Ernest Ezra Mandel (Dutch:[ˈɛrnəstmɑnˈdɛl]; 5 April 1923 – 20 July 1995), also known by various pseudonyms such asErnest Germain,Pierre Gousset,Henri Vallin,Walter, was a BelgianMarxian economist,Trotskyist activist and theorist, andHolocaust survivor. He fought in theunderground resistance against theNazis during theoccupation of Belgium.[1]
Born inFrankfurt, Mandel was recruited to theBelgian section of the internationalTrotskyist movement, theFourth International, in his youth inAntwerp. His parents, Henri and Rosa Mandel, wereJewish emigres fromPoland,[2] the former a member ofRosa Luxemburg's andKarl Liebknecht'sSpartacist League. The beginning of Mandel's period at university was interrupted when theGerman occupying forces closed the university.
DuringWorld War II, while still a teenager, he joined the Belgian Trotskyist organisation alongsideAbraham Leon andMartin Monath. He twice escaped after being arrested in the course ofresistance activities, and survived imprisonment in the Germanconcentration camp atDora. After the war, he became the youngest member of theFourth International secretariat, alongsideMichel Pablo and others. He gained respect as a prolific journalist with a clear and lively style, as an orthodox Marxist theoretician, and as a talenteddebater.[citation needed] He wrote for numerous media outlets in the 1940s and 1950s includingHet Parool,Le Peuple,l'Observateur andAgence France-Presse. At the height of theCold War, he publicly defended the merits ofMarxism in debates with thesocial democrat and futureDutch premierJoop den Uyl.
His first wife was Gisela Scholtz (1935—1982), whom he met in 1965. His second wife was Anne Sprimont, whom he met after Gisela Scholtz's death.[3]
After the 1946 World Congress of the Fourth International, Mandel was elected into the leadership of theInternational Secretariat of the Fourth International. In line with its policy, he joined theBelgian Socialist Party where he was a leader of amilitant socialist tendency, becoming editor of the socialist newspaperLa Gauche (and writing for itsFlemish sister publication,Links), a member of the economic studies commission of theGeneral Federation of Belgian Labour and an associate of the BelgiansyndicalistAndré Renard. He and his comrades were expelled from the Socialist Party not long after theBelgian general strike of 1960–61 for opposing its coalition with theChristian Democrats and its acceptance of anti-strike legislation.
He was one of the main initiators of the 1963 reunification between the International Secretariat, which he led along withMichel Pablo,Pierre Frank andLivio Maitan, and the majority of theInternational Committee of the Fourth International, a public faction led byJames Cannon'sSocialist Workers Party that had withdrawn from the FI in 1953. The regroupment formed thereunified Fourth International (also known as the USFI or USec). Until his death in 1995, Mandel remained the most prominent leader and theoretician of both the USFI and of its Belgian section, theRevolutionary Workers' League.[citation needed]
Until the publication of his massive bookMarxist Economic Theory in French in 1962, Mandel's Marxist articles were written mainly under a variety of pseudonyms and his activities as Fourth Internationalist were little known outside the left. After publishingMarxist Economic Theory, Mandel travelled toCuba and worked closely withChe Guevara on economic planning, after Guevara (who was fluent in French) had read the new book and encouraged Mandel's interventions.[4]
He resumed his university studies and graduated from what is now theÉcole Pratique des Hautes Études inParis in 1967. Only from 1968 did Mandel become well known as a public figure and Marxist politician, touring student campuses in Europe and America giving talks on socialism,imperialism and revolution.
Although officially barred fromWest Germany (and several other countries at various times, including the United States,[5] France,Switzerland, andAustralia), he gained a PhD from theFree University of Berlin in 1972 (where he taught for some months), published asLate Capitalism, and he subsequently gained a lecturer position at theFree University of Brussels.
Mandel gained mainstream attention in the United States following the rejection of his visa by Attorney GeneralJohn N. Mitchell against the suggestion of Secretary of StateWilliam P. Rogers in 1969.[6] Attorney General Mitchell acted under theImmigration and Nationality Act of 1952 (also known as the McCarran–Walter Act). This act states that those who "advocate the economic, international and governmental doctrines of world Communism" and "who write or public any written or printed matter advocating or teaching the economic international and governmental doctrines of world Communism" can have their visas barred. Mandel had been granted visas in 1962 and 1968 but had violated the conditions of his second visit unknowingly by asking for donations for the defence in the legal cases of French demonstrators.[6] As a result of his rejected visa, a number of American scholars came out to vouch for his right to visit the United States. They attempted to highlight that he did not affiliate with theCommunist Party and had publicly spoken out against the invasion ofCzechoslovakia in 1968.[6]
In 1971, a Federal Court in New York voted to void Mitchell's decision, stating that the United States could not bar a visitor, but on 29 June 1972, the Supreme Court ruled inKleindienst v. Mandel, 6 to 3, that Mitchell had acted within his job description in rejecting the visa.
In 1978, he delivered theAlfred Marshall Lectures at theUniversity of Cambridge, on the topic of thelong waves of capitalist development.[7]
Mandel campaigned on behalf of numerous dissident left-wing intellectuals suffering political repression, advocated for the cancellation of theThird World debt, and, in theMikhail Gorbachev era, spearheaded a petition for the rehabilitation of the accused in theMoscow Trials of 1936–1938. When in his seventies, he travelled toRussia to defend his vision ofdemocratic socialism and continued to support the idea of Revolution in the West until his death.[8]
In total, he published approximately 2,000 articles and around 30 books during his life in German, Dutch, French, English and other languages, which were in turn translated into many more languages.[citation needed] During the Second World War, he was one of the editors of the underground newspaper,Het Vrije Woord. In addition, he edited or contributed to many books, maintained a voluminous correspondence, and was booked for speaking engagements worldwide. He considered it his mission to transmit the heritage of classical Marxist thought, deformed by the experience ofStalinism and theCold War, to a new generation. And to a large extent he did influence a generation of scholars and activists in their understanding of important Marxist concepts. In his writings, perhaps most striking is the tension betweencreative independent thinking and the desire for a strict adherence toMarxist doctrinal orthodoxy. Due to his commitment to socialist democracy, he has even been characterised as"Luxemburgist".[9]
Mandel died at his home inBrussels in 1995 after suffering from aheart attack.[10]
Mandel is probably best remembered for being a populariser of basic Marxist ideas, for his books onlate capitalism andLong-Wave theory, and for his moral-intellectual leadership in theTrotskyist movement. Despite critics claiming that he was "too soft onStalinism", Mandel remained a classic rather than aconservativeTrotskyist: writing about theSovietbureaucracy but also why capitalism had not suffered a death agony. Hislate capitalism was late in the sense of delayed rather than near-death. He still believed though that this system hadn't overcome its tendency to crises. A leading German Marxist,Elmar Altvater, stated that Mandel had done much for the survival of Marxism in the German Federal Republic.[11]
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