New Keith Woods and Joel Davis video on popular sovereignty - some criticisms

submitted by NeoRail from self.debatealtright

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[–]NeoRail[S] 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (7 children)

You are speaking specifically about a cultural institution, which is entrusted to form the elite. The process you are describing, were the actual elite is tasked to train the next one, is an institution.

I think this is a flawed way of viewing things.

But anyway. The Venetian republic lasted more than 1000 years and it was pretty good in maintaining an healthy elite. Very patriotic aristocracy, extremely concerned with the health of the state, overall that's something it could work right now.

What do you like about Venice?

[–]Rakean93Identitarian socialist 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (6 children)

What do you like about Venice?

Venice achived the goal of making actually desirable to serve the country and invest your own resources in it. The system is pretty complex but is similar in many aspects to the Roman cursus honorum, where if you were noble you were expected to serve the community for free, to build things for the state and to set an example for the rest of the population. Obviously, while serving for the state, you were able to achieve "honor", which means status, to build useful connection and to maintain your power against the competition. This resulted in an elite that identified itself with the state and was mostly working for his best interest. it's extremely different to, let's say, the feudal nobility, where one was able to just switch possession one with another, as it happened a lot of times, or even switch king / feudal overlord. Instead, all the Venetian aristocracy was only bound to the Venetian state, and to the Venetian state as a whole. Moreover, while the head of the state was a lifelong office, it was completely elective, so it prevented a single family to devolve in a feudal power against the others. This system was strong enough to survvive over 1000 years, which is more than most of any other European institution, except for the Catholic Church. But the church has also a strong ideology, the religion. Venice was able to do so thanks only to the political architecture.

Honestly, I consider Venice the true heir of Rome when it comes to political system. Evola was fixed with the feudalism, but it was just because when he was young the right was extremely monarchic and idealised the middle age - he was also anti-nationalist because he correctly linked nationalism with the french Revolution, which is something that today is heavily downplayed. He should have look deeper into the Roman heritage, not in the Germanic one. But that was kinda the zeitgeist.

[–]MarkimusNational Socialist 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

I don't know anything about the Venetian system, do you know of any good videos or articles that give like an outline of how it worked?

[–]Rakean93Identitarian socialist 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

I mostly developed this understanding of Venice by studying particular cases. I can point out to the life of Gasparo Contarini, which is the subject of this book https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520305700/gasparo-contarini to understand the psichology of the patricians. There are also quite a few insights in the works of the fellow of the Warwick university, which are now synthesized in this book about the Italian wars, http://encore.lib.warwick.ac.uk/iii/encore/record/C__Rb2806678

There's also this seminar, which comes with an extremely good reading lists - I particularly praise the works of rospocher, who teach in Milan and who enlightened me with the early nationalism of the reinassance, special mention to his work about Julius II https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/history/students/modules/hi985/topics/venice_war_and_public_opinion/

All those books are academy-grade, which means that they require of a bit of understanding of the historical jargon. But anyone can read them, they are not as obscure as German philosophy. Obviously, when the Warwick group point to the early Italian nationalism with skepticism, you should take for granted that there was, indeed, a strong ethnonationalism in Italy at that point of the history.

[–]NeoRail[S] 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (3 children)

I can acknowledge the valid and traditional elements of Venice, just like those of any other medieval state, but I feel like it is a serious stretch to compare any of the merchant republics with Rome. Rome was a spiritual ideal, whereas Venice, in my view, hardly differed from a commercial corporation. The role of the state was to guarantee the income of the rich, and the rich could use their wealth to buy their way into controlling the state. Venice was a very durable plutocracy, but it was still just a plutocracy.

[–]Rakean93Identitarian socialist 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

That's because the liberal storiography hijacked Venice for the large public. It wasn't a "merchant Republic", the patricians were involved in the same activities that involved the rest of the nobles of that age. They were landlords with commercial interests, not different from the Germans, the Italians or the french nobility. Venice was an example of early aristocratic nationalism, which sometimes shows elements of ethnic nationalism. I put a little bit of titles in the other comment, you can check them.

[–]NeoRail[S] 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

I know that there was a more traditional faction of feudal landowning aristocrats, particularly those living outside the city of Venice itself. To my knowledge, most of the wealth of the city was generated by trading in the eastern Mediterranean, though, hence why Venice was a commercial empire.

[–]Rakean93Identitarian socialist 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Everyone was dealing with commerce while using the lands to get a revenue, that's how the nobility would gain money.