Blog Marcos L. Mucheroni Filosofia, Noosfera e cibercultura

The discussion was made without reference to history, and without conscience history does not repeat itself, but it is good to look at the work on the renaissance and the difficulties of establishing “strong” and “centralized” governments seeking to provide political stability, wrote Norbert Elias Scholar of Machiavelli, who is of the period of the renaissance:
“Society was in transition. The same was true of manners. Even in tone, in the way we see it, we feel that, in spite of all its attachment to the Middle Ages, something new was on the way. The “simplicity” as we experienced it, the simple opposition between “good” and “bad” and between “compassionate” and “cruel” had been lost. People embodied things more differently, that is, with stronger control of their emotions (ELIAS, 1994, 83-84).
At the end of the Middle Ages (around the fifteenth century), economic changes began to emerge, structural ones: industrial revolution, liberalism and republicanism, etc. Were still in their infancy, but the economic base is already starting to show signs of change.
Monetary economics, tied to the reappearance of money, which almost disappeared during the period of feudalism (the High Middle Ages), and mercantilism, the period of great navigations and new trades, changed the winds of that time.
It is in this context that the Feudal State gives way to centralized monarchies, and so-called Sovereign by Hobbes or The Prince, by Machiavelli, will make the transformations in the idea of ​​state strengthen throughout the Modern Age.
To deal with such a subject, without a brief analysis of the model of the Feudal State, which underwent profound transformations in the period called the Middle Ages (XI to XV centuries), it is in this context that apocalyptic defenders of the modern State today are unaware of the process of Change we are and advocate the state strengthening “strong” government.
They did not count on the rise to power, at least its announcement in traditionally open countries like the Netherlands, France and even Germany, in addition to the already “consolidated” Trump and Putin governments, in two very strengthened nations.
If this was valid in the time of Adam Smith’s “Riches of the Nations,” today is an outdated and a-historic defense of this strong states defense and does not collaborate with a vision of a world more tolerant, fraternal and respectful of differences Cultural activities.
Adam Smith wrote at this time, Marx himself studied it, and he writed: “In these troubled times, every great owner was a kind of prince on a small point. His tenants were his subjects. He was the Judge and, in chief, in times of war. He waged war at will, and often against his neighbors, and sometimes against his sovereign.” (Smith, 1999, 660).
Today it does not make sense, but the Baumanians and other defenders of the “solid” go out of their way to see “strong” national governments come to the fore, was that what they defended? I bet not, but “strong” government is authoritarian government, contrary to what the world asks, at least any part of society.

ELIAS, N. The Civilizing Process. Oxford: Blackwell, 1994.

SMITH, A. Theory of moral sentiments, São Paulo: Metalibri, 2006. (pdf)