The People's Stick
"The People's Stick" is a political metaphor by 19th-century Russian anarchist Mikhail Bakunin used in his 1873 work Statism and Anarchy to critique Marxism and the notion of the dictatorship of the proletariat. The full quote states:
When the people are being beaten with a stick, they are not much happier if it is called "the People's Stick".
The phrase is widely, though incorrectly, attributed to Noam Chomsky.[1] Other scholars have also noted the phrase as emblematic of the inherent oppressiveness of a state power, even in a nominally socialist government.[2]
See also[edit]
References[edit]
- ^ Noam Chomsky (13 December 2013). The Essential Chomsky. New Press. pp. 510–. ISBN 978-1-59558-566-0.
- ^ Lucien Van der Walt; Michael Schmidt (2009). Black Flame: The Revolutionary Class Politics of Anarchism and Syndicalism. AK Press. p. 54. ISBN 978-1-904859-16-1.