Not Fundamentally Rational

This is what Stephen Hicks writes on Page 159 of his book, Explaining Postmodernism: "In effect, this strain of Left thought came to agree with what the collectivist Right had long argued: that human beings are not fundamentally rational--that in politics it is the irrational passions that must be appealed to and utilized."

The revolutionaries on the Right and the Left, earlier in the 20th century, came to the conclusion that the masses were fundamentally irrational, and the elites that made the Revolution possible and underway, would also rule the irrational masses, after the successful Revolution--should it be victorious, the effort.

Now, I abhor tyrants of any stripe, and elites, all through history, have justified ruling, oppressing, abusing, exploiting, murdering, and impoverishing the masses, because they deemed the masses were irrational, selfish children that needed to be ruled with a gun, and baton, and a firm hand, and that was what they deserved and all that they were capable of handling.

As  a Mavellonialist, I reject this cynical portrait of the masses, wholly and wholesale. People are irrational more than they are rational, but they can be taught to reason, to think, to maverize, to exercise their agency and liberty in culturally and politically responsible ways. The common people can and should run things, and elites need to disappear.