Wealth & Money Quote by Ernest Mandel

Strikes, Mandel reminds us, are not just expressions of anger; they are structured by the very system they challenge. The line’s power is its refusal of the romantic image of perpetual revolt. In a capitalist economy, workers don’t simply choose to withhold labor whenever they feel like it, because their survival is wired to the wage. “Selling their labor power” isn’t decorative Marxist phrasing; it’s the mechanism that turns time into rent, groceries, childcare, medication. The strike is a weapon, but it’s also a wager against your own short-term ability to live.

The intent is corrective and strategic. Mandel is pushing back on armchair expectations that working people should constantly “take to the streets” if conditions are bad. He’s also quietly indicting a common media and managerial framing: that strikes are irrational disruptions caused by agitators. His subtext is colder: capitalism disciplines dissent by making stoppage costly, not merely by policing or propaganda, but through the daily arithmetic of bills.

Context matters. Mandel, a major Marxist economist and Trotskyist theorist, wrote in a Europe shaped by postwar labor movements, periodic mass strikes, and the institutionalization of unions. That era made the strike visible and politically potent, but also revealed its limits: unions negotiate because workers can’t indefinitely suspend income. The quote is less a lament than a map of constraint, arguing that any serious politics of labor has to confront dependency on the wage, not just inspire courage.