Date: Sun, 15 Sep 1996 18:53:01 -0400 (EDT)
From: Gerald Levy <glevy-AT-pratt.edu>
Subject: Re: the state


Hugh Rodwell wrote:

> Justin writes:
> >Ernest Mandel, who
> >is as orthodox as you like
> Where did you get this from?

(1) Ernest Mandel WAS rather that IS, ... alas.

(2) Was Mandel "orthodox"?  Orthodox WHAT?
    I think that Mandel considered himself to be part of a tradition that 
went back to Marx (and included many others), but in what sense is that 
"orthodox"?  *If* one is to suggest that "orthodox" Marxists identify 
*uncritically* with Marx's writings, then Mandel -- and Kautsky, Lenin, 
and Trotsky (to name a few) -- could not be said to be orthodox. For 
instance, Lenin and Trotsky (along with the rest of the Bolshevik 
theoreticians and just about all of the German and Austrian Social 
Democratic theoreticians) held to either a disproportionality and/or 
underconsumptionist theory of crisis -- yet this is not an "orthodox" 
(i.e. literal) reading of Marx.

(3) Mandel, like the late Paul Mattick Sr., was influenced 
intellectually by Henryk Grossmann and Roman Rosdolsky (both of whom were 
innovative writers). Unlike Mattick, however, Mandel held essentially to a 
multi-causal theory of crisis that embraced the expression "laws of 
motion" (even though, Marx referred to the "law of motion" -- singular, 
not plural).  

(4) In his writings on political economy, Mandel was an *innovative* 
writer who attempted to grasp political economy in a way that went 
*beyond* what Marx had written (see his _Late Capitalism_, for instance). 
This was something that he should be commended for since too many 
"Marxists" have become "fundamentalists" -- which brings to mind Marx's 
statement that he was not a Marxist (orthodox or otherwise).

Jerry


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