Date: Mon, 16 Sep 1996 08:14:55 -0400 (EDT)
From: Justin Schwartz <jschwart-AT-freenet.columbus.oh.us>
Subject: Re: the state



All the reasons you give are why I respect Mandel. By "orthodox" I mean
defended a conception of Marxism and socialism that hewed very closly to
the main lines of the Founder's thinking, although never dogmatically and
always reflectively and intelligently. He was orthodox, but no
fundamentalist. I wish we had a million like him. (For all my
disagreements) --jks

On Sun, 15 Sep 1996, Gerald Levy wrote:

> 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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