Yes it is very good. He describes the incentives for a feudal prince. Not sure why he is considered to be some kind of evil philosopher.
Because it makes people feel funny to hear what it takes to be in power. It hurts their wittle feewings. A lib once said to me, "If the world is going to be like that, then I don't want to live in it," as if that made a difference.
Its great how instead of the natural conclusion of "If the world is going to be like that, I want to change it" the conclusion is "If the world is going to be like that, I will pretend I do not see it and then the world wont be like that".
Feels before reals.
I used to not understand just how important people's feelings were to them. They're super important. More important than anything in the world. Certainly more important than stupid reality.
I heard a dude say Machiavello was one of the first materialist or something like that, a big dipshit tho
Don't let the label leftist stop you from reading theory deemed not leftist. Even people like Carl Schmitt are still relevant.
If you have the bandwidth, there's plenty of benefit to consuming counter points of view even if only to have a better understanding of what you stand against. I would recommend against reading someone like Ben Shapiro because, awful writing aside, conservative pundits are mainly grifters who make a living selling snake oil to 'temporarily embarrassed millionaires'. Someone like Peter Thiel will give you a much clearer insight into what the capitalist class actually thinks.
Also, concerning the prince: while it's not really a "leftist" text it's always worth mentioning that there's an interesting debate among historians regarding it's purpose/role from Machiavelli and whether not his one book about "how to be a sith Lord for dummies" was actually written to be subversive.
I remember listening to it back on Librivox. I think it's actually a very good context for understanding both the Renaissance and the age of Exploration(=genocide and colonialism).
It's pretty fun and has a lot of unexpected stuff. I didn't learn much from it. A renaissance prince might have more use for the specific advice in it.
It's at least handy for understanding references to it and it's super short
I was supposed tonread it for class once. I didnt but I got a B on the paper anyway. So that means there is 30% value in reading it. So it is better than a cheesy men's adventure novel I suppose
No more or less than a person who doesn't identify with leftism, as with anything
