"You can have relatively high levels of class consciousness with a lower level of class militancy than one would have expected"
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Mandel’s line has the chill of an autopsy report: the patient (working-class politics) is awake, even self-aware, and still refusing to get out of bed. The sting is in the mismatch it names. “Class consciousness” is the cognitive piece, the recognition that society is structured by exploitation and hierarchy. “Class militancy” is the behavioral piece, the willingness to risk comfort, legality, or livelihood to change that structure. Mandel is pointing to a modern paradox that embarrasses orthodox Marxist expectations: people can know exactly what’s happening to them and still not move collectively.
The phrasing “than one would have expected” quietly targets a whole tradition of deterministic confidence. It’s a jab at the idea that clearer awareness automatically ripens into confrontation. Mandel, a Marxist economist writing in the long shadow of postwar Europe, is registering how welfare states, mass consumer culture, union bureaucracies, and Cold War repression could stabilize capitalism without dissolving inequality. The system can tolerate a surprising amount of insight as long as it channels anger into safe outlets: voting rituals, negotiated contracts, private coping.
The subtext is strategic, not merely diagnostic. If consciousness isn’t translating into militancy, the problem isn’t that workers are “duped” or “apathetic”; it’s that the costs of militancy are real and the institutions shaping daily life are designed to make collective rupture feel both risky and unnecessary. Mandel’s sentence is an argument for organization and politics, not just education: knowing your class position is common; acting on it is the hard, contested terrain.
The phrasing “than one would have expected” quietly targets a whole tradition of deterministic confidence. It’s a jab at the idea that clearer awareness automatically ripens into confrontation. Mandel, a Marxist economist writing in the long shadow of postwar Europe, is registering how welfare states, mass consumer culture, union bureaucracies, and Cold War repression could stabilize capitalism without dissolving inequality. The system can tolerate a surprising amount of insight as long as it channels anger into safe outlets: voting rituals, negotiated contracts, private coping.
The subtext is strategic, not merely diagnostic. If consciousness isn’t translating into militancy, the problem isn’t that workers are “duped” or “apathetic”; it’s that the costs of militancy are real and the institutions shaping daily life are designed to make collective rupture feel both risky and unnecessary. Mandel’s sentence is an argument for organization and politics, not just education: knowing your class position is common; acting on it is the hard, contested terrain.
Quote Details
| Topic | Equality |
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