machiavelli the democrat

For a profoundly revisionist take on the Fiorentine listen to this "Occupy interview" with John P. McCormick, Professor of Political Science from U Chicago, and author of Machiavellian Democracy. You can also read McCormick's brief article, "Defending the People from the Professors," which not only departs from the the Machiavellis of old, i.e., of Straussians, neo-Republicans, and those who McCormick refers to as "self-proclaimed radicals," but proffers a Machiavelli for "democrats" for "theoretical insight, institutional inspiration, and spiritual fortification." 

god is dead, and why clinging to the democratic left is somehow still a worthy undertaking

Every now and then, the lefter-than-thou debate flames up where, as Matt Bruenig  recently put it, "people ...do everything they can to throw bombs at left-wing projects that are successful." Obviously, an unfortunate debate insofar it divides ostensible comrades. But its also understandable one: not just because of co-optation anxieties among the powerless, or some unspoken envy, but because the ontological basis of The Left, its very critical basis of resistance, has been up for grabs ever since Engels shook hands with Marx. 'Cuz in a Kantian Nietzschean world that Hegel stuff just ain't gonna cut it. Thus Bruenig can posit, "The biggest challenge facing the left or any minority movement is convincing people to spend their time, energy, and other resources working with them."A problem undoubtedly but... "the biggest challenge?" I would submit the problem is far more visionary and profound than Bruenig realizes.

The conditions for fighting the good fight qua radical political movement, I would submit, might easily be considered a pragmatic nihilism where the dire need to articulate, form, and sustain political commitments gets inundated these days in a wink of an eye by everyday contingencies, like multiple loyalties, imperfectly formed and thus questionable commitments, ordinary uncertainties, and the sheer fact of powerlessness. There is no Grand Narrative to which leftists can appeal. There is no "false consciousness." Thus guidelines are constantly shifting, the goal posts continually prone to springing up unexpectedly to float in space. Thus the dissension, the disagreement, the fear, the breakup. The blame game, the purity game. Or, conversely, the success.

I am not an anarchist (a la David Graeber and his crowd) nor a statist (a la Jacobin) but a melancholic/disenchanted/disgruntled democrat - a populist even - who acknowledges (at least at this point in time) the historical inevitability of a strong, centralized, power which is anti-democratic in both design and orientation. Hopefully, (and here, I guess I'm an idealist after all) this enormous state complex, (which these days interlock a few public and private actors at the top in ways that make it neo-fascist, absurdly violent, and indifferent,) can someday be made more democratic, more just, and more peaceful, at least as far as ordinary folk, the poor, and minority groups, are concerned. Please note I have no political ontology whatsoever to justify and sustain these hopes. And I realize they will almost certainly be losing battles in my lifetime. And so, like that of my comrades, they remain the inchoate dreams of people who continue stumbling along through a dystopia. In a word, we lefties, and we ordinary folk, are up fucking shit's creek.


  

mayday!

From NYTimes comes

Here’s a fact that may not surprise you: the children of the rich perform better in school, on average, than children from middle-class or poor families. Students growing up in richer families have better grades and higher standardized test scores, on average, than poorer students; they also have higher rates of participation in extracurricular activities and school leadership positions, higher graduation rates and higher rates of college enrollment and completion.

And,

Meanwhile, not only are the children of the rich doing better in school than even the children of the middle class, but the changing economy means that school success is increasingly necessary to future economic success, a worrisome mutual reinforcement of trends that is making our society more socially and economically immobile.

Read all about it here.