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For Marx, 'pure' economic theory, that is economic theory which abstracts from a specific social structure, is impossible.

Ernest Mandel

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Ernest Mandel
Age: 72 †
Born: 1923
Born: April 5
Died: 1995
Died: July 20
Economist
Journalist
Philosopher
Politician
Resistance Fighter
Teacher
University Teacher
Writer
Frankfurt/Main
Ernest Ezra Mandel
Structure
Pure
Theory
Economic
Impossible
Social
Abstracts
Marx
Specific

More quotes by Ernest Mandel

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There are no conditions in which we subordinate the interests of the class as a whole to the interests of any sect, any chapel, any separate organization.
Ernest Mandel
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Precisely because Marx was convinced that the cause of the proletariat was of decisive importance for the whole future of mankind, he wanted to create for that cause not a flimsy platform of rhetorical invective or wishful thinking, but the rock-like foundation of scientific truth.
Ernest Mandel
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Socialist democracy is not, a luxury and its need is not limited to the most advanced industrial countries.
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Socialist democracy is not a luxury but an absolute, essential necessity for overthrowing capitalism and building socialism.
Ernest Mandel
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The only conclusion you can draw from the real historical movement is that by and large, in day-to-day life, what Lenin called trade union consciousness dominates the working class. I would call it elementary class consciousness of the working class.
Ernest Mandel
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You can have relatively high levels of class consciousness with a lower level of class militancy than one would have expected.
Ernest Mandel
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I do not believe in self-proclaimed parties.
Ernest Mandel
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Only if you bring together the experience of the concrete struggles conducted by the real masses in the three sectors of the world (which are also called the three sectors of world revolution), then you have an overall, correct view of world reality.
Ernest Mandel
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There has been hardly a single year since 1917, and in a certain sense since 1905, without a revolution somewhere in the world in which the workers participated in a rather important way.
Ernest Mandel
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For us, Marxism is always open because there are always new experiences, there are always new facts, including facts about the past, which have to be incorporated in the corpus of scientific socialism.
Ernest Mandel
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Mistakes in themselves are unavoidable.
Ernest Mandel
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Periodically, the workers do revolt against bourgeois society, not by a hundred, five hundred, or a thousand, but by the millions.
Ernest Mandel
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Factions are a sign of illness in a party.
Ernest Mandel
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The more workers you have in your organization, the better you are implanted in the working class, the more likely you are to come up with the concrete problems of the class.
Ernest Mandel
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Only under conditions of revolutionary crises do you have the highest level of self-organization this is the Soviet type of organization, which is to say, workers' councils, people's councils, call them what you want, popular committees.
Ernest Mandel
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You cannot make a socialist revolution without really trying.
Ernest Mandel