Yes, Marxism Predicts. No, That's Not What Makes It Valid.

Red Mole's End of Year Editorial

We end 2025 watching revolutionaries retreat into ritual. Across the international left, organizations cling to predictions that failed decades ago, defend analyses reality has shredded, treat theoretical frameworks as sacred texts requiring priestly interpretation. The SWP still mutters about state capitalism while ignoring how the Chinese bureaucracy actually restored capitalism. The AWL repeats mantras about “two camps” while campism devours what remains of anti-imperialist principle. Groups split over whether saying the right words about 1917 matters more than understanding Gaza.

This is the dogmatic soul of Trotskyism: the belief that legitimacy flows from predictive accuracy. Get the forecast right, and history vindicates you. Get it wrong, and the entire political project collapses.

Mandel spent his life fighting this bankruptcy. His answer? Open Marxism; the only scientific form of revolutionary theory, the tradition Marx and Lenin actually practiced.

Science Isn’t Prophecy

Brian Cox, the Manchester physicist, recently dismantled climate skeptics with an observation that applies perfectly to revolutionary theory: “The power of science is it’s the only human system of thought that accepts its own fallibility.”

Climate models predict temperature rises between 1.7 and 4.5 degrees by 2100. Large error ranges. Significant uncertainty. Cox’s point: that’s how science works. You make measurements, model the system as best you can, get predictions with error bars. What else can you do? “Read tea leaves, the tarot cards?” Science is always preliminary, never claiming prophetic certainty.

The problem isn’t the error ranges. The problem is that people attack the science to avoid the policy implications. Climate sceptics demand perfect prediction before accepting that action is necessary. When specific forecasts miss, they use uncertainty as an excuse for inaction. “Science isn’t a priesthood,” Cox insists, but sceptics treat it like one: either prophetically accurate or completely invalid.

Now watch the parallel. Dogmatic Trotskyists make the identical error. Classical Trotskyism predicted the bureaucracy would defend October’s gains until overthrown by workers. True in 1936. Obsolete by 1970. Reality committed heresy against the doctrine. The dogmatic response: defend the prediction, attack the empirical analysis, treat theoretical revision as betrayal. When the bureaucracy restored capitalism in 1989, they faced the same choice as climate sceptics: accept that large error ranges don’t invalidate the method, or abandon science entirely.

Most chose the latter. The Fourth International’s legitimacy supposedly rested on getting the forecast right. Fail the prophecy test, lose your revolutionary credentials. This transforms Marxism from a critical method into a priesthood: either infallible or fraudulent, with no middle ground for fallible science constantly refined through practice.

Yes, Marxism Predicts. No, That’s Not What Makes It Valid.

The dogmatic error isn’t the claim that Marxism has predictive capacity. It does. Mandel never denied this. Classical Marxism correctly foresaw capitalism’s tendency toward cyclical crises, the inevitability of imperialist war, the structural contradictions that would explode the Soviet bureaucracy. Trotsky and Mandel’s analysis accurately predicted the conditions that would lead to bureaucratic collapse, even if the timescale remained uncertain.

This predictive capacity matters immensely. Revolutionary action requires anticipating society’s laws of motion. Without understanding where capitalism’s contradictions are driving events, you can’t intervene effectively. The Fourth International understood the bureaucracy’s structural instability—the theoretical framework was more sound than that of those who thought the bureaucracy was a ruling class. But when collapse came in 1989-91, we did not treat this general prediction as prophetic vindication, but instead analysed the specific dynamics of capitalist restoration. It never claimed ‘we foresaw this’ (especially since Mandel believed that the Soviet working class would be strong enough to prevent wholesale privatization). The FI instead aimed to explain how nationalist fragmentation, Gorbachev’s trajectory, and IMF shock therapy actually worked. The framework helped; treating it as prophecy fulfilled didn’t.

The error lies in what dogmatists make of this. They transform prediction from a tool for understanding objective conditions into rigid historical fatalism. They substitute prophetic vindication for the necessity of political struggle. Worst of all, they engage in retrospective hagiography, claiming their tendency “predicted everything” while memory-holing the perspectives that failed (e.g. volume two of Ted Grant’s Selected Works was disappeared five years ago).

The Ted Grant cult perfects this priesthood. His followers insist Grant foresaw the USSR’s collapse, Corbyn’s rise, every major development in British politics since 1945. The actual record shows something more interesting: Grant got plenty wrong, but his method often helped the Militant tendency organize effectively in specific conjunctures. That’s what mattered. The test wasn’t “did Ted predict X” but “did Militant build working-class organization when others couldn’t.”

Compare Grant’s method to his followers’ mythology. Grant analyzed concrete situations, adapted tactics when reality contradicted expectations, prioritized building organization over doctrinal purity. His epigones do the opposite: defend every historical forecast, attack empirical analysis that challenges inherited wisdom, treat Grant’s writings as sacred texts. They’ve made him what he never claimed to be—infallible.

Mandel’s point: Marxism’s predictive capacity derives from its scientific analysis of capitalism’s objective laws of motion. But science accepts fallibility. It refines predictions when they miss, updates models based on new evidence, tests hypotheses through practice. The value of Marxism lies in its ability to guide effective political action, not the infallibility of its forecasts.

We are all as right as our experience allows, our ability to learn from defeats, our capacity to organize under pressure, our commitment to human emancipation. Grant organized. His followers genuflect. That difference matters more than any prediction.

The Heresy of Reality

In 1980, Mandel co-authored Offener Marxismus (Open Marxism) with Johannes Agnoli. The subtitle tells you everything: “A Discussion about Doctrines, Orthodoxy and the Heresy of Reality.” Not theory against reality. Reality as heresy against ossified doctrine. The phrase captures Mandel’s core insight: concrete history constantly challenges rigid theoretical dogmas, and revolutionaries must have the intellectual courage to confront this, even when it means questioning established tenets.

Cox makes a crucial distinction: climate science (modeling with error ranges) is different from policy action (where democracy and politics enter). The 97% engineering consensus that a bridge will collapse doesn’t tell you whether to evacuate the city or reinforce the structure. Science provides the analysis; politics makes the decisions.

Mandel’s parallel: the critical method (dialectical materialism as “road to truth”) differs from specific strategic decisions (which must be tested through struggle). Marx’s method provides the analytical framework; revolutionary practice determines which tactics work. The method persists across defeats; specific forecasts get refined or discarded based on results.

This separation prevents two fatal errors.

1. First, treating predictive failure as methodological bankruptcy: climate skeptics abandon the entire science when a specific forecast misses, dogmatic Trotskyists abandon dialectical materialism when 1948 or 1968 or 1989 doesn’t produce the expected outcome.

2. Second, using methodological sophistication to avoid political responsibility: some post-Mandel “Open Marxism” descends into academic abstraction precisely by severing theory from the obligation to inform revolutionary practice.

Open Marxism rejects “closed” forms associated with positivism, determinism, and functionalism. It refuses the view that Marxism’s purpose is providing an “alternative body of objective knowledge” like classical political economy. Instead, Marx’s categories are conceptualizations of class struggle, not fixed laws discovered once and applied forever. This approach stresses “practical reflexivity”: theory tested through action, refined through defeat, developed through the actual movement of the class.

Science is always preliminary, Cox argues, so “you’ve got to act on it.” Historical development is radically uncertain, Mandel insists, therefore revolutionary organization becomes paramount. Both reject the fantasy of perfect knowledge before action. Both demand we act on the best available analysis while remaining open to empirical correction.

Mandel’s synthesis held two seemingly contradictory stances in dynamic tension. His Marxism was simultaneously orthodox and open. Orthodox, meaning faithful to Marx’s critical method and the categorical imperative to resist all inhuman social conditions. Open, meaning relentlessly engaged with new empirical realities, refusing to let past predictions constrain present analysis.

Orthodox Marxism, properly understood, is not dogmatic adherence to specific forecasts. It’s methodological and ethical fidelity to revolutionary transformation. Mandel defined an orthodox Marxist as one who “acts in the spirit of Marx” and is “bound by the obligation to resist all inhuman social conditions.” This shifts emphasis from textual interpretation to practical commitment, from prophecy to praxis. Orthodoxy becomes an active ethical imperative for struggle, not a static defense of inherited predictions.

If orthodoxy meant only rigid adherence to past texts, it would become dogmatic and incapable of addressing new historical conditions. If openness meant abandoning all foundational principles, it would risk theoretical eclecticism and lose its critical edge. Mandel’s synthesis avoids both pitfalls: orthodoxy provides the enduring critical method and emancipatory goals, while openness ensures the theory’s empirical relevance and analytical sharpness in a constantly changing world.

The Compulsion to Prophecy

The dogmatic current reduces political science to “foreseeing what is going to happen.” When predictions fail—and they always do—this tendency becomes static, conservative, defensive. It transforms Trotskyist theory from an instrument of analysis into a collection of ritual formulae.

Once again, take the Soviet bureaucracy. The core prediction of Classical Trotskyism—that the Soviet bureaucracy would defend the non-capitalist gains of the October Revolution out of self-interest—was accurate in the 1930s, as the bureaucracy derived its privileges from the elevated national income produced by the planned economy. Yet, Ernest Mandel argued that the continuing reliance on the traditional prognosis, which defined the outcome as an alternative between social counter-revolution (capitalist restoration) or political revolution, had become obsolete decades before 1989.

Mandel (writing as Ernest Germain in 1957) contended that following the post-World War II victories of revolutions and the enormous economic progress of the USSR, the overall relationship of forces on the world scale had turned in favour of the revolution. Consequently, capitalist restoration was “no longer a possibility” in the short- or medium-term. Clinging to the outdated “alternative prospect” transformed Trotskyist theory from an instrument of analysis into a “collection of ritual formulae”, which Mandel labelled “vulgar eclecticism”. This made sense in 1957, but not in 1987.

This failure by some to update the prognosis persisted while the bureaucracy, in power because of its monopoly over political authority, became unable to successfully transition the economy from extensive to intensive industrialisation. The continued structural crisis eventually reached a point where the bureaucracy was incapable of resisting capitalist restoration, but had atomized the working class and made it incapable of successful resistance.

The problem isn’t that predictions fail. Revolutionary practice is radically uncertain because history is partly the product of continuing struggles. The outcome is not predetermined. What matters is whether failure produces theoretical development or defensive rigidity. Does defeat prompt systematic refinement of analysis in light of experience, or retreat into doctrinal purity?

Mandel insisted that “each step forward of the international revolution also gives rise to a progress of revolutionary thought.” This progress must be continually assimilated by the whole revolutionary party. New problems posed by life and history “cannot be solved simply by turning to the scriptures.” The dogmatic tendency, confronted with failed forecasts, either abandons Marxism entirely or retreats into scholasticism. Neither option equips the working class to seize sudden, favorable opportunities for action.

Theory as Weapon, Not Scripture

Revolutionary theory serves as critical, interpretive, and transformative science: a tool for actively shaping history through conscious intervention. Theory without action cannot be “genuinely scientific” because revolutionary practice is the only way to test and verify theoretical analysis. Mandel rejected mechanically deterministic views of history and condemned those who relied on the certainty of historical inevitability.

This matters intensely for contemporary organizing. Cox identifies where climate skepticism goes wrong: “people attack the science and the modeling in order to disagree with the policy action.” The sectarian left makes the identical move. When groups fail strategically, they attack the theoretical framework to avoid examining their own practice.

The AWL’s positions on Palestine collapse under examination not because they got Marx wrong but because they substituted doctrinal consistency for materialist analysis of imperialism’s actual dynamics. The SWP’s crisis in 2013 stemmed partly from treating organizational forms as sacred rather than testing them against the needs of the movement. Rather than acknowledge democratic centralism requires democratic practice, they attacked critics as enemies of Leninism. BSW’s nationalist turn isn’t explained by Die Linke’s theoretical errors; it flows from material pressures the old formulae couldn’t anticipate. Rather than develop new analysis of petty-bourgeois oscillation under polycrisis, Wagenknecht attacks “open borders dogma.”

Cox is in a scientific conversation that is less dogmatic. If 97% of engineers said a bridge was going to collapse, you’d evacuate, not attack engineering science. When organizational strategies fail—and the international left has experienced cascading failures this decade—the scientific response is refining analysis and testing new approaches. The dogmatic response is defending the doctrine and attacking those who notice the bridge collapsing.

Effective revolutionary organizations need both: continuity of the core critical method (orthodoxy) and relentless willingness to test and update conclusions against objective reality (openness). This isn’t pick-and-choose eclecticism. It’s ensuring Marxism remains what Marx intended: a tool for active transformation, constantly adapting to new empirical realities while maintaining its revolutionary purpose.

Mandel’s concept of “transitional demands” demonstrates this synthesis. For him, these are demands that “objectively cannot be achieved or co-opted within the framework of the capitalist social order, and which produce an objectively revolutionary dynamic.” They’re not fixed predictions but strategic interventions whose effectiveness must be tested through struggle. When a demand gets co-opted or proves inadequate, you develop new ones. The method persists; the specific applications evolve.

The 2026 Challenge

As we enter the new year, the international left faces cascading crises. Palestine genocide continues while campism paralyzes anti-imperialist solidarity. European social democracy accelerates its nationalist turn. The far right advances while Labour governments implement austerity. Climate breakdown accelerates while ecosocialism remains marginal. Ukraine grinds through its third year of imperialist war while the left fractures over whose imperialism to oppose.

These challenges demand Open Marxism. Not the academic abstraction some have made of it since Mandel’s death, but his living synthesis: methodologically orthodox, empirically open, strategically revolutionary. We need rigorous analysis of how Chinese capitalism actually functions, not repetition of state capitalism mantras. We need materialist understanding of why Labour embraced Zionism, not ritual denunciation. We need strategic intelligence about Die Linke’s decomposition that illuminates the British left’s trajectory.

The dogmatic current offers only defensive sectarianism: guard the doctrine, denounce the heretics, wait for history to vindicate the prophecies. This produces small, pure organizations that watch from the sidelines as the class moves without them. Like climate skeptics demanding prophetic certainty before accepting action is necessary, they treat theoretical uncertainty as excuse for passivity.

Open Marxism offers something else: the intellectual courage to confront reality even when it contradicts inherited wisdom, the theoretical flexibility to develop new analyses when old ones fail, the strategic orientation toward revolutionary regroupment rather than sectarian purity. It means treating defeats as sources of new theoretical insights rather than proof of theoretical bankruptcy. It means understanding that history’s radical uncertainty makes revolutionary organization more necessary, not less.

Cox’s observation illuminates everything: “The power of science is it’s the only human system of thought that accepts its own fallibility.” This acceptance isn’t weakness but strength. Climate science doesn’t collapse when error ranges are large or specific forecasts miss; it refines the models and continues. Revolutionary Marxism shouldn’t collapse when predictions fail; it tests theory through practice, assimilates lessons from struggle, develops new strategic approaches while maintaining the critical method.

Mandel titled his book “the heresy of reality” for a reason. Reality keeps committing heresy against our doctrines. We can treat this as crisis or opportunity. Dogmatic Trotskyism chooses crisis, defending predictions against facts, attacking empirical analysis to avoid policy implications. Open Marxism chooses opportunity, refining theory through engagement with the heretical reality before us.

That choice defines whether we enter 2026 as a revolutionary current capable of building effective movements or a priesthood of failed prophecy, muttering the old mantras while the world burns. Science accepts fallibility and gains power. Dogma demands infallibility and produces paralysis.

The decisive quality of Trotskyism is not its predictive power but its commitment to the open theoretical practice of Marx and Lenin: testing theory through action, refining analysis through struggle, maintaining revolutionary purpose while adapting to changing conditions. This is what separates us from the sects. This is what makes us orthodox.

And this is what 2026 demands.