Ernest Mandel Was One of the 20th Century’s Greatest Marxist Thinkers
Born on this day a century ago, Ernest Mandel was one of the major political thinkers of his age. From his teenage activism in the anti-Nazi resistance to his final days, Mandel was an uncompromising defender of socialist ideals and working-class interests.
Economist Ernest Mandel attends a meeting of the International Communist League. (Giorgio Piredda / Sygma via Getty Images)
The Belgian socialist intellectual and activist Ernest Mandel was born one hundred years ago today on April 5, 1923. Mandel was a tireless agitator and scholar who wrote some of the most significant works of Marxist theory during the second half of the twentieth century.
Mandel is perhaps best remembered today for his book Late Capitalism, which popularized a now familiar term. The critic Fredric Jameson drew heavily upon Mandel’s economic writings in his theorization of postmodernism, and “late capitalism” has become a journalistic cliché for cultural analysis.
Mandel himself, who once wrote a social history of crime novels, might have smiled at this curious appropriation of his work. But his overriding goal was to challenge the power structures of capitalism rather than analyze its cultural side effects.
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