Ernest Mandel - Definition and Overview

Ernest Mandel, also known as Germain, (April 5, 1923 - July 20, 1995) was a Belgian Jew recruited to the Fourth International. During World War II, he survived imprisonment in a concentration camp. After the war, he became a leader of both the Belgian Trotskyists and of the Fourth International alongside Michel Pablo. When the FI split in 1953, the two men were the senior leaders of the International Secretariat of the Fourth International.

In 1963 he led the ISFI into a fusion with the Socialist Workers Party (USA). This regroupment was known as the United Secretariat of the Fourth International, and until his death Mandel remained its most prominent leader.

Along with his revolutionary position, he was editor of La Gauche, a reformist newspaper in Belgium, a member of the economic studies commission of the General Confederation of Labour of Belgium and a lecturer at the Free University of Belgium.

Partial Bibliography

• Marxist Economic Theory. Monthly Review Press (1969)
• The Formation of the Economic Thought of Karl Marx, 1843 to Capital. Monthly Review Press (1971)
• Late Capitalism
• Long Waves of Capitalist Development