Machiavellian Democracy
Machiavellian Democracy

Author: John P. McCormick

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2011-01-31

Total Pages: 265

ISBN-13: 1139494961

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Intensifying economic and political inequality poses a dangerous threat to the liberty of democratic citizens. Mounting evidence suggests that economic power, not popular will, determines public policy, and that elections consistently fail to keep public officials accountable to the people. McCormick confronts this dire situation through a dramatic reinterpretation of Niccolò Machiavelli's political thought. Highlighting previously neglected democratic strains in Machiavelli's major writings, McCormick excavates institutions through which the common people of ancient, medieval and Renaissance republics constrained the power of wealthy citizens and public magistrates, and he imagines how such institutions might be revived today. It reassesses one of the central figures in the Western political canon and decisively intervenes into current debates over institutional design and democratic reform. McCormick proposes a citizen body that excludes socioeconomic and political elites and grants randomly selected common people significant veto, legislative and censure authority within government and over public officials.

Democracy Against the State
Democracy Against the State

Author: Miguel Abensour

Publisher: Polity

Published: 2011-02-07

Total Pages: 200

ISBN-13: 0745650090

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In the "Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right,” the young Marx elliptically alludes to a "true democracy" whose advent would go hand in hand with the disappearance of the state. Miguel Abensour’s rigorous interpretation of this seminal text reveals an “unknown Marx” who undermines the identification of democracy with the state and defends a historically occluded form of politics. True democracy does not entail the political and economic power of the state, but it does not dream of a post-political society either. On the contrary, the battle of democracy is waged by a demos that invents a public sphere of permanent struggles, a politics that counters political bureaucracy and representation. Democracy is "won" by a people forewarned that any dissolution of the political realm in its independence, any subordination to the state, is tantamount to annihilating the site for gaining and regaining a genuinely human existence. In this explicitly heterodox reading of Marx, Miguel Abensour proposes a theory of "insurgent" democracy that makes political liberty synonymous with a living critique of domination.

Reading Machiavelli
Reading Machiavelli

Author: John P. McCormick

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Published: 2018-10-09

Total Pages: 289

ISBN-13: 0691187916

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To what extent was Machiavelli a “Machiavellian”? Was he an amoral adviser of tyranny or a stalwart partisan of liberty? A neutral technician of power politics or a devout Italian patriot? A reviver of pagan virtue or initiator of modern nihilism? Reading Machiavelli answers these questions through original interpretations of Niccolò Machiavelli’s three major political works—The Prince, Discourses, and Florentine Histories—and demonstrates that a radically democratic populism seeded the Florentine’s scandalous writings. John McCormick challenges the misguided understandings of Machiavelli set forth by prominent thinkers, including Jean-Jacques Rousseau and representatives of the Straussian and Cambridge schools. McCormick emphasizes the fundamental, often unacknowledged elements of a vibrant Machiavellian politics: the utility of vigorous class conflict between elites and common citizens for virtuous democratic republics, the necessity of political and economic equality for genuine civic liberty, and the indispensability of religious tropes for the exercise of effective popular judgment. Interrogating the established reception of Machiavelli’s work by such readers as Rousseau, Leo Strauss, Quentin Skinner, and J.G.A. Pocock, McCormick exposes what was effectively an elite conspiracy to suppress the Florentine’s contentious, egalitarian politics. In recovering the too-long-concealed quality of Machiavelli’s populism, this book acts as a Machiavellian critique of Machiavelli scholarship. Advancing fresh renderings of works by Machiavelli while demonstrating how they have been misread previously, Reading Machiavelli presents a new outlook for how politics should be conceptualized and practiced.

Machiavelli and the Politics of Democratic Innovation
Machiavelli and the Politics of Democratic Innovation

Author: Christopher Holman

Publisher: University of Toronto Press

Published: 2018-08-08

Total Pages: 320

ISBN-13: 1487519109

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Presenting a detailed reinterpretation and reconstruction of the political thought of Niccolò Machiavelli, Machiavelli and the Politics of Democratic Innovation uses original readings of Machiavelli’s texts to develop a new theoretical model of democratic practice. The book critically and creatively juxtaposes certain concepts drawn from Machiavelli’s work in order to produce new political insights. Christopher Holman identifies two unique ideas in Machiavelli through his rearrangement of Machiavellian concepts. The first, drawn primarily from The Prince, is an image of the individual human being as a creative subject that seeks the exteriorization of desire via political creation. The second, drawn primarily from The Discourses on Livy, is an image of the democratic republic as a form of regime in which this desire for creative self-expression is universalized, all citizens being able to affirm their psychic orientation toward innovation through their equal access to political institutions and orders. Such institutions and orders, to the extent that they function as media for the expression of a fundamental human creativity, must be arranged so that they are capable of continual interrogation and refinement. In the final instance, a new ethical ground for the normative defense of democratic life is constructed, one grounded in the orientation of individual beings toward novelty and innovation.

Machiavelli in America
Machiavelli in America

Author: Thomas Block

Publisher: Algora Publishing

Published: 2014-03-01

Total Pages: 218

ISBN-13: 1628940689

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Machiavelli advised us that people are so mean, small and selfish that they will only act under necessity, so the successful prince must force the population, through whatever means necessary, to follow his dictates. This book traces the influence of the Florentine thinker on American politics, from the Founders (c. 1770s) through today's rough-and-tumble political panorama. Machiavelli's ideas have been re-interpreted internationally as 'real-politik.' He proposed that the 'ends justify the means,' and that any manner of fraud, violence or corruption must be utilized in attaining and retaining power. He maintained that the most powerful form of fraud was the appearance of religiosity and said that the successful prince must hold no art higher than that of war. In this disturbing, erudite and highly readable book, America is shown to be a surprising example of Machiavellian politics, utilizing all of the post-modern methods of information distribution and "legal" fraud and corruption. Lee Atwater, Karl Rove, George W. Bush, the Supreme Court's 'Citizens United v. the Federal Election Commission' (2010) and the Super PACs it spawned, the massive amounts of money ("power's master key"), the intermingling of the language of religion and war, and the 90% negative advertising of the 2012 Presidential campaign (channeling Machiavelli's dictum that the adversary must be "assassinated," though in contemporary America by character assassination) and even Barack Obama's Machiavellian machinations are looked at in light of the Renaissance political philosopher's ideas. The last section of the book offers a response to this with a specific, implementable program that will begin to devolve the power of American democracy back to the people.

Nietzsche's Machiavellian Politics
Nietzsche's Machiavellian Politics

Author: D. Dombowsky

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2004-02-27

Total Pages: 232

ISBN-13: 0230000657

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In this exciting new study, Don Dombowsky proposes that the foundation of Nietzsche's political thought is the aristocratic liberal critique of democratic society. But he claims that Nietzsche radicalizes this critique through a Machiavellian conversion, based on a reading of The Prince , adapting Machiavellian virtù (the shaping capacity of the legislator), and immoralism (the techniques applied in political rule), and that, consequently, Nietzsche is better understood in relation to the political ideology of the neo-Machiavellian elite theorists of his own generation.

The Machiavellians
The Machiavellians

Author: James Burnham

Publisher:

Published: 2020-12-15

Total Pages: 258

ISBN-13: 9781839013959

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James Burnham describes in details the history of Machiavelli and the modern Machiavellians who have been using his ideas to influence modern political liberty.

Reading Politics with Machiavelli
Reading Politics with Machiavelli

Author: Ronald J. Schmidt

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2018

Total Pages: 177

ISBN-13: 0190843357

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The uncanny friend -- We can breathe together : reading conspiracy with Machiavelli -- Machiavelli's Moses -- Torture, exile, and the citizen -- Exhortations

Democracy Against the State
Democracy Against the State

Author: Miguel Abensour

Publisher: Polity

Published: 2011-02-07

Total Pages: 200

ISBN-13: 0745650104

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Translator's Introduction: "To Think Emancipation Otherwise" Max Blechman p. vii Preface to the Italian Edition (2008): "Insurgent Democracy and Institution" p. xxiii Foreword to the Second French Edition (2004): "Of Insurgent Democracy" p. xxx Preface p. xlii Introduction p. 1 1 The Utopia of the Rational State p. 14 2 Political Intelligence p. 24 3 From the 1843 Crisis to the Criticism of Politics p. 31 4 A Reading Hypothesis p. 38 5 The Four Characteristics of True Democracy p. 47 6 True Democracy and Modernity p. 73 Conclusion p. 89 Appendix: "Savage Democracy" and the "Principle of Anarchy" p. 102 Notes p. 125 Index p. 141.

Machiavelli on Freedom and Civil Conflict
Machiavelli on Freedom and Civil Conflict

Author: Marie Gaille

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2018-07-23

Total Pages: 192

ISBN-13: 9004376011

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In Machiavelli on Freedom and Civil Conflict, Marie Gaille discusses Machiavelli’s conception of civil conflict, its historical and medical language, and its uses in contemporary conceptions of democracy.