And as he put it, those people will “beat the people with the people’s stick.” In other words, they’ll talk about democracy, but they’ll really be beating people with the stick of democracy, which they’ll turn into a mechanism of coercion.
So there are some intellectuals who think you can get power by exploiting popular struggles and others who thing you’re going to get power by associating yourself with the people who already have economic power.
https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/noam-chomsky-bakunin-s-predictions
He also predicted quite accurately what happens in modern industrial state capitalism societies. And looking at it now from the retrospect of 100 years we can see this development very clearly.
And I think it explains an odd fact about 20th century intellectual life, namely how easy it’s been for people to shift from one position to another. So the same person who’s a Stalin apologist one year is a super American patriot the next, supporting every atrocity
https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/noam-chomsky-bakunin-s-predictions
