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…

— 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…

— Ernest Mandel

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

— 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…

— Ernest Mandel

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

— Ernest Mandel

Factions are a sign of illness in a party.

— Ernest Mandel

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

— Ernest Mandel

There has been hardly a single year since 1917, and in a certain sense since 1905, without a revolution somewhere in the…

— Ernest Mandel

Only under conditions of revolutionary crises do you have the highest level of self-organization; this is the Soviet type of organization, which…

— Ernest Mandel

Mistakes in themselves are unavoidable.

— Ernest Mandel

Precisely because Marx was convinced that the cause of the proletariat was of decisive importance for the whole future of mankind, he…

— Ernest Mandel

I do not believe in self-proclaimed parties.

— Ernest Mandel

There is a process of social and of political differentiation going on in the real working class all the time.

— Ernest Mandel

On the contrary, history generally confirms that the more conscious and the better you are organized in vanguard organizations, the more constructively…

— Ernest Mandel

You need a vanguard organization in order to overcome the dangerous potential brought about by the uneven development of class militancy and…

— Ernest Mandel

The conclusion you can draw from these characteristics is that you have an uneven development of class activity and an uneven development…

— Ernest Mandel

There are no conditions in which we subordinate the interests of the class as a whole to the interests of any sect,…

— Ernest Mandel

Only if you bring together the experience of the concrete struggles conducted by the real masses in the three sectors of the…

— Ernest Mandel