Which set of revolutionaries do you have the most respect for?

[- Groucho -]

McDonald's doesn't have a great song, but I'd still put Ray Kroc up there with any other revolutionary. Not particularly for his personal accomplishments, but for the accomplishments of the entity he founded, McDonald's Corporation. Say what you want about their food (which I try to avoid) but McDonald's spread across the globe has had a profound influence on the direction our world is headed in.

Charles Merrill and his investment bank practically invented the concept of Mom & Pop shareholders as a major force in the capital markets. That concept has also spread through the developed world and also has fairly profound implications for how the world is organized.

And Akio Morita ... just take a good long look at Sony. Morita developed one of the first truly borderless corporations. He exemplifies the modern revolutionary. Screw idiotic flag waiving, bloodshed and the lust for political power. Morita took his vision of the way the world ought to work and just went out and did it.

[chequita guevara]

None of them are revolutionaries.

[Imran Siddiqui]

They are economic revolutionaries (of a sort).

[moomin]

Bah. They didn't even manage to kill a few people, these spineless servants of the Corporate Masters.

You can't really expect a decent commie to take them seriously.

[- Groucho -]

Che: I don't think you've quite grasped the significance of the three revolutionaries I chose. There is a good argument that these three people have done more to undermine the 19th century concept of a nation state than any three other modern individuals.

[JCG]

Any of those who actually do something constructive, and not just murder people for greed and lust for power....Hopefully, we will see (mostly) non-violent revolutionaries like Gandhi once again...

[DaShi]

Originally posted by axi




You see DaShi.... This is the sort of list that smells fishy to me. The people on those lists have one common element: they are acceptable by the US "system of values". Regarding how much revolutionary they were, see Ataturk side by side with Martin Luther King.

My case rests.

God forbid that the US has values! They should all have the same values as you. In fact, the whole world should have the same values. There'd be a lot less conflict that way.

Oh and you didn't cite this before you went on your rant. Your rant was triggered by minimal (truly no) provokation.

[Tuberski]

Originally posted by moominparatrooper
Bah. They didn't even manage to kill a few people, these spineless servants of the Corporate Masters.

You can't really expect a decent commie to take them seriously.

I'll bet McDonald's has killed more than a few people.

[Zkribbler]

Originally posted by axi
Who Ataturk? He commited genocide for crying out loud!

Ieeee! I put Ataturk there for his modernization of Turkey. I wasn't aware he was also behind the genocide. Jurassic erase his name off my list!

[Ramo]

Well, he did run the country at the time...

[chequita guevara]

Originally posted by Echinda
Che: I don't think you've quite grasped the significance of the three revolutionaries I chose. There is a good argument that these three people have done more to undermine the 19th century concept of a nation state than any three other modern individuals.

They haven't overturned anything. At best they done extremely well in the system that they are a part of. They haven't done anything new. At the begining of the 21st Century the nation-state is just as strong as ever. To call them revolutionary would be like calling Louis the XIV revolutionary.

[Sprayber]

Martin Luther-Got the people in Rome to sit up and take notice.

American Founding Fathers-They managed a revolution without it turning to into a worse government than before with some paying dearly for their deeds.

Thomas Paine - I know he was a contemporary of the founding fathers, but he was advocating common sense before the others.

Abolitionists - Among the first was Benjamin Franklin

Mahatma Gandhi-Shamed the British Empire into doing the right thing. Too bad it was too late for the Irish.

Martin Luther King Jr.-Scorned by Malcolm X and other militants , he sought to shame American as Gandhi did the Brits.

[chequita guevara]

Spray, you know what X said about King? They better hope they kill me [X] before they kill King. X respected King.

[- Groucho -]

Originally posted by chegitz guevara
They haven't overturned anything.

I don't agree that overturning a government is a necessary precondition to being revolutionary. Two of these guys developed a working way of making something other than nation states and religion matter on the world stage and the other fundamentally altered the ownership of our society's means of production. Sounds revolutionary, or at least gestalt altering, to me.

[Sikander]

Originally posted by moominparatrooper
Bah. They didn't even manage to kill a few people, these spineless servants of the Corporate Masters.

You can't really expect a decent commie to take them seriously.

Are you kidding? McDonalds kills thousands every year!