Ernest Mandel

“No government could last more than a month without having to knock on the door of the banks in order to pay its current expenses. If the banks were to refuse, the government would go bankrupt.”
― Ernest Mandel, The Marxist Theory of the State

“As long as the productivity of labor remains at a level where one man can only produce enough for his own subsistence, social division does not take place and any social differentiation within society is impossible. Under these conditions, all men are producers and they are all on the same economic level.

Every increase in the productivity of labor beyond this low point makes a small surplus possible, and once there is a surplus of products, once man’s two hands can produce more than is needed for his own subsistence, then the conditions have been set for a struggle over how this surplus will be shared.”
― Ernest Mandel, Marxist Economic Theory: Vol II,