Ernest Mandel’s slim and short An Introduction to Marxist Economic Theory came recommended to me as an alternative to a much larger book. That book is entitled Marxist Economic Theory. The sucker stretches across two largely out-of-print volumes. Compared to that, this book seemed like a much more approachable option. Marxism contains an expansive set of ideas about economics, history, politics, sociology and more. It’s very attractive to think that can be condensed, in its basics, to 100 pages or so. I’d wager that many if not most Americans don’t tackle these ideas in chunks far beyond the snippets they hear about in the news. But I bet few of us got far past The Communist Manifesto when it came time to dive into what Marxism actually means. With that in mind, any 100 page volume that claims to cover the essentials in non-academic language seems worth a look.
All in all, Mandel succeeded in that goal. This lays out the basics, starting with the nature of surplus value, labor, the transition from feudalism to capitalism, and the other core concepts I’ve been reading about for months now. I also talk about them in my Briefing series on Marxism 101. It breaks down the Labor Theory of Value, how commodities and currency work, how Marxists believe workers are exploited and capitalists accumulate ever more capital (and why). The last third of the book, similar to A People’s Guide to Capitalism, covers how Mandel sees the capitalist system changing and metastasizing since the time of Marx. He explains why that inevitably means our economic crises will continue and grow deeper. He also spends considerable time discussing how the social welfare policies advanced in the 20th century by social democrats and the Democratic Party in the United States inevitably become a trap to pacify labor movements. This entrenches capitalism so that its profits grow ever more secure, even as the wealth gap widens.
George Novak uses his intro to the book to call it “fresh and readable.” He promises that it avoids the “dullness found in other treatments.” I can’t say I agree with him, though. Some of that is inevitable when you read this book fifty years after it was first published. A fifty-year old economic text is definitely going to be “fresher” than what Marx laid out in the 19th century. Yet its examples and context queues are still driven from mid-20th century Europe. That’s pretty far off from a reality where we think about capitalism in terms of SpaceX and Uber. The “neocapitalism” that Mandel describes is the capitalism of the 1960s. It’s completed plenty of evolution (or, I’d argue, decay) since then. Social welfare policies were still strong or expanding in the mid-20th century. Now, they’re hobbled shells of what they were when the Baby Boomer generation was growing up. Even accounting for the dated nature of the book, there are points where readability is an issue. On the whole Mandel is a strong explainer of Marxist principles. But he can still drift into the long, meandering sentence structure of an academic. This happens even when his goal is to make something approachable and concise.
An Introduction to Marxist Economic Theory is a solid introduction to a complicated topic. If you read it, it will be time well spent. It may even pique your interest in reading more by Mandel in the future, which I plan to do. Still, I’d recommend that you supplement it with more modern takes on the same subject if possible. Marxism has plenty to say – good and bad – about any economic era. It remains relevant even as capitalism changes with the times.
- If you’re not inclined to purchase it at one of the links below or borrow it from your library, you can find the full text of this book hosted by the Marxists Internet Archive. The version on my shelf was published by Pathfinder Press.
An Introduction to Marxist Economic Theory
A short and sweet introduction to Marxism from a late Belgian Trotskyist intellectual. Useful and well-written, but it can still meander and show its age despite its small size.
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