Das geht direkt an Herz und Nieren meiner Diplomarbeit:

The study of democracy is usually left to political scientists, sociologists or contemporary historians, for whom its antique origins form little more than a picturesque backdrop to the story of its twentieth-century triumph. In their accounts, its heartlands tend to be North Atlantic: the United States, Britain and France. As for the term itself, ‘democracy’ is standardly defined as a set of electoral procedures and representative institutions, legitimating political rule. Within this field there is room for a variety of views: the liberal wing of orthodoxy pines for greater voter participation, while the hard-headed right rejoices at apathy; but both consider a regular electoral cycle to be a minimum condition. There is also a common historical narrative: from modest, property-owning beginnings, democracy was successfully extended to incorporate first working men, then women. Twinned with ‘freedom’, it defeated fascism in Europe and, after 1945, confronted its enemy, totalitarianism, in the Communist East. From the mid-1970s a third wave of democratization washed away the dictatorships of Europe’s southern fringe—Greece, Spain, Portugal—before sweeping most of the world after 1989.

Luciano Canfora’s Democracy in Europe: A History of an Ideology breaks with this tradition in nearly every respect—conceptual, geographic, historical. Canfora himself is not a political scientist but a classical philologist, trained at the Scuola Normale Superiore in Pisa in the 1960s; a fiercely independent intellectual, originally of the PCI, and more recently of the PdCI, one of the small groups to emerge from its collapse, for which he ran as candidate in the European parliamentary elections in 1999. In a prolific œuvre, his writings include studies of Demosthenes and Thucydides, a foundational analysis of the narrative principles of classical historiography, a striking biography of Julius Caesar, and three books on Togliatti, of whom he remains a great admirer; not to speak of many reflections on contemporary politics. Notable among his skills has been historical and textual detective work, yielding a set of remarkable demonstrations—among them, that Giovanni Gentile was, contrary to official legend, killed on orders of the PCI leadership in 1944; that the celebrated papyrus attributed to the geographer Artemidoros of Ephesus (second to first centuries BC) is almost certainly a forgery, probably by a nineteenth-century Greek adventurer; that a letter sent in 1928—supposedly by Ruggiero Grieco, a member of the PCI leadership in exile—to Gramsci, awaiting his trial in prison, was a provocation of the fascist police. Far from separating classical rigour from political commitment, he has directly theorized their connexion. His most recent work, Filologia e libertà, is devoted to the argument that, historically, a passion for precise textual truth has always required a rejection of canonized authority, and an independence of mind that freedom of thought alone can assure.

Democracy in Europe combines these backgrounds in an intriguing and highly original work. Conceptually, Canfora flatly rejects the standard view of democracy as a set of institutions and electoral procedures. Endorsing Norberto Bobbio’s view that ‘the essence of democracy is egalitarianism’, he argues—anathema to the mainstream perspective—that it ‘may reassert itself within the most diverse political-constitutional forms’. Following Aristotle, Canfora proceeds to define democracy as ‘the ascendancy of the demos’, that is, the rule of the poorer, non-property-owning classes. On this basis he proposes a historical narrative of democracy’s fortunes in Europe radically at odds with conventional accounts. In place of a progressive widening and deepening, Canfora sees only brief moments of localized and immediately embattled democratic breakthrough, among them the early 1790s in France, the decade following 1917 in Germany and Russia—a high-water mark—and the late 1940s in France and Italy. For the most part, though, Canfora’s story is of the failure of democracy, in his sense, and of how ruling elites have managed the egalitarian threat of broadening suffrage to ensure their own freedom of action. The post-1950 period is represented as a grim political landscape, featuring the erosion of democratic-egalitarian aspirations in both eastern and western Europe, and the final triumph of what Canfora calls the ‘mixed system’—‘a little democracy and a great deal of oligarchy’, combining ‘the electoral principle’ with the reality of bourgeois class ascendancy—as the formula for contemporary political rule.

[Dylan Riley, Freedom’s Triumph?, New Left Review 56, März-April 2009]

Der Autor des Artikel schreibt: »Canfora’s conception of democracy as the ascendancy of the poorer classes is based on an elision of the difference between political and social power that is deeply rooted in Italian political culture. Indeed one might argue that a characteristic feature of the Italian tradition of social theory is its lack of a robust conception of social structure, or of political economy, as distinct from political rule.«

Soweit ich das bisher verstanden habe, steht Machiavelli genau in dieser Tradition bzw. hatte wesentlichen Anteil an ihrer Entstehung, während Gramsci (bei all den erstaunlichen Ähnlichkeiten, die er mit Machiavelli hat) den Gegenpol bildet. Und das ist genau der Punkt, den laut Gramsci Marx Machiavelli voraushat: Die Entdeckung, dass die menschliche Natur nicht mehr oder weniger fix ist, sondern einer historischen Entwicklung unterliegt (im Wesentlichen der Entwicklung der Produktionsmittel), und dass die politisch relevanten Teilungen des Volkes nicht durch „reine Politik” konstituiert werden, sondern eine ökonomische Basis haben (wohlgemerkt: sie haben eine ökonomische Basis - nicht: sie sind ökonomisch determiniert).

Nach dem, was ich bis jetzt so gelesen habe, sieht Machiavelli nämlich die Spaltung in Guelfen und Ghibellinen als den Prototyp der Fraktions- und Parteienbildung, und zwar als einen Konflikt zwischen den Handels- und Herrschaftsinteressen einiger weniger hoher Familien, woraus sich zwei rivalisierende Koalitionen bilden, die über diverse Abhängigskeitverhältnisse schließlich auch das Volk mit in den Konflikt ziehen und „spalten” (die Anführungszeichen deshalb, weil es genau der Fehler dieser Ansicht ist, das Volk - siehe Marx’ böse Bemerkung im 18. Brumaire - als in seinem „Naturzustand” einig und ungeteilt zu sehen). Die (ich weiß nicht, wie ich es anders nennen soll) Parteiung des Volkes wird also „von oben” („politisch”) bestimmt, und nicht „von unten” („ökonomisch”). Eigentlich ist es aber insofern ein Fehler, diese Ansicht allgemein als fehlerhaft zu sehen, als sie ihrer Zeit durchaus angemessen war. Die moderne Massenpolitik, die Marx im erwähnten 18. Brumaire so eindringlich beschreibt, ist tatsächlich eine so grundlegend neue Entwicklung, dass sie selbst nach über zwei Jahrhunderten noch nicht in allen Köpfen angekommen ist.

[Und hier nochmal Gramsci: Man könnte seine Bemerkung, dass Machiavellis Neuerungen immer noch nicht „angekommen” sind, dahingehend verstehen (oder vervollständigen), dass im Zeitalter der Massenpolitik ein volles Verständnis Machiavellis von einem vollen Verständnis Marx’ abhängig ist]

[Perry Anderson, An Entire Order Converted into What It Was Intended to End, London Review of Books, Vol. 31 No. 4, 26. Feber 2009]
[Perry Anderson, An Invertebrate Left, London Review of Books, Vol. 31 No. 5, 12. März 2009]

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But the promise of Green Keynesianism may turn out differently than imagined by radical economists and environmental activists. A fundamental power-shift seems to be taking place in the business infrastructure of Washington, with ‘New Economy’ corporations rapidly gaining clout through Obama and the Democrats while Old Economy leviathans like General Motors grapple with destitution and welfare, and energy giants temporarily hide in caves. The unprecedented unity of tech firms behind Obama both helped to define and was defined by his campaign. Through his victory, they have acquired the credit balance to ensure that any green infrastructure will also be good industrial policy for their dynamic but ageing and cash-short corporations.

There is an obvious historical analogy. Just as General Electric’s Gerard Swope (the Steve Jobs of his day) and a bloc of advanced, capital-intensive corporations, supported by investment banks, enthusiastically partnered with Roosevelt to create the ill-fated National Recovery Administration (NRA) in 1933, so too have Schmidt and his wired peers, together with the ever-more-powerful congressional delegation from California, become the principal stakeholders in Obama’s promise to launch an Apollo programme for renewable energy and new technology.⁶⁵

We should note that this realignment of politics by economics fits awkwardly within the Keys–Burnham paradigm, which asserts the primacy of public opinion and the durability of voter blocs. A ‘silicon presidency’, on the other hand, is perfectly accommodated by Thomas Ferguson’s ‘investment’ theory of political change which privileges political economy and class struggle within capital as modes of explanation. Analysing New Deal case-studies in his 1995 book, Ferguson—an intellectually supercharged descendant of Charles Beard—concluded that business elites, not voters, usually determine both the nature and course of electoral realignments.⁶⁶

The fundamental market for political parties usually is not voters. As a number of recent analysts have documented, most of these possess desperately limited resources and—especially in the United States—exiguous information and interest in politics. The real market for political parties is defined by major investors, who generally have good and clear reasons for investing to control the state . . . During realignments . . . basic changes take place in the core investment blocs which constitute parties. More specifically, realignments occur when cumulative long-run changes in industrial structures (commonly interacting with a variety of short-run factors, notably steep economic downturns) polarize the business community, thus bringing together a new and powerful bloc of investors with durable interests. As this process begins, party competition heats up and at least some differences between parties emerge more clearly.⁶⁷

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65 For a fascinating reflection on New Deal-era economic theory, including a possible synthesis of the ideas of Keynes, Hansen, Means and Schumpeter, see Theodore Rosenof, Economics in the Long Run, Chapel Hill, NC 1997.
66 Charles Beard’s An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution (1913), which argued that the Founding Fathers’ politics were approximately the sum of their material interests, is still worth a visit, even if modern political and economic historians tar him as a vulgarian economic determinist.
67 Thomas Ferguson, Golden Rule: The Investment Theory of Party Competition and the Logic of Money-Driven Political Systems, Chicago 1995, pp. 22–3. Ferguson, of course, acknowledges that voters also become more active: ‘only if the electorate’s degree of effective organization significantly increases, however, does it receive more than crumbs.’

[Mike Davis, Obama at Manassas, New Left Review 56, März-April 2009]

Man müsse sich das so vorstellen: Wenn um 100 Mio. Euro Eigenkapital und weitere 400 Mio. Euro Fremdkapital eine Akquisition getätigt wurde, sei auf Basis der Gesamtsumme von 500 Mio. Euro eine Management-Fee von 60 Mio. Euro errechnet worden, "nur weil die 400 Millionen Kredit aufgenommen haben", so Dohr.

[„Kaufen, egal was”]

Ziel der neuen US-Strategie für Afghanistan und Pakistan sei die Ausschaltung der Terrororganisation El Kaida als einer Gefahr für die USA und die gesamte Welt. Das erklärte US-Präsident Barack Obama am Freitag in Washington.

[Die neue US-Strategie für Afghanistan]

President Barack Obama's administration denied Wednesday dropping the punchy but controversial phrase "global war on terror" for the less snappy formulation "overseas contingency operation."

[No ban on 'global war on terror': US officials]

[Was ist das neue Ziel im Krieg? Den Krieg gewinnen! Was ist die Strategie dazu? Eine gute Strategie haben! Wer sind die Bösen? Der Feind! Wer ist der Feind? Die Bösen! »He said making smart decisions would be at the core of his stimulus package plans.« - und gerade genug change, um sich davon einen Kaugummi kaufen zu können]