A praise of Political Severity

I've added to the list of prominent men that I admire the Roman Emperor Septimius Severus. Many might know by now that when regarding to Rome I focus on the republic, and by the name Rome I always mean the republic. Consistent with this vision I consider everything that happened after Julius Caesar to be a tragic story of tyranny and slavery. I do not depart from this vision, but my recent immersion into Machiavelli's thought has given me the extraordinary tool to twist and change my vantage point according to necessity and fortune, something that is essential, if not mandatory, to understand anything that has to do with politics. In this new approach, now that I'm rereading the Prince, I've been impressed by Machiavelli's high praise of the Roman Emperor Septimius Severus, a man famously recognized for his unscrupulous political actions. Like any other emperor, he was a tyrant. But when we leave the republic and its freedom behind, and we set our play in the realm of absolute and long-lasting tyranny, our value judgments and normative claims must shift, something in which Machiavelli was extraordinarily skillful at.

Machiavelli writes that "because of what Severus did was remarkable and outstanding for a new prince, I want to show briefly how well he knew how to act the part of both a fox and a lion, whose natures, as I say above, must be imitated by a new prince" (P XIX). Interestingly enough the nature of both the fox and the lion were the beastly natures that the humanist tradition, the inheritance of Cicero, would condemn as unworthy. Machiavelli would turn this tradition upside down, being his praise of Severus one of the turning points of this break with the humanists (Skinner, 1981, 40). This led me to Herodian of Antioch, the source from which Machiavelli draws his portrayal of the Roman Emperors in chapter 19 of the Prince.

Of Severus Herodian says that "he was surely the most accomplished of all men in pretending to pledge his good will, but he never kept his sworn word if it proved necessary for him to break it; he lied whenever it was advantageous to him, and his tongue said many things which his heart did not mean" (History of the Roman Empire, II). He ruled for almost eighteen years, his son Caracalla succeeded to the throne successfully and he brought peace and stability in a moment in which the empire's structure of political authority was about to collapse after Commodus deserved death. What does this say about the ancient Ciceronian and today's Kant/Mill-liberal moralities and their relations to politics? Maybe that they don't worth a penny when the chips are down, and that the true nature of political power is tested precisely in these moments of emergency. Recently this vision of politics was exposed by Carl Schmitt, who might be blameworthy of his Nazi allegiance, but whose political insight and sincerity cannot be denied. So with Machiavelli.

Reading about how Severus managed to take over the empire by using the cunning of the fox in bamboozling everyone into his own scheme, and then defeating his enemies with the ferocious strength of the lion, produces nothing but awe and admiration (the charm of evil). But the most interesting contrast regards the unsuccessful attempt by the previous Pertinax to establish his imperial authority by the "strength" of moral convictions and reasonable arguments, in a lame attempt to imitate Marcus Aurelius, which led him to be butchered by his own praetorian bodyguards, thereby ending his less-than-three-months rule. His incompetence to understand politics could have sunk the Roman Empire into long-lasting anarchy, if it weren't because of the skillful and vigorous intervention of Severus. Which lead me to my conclusion: those that want to hold their moral integrity at all cost in the face of impelling necessity, at least in the realm politics, can be the most irresponsible actors of all; because instead of weighting the good of the community as the main reason of their historical position, they prefer the maintain their conscience clean, i.e. the paradoxical conclusion that acting morally can be utterly selfish.

This is so obvious, so common sense, that hearing the self-righteous liberals and left-wing socialists speak about justice, fairness, equality and progress makes so much noise in a world of wretched human beings. John Stuart Mill praised Marcus Aurelius as the most glorious and virtuous Roman Emperor. And he is right in doing so, because under his rule the Empire enjoyed the peak of its accomplishments. But he is deceived in believing that Marcus Aurelius example can be taken to be a fixed rule in a world of ever-changing conditions, not to speak of the almost silly discourse of modern Kantianism.
Septimius Severus, 21st Emperor of the Roman Empire (14 April 193 – 4 February 211)

Machiavelli will prevail

And in the end, when all the self-righteous moralists, when all talks of justice and fairness, of universal rights, peace and progress, meet their doom, when we reach the final moments of the Western civilization, Machiavelli will prevail.

"I conclude, therefore, that as fortune is changeable whereas men are obstinate in their ways, men prosper so long as fortune and policy are accord, and when there is a clash they fail." (The Prince, XXV)

Beyond Good and Evil: Aphorism 14

Returning to old debates (but on the opposite side of the isle) rereading Nietzsche's Beyond Good and Evil I cannot but to quote in its entirety the 14th aphorism of the book. This I dedicate to all my friends and acquaintances that still believe in progress and in the inglorious and pitiful virtues of our times. This was published in 1886, which shows unsurprisingly the almost sibylline nature of Nietzsche's thought.

"14. It is perhaps just dawning on five or six minds that physics too is only an interpretation and arrangement of the world (according to our own requirements, if I may say so!) and not an explanation of the world; but in so far as it is founded on belief in the senses it passes for more than that and must continue to do so for a long time to come. It has the eyes and the hands on its side, it has ocular evidence and palpability on its side: and this has the effect of fascinating, persuading, convincing an age with fundamentally plebeian tastes — for it instinctively follows the canon of eternal, popular sensualism. What is obvious, what has been 'explained'? Only that which can be seen and felt — thus far has every problem to be scrutinized. Obversely: it was precisely in opposition to palpability that the charm of the Platonic mode of thinking, which was a noble [aristocratic] mode of thinking, consisted — on the part of men who perhaps rejoiced in even stronger and more exacting senses than our contemporaries possess, but who knew how to experience a greater triumph in mastering them: which they did by means of pale, cold, grey conceptual nets thrown over the motley whirl of the senses — the mob of the senses as Plato called them. This overcoming and interpretation of the world in the manner of Plato involved a kind of enjoyment different from that which the physicists of today offer us, or from that offered us by the Darwinists and anti-teleologists among the labourers in physiology, with their principle of the 'smallest possible effort' and the greatest possible stupidity. 'Where man has nothing more to see or grasp he has nothing more to do' — that is certainly a different imperative from the Platonic, but for an uncouth industrious race of machinists and bridge-builders of the future, which has nothing but course work to get through, it may well be the right one."

This is pretty much a complete statement of the industrial and post-industrial world and all its obsession with technology, the economy, its heroes and its geniuses; the result of which is nothing but crude mediocrity. When are our liberals (and conservatives) in the academia of today going to start reading Nietzsche?

Why I support "Occupy Wall Street"

A recent friendly discussion has left me startled. I think this is the reason: I not only like, but support and defend the American form of government as it is established by the US Constitution. That is, I believe in the spirit and principles that it contains, and I do not think that the constitution is just a function of any capitalist/bourgeoisie dominating class. One of the virtues of the US Constitution is that it has given the populace-citizens the opportunity to actively interfere in the affairs of government and letting their voices be heard. Agreed, it is not always effective and economic elites, the American bourgeois, have been historically privileged in their access to representation in the government (especially at the Federal level, whilst at the local level the populace seems to have more control). But it cannot be denied that since Jeffersonian republicanism, Jacksonian democracy, Lincoln's republicanism and the 20th century civil rights movement, democracy (the rule of the populace) has always remain a part of the American form of government. And as a consistent follower of Machiavelli, I do not think that a republic without elites on one side and the populace on the other can remain free. The communist dream of a classless society has been proved to be tantamount to totalitarianism. The republic is formed by upper and lower classes and the chances of both segments to participate and check on each other. This philosophy is alive in the US Constitution thanks to different mechanisms.

The interesting thing is that, according to inherited rigid concepts from the 20th century Cold War, if you are not a left-wing revolutionary, you must be a right-wing reactionary that stands on the side of the bourgeoisie. Well, I disagree with such generalization, not only because it is updated, but because it has always been inaccurate. Not because we defend the American form of government we are friends and allies of big business and corporate interests. Wall Street today has become almost like the ideological headquarters of the American oligarchy that has been trying to take over the republic for decades. And not because one opposes them one must be a communist, not to say a Marxist. I would go even further and say that a person that truly stands for traditions (a true conservative) is an obstacle to the development of capital in the form of big business; because it is that same big business the one that is destroying traditional lifestyles and grassroots movements that are so important for a healthy republican form of government. Democracy requires the populace-citizens fighting on the public space against the pretensions of the economic elites to overrun their political rights, and extort them through unemployment, lower wages and overworking; the same maladies that destroy traditional lifestyles in America.

I support "Occupy Wall Street" because, even though there is no clear cut agenda, it is proving a point: America is going in the wrong direction. And what is this direction? An economic system that excessively favors the rich by giving them the chance to become richer, while leaving the populace-citizens on its own to deal with a market that is destroying their lifestyles and future prospects. This undermines the populace-citizens capacity to participate in politics and check on their representatives, while giving the rich the upper hand in having access to representation and forcing their interests in the legislatures and the different levels of civil bureaucracy. The maladies of America are both represented by Washington's labyrinthine bureaucracy and Wall Street pervasive economic predominance. The so called libertarians, in their naive approach, do not realize that when they sacrifice only government, they heed big business and help the development of an oligarchic form of government which can be more repressive than an all expanded civil bureaucracy, precisely because it hurts the populace-citizens private lives.

It is extremely important that "Occupy Wall Street" does not become a monopoly of left-wing radicals, something that would automatically kill its prospects of being an authentic and positive movement. It must be a front of average citizens that, struggling with such an unfair economic system, make the government understand a sensible point: that reform in both the political and the economic system is required in order to enhance democracy, i.e. empower institution that would allow the populace-citizens to have more control over governmental decisions and legislation, as well as severely punishing the rich in their stubborn quest to impoverish the rest of the country. The rich are no "job creators"; that concept is the paramount ideological sham of our generation. The rich are wealthy bank account accumulators. What they want is to be more rich at all cost, even if it will send honest and hard working citizens into unemployment. Wall Street is incredibly skilled at doing that. The rich is the embodiment of avarice, a capital sin in Christian theology. If "Occupy Wall Street" is a spontaneous movement of disenfranchised young against the unchecked avarice of the rich, then I strongly support it.

NOTE: I wonder why in America banks get bailed out while universities get cut down.

Faith, Knowledge and Ideology

This was written as a note in my Blackberry phone in a lonely and long travel inside the New York subway; they are only sketchy ideas based on reflections caused by a recent argument I had with a professor in class. As such not much can be demanded from them.

The problem of ideology is urgent in social sciences. What we take to be ideological will set the limits and boundaries for the possibility of truthful knowledge. We assume that "ideological knowledge" is contrary to our idea of what knowledge is. Knowledge aims at truth while ideology is the mask of falsehood. But, is this true? Hasn't recent philosophy challenged the assumption that links knowledge with truth? I think us to be deceived if we don't agree with Nietzsche in his rejection of modern rationalist philosophy's pretensions. This leads us straight the dead end of yielding to the pessimist conclusion that any kind of knowledge must be ideological. But hasn't modern sciences proved many facts of the natural and social worlds to be true? So, there must be a connection between scientific knowledge and facts known to be true. These facts cannot vanish as fantastic representations just because we become skeptics of man's rational capacities.

What I conclude from this (which is, by no means, a novel conclusion at all) is that scientific knowledge only deals with truthful facts; that can only be its object. This calls for a statement of humility, because it implies that knowledge cannot grasp the Truth in its universal significance. Such thing as the Truth cannot be fully rationally apprehended. Because a thing like the Truth demands full knowledge of the totality of the object, and this cannot be reached, then we have to adjust to concrete and limited truthful facts. Ideology becomes the boundary of knowledge when we recognize that any rational knowledge that aims or pretends in reaching a final and absolute truth must be ideological and must be betraying the initial quest for truthful knowledge. This have been the pervasive spirit of many modern theories, particularly in social sciences; however not infrequently natural scientist fall in the same error.

Here faith comes into our problem. The object of faith is the Truth in its whole meaning. Whatever aims at reaching a discourse that deals with the totality of the whole truth must be an act of faith. Here we must attempt the next set of boundaries: the difference between faith and ideology, or if there is no difference at all.

The problem with faith is that it cannot be rationally explained without losing the inherent meaning of what it is, i.e. rational knowledge cannot know faith. One of the problems of many intelligent men that lack any sense of faith is that they cannot understand it without attaching to it an ideological origin. This was the problems men like Voltaire, Feuerbach, Marx, Einstein, Russell (however not Nietzsche) were condemn to have. Because the object and content of faith is the absolute Truth, whatever it might be, and because knowledge cannot reach that level of understanding under any circumstance, they use different rational explanations to give content and reason to what really is an abyss of in-comprehension and ignorance on their part. The knowledgeable atheist man doesn't have the experience of faith (I will later explain how I think they do but under ideological forms); ergo for them it is as hard and insufferable to give it credit just as it is hard and insufferable for the brutish and ignorant man to understand knowledge and coherent reason, or for the born blind the concept of color.

The relation between faith and knowledge is analogous to the relation between knowledge and ideology. Faith sets boundaries for knowledge, as knowledge sets boundaries for faith. In this sense it is naïve, or awkward to have a faith that challenges well known truthful facts, just as it is naïve and arrogant to deny the human experience of faith in a universal Truth using limited, concrete and short-sided truthful facts. This division was already exposed by St. Paul in theology and explored by Kant in philosophy. In this sense faith and knowledge can be both allies, or at least respectful opponents in man's heart and mind. By understanding that factual knowledge is limited, however truthful, and that faith does not have to disclaim factual knowledge but give meaning and sense to human life, a man can both have faith and respect reason's discoveries, as the 17th century European scientists and philosophers seem to have done.

However we cannot be over optimistic; faith, just as knowledge, has a relation to ideology, and in the past it has been the source for a lot of ideology. But the boundaries between these two cannot be clearly seen. To what extend faith in an omnipotent God does not derive in submission to an absolute monarch, or in a vicious devotion to a priestly caste? The problem is not easy to solve, because at first sight it appears to give knowledge the upper hand in claiming that faith is ideological by necessity. A first good approximation to such a complex subject might be through St. Paul in Hebrews 11. There, a radical schism is posed between things of God and things of this world, because everything that pertains to God is not seen (that is, never perceived through the body senses); hence it can never fit as a truthful fact, nor subject to knowledge. But the many examples of prophets given by St. Paul show one thing: trust. Man's capacity to trust, to accept something without proofs of it (as when a man accepts a promise from a friend) lies in the heart of the matter. If we take our relation to God to be a friendly relation (even more, the ultimate friendly relation), then we trust in his promise, and because of this we have faith, i.e. without knowledge. We take this promise to be the supreme Truth, without which the truthful facts would seem like ghosts and shades in a world without purpose. In this particular sense faith gives food for knowledge, as it makes the absolute Truth the spring of all other factual truths. So that when Pilate asked Jesus "What is truth?" (John 18:38), Jesus silence makes sense out of the impossibility of proving with rational speech what can only be grasped by faith. Jesus had already given the answer before Pilate asked him: "Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice" (John 18:37); Jesus is the truthful fact of the universal Truth, and only faith can grasp that apparently incoherent notion. This explains Jesus' silence. Pilate's business was administering justice according to the Roman law; that is, according to the most rationally codified legal system of the times in the Mediterranean. Precisely because Jesus truth was a universal statement, it did not deal with the truthful facts that a judge like Pilate can accept in a court; the reason of why he says to the Jews "I find no guilt in him" (John 18:38).

But the answer of the Jews headed by the priests is also enlightening; their religion did not allow them to crucify or execute Jesus, but they found a loop in their beliefs by pressing the Roman law to kill him. Jesus had been preaching against some prominent "interests groups" in Judea, and they wanted to eliminate him from the scene, however unjust. The Jews were being subject to ideology. So what can be the difference between ideology and faith if the Jews' actions were moved by religious devotion? The truth is that religious devotion can turn into ideology when it is used to back particular worldly interests of powerful groups. Faith is the authentic and deeply personal experience of a metaphysical connection with God. This escapes reason, but it cannot be considered ideology because it also escapes ideological worldly purposes.

Just as faith can become the base for ideology, so the same with knowledge. Philosophical and scientific systems that aim at explaining the totality of the human condition are very well used for repressive reasons when it is taken to be the Truth, of which the Marxist ideology seems the most prominent recent case (but also the European divine right of the kings), as well as when it tries to erase man's inclination for faith. The boundaries between the three are never well fixed, because knowledge is always unstable and fallible, faith cannot be apprehended by the pure mind, and ideology hides in its most obscure and mendacious forms.

But what also seems to be true is that men, as long as they live in this world, cannot depart from any of them, because on ideology social and political stability is built, from knowledge every technique and technology is constructed, and only through faith men can have the hope they need to bear the miseries of worldly existence.

The Democratic Tyrant

"...when a people is induced to make the mistake of holding someone in high esteem because he is down on those whom they hold in detestation, and that someone has his wits about him, it will always happen that tyranny will arise in that city. For he will wait until, with the support of the populace, he has got rid of the nobility, and will not begin to oppress the people until he has got rid of it, by which time the populace will have come to realize that it is a slave and will have no way to escape" (Machiavelli, Discourses, I 40).

A quick look at the last twelve years of Chavez regime in Venezuela will show a strikingly similar relation with this statement made by Machiavelli almost five hundred years ago. Venezuela didn't have a nobility but it did have a political party and economic elite. For the most part of his presidency, not to say all, Chavez has moved a strategy to reduce these elites to their minimum expression. Contrary to more autocratic dictators, he hasn't killed his opponents, but limits himself to wield the power he has backed by his popularity to break asunder and isolate "those whom they [the people that holds him in high esteem] hold in detestation".

But again because Chavez is not a prince, but a soft democratic tyrant, the opposition still exists, however negligible and mediocre. This has given his opponents the opportunity to rise a little bit in esteem every once in a while (especially during elections). But Machiavelli's conclusion still applies; once his opponents were reduced to nothingness, the people that had him on such a high esteem are reduced to slavery, for they have no one else to go for succor. Police repression is always stronger when it is used against the poor and the traditional strongholds of the president's popularity. The middle class in Venezuela has a wider freedom to protest, because their actions are made inconsequential by the manoeuvrings of the government. But the real threat to Chavez regime comes from the base of the people, whom loved him for years, that today have little choice but to keep loving him, even though his government is absolutely incompetent in tackling their needs: housing, personal security, water and electricity supply, etc.

Today Venezuelans have no way to escape from him, except by the miraculous act of a sickness. Machiavelli's other overwhelming force in politics, fortune, might be ending, sooner than expected by anyone, the long and exhaustive efforts made by the tyrant to rule for decades.

Open Conservatism

Having the experience of living in the United States, and hearing daily where the conservative grass-root movements stand on issues, has led me to question my identity as a conservative. The first thing that I have discovered is that conservatism is anything but an homogeneous group, or set of political convictions. Starting with me I realized that I can't agree with most of the cantankerous rhetoric coming from the right of the Republican Party. Most of what they say is not possible, showing only political naivete and complete lack of understanding of where we are historically. But also, of most of what is being said on the right I feel almost like an instinctive revulsion. The reason for this is because they show a stubborn and relentless intolerance toward what any other person might say; and that is not how you play the game of democracy.

My first complete divergence with contemporary conservatism lies mostly in their position on economics and fiscal policy. Yes, I agree that a balanced budget and a controlled-size of government bureaucracy are good goals; that rampant spending and growing centralized government might cripple the economy and eventually threaten the republican freedoms. But then, I don't understand why is it that this is called conservatism. What is it to be preserved? A balanced budget and controlled debt has no moral meaning or significance at all. I haven't heard that these can be morally problematic in the texts of any of the classical moral philosophers since Plato. For practical and utilitarian reasons I might agree with the idea of a balanced budget; but why is this conservative? Where is the moral value behind this idea? What original society is being preserved? These questions led me to the conclusion that what they call "fiscal conservatism" is nothing but an euphemism. Sometimes we have to spend, and sometimes we have to safe, depending on the historical context, the need of society and the level of antagonisms of the social classes. Of course we don't want a broke republic; not even liberals want that. So why on Earth calling it conservatism?

There is an answer to this questions: that the idea of a "small government" dates back from an idyllic past in the development of capitalism in which every individual was unhindered to pursue their businesses freely and without government intervention, and that this was a free and happy society. A first look at those years shows that this idea is a fantasy; capitalism grew out of the misery of a lot of people (and it is my impression that misery undermines freedom and human happiness). But it couldn't have been the other way around; wealth on one side and misery on the other is the only way the first accumulation of capital is possible for the next generations to make it grow more. A second and more scientific look: the growth of capital has been parallel with a growth of the government's size, because the amount of wealth created every generation over the previous one is reflected on the augmentation of the government's resources to increase its strength; and also because the government has been the way in which many in the proletariat lines have found the means to avoid utter and humiliating exploitation. As capitalism makes the proletariat grow, the state grows with it.

So far the "fiscal conservative" rests on generalizations and a misconceived look toward history. If we are to defend a balanced budget it is for strict reasons of utility; there is no moral principle behind it. As I said before: sometimes we spend, and sometimes we safe; there is nothing conservative about it.

The real reason why I claim to be a conservative is because I have a somehow romanticized vision of traditions. This is linked with my religious faith expressed through the Catholic Church. In this sense there are traditions that I think are better to be preserved and that the government has a duty to protect and promote, because whether we like it or not, peaceful social interaction between human beings rests more on traditions than on the coercive strength of the state. The latter usually kicks in when the former is disintegrating. And what the "fiscal conservatives" don't understand, and don't want to see, is that it was the growth of capitalism and its method of accumulation which has led to a vast disintegration of traditional life. The growth of government is nothing but a compensation in a society that no longer finds itself in the middle of big business. Both big business and its pursuit of wealth as well as big government and its pursuit of power are nothing but the consequence of that "idyllic small government society" the libertarians are trying to defend. So their position is utterly paradoxical.

There is another problem with what we call social conservatism (which I think is the only legitimate conservatism whatsoever). Capitalism, by destroying traditional life, especially in big urban areas, renders much of what is defended by religious faith as obsolete and inconvenient to the growth of capital. Capital doesn't care about sexual orientation, religious beliefs, family background, virtues or vices; it only cares about you doing your job in the time and the fashion expected. But this practical reality has its ideological face in liberalism and its quest to erase inherited traditions that bind the individual.

But then social conservatives have also a taste for the intolerant. They have interpreted their beliefs in moral virtue as the position of those that cast stones on the sinful one, and become nothing but pharisees. But I don't think it has to be that way.

This is the reason why I am defending something that I like to call "open conservatism": that is following and defending policies that aim at preserving and promoting the ancient traditions from which we've come, but never in a way that you should cast moral judgments on those particulars that do not follow our beliefs. This second clause is inherited from Christianity, and the idea that all human beings (individually and not in the enlightened abstraction called humanity) must be loved as you love yourself. The central idea is that we shall cast charity and not judgment on everyone, even those that pursue a life that according to our beliefs is questionable. In many passages of the Holy Scripture this philosophy is expressed. But I shall limit myself to quote John 8:7 in which Jesus prevents a mob from killing a prostitute and says to them "Let whoever is without sin among you be the first to cast a stone on her". The catch is that because none of us is free of sin, none has the legitimate authority to cast the stone of moral judgment on others. Jesus himself teaches how to be an open conservative, first by never denying the Laws of Moses (Matthew 5:17), and second by offering his hand and his love to the sinful (which are, basically, all of us).

Open conservatism can be a polite way of defending tradition by never pretending to trample over the inclinations of others. Our attitude toward the most radical of liberals and anarchists must be that of intellectual disagreement, but also of sincere love for them. If we have to cast our votes, we rather do it for tradition; if we have to claim the truth of Jesus, we will do it without pride; if we have to face another person that thinks and acts contrary to our beliefs, we shall embrace that person as a brother or sister in life. But the contemptuous conservatism that aims at rejecting other people's lifestyles is contrary to the spirit of the teachings of Christianity, and is built on the false assumption that we are the ultimate owners of the truth from which we can judge. Only God has the entire truth and hence just capacity to judge; precisely because we don't have it, we can't make a science out of morality, but simply to have faith in it.

My central point is that we can be conservatives without being pharisees. We can make friendship with those that oppose our ideas radically. We can even spend and enjoy time with them. In this sense tolerance is not enough; tolerance is just polite contempt. What we need is to improve our capacity to love and care about everyone we meet; to debate with them honestly, sincerely, and without traces of hatred and remorse for their different world outlook. And also to invite them to approach our differences in the same way. Conservatism can do this without betraying its convictions and its faith; we just have to take the word of Jesus seriously.