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. 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 cited by 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

References
  1. Noam Chomsky (13 December 2013). The Essential Chomsky. New Press. pp. 510–. ISBN 978-1-59558-566-0.
  2. 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.
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