Just read "The Concept of the Political" by Carl Schmitt and wondering if anyone else has and if they have what they thought about the whole political as such being basically a friend/enemy dynamic and his critique of liberal democracy.
Obviously its not really a leftist text (guy was a Nazi but wrote this before all that), but I find his critique of liberal democracy interesting but it is so tied to his conception of what is the political as such, its kinda infuriating especially because I feel like that conceptual understanding of the political is problematic in a few ways.
Guess I'm venting a bit, but wondering what anyone else thought of him
Nazi scum, but useful for thinking through state structures. I'd actually say he's more useful than Heidegger, but I think that what's especially productive is the responses and critiques of his work. However, I think that the more useful side of his work is the political theology. Friend/foe is so simple it's boring, but when you start to think about political theology, then you have a more useful way to think about how state power legitimates itself. Of course, the more recent follow-ups on Schmitt are even more interesting than Schmitt, but to credit a piece of shit, he did pick up on the way that the state legitimates itself on an exception to the law it pretends to uphold.
