On Plebeian Credentialism

The Populist Persuasion Industry

I’m reading John McCormick’s Machiavellian Democracy, which is mostly a commentary Machiavelli’s Discourses on Livy, itself a commentary on Titus Livy’s history of Rome. Long before Marx wrote “the history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggle,” Machiavelli believed that all cities’ politics were essentially struggles between…