Life & Wisdom Quote by Ernest Mandel

“Luxury” is the tell: Mandel is refusing a common Cold War framing that treats democracy as something you can afford only after you’ve built a rich, stable capitalist economy. By denying that premise, he’s also taking aim at two convenient excuses at once. One is liberal paternalism: the idea that poorer countries must accept “development first, rights later,” often under the guidance of international capital and Western-aligned elites. The other is authoritarian socialism’s alibi: the claim that party rule, emergency measures, and suspended freedoms are temporary necessities on the road to prosperity.

Mandel’s phrasing ties democracy to need rather than achievement. Democracy isn’t the dessert you get after industrialization; it’s the machinery for deciding what development is, who it serves, and what costs are acceptable. The subtext is bluntly strategic: without democratic control, “socialism” collapses into a managerial state that plans production but reproduces hierarchy, secrecy, and coercion. In Mandel’s Trotskyist orbit, that’s a direct indictment of Stalinist bureaucracies and their habit of calling dissent “counterrevolution.”

The second clause widens the battlefield. By insisting the need isn’t limited to advanced industrial countries, he’s defending revolutionary possibilities in the Global South and undercutting Marxism’s more mechanical “stages” reading. It’s also a warning: when democracy is treated as optional, “development” becomes a cover story for extraction - whether by multinational corporations or by domestic elites wearing socialist badges.