves a consideration of the military strategy of the opposing states into his analytical narrative of the war and its results.

In this revised and expanded edition of Long Waves of Capitalist Development, Ernest Mandel seeks to explain the underlying determinants of the booms and slumps of the trade cycle. Mandel first establishes that there have indeed been twenty- to twenty-five-year-long waves of capitalist expansion and contraction-and that these have persisted in the period since World War II. He then assembles evidence to show that while broad tendencies in the rate of profit have been decisive in triggering downturns, the ingredients necessary for a new upswing are, by contrast, generally political and extra-economic in character. He thereby demonstrates the falsity of neo-liberal doctrines, according to which the free market will itself generate a new formula for balanced and sustainable expansion.Long Waves of Capitalist Development not only offers a penetrating analysis of the ills that have afflicted contemporary capitalist economies but also surveys, and takes forward, one of the classical debates of modern economic history.

Leon Trotsky has become one of the twentieth century's most enduring political legends. Joining the Bolsheviks on the eve of the 1917 revolution he played a vital role as Lenin's right-hand man in the insurrection and went on to lead the Red Army to victory in the ensuing civil war. Having lost to Stalin the struggle for power which followed Lenin's death, he became an implacable opponent of the dictator over the next three decades-a stance which cost him his political career, his citizenship and ultimately his life. A charismatic orator, a prolific author and a political philosopher whose ideas continue to resonate in the wake of the collapse of the Stalinist regimes of Eastern Europe, Trotsky made an indelible mark on world history.Ernest Mandel, one of the foremost leaders of the international movement which Trotsky founded before the Second World War and an influential economist and political theorist, is uniquely placed to review the life and work of Trotsky. In Trotsky as Alternative he presents a portrait of his subject which is appreciative yet critical. He shows that Trotsky's contribution to the history of the twentieth century was primarily political rather than sociological, and this in a practical as well as a theoretical sense. He locates Trotsky's theory of uneven and combined development as a crucial tool whose explanatory power of the mechanisms of world imperialism is as relevant to the late capitalism of the 1990s as it was to the first three decades of the century when it was formulated.Ranging across Trotsky's struggles against Stalin's bureaucracy, his formulation of an alternative economic strategy, his theories relating to the Third World, fascism and the national question, his extensive literary criticism, and concluding with a moving assessment of an extraordinary life, this book is a fitting testimony to a man who, in Mandel's words, "will be judged by history as the most important strategist for the socialist movement."

Var andra världskriget en kamp mellan demokrati och fascism? Mellan godhet och ondska? Handlade kriget om militär snillrikhet och individuellt hjältemod? Var det en strid mellan personligheter? Den belgiske marxisten och ekonomen Ernest Mandel (1923 -1995) låter sig inte nöja med någon av dessa förklaringar. Med materialistisk historieskrivning som verktyg analyserar han i denna bok (först publicerad på engelska 1986) kriget som en kamp om världsherraväldet. Han härleder kriget ur det imperialistiska världssystemet, och visar hur ekonomin, industrins utveckling och olika klassers positioner bestämde dess förlopp och resultat. Och han skisserar sambandet med den kalla krigsvärld som växte fram ur kriget. Inte minst lyfter Mandel fram andra världskrigets mest glömda aktörer: de folkliga motståndsmän och -kvinnor från Jugoslavien till Kina, från Italien till Indokina, som ville gå längre i sin kamp än världens ledare ville tillåta. I den svenska utgåvan publiceras även en senare text av samma författare om Förintelsen och dess samhälleliga och ideologiska förutsättningar.