The very scale of the 1939-45 war has often tempted historians to study particular campaigns at the expense of the wider panorama. In this readable and richly detailed history of the conflict, the Belgian scholar Ernest Mandel (author of the acclaimed Late Capitalism) outlines his view that the war was in fact a combination of several distinct struggles and a battle between rival imperialisms for world hegemony. In concise chapters, Mandel examines the role played by technology, science, logistics, weapons and propaganda. Throughout, he weaves a consideration of the military strategy of the...

This book presents new methods for the analysis of time series and the identification of long waves. In Part One it is shown that new time series analyses confirm the existence of Kondratieff long waves in economic growth for the 19th and 20th centuries. Part Two presents evidence on long waves in aggregate profit rates for selected major industrialized countries. Part Three covers theoretical discussions and attempts at modeling social, economic and technological factors in long waves.

In the remarkable series of interviews that makes up his new book, Ernest Mandel sets out a comprehensive analysis of the contemporary world scene and the opportunities it affords for a revolutionary breakthrough to socialist democracy. Mandel begins with a discussion of the economic and social dynamics of the advanced capitalist societies of Western Europe in a period of crisis, and the strategy necessary to confront the bourgeois-democratic institutions which typically dominate their political life. The sequence of anti-imperialist upheavals in the Third World since 1945 forms the topic of...