This text was Ernest Mandel’s contribution to a colloquium on the occasion of the centenary of Marx’s Capital, organized by the institute of political science of the Goethe University Frankfurt and publisher Europäische Verlagsanstalt. The contributions and discussion were originally published in Kritik der politischen Ökonomie heute,100 Jahre Kapital (Frankfurt am Main, 1968). 

Le socialiste, érudit et militant, Ernest Mandel est né il y a cent ans, le 5 avril 1923. "Internationaliste flamand d'origine juive", il était un militant et un érudit, écrivant certains des ouvrages les plus importants de la théorie marxiste de la seconde moitié du vingtième siècle.

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Any serious discussion in a Marxist organization has two aspects.ⁱ It is born of ongoing events and tends to respond to a need for action born from the same events. In this respect, any discussion which is not artificial is inevitably partly pragmatic. But the answer given and the method which determines it become part of the whole of Marxist theory, and in one way or another modify the ideas—and the action—of future generations of Marxists, and even the answers given by the same generation to future questions.