IN MEMORIAM TRIBUTE TO ERNEST MANDEL
Andre Gunder Frank
We have lost not only a most humane human being, but the world's
greatest optimist. I don't know which is the greater loss, but perhaps there
was an intimate connection of humane optimism and/or optimistic
humanism; and, if so, the world's loss is multiplied and all the greater. Not
only shall we miss him; we still NEED him!
My relation with Ernest was professional, political, and above all
personal. It began with his professional/political published praise of my
early work on Latin America and my request to him for help with my work
on dependence, to which he acceeded logistically by receiving me in the
Hague, taking me back to Brussles in his car, and lodging me at his home
in or about 1969. Ernest later changed his mind about, and became ever
more critical of, dependence "theory" and my work; but our personal
relations continued to flourish.
Another professional tie was our interest in Kondratieffs in general and
the Kondratieff B phase world economic crisis of accumulation since 1967,
about which we both wrotre so much. A recent manifestation was the
1989 Brussels Kondratieff conference he organized whose papers then
appeared in a book edited by him, Kleinknecht and Wallerstein. Another
was our concern with whether Kondratieff lower turning points are
exogenous, as he maintained, or possibly endogenous as I suggest, as eg. in
our debate which began between him and David Gordon in Boston in 1979
as summarized and continued by the three of us in REVIEW 1994.
Also in 1979, we co-taught a summer school course on the world
economic crisis together at Boston University. As I have recounted many
times, Ernest and I agreed on everything with each other [and very little
with almost everybody else], and we disagreed in class and in private on
only two issues: Ernest said the revolution is arond the corner in several
countries, and I said that it is not. I claimed that the same capitalist
economic law of value also operates in the "socialist" economies, including
the Soviet Union, which really exist as part and parcel of the [capitalist]
world economy; and Ernest Mandel denied the same. On several occasions
both before -- and all the more so after -- 1989-91, I found it increasingly
difficult to avoid saying and writing to Ernest that "I told you so."
I also recall standing on a street corner with him in Brussles waiting for
his first wife Gisela to get some film she had left for developing at a photo
shop. Ernest asked me "don't you agree that we Trotskyists do the best
analysis of what is going on in the world?" and I answered, yes I do. Well,
"then you have to also agree that we have the best political practice,"
Ernest continued. NO, I answered, I do NOT agree; and I do not have to,
because what you say is a complete non-sequitur, which was born, perhaps,
more from his own great optimism and humanity than from his analysis of
the evidence, which has hardly supported his aspiration. Even with all his
humanism, I never understood how Ernest Mandel maintained his
inveterate optimism in the face of all the evidence; and yet, the more the
evidence comes in, the more do we need his optimism and humanism -- as
well as his analysis -- to get out of it. So we shall miss him -- and continue
to need him
