Socialist Democracy Quotes by Ernest Mandel

For Marx, 'pure' economic theory, that is economic theory which abstracts from a specific social structure, is impossible.

— Ernest Mandel

The only conclusion you can draw from the real historical movement is that by and large, in day-to-day life, what Lenin called trade union…

— Ernest Mandel

Socialist democracy is not, a luxury and its need is not limited to the most advanced industrial countries.

— Ernest Mandel

And you cannot have a socialist revolution commandeered from the top, ordered around by some omniscient leader or group of leaders

— Ernest Mandel

Periodically, the workers do revolt against bourgeois society, not by a hundred, five hundred, or a thousand, but by the millions.

— Ernest Mandel

Furthermore, there is absolutely no contradiction between the separate organizations of revolutionary vanguard militants and their participation in the mass organizations of the working…

— Ernest Mandel

We do not believe that the Marxist program, which embodies the continuity of the experience of the actual class struggle and real revolutions of…

— Ernest Mandel

You can have relatively high levels of class consciousness with a lower level of class militancy than one would have expected.

— Ernest Mandel

Socialist democracy is not a luxury but an absolute, essential necessity for overthrowing capitalism and building socialism.

— Ernest Mandel

Revolution is not a goal in itself.

— Ernest Mandel

Otherwise we get off the track and we do not fulfil the historical role which we want to fulfil: to help the masses, the…

— Ernest Mandel

For us, Marxism is always open because there are always new xperiences, there are always new facts, including facts about the past, which have…

— Ernest Mandel