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Archive : Ernest Mandel - Selected Works
The Place of Marxism in History
At a time when many repentant leftists are proclaiming Marxism incapable of explaining the new phenomena of this last quarter of the twentieth century, Ernest Mandel reminds us in The Place of Marxism in History that Marxism drew from its very inception on the advances of all the social sciences and emancipation movements of its time. In a survey of the multiple sources of Marx and Engels’ theory, he identifies the specific contribution of the two friends in the various disciplines to which they applied themselves: philosophy, political economy, social history, revolutionary organisation, self-organisation of the working class, emancipation movements, internationalism. Concluding that Marxism "constantly learns from perpetually changing reality" and that it is the conscious expression of the real movement of workers towards self-emancipation, Mandel propose a formula which provides for a dialectical interaction between innovation and the verification of established tenets. This text is based on a series of lectures given at the International Institute for Research and Education. This text is published by the International Institute for Research and Education as one of a series of notebooks. It, and other IIRE publications can be purchased from IIRE Notebooks.
To understand Marxism, we must first set it in its historical context. We must understand when it was born and how it arose.
Marxism emerged at once as a revolutionary transformation and a progressive unification of what already existed.
German philosophy’s main contribution to Marxism was Hegel’s dialectic, most of which Marx and Engels assumed as their own after transforming it, "setting it back on its feet."
The observation that history was not made by great men, but fundamentally shaped by conflicts opposing large numbers of individuals, that is conflicts of social forces, became obvious to historians from the very dawn of historiography.
Marx’s and Engels’s critical appropriation of French sociological historiography led them to link the concepts of social class and class struggle to the concepts of social labour and social product.
One of the most notorious commonplaces used against socialism is the claim that "it goes against human nature." Private property, it alleges, is "innate" in the human species. Rich and poor have always existed and will always exist.
The subsequent evolution of utopian socialism was influenced by three key figures who pioneered the transition from pre-proletarian philanthropy and propagandism to proletarian action properly speaking: the German Wilhelm Weitling and the French Pierre-Joseph Proudhon and Auguste Blanqui.
Mass organisation of workers by the workers themselves began in Britain, the cradle of the industrial revolution and large-scale industry.
Marxism was a product of its time. But it was neither a spontaneous nor an automatic one.
The explanation of the origins, content and development of Marxism must necessarily conclude with an analysis of its diffusion and real influence in the world.
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