"Periodically, the workers do revolt against bourgeois society, not by a hundred, five hundred, or a thousand, but by the millions"
About this Quote
“Periodically” is doing the heavy lifting here. Mandel isn’t offering a romantic postcard of revolution; he’s insisting on a pattern, almost a business cycle of social conflict. The line carries the calm assurance of someone writing with Marxism’s long view: capitalism doesn’t just generate wealth and inequality, it also periodically generates its own mass antagonists. Revolt isn’t an exception to “normal” bourgeois society. It’s a recurring output.
The counting rhythm - “not by a hundred, five hundred, or a thousand, but by the millions” - is more than emphasis. It’s an argument about where history actually happens. Liberal narratives often treat protest as a moral pageant staged by brave minorities. Mandel flips that: the decisive breaks aren’t symbolic, they’re majoritarian, and they arrive when everyday economic pressures tip into collective political action. The subtext is a warning to elites who mistake quiet for consent, and a rebuke to leftists who resign themselves to marginality.
Context matters: Mandel wrote as a Trotskyist economist in the afterglow of mid-century labor power and amid the tremors of 1968, when strikes and street politics reminded Europe that “order” could be interrupted at scale. His insistence on “millions” echoes general strikes more than romantic barricades; it’s about organized workers discovering themselves as a class, not just as individuals with grievances.
What makes the line work is its mixture of inevitability and audacity. It promises recurrence, not certainty: revolts happen, but their outcomes aren’t guaranteed. The revolution is periodic; the victory is never automatic.
The counting rhythm - “not by a hundred, five hundred, or a thousand, but by the millions” - is more than emphasis. It’s an argument about where history actually happens. Liberal narratives often treat protest as a moral pageant staged by brave minorities. Mandel flips that: the decisive breaks aren’t symbolic, they’re majoritarian, and they arrive when everyday economic pressures tip into collective political action. The subtext is a warning to elites who mistake quiet for consent, and a rebuke to leftists who resign themselves to marginality.
Context matters: Mandel wrote as a Trotskyist economist in the afterglow of mid-century labor power and amid the tremors of 1968, when strikes and street politics reminded Europe that “order” could be interrupted at scale. His insistence on “millions” echoes general strikes more than romantic barricades; it’s about organized workers discovering themselves as a class, not just as individuals with grievances.
What makes the line work is its mixture of inevitability and audacity. It promises recurrence, not certainty: revolts happen, but their outcomes aren’t guaranteed. The revolution is periodic; the victory is never automatic.
Quote Details
| Topic | Equality |
|---|
More Quotes by Ernest
Add to List
