An Introduction to Marxist Economic Theory

by Ernest Mandel

A concise presentation of the basic principles of political economy.

Genres: Economics, Politics, Nonfiction, Theory, Philosophy, History, Social Science

104 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1969

About the author

Ernest Ezra Mandel was a German born Belgian-Jewish Marxian economist and a Trotskyist activist and theorist. He fought in the underground resistance against the Nazis during the occupation of Belgium and he became a member of the Fourth International during his youth in Antwerp. Mandel is considered to be populariser of marxism.

Reviews

[Carlos Martinez · Rating 5 out of 5]

Rounded up from 4.5 stars.

The first three-quarters of this book provide a very solid, easy-to-understood introduction to the key concepts of Marxist economics. Really helped to solidify what I learned reading Capital: Volume 1: A Critique of Political Economy:, and introduced some ideas that don't appear until volumes 2 and 3 (which, let's face it, hardly anyone reads): specifically, equalisation of the rate of profit, the tendency of the rate of profit to fall, and crises of overproduction.

The last quarter introduces Mandel's hypotheses about 'neo-capitalism'. These are certainly interesting, but a lot more contentious, and some of them I wasn't really convinced by. For example, he makes a big thing about the inflationary effect of increased military spending, since it creates jobs (and provides wages) but doesn't put new products on the market. Is this unique to military spending? Not sure.

Also the book was written in 1967, so during what might have been 'neo-capitalism' then but is now considered the Keynesian 'golden age', before the emergence of global value chains and the near-complete victory of neoclassical economics via neoliberalism. As such, its attempt to update Marxism is, well, dated.

But those little weaknesses aside, it's a very worthwhile book and I wouldn't hesitate to recommend it.

[Twilight O. ☭ · Rating 3 out of 5]

In terms of the ratio of value to length, Mandel's "An Introduction to Marxist Economic Theory" must rank within the upper echelons of the Marxist canon, alongside Engels's "Socialism: Utopian and Scientific", Marx's "Critique of the Gotha Programme", and essentially anything Lenin ever wrote. Mandel is less polemical than any of the men listed there nor does this contain original insights, so the book suffers from a lack of energy, but at a mere 100 pages, there isn't enough time for this issue to become serious. If you want a clear explanation of Marx's most central economic concepts, this book is for you.

My only warning is that Captial is not exclusively a work of economics, so extracting and summarizing the economic ideas from it is not the same as summarizing the work as a whole. The more philosophical dimensions of abstract labor and commodity fetishism are left to the side. This does not constitute a flaw with the book but does represent a meaningful limit to scope. To compensate for this, it is recommended that one also read Fredy Perlman's "The Reproduction of Daily Life" and key chapters from "Marx's Capital and Today's Global Crisis" by Raya Dunayevskaya.

[Tom · Rating 5 out of 5]

Want to get a effective understanding of Marxist economics, yet don't feel like slogging through all three volumes of "Capital"? Look no further than this little jewel. Mandel explains the subject matter with great clarity and wisdom. Best introduction to the subject that I've come across.

[Lucid · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ernest Mandel puts a finer point on many of the concepts Marx introduces in Capital, Volume One. He teases out the ramifications for a mid-20th century world of the Marxian theory of the declining rate of profit, collaboration of the state with capitalist industry (neo-capitalism), the role of the state in crises of over-production, and economic colonialism. Mandel’s account of Marx is astute and elegant; his grasp of Marx was apparent. However, I propose that Mandel is a little too uncritical of Marx on certain important topics, including the question of whether there is really a tendency to a declining rate of profit and the question of the usefulness of Marx’s model of the “crisis of overproduction.”

Here and there in An Introduction to Marxist Economic Theory, Mandel leaves the reader clues as to the historical-political position from which he writes. Early in the book, Mandel asserts that “every step forward in the history of civilization has been brought about by an increase in the productivity of labor…as long as a given group of men barely produced enough to keep itself alive, as long as there was no surplus over and above this necessary product, it was impossible for a division of labor to take place and for artisans, artists or scholars to make their appearance” (7). This view roughly indicates Mandel’s place in the broad and varied history of critics of capitalism: unlike Derrick Jensen and other radically anti-capitalist environmentalists who endorse a return to subsistence living, Mandel adopts Marx’s conviction that capitalism creates the necessary preconditions for communism, that it provides organizational strategies essential to the production of sufficient surplus-value for the advancement of societies.

Before I write anything else, I want to pause and note that Mandel seems to equivocate on the definition of surplus-value in the early chapters of his book. According to Mandel, exchange-value and surplus-value are not intrinsically detrimental, but that the methods according to which they are distributed dictate their effects on people. He writes that “as long as there was no surplus over and above this necessary product, it was impossible for a division of labor to take place…” (7). I am confused on this point, because I thought that surplus-value would disappear if the working-class were to be compensated equally for the value that its labor added to the commodities in question. I am pretty sure that this is simply a misunderstanding on my part, but if anyone can describe what a situation in which workers were remunerated fairly (perhaps equally) for their labor and still generated surplus value would look like, I would appreciate it.

Mandel offers a very handy tool for visualizing Marx’s labor theory of value in his “proof by reduction to the absurd.” Imagine, he writes, a world in which every possible kind of “living human labor” has become mechanized and/or automated. Mandel asks, “Can there be a society where nobody has an income but commodities continue to have a value and to be sold?” (28). I thought this exercise was helpful insofar as it stripped away peripheral details to reveal that at the heart of profit-making there is human labor.

Now I want to address the question of the tendency to the declining rate of profit under capitalism. There seem to be a few glaring lacunae in Mandel’s explanation of Marx’s theory, but Mandel nonetheless forges ahead with his own argument. Marx came up with the expression (S/C+V) to express the rate of profit under capitalism, where S stands for surplus-value, C for constant capital, and V for variable capital. Mandel runs with Marx’s expression for the organic composition of capital (C/V) and with Marx’s conviction that savvy capitalists are always tempted to purchase technologically-advanced constant capital to reduce the socially-necessary labor-time of production and reduce variable capital expenses. He notes that an increasing organic composition of capital would produce a declining rate of profit, because the denominator in the expression S/C+V would grow, while S, presumably, would not change. Mandel writes that capitalists can maintain the former, higher rate of profit by increasing the rate of exploitation, which is expressed by S/V. I wonder, though, what the incentive for increasing the organic composition would be if it did not yield increased surplus-value? If S were to grow simply due to an increase in the organic composition (which I assume is the point of increasing the organic composition), there would be no need to increase the rate of exploitation.

Mandel notes that in reality there are limitations to the apparent solution of increasing the rate of exploitation. There is no upward limit to the expense of constant capital (new technologies), but there is a limit to the amount of surplus-labor that a human worker can produce in one day. Capitalists rely on the exploitation of human labor – the idea that the worker replaces the cost of his labor and gives the excess surplus-labor and surplus-product to the capitalist. Without some positive value for variable capital, there would be no value for S – no surplus value at all. I wonder if this is a plausible situation. One of the biggest challenges I faced as I read first Marx and then Mandel was trying to conceptualize scenarios like the one I have just described, for example, one in which a capitalist had no variable capital expenses, only constant capital expenses. In that case, Marx’s expression for the capitalist rate of profit and for the organic composition of capital would be useless. How would this sort of business coexist with businesses that still employed human workers? Would there be any explanatory framework, like the one that Marx hashes out in Capital, to reveal the terms on which these different kinds of business carry out transactions? If the scenario described above is plausible – indeed, if it is already a reality – what insight can Marx offer?

The second and last issue that I want to touch on is Mandel’s brilliant explication of neo-capitalism, and the gradual merging of monopoly capital’s interests with the state’s. One persistent question I have, thinking back to my reading of Capital and then Mandel’s book, is how the initial bond or alignment between the state and the capitalist class occurred. I can see the (civic and economic) reasons for the state intervening in the economy in the case of economic crises, but how did this relationship begin, and what conditions preserve it?

It is worth giving a quick overview of at least one way in which the state and the capitalist class collaborate. Mandel gives a lot of attention to the crisis of over-production, which he holds up as the classic crisis of capitalism. I think that his explication of the state’s role in crises of over-production does provide some keys to understanding the American government’s response to the 2008 financial crisis, and it is actually exactly at this point that my questions begin. I will present those at the end of this essay.

States have an interest in softening the blows of cyclical crises of overproduction because these crises spread like wildfire and can result in sudden mass unemployment and therefore the disintegration of social order. It seems reasonable to imagine that elected politicians consider their both their future careers in politics and the welfare of the countries they have decided to lead when responding to crises. Mandel describes how these crises proliferate: one consumer-goods industry produces too many of a particular commodity; worse than breaking even, these firms lose money and have to lay off workers. The unemployed workers obviously now lack the income to spend on goods they used to buy. Now, industries producing those goods find themselves producing too much, and in turn must lay off workers. The firms that supply the consumer-goods firms with their heavy machinery also suffer because demand has decreased and now they are producing too much, as well.

State-funded entitlement programs like unemployment insurance, food stamps, universal health coverage, and others protect workers from the uncertainties they face as workers, alienated from the means of production. Mandel calls these entitlements “deferred wages” because they fall neatly into the category of the necessary means of subsistence, which capitalists are obligated to pay employees in order to profit. Paradoxically, entitlements also protect the capitalist classes from the uncertainties associated with the continual upgrading of constant capital. Upgrades in constant capital free capitalist firms from their variable capital costs, but can also depress demand for their products; so it is critical that even while they are unemployed, workers can afford to spend on consumer goods and preserve the status quo. Given this arrangement, it makes perfect sense that the federal government decided to bail out Wall Street in 2008: not to bail the financial sector out would have disastrous ripple effects for the rest of the country (even with the bailout, millions of working and middle-class Americans have suffered). But my question is, how can we recognize in the housing and financial crisis – the catchwords of which were collateralized debt obligations, subprime mortgages, and lax regulation – the “classic” capitalist crisis of overproduction?

[وسام عبده · Rating 3 out of 5]

الاسم الأصلي للكتاب «مقدمة إلى الماركسية Introduction au Marxisme»، وفي اعتقادي أن مترجمي الكتاب اختار تغيير العنوان الأصلي ربما لتفادي استفزاز اسم ماركس عند البعض، وربما لتفادي أن يثبت الماركسية على مؤلف الكتاب، الذي كان الكثير من الماركسيين العرب الكلاسيكيين يتهمونه – كما سمعت من أحدهم - بالـ (الرجعي) و(التحريفي) إلى آخر قائمة السباب اليساري العربي الذي لا تدري عندما تسمعه أتضحك أم تبكي، ولكن السبب الأهم في نفسي، وهي واحدة من المشكلات النفسية في تيار اليسار كله، خاصة في العالم العربي، وهي إصراره أنه الفكر الذي يتبناه مبني على أساس منهجي علمي موضوعي، وهم لا يعنون هنا أن الفلسفة الماركسية هي أحد صيغ العلوم الاجتماعية، ولا يرضون إلا أن تكون مكافئة في موضوعيتها وصرامتها ويقينها للرياضيات والفيزياء، ومن هنا يصرون دائمًا على نعتها بالاشتراكية العلمية، ولتمييزها عن الاشتراكية الحالمة أو اليوتوبية، وإن كنت أرى أن الماركسية كما يطرحها المؤلف ربما تكون حالمة أكثر ممن تعيبهم.
فالكتاب، وهو يقدم الماركسية – من وجهة نظر المؤلف – في صورة فصول متتابعة، كأنها دروس تلقى في صف دراسي، أكد في ذهني على عدة مسائل، الأولى أن ماركس عرف كيف يشخص بعض الداء، واساء تقدير الدواء، وأتى من بعده قومًا أكثرهم من عطلوا عقولهم عن النظر والنقد، واكتفوا بالتكرار والاجترار، فالكتاب وإن بين دور العامل الاقتصادي وتأثيره على المجتمعات، إلا أن هذا العامل – وتحت وهم العلمية – يتم تضخيمه حتى يمحو أثر كل عامل آخر، فالفرد لا وجود له في التفسير الماركسي، لا شيء إلا الجموع، انصهرت فأصبحت كتلة واحدة، لا يحكمها إلا قوانين موضوعية مادية تلك التي اكتشفها ماركس، وفي هذا السياق تجد الكاتب مثلًا يعلق على خطاب خروتشوف الشهير الذي انتقد فيه حكم سلفه ستالين، ونعته بأنه أسس لعبادة الفرد، وأنه قد وجد من الانتهازيين من ساعدوه في هذا، مرجعًا ذلك إلى استعداد ستالين وأعوانه النفسية، فنجد الكاتب يقول (وهذا التفسير الذاتي، لا بل السيكولوجي، لنظام سياسي قلب رأسًا على عقب حياة عشرات الملايين من الكائنات البشرية، لا يتفق مع الماركسية) و(إن الأمر يتعلق بظاهرة اجتماعية) (ص143)، وهو في ذلك مصيب ومخطئ، مصيب أنه يتعامل مع ظاهرة اجتماعية، ومخطئ في استبعاده تأثير الفرد في التاريخ، وهو واحدة من الأخطاء الأساسية في الماركسية كما أظن.
المسألة الثانية، هي تحول الفلسفة الماركسية من فلسفة، تخضع للنسبية الفكرية، إلى كتيب تشغيل جامد للحضارة البشرية، لا ينبغي لها أن تخالفه، فيتحجر فكر أصحابها حولها. فمثلًا تجد أن شيوعي الثورة الروسية وقد استولوا على السلطة، يفكرون في دعم خصومهم!!! لماذا؟؟؟ حتى تتمكن البرجوازية ورأس المال من التطور، بما يسمح باستكمال الشروط المادية الموضوعية لنمو البروليتاريا ومن ثم تقوم هذه البروليتاريا بالاستيلاء على السلطة، تلك التي سلمها الشيوعيون من قبل لخصومهم؟!؟!؟ (ص129) ما هذا الهذيان؟ المدهش، أن هذا الموقف المضحك والأحمق، والذي يفتقر إلى المنطق يعتبره الشيوعيون منهجًا علميًا، وهو موقف مبدئي، وليس حدث عارض أو إساءة للفهم، وهو ما جعلني أصف هؤلاء بالتحجر الفكري، فمثلًا يتكرر هذا الموقف العجيب في مواضع أخرى من التاريخ، فتجد أكثر من واحد ممن أرخوا للشيوعيين في دولة الاحتلال (انظر مثلًا عزيز العظمة في كتابه اليسار الصهيوني) يذكر أن المهاجرين من أولاد الغم الروس الشيوعيين -حزب بوند - الذين هاجروا لاستيطان فلسطين، وجدو البروليتاريا ضعيفة وغير ناضجة، فقرروا التحول إلى رأس ماليين مستغلين ليسمحوا بتطور البروليتاريا ؟؟!! ((ولكن لا يمكن أن نصف هذا الموقف هنا بالمبدأ أو الحماقة أو التحجر، إنه باختصار من أين تؤكل الكتف)).
وهو ما يقود إلى المسألة الثالثة، فالدواء الذي وصفه ماركس يجعله حالمًا أكثر من هؤلاء الذين وصفهم بأنهم اشتراكيين حالمين! ومن انتحلوا فلسفته يتداولون هذه الأحلام تدون تفكر أو تدبر، فمثلًا الحل المقترح في عالم ماركس المثالي للسلام، هو توزيع السلاح على العمال، لمنع خصوم الثورة من استعادة السلطة، وعند التيقن من عجز الخصوم عن استرجاع السلطة، يتم حظر السلاح بصورة نهائية ليعيش جميع البشر في وئام وسلام (ص 186)، وبنفس الطريقة، تجده يبشر بتحول الاقتصاد العالمي من نمط الإنتاج بهدف الربح، إلى نمط أنتاج بهدف الاستخدام الآني، متجاهلًا الاختلافات البيئية التي تجعل الاختلاف في نوعية الإنتاج من بلد لبلد حتمي، وبالتالي تحتم أيضًا التبادل التجاري، مبشرًا بتحول المجتمعات كلها عندئذ يفسح المجال ولأول مرة في التاريخ لتطور متسلسل لإمكانات الفكر والعمل لدى الفرد (ص181)، إن هذا الحلول الساذج الذي يقترحه مؤلف الكتاب بناء على فهمه لفلسفة ماركس، وحلول أخرى مشابهة لمسائل أخرى لم يسعنا عرضها ولكنها لا تقل سذاجة ، تظهر كيف كان ماركس حالمًا وغير عمليًا في حلوله.
أم كل المشاكل في نظري، هي ما اختصره المؤلف عندما أشار إلى العلاقة بين البنية التحتية والبنية الفوقية للمجتمع، مؤكدًا أن التطور المادي هو العامل الرئيس في بلورة التطور الفكري، وهنا نقطة التناقض الرئيسة، فالمؤلف وإن أقر أن الماركسية ابنة زمانها، يجري عليها ما يجري على كل تطور فكري (ص211)، إلا أنه يزعم في الوقت نفسه أنها قادرة على تجاوز شروط زمانها الموضوعية، وتفسير مشاكل الحضارة منذ بدئها وفي مستقبلها، وهو هنا ينزلها منزلًا يرفعها عن كل نتاج فكري آخر، معتبرًا أياها الفلسفة الأخيرة، وهو في ذلك يعكس تصور ماركس عن عصره أنه ذروة التاريخ، وبالتالي فإن أي نتاج فكري فيه لابد أن يكون ذروة النتاج الفكري البشري، واليوم، ندرك أن كثير من نظريات الفيزياء التي تداولت في القرن التاسع عشر تم نقضها، ولكن منتحلي ماركس يعتقدون أن اشتراكيتهم العلمية لا تنقض.
مؤلف الكتاب هو ارنست ماندل، مفكر ماركسي بلجيكي، وهو أحد الوجوه الخارجة عن التيارات الماركسية الرسمية، التي كانت ترعاها الدول الشيوعية، وناقد عنيف لها. المقدمة التي قدم بها الماركسي الفرنسي دانيال بن سعيد للكتاب لا تقرأ، أسقطها من حسابك. ترجمة الكتاب واضحة ومفهومة، ولكن تهيمن عليها تلك النبرة الباردة والجافة التي كانت تميز الكتب الصادرة عن دار التقدم الروسية التي تخصصت في نشر الكتب الماركسية باللغة العربية زمان الاتحاد السوفييتي، والكتاب صادر عن دار الطليعة في بيروت، وهي دار يسارية معروفة تخصصت في نشر كتب التيارات اليسارية، وتميزت بطبعاتها البسيطة المميزة الغلاف، وغالب ما تطبعه، وإن اختلفت معه إلا أنه يستلزم دائمًا القراءة الواعية والنقدية والتفكير المستمر في مادة ما يقرأ.

[Waleed · Rating 4 out of 5]

هو مقدمه للاشتراكيه العلميه , يبدا من بدايه التاريخ
كتاب بسيط يشرح مواضيع كثيره ,
على عكس طول ابوابه التى تتمز بالبساطه يتحول الى الصعوبه فى الفصل الاخير عند الحديث عن الماديه الجدليه
يمكن القراه عنها فى كتاب
اصول الفلسفه الماركسيه ؟
http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/13...


- الكتاب الافضل كمقدمه للماركسيه هو كتاب كيف تعمل الماركسيه لكريز هيرمن
http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18...

[Ico Maly · Rating 5 out of 5]

Simply a must-read. Should be mandatory for all students.

[Cool_guy · Rating 3 out of 5]

A nice primer on Marxist economics. The first two sections are useful for someone new to the subject. Shows its age with the third chapter, which is all about Keynesianism. Mandel's critique of the managed capitalist economy is spot on. It should throw cold water on leftist dreams to revive the New Deal or to establish a Scandinavian welfare state. These dreams are understandable - I'd love to have free heath care, more vacation time, etc etc - but ultimately untenable. In the late 60s, industrial capital made a generous welfare state possible, and it was in the interest of the bourgeoisie. We're entering an era where it seems some of the bourgeoisie are recognizing the importance of increased social provisions to keep the peace. It's too bad for them that it's impossible with an economy based on the service industry and speculative finance.

[Roodabe · Rating 4 out of 5]

عنوان اصلی کتاب:
an introduction to marxist exonomic theory
کتاب قرار بوده تبیینی فشرده از اصول مقدماتی مارکسیستی ارائه دهد که از این نظر موفق است. فشردگی مطالب کمی می‌تواند درک موضوعات را بخصوص اگر با مفاهیم اقتصادی بیگانه باشید دشوار کند. اما یک آشنایی ابتدایی با مبانی اقتصاد خرد و کلان می‌تواند حداقل نقطه نظرها و تفاوت رویکرد این مکتب را با جریان غالب اقتصاد مشخص کند و البته سوال‌هایی ایجاد کند. چه در رابطه این مکتب و چه دررابطه با پاسخهای احتمالی جریان غالب. نویسنده کتاب مفصلتری در این باب دارد که می توان برای عمیق‌تر فهمیدن نقطه نظراتش به آن رجوع کرد.
به شخصه یک سری منابع دیگر را لیست کرده ام. بعد از خواندن آنها احتمالا مجدد به این کتاب رجوع کنم.
نقطه شروع خوبی برای آشنایی با این مکتب است. و البته محک خوبی برای کسی که اقتصاد را جور دیگری می‌فهمد.

[Joaquin Roibal · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of my favorite books (not written by Marx) about Marxian economics, and a timely update (around 1965) of roughly 100 years since Communist Manifesto. Clarifies and expands upon topics introduced by Marx, my favorite part of the book is the section on "neo capitalism" requiring significant intervention by the state in capitalistic development. Particularly social services and military spending "smoothing out" the ups and downs of unrestrained capitalism.

[Thomas · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very accessible crash course in the basics of Marxist theory. Not a replacement for reading Marx himself, but fine as an introduction, companion, or refresher.

The second half of the book deals with "neo-capitalism" and (from the perspective of 2017) is somewhat less interesting. Though his account of the Keynesianism of the 40s - 60s is probably very astute, he doesn't anticipate the rise of neoliberalism and thus only has a limited amount to say about the form capitalism has taken today.

[Henrique Valle]

puta merda trotskista é muito burro tem que separar essa corja de imbecis do resto da sociedade

é bem didatico mas vai tomar no cu, isso que da tentar levar um grupo de marxismo organizado pelo ESQUERDA DIARIO a sério

[Miguel Martínez · Rating 4 out of 5]

Los dos primeros capitulos muy interesantes y bien expuestos. El ultimo mucha propaganda y pocas nueces. Pero overall muy guay para entender algunos conceptos de base del pensamiento marxista.

[OM · Rating 5 out of 5]

Den beste introduksjonen til marxistisk økonomisk teori jeg har vært borti. Kjempegod.

[Daniel · Rating 4 out of 5]

Easy to understand, wish there was more but a good intro to some key topics.

[Drew Pyke · Rating 3 out of 5]

Introduction

The author, Ernest Mandel, is described in the Introduction as “probably the most influential exponent of …scientific socialism in the Western world today”, who is “banned from the US, Germany, France, Switzerland and Australia for his socialist views”. “While Mandel, as a Trotskyist, adheres to classical Marxism”.

1 Theory of Value and Surplus-Value

Man’s progress depends on labour: “Every step forward in the history of civilization has been brought about by an increase in the productivity …for artisans, artists or scholars to make their own appearance”.

Social Surplus Product

But this typically leads to “a struggle over how this surplus will be shared” and can “release a section of society from having to work for its own subsistence”. In the seventeenth century slavery, this surplus was 100%, where “six days of the week the slave worked on the plantation and received in return none of the products of his labour”.

Commodities, Use-Value and Exchange-Value

Historically, products were created for direct consumption, “either by the producers themselves or by ruling classes”, but this change to “exchange on the marketplace”. It then become less about “simple use-values; it is now a production of commodities”.

This is “the first society in human history where the major part of production consists of commodities”. The consequences of this though how it “transformed the way men labour and how they organize society”.

Marxist Theory of Alienation

The most infamous consequence when “a society [is] based on commodities”, according to Marx, is Alienation: “the division of labour as the elimination of all aesthetic activity, artistic impression and creative activity” and that “repetitive tasks were non-existent in primitive society”. Not only do they do mindless activities, but they work harder under Capitalism, from 150 to “dangerously close to 300” working days per year. Contrast this with pre-Capitalism, “a society which only produces use-values …has been in the past been an impoverished society”, but similarly has “narrow limits to man’s wants, since these had to conform exactly to its degree of poverty and limited variety of products”. The variety of goods comes at a cost to the majority of society (proletariats who have to produce it). This shift from use-value to exchange-value meant more labour required to produce surplus products and therefore “an accounting system founded on labour”. Mandel gives a few historic examples of this development, such as in Indian blacksmith who sells a newly forged tool whilst the buyer works the blacksmiths land in exchange. Or in Japan where there is a “great book” which recorded labour hours devoted toward “cooperative labour”. Before this period of accounting, “the technique of making clothing was …no mystery to the cultivator of the soil” and so there is transparency in the value of things. This progressive development in “the accountancy system founded on labour” led up to the codification of exchange value in charters in the Middle Ages.

Determination of the Exchange-value of commodities

An obvious benefit of a Guild is that the “lazier or more incompetent the producer, and the larger the number of hours he would spend in making” is that “he will receive nothing in exchange for these wasted hours”, because the price has been set by “average necessary hours”. This is made complicated when you add in skilled labour which a worker needs to be compensated quickly for his investment in training. For Mandel, this is something that Stalin got wrong, where the exchange value was derived in a “bourgeois ideological sense”, “used to justify the incomes of marshals, ballerinas and industrial managers” which in many cases are “ten times higher than the incomes of unskilled labourers”. This paradoxically led to “enormous differences in incomes” in Stalinist Russia.

What is socially necessary labour?

Socially necessary labour is an equilibrium between work-hours “distributed among the various sectors of industry in the same proportions as consumers distribute their buying power in satisfying their various wants”, i.e. supply equals demand.

Capitalism itself “is anarchistic, unplanned and unorganised” and therefore “the productivity of labour is constantly changing” whereby there is always an over or under supply of labour necessary to society (to produce the goods desired by the people). Also, by virtue of competition, there is always a desire of Capitalists to achieve higher productivity rates which can often lead to a waste in social necessary labour.

The origin and nature of surplus-value

Surplus-value is the “part of the worker’s production which he surrenders to the owner of the means of production without receiving anything in return”. What a worker offers is “labour-power” which is “labour socially necessary to produce and reproduce it, that is to say, the living costs of the worker in the meaning of the term”. The surplus-value is a form of exploitation because the worker gives labour-power (his mind, body etc) that should be for his living costs (subsistence, family, house etc) but he sells himself less than “the quantity of newly created value”.

The validity of the labour theory of value

Mandel gives three proofs for Marx’s labour theory of value:
1 Analytical, if you break down a commodity down (again and again) to its constituent parts, only labour would be left (even raw materials requires labour to extract it, investment comes from a revenue based on other commodities that were worked on by labour).
2 Logical, the value of a commodity cannot be measured by its infinite physical attributes (weight, length, density, colour, size, molecular structure etc). The “only common quality in these commodities which is not physical is their quality of being the products of human labour”. Therefore, it is the “socially necessary labour in the production of commodities which determines their exchange value”.
3 Absurd, if automation were to fully eradicate labour then there would exist “a society where nobody has an income but commodities continue to have a value”. Surely you need a value based on labour because the labour has a supplementary salary that is used as purchasing power. Automation would sever this.

2 Capital and Capitalism

Capital in Pre-capitalist Society

Between primitive and capitalist society, there was “small-scale commodity productions”, which “the peasant brings wheat to the marketplace which he sells for money; with this money he buys, let us say cloth”. This is what Marx coined as C-M-C (Commodity, Money, Commodity). Within this society though there developed M-C-M (Money, Commodity, Money) which essentially means buy a product so you can sell it on again but at a profit (otherwise there is no need to buy it in the first place), and this is where surplus-value comes in.

Origins of the Capitalist Mode of Production

What makes Capitalist society different from its predecessor? For Mandel its “the separation of the producers from their means of production”. When the proletariat has no other means to survive than “the sale of its labour-power to the class which has monopolized the means of production” there becomes a cleavage in class struggle. Serfs on the other hand, whilst they lacked rights and freedoms, had the means (albeit basic) to produce food for themselves and were not “condemned to death by starvation if they do not sell their labour-power” (which they would in Capitalist society). In Africa this is even more extreme during colonial slavery. They once “were stock breeders and cultivators of the soil on a more or less primitive basis” with an “abundance of land”. Expanding Capitalists could not work in this environment however and so had to transform the political and economical environment with a “brutal separation of the black masses from their normal means of subsistence”, where the “abundance of land” “transformed overnight into national domains, owned by the colonizing state, or into private property belonging to capitalist corporations”. The people “re-settled in domains, or in reserves” and had to be taxed “since primitive agriculture yielded no money income” for which they had to work up to three months a year to pay. Mandel also points out the hypocrisy in the claim that Africans are “lazy since they did not want to work even when they had a chance to make ten times as much in mines and factories as they did from their traditional labour on the land”. Quite rightly, the author points out that “no man cares to be confined …12 hours a day in a factory, mill or mine”. Because the Africans ultimately lost their means of production it makes ownership of these means “impossible for the overwhelming majority of wage-earners” and more importantly, “no means of subsistence other than the sale of its labour power”.

Origins and definition of the modern proletariat

One of the origins Mandel observes is the “expulsion of a part of the peasantry from its land” as agriculture turned to grass-lands; “the sheep have eaten man” alongside the separation of the means of production again (so that only the sale of their labour-power can give them subsistence). This is an important point because it isn’t necessarily the wage that is important but that the worker no longer has the means to survive without the wage (and there is no way out either: “with no savings or not enough capital to buy means of production”).

The fundamental mechanism of capitalist economy

Competition is fundamental to capitalism (measured typically by market-share) to the point where “the whole world to be …a real potential market for each capitalist producer”. Naturally, this incentivizes a growth in labour productivity through mechanization and “reduced quantity of labour-time, which is notable when you look at the great leaps with steam power, oil and electricity to mechanize or automate where available.

The growth in the organic composition of capital

“All capitalist production can be represented in value by the formula: CVS”.
C (or Constant Capital) is the capital “transformed into machines, buildings, raw materials etc”.
V (or Variable Capital) is the wages paid to the worker for making the product
S (Surplus Value) is whatever is taken by the Capitalist in profits, dividends etc.

Productivity can be measured by C / V as a ratio. This is where capital is applied to the production of a good through machines etc more than wages (as a form of mechanization or automation) and there is always a choice between hiring more workers or more machines.

However, Mandel makes the point that it is “inaccurate to say that it is the capitalist who creates employment, since it is the worker who produced the surplus value, which was capitalized by the capitalist”. This isn’t a chicken-and-egg allegory as the labourer was able to sustain himself before capitalist when he owned the means of production himself.

Competitions leads to concentration and monopoly

Ironically, through the concentration of wealth through capitalism, the bourgeoisie will inevitably shrink. Whilst it claims to “defend private property, is in reality a destroyer”. You can see it today with very few “landed aristocrats” compared to centuries ago. And as the means of production becomes more and more capitalised (bigger machines etc), the costs of setup become unreachable for more and more people and so only monopolies will exist. The danger of this situation though is that it paradoxically does away with competition, “where they can readily reach agreements at the expense of the consumer” (i.e. cartels limiting supply of oil to shore up prices).

Tendency of the average rate of profit to decline

Mandel argues here that “the total mass of surplus-value …is a fixed mass” (I assume this is limited by purchasing power, or national income etc). This then is a zero-sum game, where those enterprises with the highest productivity get the most surplus-value, leading to a “flow of capital from one branch to another”.

In terms of the tendency of the average rate of profits falling, this is broken down below. Because companies like to increase productivity (put more capital than wages) this reduces the Surplus Value (profits) because it is workers that add the value to the finished product.



Enterprises get around this by adding to the Surplus Value (year 3 above) which brings their Rate of Profit from 0.3 back to 0.5 again. But this trend cannot be maintained indefinitely because the exploitation rate will end up so high that wages will be 0. This is why Capitalism “seems to feed on itself”.

The fundamental contradictions in the capitalist system and the periodic crises of overproduction

Capitalism spreads because it views “all human beings as potential customers” so will not stop at national borders, creating absurd economic relations globally to the point that “if someone sneezes on the New York stock exchange, 100,000 peasants are ruined in Malaya”. But the “trade-off” is that we get stuff: “in the Middle Ages, pineapples were not eaten in Europe”. Also economic crises are typically not due to scarcity , but actually “crises of overproduction” to the point that hunger is often down “too great a supply of foodstuffs” where producers are no longer able to sell their products (not “realizing their surplus-value”) or “not even their invested capital”, which forces operators to stop production.

3 Neo-Capitalism

The origins of Neo-Capitalism

The 1929 depression turned the bourgeoisie into Communists, which is similar to what happened in Europe between 1865 to 1890 and consequently “the birth of the socialist workers movement”. In the post-world war period, this sentiment continued, “that the bourgeoisie itself is no longer confident that the automatic mechanics of capitalist economy will sustain its rule, another force must intervene …and this force is the state”. The author thinks this could be more about the Cold War though, that there is too much to lose to let Capitalism run riot: “how intolerable this would be from a political point of view” that unemployment went so high when up against Communism.

A permanent technological revolution

The economic boom in US after the second world war comes fundamentally from technological innovation and “99 per cent of the technological changes …are military”, which only later do they become available publicly and commercially. Always a “danger exists that the enemy will be the first to find a new weapon” and so uninterrupted innovation ensues: in nuclear energy, automation and electronic computers for example. But with rapid development comes a quickened cyclical effect: from 10 to five year recessions. For Mandel, he doesn’t believe “that this period will last forever and

[ review cut short because of word count ]

[Valdemar Gomes · Rating 3 out of 5]

I don't know much about marxist economy, so he could be saying that the surplus value is made of ice cream and that value-form is codename for a "ghost of the market" and I'd believe him. Therefore, I can't say I liked it a lot for I am cautious and aware that this may have irregularities. As in fact, some irregularities are pointed out in this critique to another of Mandel (not this one).
With that being said, I'm sure that I liked this for it was written in a elucidative, non-repeating way. Exceptions being in the parts in which he announces his own theories (neo-capitalism or as he later branded "late capitalism", which demonstrated very little change to err normal capitalism so the initial name was truly ill-founded) and the military economy.Also, his defence of his political programme in the last page is glued like a sticker, having provided no context or explanation whatsoever! Yet, he puts it there as if it's an obvious inference. Well, for a sticker to stick, glue is needed. Having provided none, it fell from my mind as soon as it was read.
I think I've learned the basics of marxist economy with this and I can't wait to get more a profound reading in the future.

[Liu · Rating 3 out of 5]

In comparison to all the intros to Marxian economics that are harder to read than Capital itself, this one does its job quite well. But it's probably a little too basic for anybody who's not an absolute beginner. I'm also pretty suspicious of a lot of the stuff in Chapter 3 on neo-capitalism and am not so sure how well it's aged.

[mohammad firouzi · Rating 5 out of 5]

فشرده شده همان کتاب بزرگ "علم اقتصاد" ارنست مندل. با همان تیزبینی و سادگی‌ در توضیح بحران‌های سرمایه داری.

Merged review:

برای کسانی‌ که وقت و حوصله‌‌ خوندن چند جلدی "سرمایه" مارکس رو ندارد. ماندل به مهمترین مباحث مارکس با زبانی ساده پرداخته.

[Eylem T · Rating 4 out of 5]

Marksist ekonomi politiği genel teorisi ve hatlarıyla ele alan başarılı bir giriş kitabı.İkinci elden de olsa Das Capital'in ana hatlarını ele almış ve çok kritik etmeden anlatmıştır.
Yeniden okunası..

[Bahman Bahman · Rating 2 out of 5]

این که مارکسیست ها این همه اصرار دارند رویا پردازی های عجیب و غریبشان را به اسم علم به دیگران بقبولانند واقعا از آن حرف های خنده دار است

[Sam Miller · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is an eminently readable book and one that provides a good enough introduction! I could totally see a very effective introduction with some depth using Wage Labour and Capital and Value, Price, and Profit paired with this book; but that doesn't mean it's perfect.

First, though, what I like: Mandel's description of surplus value is a very good restatement that I think is probably better than the typical presentation, i.e. rather than "surplus value is value produced by workers but which they aren't compensated for" a la that classic IWW political cartoon, he goes in the direction of surplus value, to use simpler language that a friend of mine provided to explain Mandel's and Sraffa's approach to the subject, being "the difference between the basket of goods a laborer can get with his wages and the basket he produces." This shift in how surplus value is defined fits better with the political conclusions of William Clare Roberts' Marx's Inferno: The Political Theory of Capital, that workers are fairly compensated for their labor power but are still exploited, with labor power being a commodity exchanged on the market for a price just as much as the product of their labor. Also, I really liked when Mandel used examples from around the world and throughout history to explain concepts such as the structuring of social exchange around labor time in societies with commodity production, which he explores using examples from premodern India and Japan. I think descriptions like that emphasize the broadly applicable elements of Marxist political economy and also show how capitalism emerged out of the social relations of societies which preceded it.

I also liked his model of "long term cycles" that he used in his discussion of "neocapitalism," the term he uses for the era of Keynesian economics from the end of WW2 to the beginning of the neoliberal era, roughly 1945 to 1980, earlier in some places later in others. While he wrote in the sixties, with no knowledge of the coming neoliberal change, hampering his utility for today, his model tying political situations to long term trends of expansion and contraction is valuable.

The bad: he analyzes changes in average wages as a result of increasing economic productivity, which divorces wages from history and from the political struggles which took place to increase the average wage. Rather than the economistic approach of wages as a reflection of increasing productivity, we should understand changes in wages as reflective of changes in the historical and moral standard of society, that historical and moral standard being the result of active organizing on the part of workers. Productivity increased massively from 1800 to 1850 with little concurrent increase in wages; this was due to the lack of a trade union movement pushing for higher wages! Also, his analysis of neocolonialism is Okay, its not terrible, but he makes some conflations that don't really reflect the situation at the time.

This work is well written and generally accurate and helpful, but of course its literally from the sixties! There needs to be a new popular introduction to marxism and marxist political economy; doing what Kautsky did in the 1890s to 1910s (The Historic Accomplishment of Karl Marx, The Economic Doctrines Of Karl Marx), Bukharin did in the 1920s (The ABC of Communism), and Mandel did in the 1960s to 1970s (this book, as well as Introduction to Marxism) but for today! I think there is a void left open for a good popularizer of these things for today, integrating more recent developments and innovations. All in all, a pretty good book but it made me think more about what's needed today!

[Augusto Delgado · Rating 4 out of 5]

Válido esfuerzo simplificador de Mandel, quen buscaba popularizar los conceptos fundamentales de la economía marxista para una audiencia necesitada de aprendizaje.

Es un curso dividido en tres partes, siendo la mejor elaborada la primera: la teoría del valor y la plusvalía, aunque no profundiza en la idea clave del capital como flujo y metamorfosis; sí se explaya con claridad acerca del excedente social, mercancía, valor de uso y valor de cambio; se detiene en el concepto de alienación (la enajenación del trabajador del producto de su trabajo) y la ley del valor.

En la segunda parte: El capital y el capitalismo, se inclina un tanto hacia lo que la gran marxista británica Ellen Meiksins Wood, llamó la corriente historicista en su libro Orígenes del Capitalismo. Dicha corriente se apoya en el hecho de la pre existencia de capital antes de la formación del modo de producción capitalista y explicaría el origen de éste. No obstante, tanto ella, como Marx, consideran el origen del capitalismo en el momento en el que la fuerza de trabajo se vuelve mercancía y el trabajador tiene que venderla a cambio de un salario. Mandel si bien no obvia esto, lo desplaza a un plano menos cualitativo.

La tercera parte, el neocapitalismo, describe -refiriéndose a las ondas largas- aquella fase keynesiana hasta fines de los 60, justo antes de la catástrofe neoliberal, en la que aún la burguesía aún no había atacado brutalmente conquistas de los trabajadores como la seguridad social, y el seguro de desempleo y los dineros separados en cajas eran utilizados como "amortiguadores" de las inevitables crisis capitalistas.

Buen curso, que requiere unas pocas actualizaciones.

[Steven H · Rating 5 out of 5]

A FAMOUS INTRODUCTION/OVERVIEW OF THE SUBJECT

Author Ernest Mandel wrote in the Author’s Introduction to the 2nd (1970) edition of this book, “Marx makes a distinction between ‘individual value’ of commodities and ‘market value.’ … The simple, abstract, total mass of living human labor expended at average intensity in the course of production determines and total mass of value newly created in society. This mass is predetermined in the process of production. It cannot be increased nor reduced by what happens on the market in the process of commodity circulation. But thus rule… is not valid for each sector of production, nor… for each plant. The market value may diverge from the ‘individual value,’ or the mass of abstract labor effectively contained in each commodity… The prices of production may diverge from this market value…” (Pg. 6)

He explains in the first chapter, “As long as the productivity of labor remains at a level where one man can only produce enough for his own subsistence, SOCIAL division does not take place and any social differentiation within society is impossible… all men… are on the same economic level. Every increase in the productivity of labor beyond this low point makes a small surplus possible, and once there is a surplus of products… then the conditions have been set for a struggle over how this surplus will be shared.. Whenever this situation arises, a section of society can become a ruling class, whose outstanding characteristic is its emancipation from the need of working for its own subsistence.” (Pg. 7)

He observes, “Modern alienation originates basically in the cleavage between the producer and his product, resulting both from the division of labor and commodity production. In other words, it is the consequence of working for the market, for unknown consumers, instead of for consumption by the producer himself.” (Pg. 13)

He notes, “exchange-value is not a moral reward for mere willingness to work but an objective bond set up between independent producers in order to equalize the various crafts in a society based both on a division of labor and an economy of labor-time… Expressed another way, the exchange-value of a commodity is not determined by the quantity of labor expended by each individual producer engaged in the production of this commodity but by the quantity of labor SOCIALLY NECESSARY to produce it.” (Pg. 18)

He says, “The meaning of supply exceeding demand is that capitalist production, which is anarchistic, unplanned and unorganized, has anarchistically invested or expended more labor hours in an industrial branch than are socially necessary, so that a whole segment of labor-hours turns out to be pure loss, so much wasted human labor which remain required by society.” (Pg. 22)

He acknowledges, “The apologists for capitalism have always pointed to the reduction in prices and widened market for a whole set of products as the benefits brought about by this system. This argument is true. It is one of the aspects of what Marx called ‘the civilizing mission of Capital.’” (Pg. 39)

He states, “capital accumulation is simply the capitalization of surplus-value… What happens to this surplus-value? A part of it is unproductively consumed by the capitalist, for the poor fellow has to live, has to keep his family alive together with his entourage, and everything he spends for these purposes is completely withdrawn from the process of production.” (Pg. 43) He continues, “It is consequently inaccurate to say that it is the capitalist who creates employment, since it is the worker who produced the surplus-value… It is, in other words, a colossal proof of the continuous exploitation undergone by the working class since the origin of capitalist society.” (Pg. 44)

He asserts, “the ever increasing complexity of the productive process implies increasingly precise PLANNING efforts in order for it to function as a whole… What is the fundamental characteristic of this indicative planning? It is essentially different in nature from socialist planning. It is not mainly concerning with setting up a set of objectives in production figures and insuring that attainment of these goals. Its major concern is with coordinating the investment plans already drawn up by private firms and with effecting this necessary coordination by proposing, at the very most, certain objectives considered to have priority on the governmental level. These are, of course, objectives corresponding to the general interest of the bourgeois class.” (Pg. 70-71)

He concludes, “The working-class movement is therefore confronted with a fundamental choice between a policy of reform in the neo-capitalist structures, which implies an integration of the trade unions in the capitalist system so that they are transformed into gendarmes for the maintenance of social peace during the amortization phase of fixed capital, and a basically ANTI-CAPITALIST structural reforms. The fundamental goal of these reforms would be to take away the levers of command in the economy from the financial groups, trusts and monopolies and place them in the hands of the nation, to create a public sector of decisive weight in credit, industry and transportation, and to base all of this on workers’ control. This would mark the appearance of dual power at the company level and in the whole economy and would rapidly culminate in a duality of political power between the working class and the capitalist rulers This stage in turn could usher in the conquest of power by the workers and the establishment of a working-class government which would proceed to the construction of a socialist democracy free of exploitation and all its evils.” (Pg. 78)

This book is a popular and well-regarded introduction to Marxist theory.

[VSOP · Rating 4 out of 5]

90% of the book was a great summary of Marx's economic thought, from the law of value to commodity production and the tendency of the average rate of profit to fall. What baffled me a bit was the last 10%, where Mandel pivoted to calling for "structural anti-capitalist reforms" to counteract the private sector, despite calling progressive income tax a "myth of reformism" just a few pages earlier. Reformist snippets aside, does what it says on the cover: great introduction to Marxist economic theory.

[Marc Lichtman · Rating 4 out of 5]

A concise presentation of the basic principles of political economy.

Ernest Mandel (1923–1995) – A leader of the Fourth International and its Belgian section from the 1940s until his death. Author of Marxist Economic Theory, Late Capitalism, and introductions to each of the three volumes of Karl Marx’s Capital published in English translation by Penguin. He is also the author of An Introduction to Marxist Economic Theory (1969) and coauthor of The Marxist Theory of Alienation (1970), both published by Pathfinder Press.

[Russell Kapryn · Rating 5 out of 5]

Originally published in French, this small book covers the basic concepts of Marxist Economic Theory, or MET. You will learn about the bourgeoisie, the proletariat working class dating from the medieval era to the present-day (or in the case of when the book was published- the 1970's) and how the economic systems of production have both changed and not changed over the centuries. Overall, this is a nice small book to read to gain at least an introductory understanding of MET.

[Iago · Rating 4 out of 5]

Me parece una muy buena obra para familiarizarse con los conceptos básicos de la economía marxista. Y no es excesivamente esquemático, explica las cosas con bastante profundidad, con buenos argumentos a favor de la teoría marxista. No obstante, y para mi gusto, me parece que sobran bastantes comentarios sobre las características del capitalismo de la época del autor (los años 60). Le dedica bastante espacio a ello, con análisis de cosecha propia, no puramente marxianos.

[James · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you're daunted by the 1,000+ pages of Karl Marx's Das Kapital (and that's just the first Volume), then the 70 pages or so of Ernest Mandel's 'Introduction' is a good substitute or aid to getting up to speed with tackling Kapital more confidently. There's also a very interesting section on 'Neo-Capitalism' and cold-war capitalist economics that is still highly relevant today.

[OSCAR · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excelente introducción, útil para entender cómo los marxistas ven el movimiento económico y las relaciones de clase. Explora con habilidad los polémicos conceptos de plusvalía, neocapitalismo y explotación. En pocas palabras, un texto sin igual.