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

• Doublespeak
• Euphemism

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.