Brad’s Reviews > The Apprentice's Sorcerer: Liberal Tradition and Fascism > Status Update

"Democracy becomes dangerous in direct proportion to the masses’ insistence on actually cashing in on their democratic prerogative."

Banger.

"It seems hardly a coincidence, that precisely in the two countries that represent most typically the liberal-democratic tradition—England and the USA—political and economic power, on the one hand, and covert maneuvering, on the other hand, are strongly interlaced."

"Without wishing to be carried away by the monarchical parties, I have no hesitation in voting with them on all measures designed to re-establish order and discipline in society and to strike down the revolutionary and Socialist party." - Alexis de Tocqueville, 1848

Four years later, the Second French Republic would give way to the Second French Empire

"For to treat Proudhon as a seminal figure in the trajectory of anarchism is surprisingly to obtain concrete evidence of the liberal origins of anarchism, as opposed to the widespread assumption that anarchism was simply another form of leftist social radicalism, different in its aims and assumptions than socialism, but equally anti-liberal."

Spicy!

"Hence the 19th century bourgeoisie discards the theoretical egalitarianism of Smith to re-embrace a version of neo-aristocratic birthright. It became necessary to defend the capitalist system as natural and reflecting innate abilities, to argue...that genius and talent are the cause, not the effect, of the division of labor."

This puts Varoufakis's "Neofeudalism" under helpfully critical examination.