[lbo-talk] Origin of "privatization"

Shane Mage shmage at pipeline.com
Tue Sep 11 15:57:37 PDT 2012


On Sep 11, 2012, at 2:15 PM, 123hop at comcast.net wrote:


> If I remember right, the masses support counter-revolution because
> it gives some -- on the domestic level - the same power as the
> elites have on the public level. "Every man a king...." free to beat
> his wife and kids and to lynch the odd uppity non-white.

This is very misleading. The "trope" entered the language as the slogan of Huey Long's left-populist presidential campaign (terminated, as is typical, by a "lone-nut" assassin) in the campaign song he wrote and sung: "Every man a king and every gal a queen." So the misogynistic reading is as off-base as the racism one: Long was the only Democratic politician in the south to carry out social programs that did not discriminate against black people and to enjoy overwhelming black support.

The "masses" support counterrevolution only as a result of mental poisoning through religious indoctrination and/or national chauvinism. The prototypical mass counterrevolutions were the Vendéen Chouans against the First Republic and the Spanish Guerrilleros against Napoleon.

Shane Mage

This cosmos did none of gods or men make, but it

always was and is and shall be: an everlasting fire,

kindling in measures and going out in measures.

Herakleitos of Ephesos



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