Machiavelli identifies at least three arenas in which the people exercise better judgement than do any other political actors, specifically, princes and the few: deciding political trials, appointing magistrates, and creating legislation. (lk 65)
Kõlab usutavalt. Sellele on mõned eeldused ka, millest hiljem juttu tuleb.
Small bodies like Florence’s executive committees, such as the Eight of Ward, with which Machiavelli was very familiar, are too prone to intimidation, collusion, or bias when they decide the fate of members of the ottimati. On the contrary, the sheer size of an assembly comprised of the entire citizenry, Machiavelli seems to suggest, (a) allows individual citizens the anonymity necessary to render judgement without worry of reprisal, and (b) overwhelms and neutralizes specific individuals or small “sects” who are motivated by partisan considerations for or against the accused (D I.7). (lk 67)
Massides peitub jõud.
Machiavelli argues that the friends and families of a citizen who has “committed wrongs” become partisan foes of the people that resorts to “extraordinary” – that is, arbitrarily violent – means. But when a prominent and powerful wrongdoer is punished through ordinary public and legal procedures, even or especially by the people, his family and friends do not subsequently become enemies of the people or partisans against the republic (D I.7). (lk 68)
Aristokraatlik impulss levib seal, kus puuduvad formaalsed protseduurid.
Machiavelli suggests that republics actually benefit when they correct this tendency by allowing the people to decide, publicly and officially, the difference between political fact and fiction. (lk 69)
Isegi kuulujuttude avalik lahkamine on vabariigile tugevdava mõjuga.
After all, Machiavelli observes, it was not false public opinion that ultimately undermined the Florentine Republic, but rather the republic’s failure to allow the people to transform their raw opinion into substantive judgement on Guicciardini, Valori, and Soderini – judgement that would have preempted the ensuing destructive behavior engaged in by elites. (lk 69-70)
Avalik arvamus pole kunagi kellelegi halba teinud.
Machiavelli attributes the people’s ability to discern better policies in no small part to their desire not to be dominated and to the correlation between this desire and the common good. (lk 78)
Vabadus on avalik hüve.
Whether or not he was aware of them, Machiavelli never mentions the Roman practices of weighing and ordering votes in ways that favored better-propertied citizens in the centuriated assembly. (lk 78)
Machiavelli maalib kallutatud pildi Rooma Vabariigist.
Why did all the writers treat the people so unfairly? Because they had no reason to fear otherwise: the writers perpetuated the bad opinion of the people prevalent in oligarchic and courtly circles, according to Machiavelli, “because everyone speaks badly of peoples freely and without fear, even while they reign” (D I.58). (lk 80)
Hea tähelepanek.
Tyranny, according to Machiavelli, arises when there exists “too great a desire of the people to be free and too great a desire of the nobles to command,” and when the ensuing conflict between them does not result in a situation where both “agree to make a law in favor of freedom” (D I.40) (lk 85)
Ma ootasin
juba tükk aega midagi, kust saaks midagi “vabaduse vastast” välja lugeda.
Üldjoontes on seni kõik olnud liiga positiivselt raamistatud. Lihtrahva vabadusepürgimustel peavad olema ka miskid negatiivsed tagajärjed.
The
plebeians had demanded and numerous tribunes had tried to pass agrarian reforms
since the earliest days of the republic. From the very beginning, the
patricians had been putting into their own “custodial care” public lands and
territories acquired from conquered enemies that in principle belonged to the
entire commonwealth. When the people and the tribunes sought legal redress, Machiavelli
claims that the senate responded by sending armies even farther afield
to seize provinces that the plebs would not covet, or at least that they could
not plausibly afford to make profitable (D I.37) (lk 87)
Selline poliitika siis tegi väejuhid ülearu võimukaks, laiendas impeeriumit üleliia palju ja tekitas üleliia palju majanduslikku ebavõrdsust.
Machiavelli indicates here and elsewhere that the senate’s self-aggrandizing economic-military strategies led to Ceasarism more directly than did the people’s inclination to worship “one man” who exhibited the ability and willingness to beat down the nobles. (lk 89)
Selles, et aadel on süüdi, mitte rahvas, on siin läbiv.
Republics without tribunes, Machiavelli suggests, succumb either to military defeat, due to their inability to arm the people (e.g., Sparta and Venice), or to fairly immediate princely usurpation, due to their inability to prevent the grandi from visiting harm upon the popolo (e.g., Syracuse and Hereclea).
Näited tekitavad küsimusi.
Machiavelli, conversely, advises republics to maintain separate assemblies for citizens of different social classes. Rosseau’s theory of assemblies is egalitarian in principle, but not in practice; Machiavelli’s is explicitly inegalitarian in a way that, counterintuitively, may produce more egalitarian outcomes – or at least results that are more intensely contestatory of power and privilege. (lk 100)
Sotsiaalse
klassi karm reaalsus on ühtepidi muidugi ajastu märk, aga teisalt kõik hilisemate teoreetikute eelduseks saab olema rojalistide jms kontingenti tahaplaanilie surumine, st muu hulgas ka sotsiaalsete klasside teatav hävitamine.
Not surprisingly, then, Machiavelli’s neo-Roman proposal for noble- and popolo-specific institutions in the Discourses avoids two major errors committed by popular republics in the history of Florence: on the one hand, losing the support of lesser guildsmen or the suttoposti (resident laborers and taxpayers not formally organized into guilds); and, on the other, as mentioned previously, making outright enemies of the magnate class above the guilds. As for the first mistake, Machivelli’s lifelong campaign for a citizen militia, drawn not only from the residents of Florence but also from inhabitants of the surrounding countryside, if enacted, would have ensured the loyalty of the popolo minuti and the sottoposti and swelled the numbers of citizens available to the city as soldiers, taxpayers, and potential magistrates. […]
As for the enmity of the Florentine magnates of grandi, the Plorentine popolo disenfranchised them in an effort to halt their incessant acts of physical violence and political against common citizens. This course of actions rendered Florentine popular government perpetually unstable as the disenfranchised magnates were always eager to (a) aid an external enemy against the city with members of the “major,” wealthier guilds , especially those engaged in banking and finance, to shut out the lower guilds of merchants and artisans and undermine the republic. Machiavelli’s model ensures the grandi of their place within a republic: it maintains a senate and initially permits an aristocratic monopoly over military command. (lk 102)
Alamklass ja ülemklass saab põhimõtteliselt sõjaväes kokku, kus üks teist kamandab. Btw, selle rahvamilitia kohta on öeldud, et aristokraadid olid alati selle vastu.
Provoking the people by excluding them from the most powerful magistracies and providing them a subordinate magistracy that is nevertheless theirs exclusively is Machiavelli’s way of better empowering the people, both psychologically and institutionally, to make elites accountable. On the one hand, common citizens will no longer suffer from the delusion that they are effectively exercising the higher offices that they regularly attain but within which they are marginalized. On the other, they will not be overwhelmed by the ottimati within the new magistracies created for them alone; the manner in which they are appointed and the short terms they enjoy protect them from cooptation, coercion, and corruption by the ottimati. (lk 106-107)
Siin on midagi ära tabatud.
Throughout his service to the republic, Machiavelli was the constant target of anonymous charges, almost invariably originating with Sodernini’s adversaries among the ottimati, charges aimed at removing the Gonfalonier’s “puppet” (mannerino) from secretarial, military, or diplomatic posts or inhibiting him from discharging his responsibilities in them. (lk 120)
Shame.
The Giovanni Guicciardini episode in the Discourses suggests that despite class animosity, the general public will give a noble (a) fairer hearing within the formal procedures of a political trial than in the murky dens and alleyways that echo calumnies, and (b) a fairer hearing than will magistrate, even one acting in the name of the people, and, especially, an imported foreigner. (lk 121)
Tänapäeval on meil mingid asjad kohtupidamises sõltuvad sellest, kas on olemas “avalik huvi” või mitte. Võib argumenteerida, et kui kohtumõistjad ise esindavad seda huvi kaob juba hulk pingeid ära.
[…]the people do not generally fear or suspect prominent citizens individually, even if they hate the grandi as a class (D I.47).
Huvitav tähelepanek. Mulle meenus kohe sada vandenõuteooriat, mis on ehitatud üksikisiku ümber. Mitte, et ma väitega ei nõustuks.
Guicciardini and his eighteenth-century constitutionalist heirs, most notably the American founders, overcompensate in an ochlophobic manner for the purportedly arbitrary and excessive use of exile, ostracism, and public punishment in ancient popular governments: they both tighten the legal procedures of political trials and exclude the general citizenry from them. (lk 136-137)
Selline hinnang siis USA asutajatele.
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