A historical reconstruction of the contribution of Ernest Mandel till the postwar politics and economical thinking.

This project aims to contribute to a more systematic studyand cataloguing of the heterodox currents in postwar political and economic thinking.At the same time it touches on an important part of the intellectual history of the VUB in the 1970's and 1980's, since an important and specific position within the heterodox current was taken up by the extensive work of Ernest Mandel (1923-1995), emeritus professor of the University.Mandel's work covers many fields and problem areas, including the general laws of capital mobility,the history of the world system and the question of bureaucracy in the labour movement.The historical reconstruction involved in this project is aimed primarily at setting up an annotated bibliography of Mandel's complete works.The next research phase involves subjecting the bibliographical material to a taxonomic analysis so as to map out the ( relations between the ) different areas covered by the whole oeuvre. A following research phase will involve bibliographical soundings to identify texts wich exist "alongside" (" con-text" ) or " behind " ( " intertextuality " ) Mandel's texts and a descriptive framework will be set up to cover the complex systems of thinking and representation for wich these texts are a vehicle and an expression .Finally, a start will be made on a bibliographical study of the reception accorded Mandel's work and the question of how this relates to the polymorphous liberated Marxism that is appearing at present.