Comments on: Aristocratic Political Theory http://www.theoria.ca/theoria/archives/2006/09/aristocratic-political-theory.html Animal studies--and more! Wed, 30 Jun 2010 14:04:04 -0700 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.0.1 By: Gracchi http://www.theoria.ca/theoria/archives/2006/09/aristocratic-political-theory.html/comment-page-1#comment-5066 Gracchi Sat, 30 Sep 2006 23:22:16 +0000 http://www.theoria.ca/theoria/archives/2006/09/aristocratic-political-theory.html#comment-5066 Aristocratic Political Theory seems to me to have died because of a lack of confidence in what we can know. If you think of the original meaning of the word aristocrat- government by the best- the problem is that we are no longer confident about what is the best. To take a case in point, looking at the Putney Debates, most people in 1649 would have agreed with Henry Ireton that the propertied were the best people to have power to preserve property for themselves but because we are all less confident in the absolute value of property we find the arguments about poor men starving from the other side compelling. That seems to me to be the main problem now with aristocratic political theory. However there are two areas where that isn't so true- one is the aristocracy of the implementation of policy by a body of civil servants, policy experts and journalists all of whom have influence and none of whom are elected. The other is equally interesting and that is the derregulation of power- to independent central banks and other bodies. Paralleling this is the rise of expert legislation which the representatives of the people only judge. There is a sense in which our governments are actually a mix of aristocracy and democracy. Aristocratic Political Theory seems to me to have died because of a lack of confidence in what we can know. If you think of the original meaning of the word aristocrat- government by the best- the problem is that we are no longer confident about what is the best. To take a case in point, looking at the Putney Debates, most people in 1649 would have agreed with Henry Ireton that the propertied were the best people to have power to preserve property for themselves but because we are all less confident in the absolute value of property we find the arguments about poor men starving from the other side compelling. That seems to me to be the main problem now with aristocratic political theory.

However there are two areas where that isn’t so true- one is the aristocracy of the implementation of policy by a body of civil servants, policy experts and journalists all of whom have influence and none of whom are elected. The other is equally interesting and that is the derregulation of power- to independent central banks and other bodies. Paralleling this is the rise of expert legislation which the representatives of the people only judge. There is a sense in which our governments are actually a mix of aristocracy and democracy.

]]> By: Politblogo http://www.theoria.ca/theoria/archives/2006/09/aristocratic-political-theory.html/comment-page-1#comment-4752 Politblogo Wed, 06 Sep 2006 18:51:28 +0000 http://www.theoria.ca/theoria/archives/2006/09/aristocratic-political-theory.html#comment-4752 <strong>The numerocracy</strong> My friend Craig has a post up about the lack of an aristocratic political theory. Now, I would like to emphasize emphatically that I am not at all an expert on such matters as he is, but merely a lay The numerocracy

My friend Craig has a post up about the lack of an aristocratic political theory. Now, I would like to emphasize emphatically that I am not at all an expert on such matters as he is, but merely a lay

]]>