Mandel revises Marx

OVER THE last few years, the Pabloite chief Ernest Mandel has acquired something of a reputation in middle-class circles as a "Marxist economist'® His two-volume Marxist Economic Theory' has been translated into several languages and the 'New Left Review' and others have taken up his writings on the nature of contemporary capitalism.

In fact there is nothing "talented' or 'original' in his thought, as his friends claim.

His writings not only suffer from fundamental theoretical weaknesses; they serve to show that there can be no 'scientific' political economy from one who rejects the revolutionary role of the working class and the struggle to construct a leadership of that class.

Mandel's pamphlet 'An Introduction to Marxist Economic Theory' has recently been reissued by Merit Publishers, publishing house of the American Socialist Workers Party (SWP) who are in political solidarity with Mandel.

Objective

A recent issue of 'Militant', organ of the SWP, recommended the pamphlet as the hant sunilahla intradintion +n best avalable murouucuon l the principles of Marxist This Mandel denies. By political economy.

Before dealing with Mandel, indicating not merely that we may perhaps recall Marx's a series of important purpose in writing "Capital. technical changes took place Marx aimed, in his great work, to demonstrate the The industrial revolution of objective nature and revolu- the 18th and 19th centuries tionary consequences of the was one which completed the Marx showed that the logic of the class struggle under capitalism was the taking of power by the working class.

contradiction between the developing productive forces under capitalism—of which the working class was the most revolutionary-and the socia relations of production.

It was this objective conflict which made the working class —the sellers of labour power -the only consistently revolutionary force in modern society.

Marx showed that the logic of the class struggle under capitalism was the taking of power by the working class.

Socialism was not a Utopia —a vision of a new society— but an objective necessity which arose out of the material struggles within capitalism. Marx in 'Capital' demonstrates the scientific and objective content of the struggle for socialism.

Lenin and later Marxists in the study of the imperialist stage of capitalist development went on to show that by the itali of the last meter athistorical mission, that it was no longer a progressive force and that the epoch of proletarian revolution had now arrived.

We start with these basic points because • we shall find that Mandel has rejected both of these fundamental principles.

We shall deal in this article with Mandel's rejection of Lenin and Trotsky's analysis imperialism.

In the current period of expansion,' he says, 'we are witnessing an accelerated technical progress, a genuine technological revolution, for which the expression "second industrial revolution" or "third industrial revolution" hardly seems adequate. We find ourselves, in fact, before an almost uninterrupted transformation of the techniques of production.' Mandel's use of the term 'industrial revolution' to describe post-war capitalist changes is no accident.

Leadership

One of the basic principles of Trotskyism and Leninism) is that capitalism in its imperialist stage is moribund and decadent.

In this phase of capitalist development there can be no systematic development of the productive forces.

The Transitional Programme of the Fourth International makes this point concrete. 'Mankind's productive forces stagnate.' Capitalism survived after 1917 not because of its inherent strength, but only because the working class has been unable to resolve its historical crisis of leadership.

speaking oI ar 'industrial revolution' after 1945 he is more rapidly. establishment of the power of capitalism over the whole period and political structure of Britain.

A new class, the working class, emerged as a result of these changes and the remnants of the old feudal order were finally destroyed.

Mandel is likening the Ernest Mandel: Rejects fundamental principles of Marxism. changes after the war qualitative changes.

But if changes of this nature have taken place, wasn't Lenin wrong to designate imperialism as the highest stage of capitalism? Surely 'neo-capitlism' (his. term for these post-war changes) is a new stage, according to Mandel.

In his latest pamphlet 'The Inconsistencies State Capitalism' (a reply to the State Capitalist attack on his book) Mandel is forced to face these issues.

Does this view of a new industrial revolution' he asks, 'overthrow the classical Marxist-Leninist conception of imperialism as the final stage of capitalism?

It does not, no more than the appearance of monopoly capitalism overthrew the classical Marxist conception of competition being the driving force of capitalism.

It was not that imperialism merely reproduces the features of earlier capitalism on a higher level.

It was a stage which had had grown organically out of capitalism in which many of the characteristics of 19th century capitalism were by this century turned into their opposite, e.g., the relationship between finance and industrial capital, the development of monopoly out of competition and, crucially, the transtormation of capitalism as a gressive force into one which was now a complete fetter on the further the productive forces.

Mandel openly admits

opposition to Trotsky and Transitional Programme.

'In any case, the key aspect of this development to understand the oversimplification of the assumption (of which even Lenin and Trotsky were at moments victim) that the structural crisis of the world capitalist system, which undoubtedly began with the First World War. and the Russian Revolution, somehow is identical with an absolute in the development of the productive forces.

'And each time, when a period of revolutionary upsurge of the working class in the industrial imperialist countries ends in defeat, this creates a situation in which the economic recovery is not only possible but inevitable for the imperialist bourgeoisie.' (My 'emphasis. P.J.)

For Mandel, the defeats of the 1930s—defeats inflicted on the European working class by the counter - revolutionary politics of the Stalinism, which Mandel and his followers are now courting-were merely 'events' which created a situation in which capitalism was given a new lease of life.

For the Fourth International these defeats, and the crisis of leadership which they exposed, have been the only means by which capitalism has survived.

Transitional Thistin the Progrim of the Programme which Mandel rejects.

Mandel also abandons Lenin when he writes:

'It seems obvious to me that the period 1913 to 1940 was one of these long-term cycles of stagnation in capitalist production, during which all the successive cycles from the crisis of 1920 to 1929 were marked by particularly severe depressions because of the fact that the long-term trend was one of stagnation' Boom For Mandel, the inter-war period was not a manifestation of a crisis of imperialism, but merely a period of long-term capitalist stagnation which has been replaced by a similarly long-term period of expansion.

Because Mandel rejects Lenin's conception of the epoch and the tasks for Marxists which flow from that conception, he is unable to analyse the nature of the postwar boom.

•. the 1940-1965 cycle, 1940-1970 cycle has, on

*The third phase [NB] in the history of capitalism reproduces most of the basic features of imperialism on a higher scale, just as monopoly capitalism reproduces capitalism on a higher scale.' This is sheer trickery with words-Lenin was talking about imperialism as the last stage of capitalism. the contrary, been characterized by .. expansion and because in this expansion the margin for negotiation and discussion between the bourgeoisie and the working class has been enlarged, the possibility has been created for strengthening the system on the basis of granting concessions to the workers, a policy which is being practiced on an international scale in western Europe and North America, and may even extend to several countries in southern Europe in the near future.' (My emphasis. P.J.)

Like all petty bourgeois, Mandel does not start from the contradictions of capitialsm during the boom.

Operating from purely surface impressions he has sought to make Marxism respectable in the eyes of the trade union and labour bureaucracy whose position was temporarily strengthened during the period of expansion.

But if capitalism was not only strengthened but entered a new phase ('neo-capitalism') after the war then all prospect of social revolution has vanished. This is the logic of Mandel's position. And he says as much:

"The working class is therefore confronted with a fundamental choice between policy of reform in the neo-capitalist structure, which implies an integration of the trade unions in the capitalist system so that they are transformed into gendarmes for the maintenance of social peace during the amortization phase of fixed capital, and a basically anti-capitalist policy [not socialist policy NBJ, with a programme of short-term anticapitalist reforms.' In other words, the choice betore the working class is reformism or ... "structural reformism'!

By But much more important than even this reformist conclusion (which is identical to that adopted by the most right-wing element within Communist Party) is Mandel's the tatan rejection of the basic Marxist theory of historical materialism, which is implicit in this position.

If the contradictions of capitalism are such that the working class is no longer driven to revolution to solve its basic problems then what is the material basis for the struggle for socialism?

This is the choice Marxists, as presented Mandel.

'Either one stands squarely inside the framework of the capitalist system on a completely logical and consistent basis, and consequently accepts the fact that the only way to guarantee a constant increase in investment and industrial upsurge based on such increases in private investments is through increasing the rate of profit; or one refuses, takes the socialist position, rejecting the road of increasing the rate of profit, and advocates the only alternative road which is the development of a powerful public sector in industry, alongside the private sector. This is the road out of the capitalist framework and its logic and passes over to the arena of VIVA ця глась what we call structural anticapitalist reforms' (My emphasis. P.J.)

Mandel's reformist position is the perfectly logical outcome of his long opposition to the principles of Trotskyism, his attempt to turn it into an adjunct of the Stalinists and According to Mandel capitalism can now devise policies which guarantee a stable rate of profit and therefore a stable rate of expansion.

Whether one rejects such a 'solution' is for him merely a moral, individual question. tradictions of capitalist society.

Socialism has, at the hands Marxists identify themselves of this revisionist, been trans- with this material and objecformed into a Utopian dream tive struggle and dedicate their to be dangled before the work- lives to the building of a party ing class to keep them happy. for the taking of power by As we have stressed, for moral choice which flows from Marx and all those who have their 'sympathy' with the lot followed him, the taking of of the working class, but bepower by the working class cause the further development arose out of the material con- of the productive forces and rowing the forward section of the S.S. Manhattan in preparatio or her voyage through the North-West Passage. of other raw materials as well.

Preparation is already well under way for the building of a pipeline to carry the oil all the way across Alaska-from the Prudhoe Bay area in the north to Valdez, a year-round hence man's control over nature can only take place through this revolution.

In other words, our struggle with Pabloism and with Mandel was not and is not a conflict over "immediate' issues alone Involved in the break with Marxism which Mandel and company made in 1953 was a ice-free port on Alaska's south coast.

The S.S. Manhattan, a 150,000-ton tanker hastily complete break from the whole conception of scientific socialism and historical materialism.

It is from this fundamental revision of the very theoretical foundations of the revolutionary movement that we must understand all Mandel's weakness, mistakes and distortions the field of political economy.