CRISIS AND POWER: ECONOMICS, POLITICS AND CONFLICT IN MACHIAVELLI’S
POLITICAL THOUGHT
Filippo Del Lucchese1
The theme of social conflict is present from the opening pages of The
Discourses on the First Decade of Titus Livius. The causes of the greatness of
a republic, Machiavelli argues, are a good army and a good constitution.
Equipped with both, Rome was able to demonstrate its fortune. Machiavelli
thus criticizes the opinion held by ‘many’, according to which ‘good fortune’
and ‘military virtue’ compensated for the constitutional defects of Rome and
the ‘extreme confusion’ created by conflicts between the plebs and the senate.
One of the main arguments in this discussion precisely concerns the role of
fortune and military virtue in keeping Rome virtuous despite these conflicts.
Machiavelli intervenes vigorously to reject both positions, arguing in Book
One, chapter 4 of The Discourses that good fortune and military virtue
developed precisely because of the city’s conflictual character.
The causes of the greatness and hence the liberty of Rome may have
been various. But the primary cause was the clash between the two main social
classes. Machiavelli stresses the argument of disunion that generates positive
effects, using an image derived from the language of medicine. As in natural
1
Marie Curie Fellow, Université de Picardie – Jules Verne (Amiens), Occidental
College (Los Angeles). Email: f.dellucchese@gmail.com
1
organisms, claims the author of The Discourses, various humours are to be
found in social bodies, in different proportions. Good laws, those favouring
liberty, are always born out of the ‘disunion’ of these humours, as is shown by
the social turmoil which, from the time of the Gracchi to that of Tarquin, never
had negative effects.2
Machiavelli employs an ‘organic’ metaphor, whereby the structure of
political bodies is similar to that of natural organisms and the needs and
demands of a social group, or even the social group itself, are compared with
the different humours which, for the sake of the organism’s health, must find
their natural outlet. In the first phase of Roman history, the clash between the
various humours never took such an extreme form as to provoke exile or
death. The conflict was moderate and violence was contained within certain
limits. Without perverse, destabilizing effects, the popular humour succeeded
in finding a suitable outlet.
Subsequently, still in The Discourses, Machiavelli considers turmoil
that assumes a more violent and extreme form – so much so that it has been
placed at the origins of Rome’s decline. This is the rioting connected with the
agrarian law at the time of the Gracchi, when conflict turned violent and
2
The Discourses I,4. I use the Italian text of the Edizione Nazionale (Rome) for the works
already published at this time, and N. Machiavelli, Tutte le opere, ed. M. Martelli (Firenze,
1992). For the English translation I use The Discourses, ed. L.J. Walker (London, 1950), The
Prince, ed. Q. Skinner and R. Price (Cambridge, 1988), and Florentine Histories, ed. L.F.
Banfield and H.C. Mansfield (Princeton, 1988), with some occasional changes.
2
destructive, leading to the ruin of the republic and the tyranny of Caesar. In
many respects, this second type of conflict resembles that characteristic of the
events described by Machiavelli in the Florentine Histories. Here the struggles
between the Grandi – the elite of powerful and wealthy families – and the
popolo3 no longer seem to express the ‘natural’ humours of the social body,
but merely the private interests of opposed, contending factions, exhibiting
violent and perverse effects for the existence of the republic.
A dichotomy between moderate and excessive conflict would thus
seem to emerge in Machiavelli’s analysis of conflict, which various authors
have highlighted.4 These interpreters have paradoxically sought to ‘save’
3
For a definition of the categories of the elite and the ‘popolo’ in late medieval and
early modern Florentine history, see J.M. Najemy, A History of Florence: 1200-1575 (Oxford,
2006), especially Chapters 1 and 2.
4
In the wake of Leo Strauss, H.C. Mansfield, Machiavelli’s Virtue (Chicago, 1996),
for example, has underlined how the root of this dichotomy, and the diverse assessments of
conflict in Florence and Rome, is to be sought in the corresponding division between
subterranean criticism of Christianity, on the one hand, and of classical political science on the
other. For his part, S.M. Shumer, ‘Machiavelli. Republican Politics and Its Corruption’
Political Theory, VII (1979), pp. 5-34, has underscored the dichotomy, developing an analysis
that is more reminiscent of Hannah Arendt and the division between a public, and hence
positive conception of politics and a ‘private’ conception, which inevitably leads to
degeneration. K.M. Brudney, ‘Machiavelli on Social Class and Class Conflict’, Political
Theory, XII (1984), pp. 507-19, has effectively revealed the limitations of these
interpretations. Yet he too rapidly categorizes Machiavelli’s analysis of conflict in terms of
3
Machiavelli from himself and his own radicalism.5 However, a careful reading
of the texts reveals how Machiavelli’s conception of conflict is neither
‘classes’. This conclusion has the merit of switching attention to the economic elements of
conflict, but risks over-simplifying the complexity of the contending forces in Machiavelli’s
analysis. Interpreters who tend to make Machiavelli a precursor of contemporary
representative democracy and the multi-party system are guilty of the converse exaggeration.
See, for example, N. Rubinstein, ‘Politics and Costitution in Florence’, in Italian Renaissance
Studies, ed. E.F. Jacob (London, 1960), pp. 160-83.
5
That is to say, they have constructed an image of Machiavelli consistent with the
values of the common good, the rule of law and institutional equilibrium. For example, M.
Viroli, Founders: Machiavelli (Oxford, 1998) has argued that the theme of conflict is not
central for Machiavelli. On the contrary, on the basis of texts in the rhetorical tradition
Machiavelli’s interest was supposedly predominantly rhetorical and oratorical in character.
Accordingly, his concern was not with power, but with the common good and civic life, thus
condemning radical, violent conflicts. More generally, the influential ‘Cambridge School’
(J.G.A. Pocock, The Machiavellian moment. Florentine political thought and the Atlantic
political tradition, (Princeton, 1975), Q. Skinner. Liberty before liberalism, (Cambridge,
1998), M. Viroli, Founders: Machiavelli, P. Pettit, Republicanism: A Theory of Freedom and
Government, (Oxford, 1999) has often underrated this theme, helping to construct the image
of Machiavelli as an exponent of classical republicanism or civic humanism, although Skinner
himself, in ‘The Paradoxes of Political Liberty’, in The Tanner Lectures on Human Values,
VII, ed. S. McMurrin, (Cambridge, 1986), pp. 225-50 has shown how the two must not be
confused and superimposed. John P. McCormick, ‘Machiavelli against Republicanism: On the
Cambridge School’s ‘Guicciardinian Moments’, in Political Theory, XXXI (2003), pp. 61543, has brilliantly demonstrated the limits of this interpretation of a ‘republican’ Machiavelli,
highlighting instead the importance of the more democratic aspects in his thought. See also J.
4
straightforward nor linear. That is to say, it is not characterized by an initial
positive estimate of conflict, in the moderate terms of the first phase of Roman
history, and a subsequent condemnation of conflict, with respect to the typical
form of Florentine history. The majority of interpreters have restricted
themselves to considering The Discourses on the First Decade of Titus Livius.
In order to fully appreciate the orginality and power of Machiavelli’s thought,
in my opinion, thorough consideration must also be given to his other major
works, above all the Florentine Histories. This makes it possible to highlight
the links between political dynamics and not only the institutional effects of
conflicts, but also their economic effects. Machiavelli is probably among the
first thinkers of modernity to grasp the explicit nexus between economic
struggles, institutional factors and political dynamics. It is for this reason that
his thought goes well beyond the republican formulation that interpreters tend
to assign to it.
‘Close to the heart of the problem...’: Crisis of Power in The Discourses on
the First Decade of Titus Livius
The first and important constitutional ‘result’ obtained by the Roman
plebs in their struggle against the nobles is the establishment of the tribunus
McCormick, ‘Contain the Wealthy and Patrol the Magistrates: Restoring Elite Accountability
to Popular Government’, in American Political Science Review, C (2006), pp. 147-63
5
plebis, in whose hands was placed the ‘guardianship of liberty’. Challenging
the ambitions of the nobles, the popolo fight for a greater role in government.
It is precisely these ‘accidents’ – i.e. this long history of struggles – which
slowly moulded the Roman constitutional order. In the first chapters of The
Discourses, interest focuses mainly on the institutional results of the ongoing
conflict, setting to one side the causes of the struggles. Nevertheless,
Machiavelli already radically rejects the classical apologia for internal
harmony in the state, counter-posing to this tradition his ‘conflictual’ model,
which he regards as the ‘first cause’ of the greatness of Rome.
Book One, chapter 37 opens with an intense reflection on human
passions, especially desire, which is based (according to Machiavelli) on the
imbalance created by the capacity to desire anything while being able to attain
only a few things. Desire generates an extremely violent conflictual situation,
because ‘since some strive to get more and others fear to lose what they have
gained, they indulge in enmity and war. These cause the ruin of one province
and the prosperity of another’. In a characteristic descriptive move,
Machiavelli passes directly from a theoretical statement describing the nature
of human desire, to a historical example to be described and interpreted:
I wrote this because it was not enough for the Roman plebs to make sure
of the nobles by setting up the tribunes – a desire to which it was forced
by necessity – but at once, having attained that, it began fighting
through ambition and through its hope to share honors and wealth with
6
the nobles, as things much esteemed by men. From this rose the disorder
that brought forth the contention over the Agrarian Law, which at last
resulted in the destruction of the republic.6
Hence this is the origin of the conflict over control of the system of
land ownership, which has a long history but which explodes with the most
serious consequences at the time of the Gracchi. In a few lines the origins of
the decadence of the Republic and the end of liberty are described. The
degeneration of the conflict produces an immediate effect. The contending
parties organize militarily against one another, ‘privately’ (says Machiavelli) –
i.e. in a manner alien to legal and institutional structures – forming factions
with militias loyal to their own ‘heads’ rather than to the state.
With the material presented up to this point, there emerges an
interpretive switch in Machiavelli’s conception of social conflict. The initial
manifestations of conflict between nobles and plebs are positive for the
greatness of Rome, while those consequent upon the agrarian law are
destructive of its liberty, because of their serious disintegrative impact on the
social fabric. The main causes of this slide appear to be two-fold. The first
consists in the changed interest of the contending parties as regards the object
of their contention. If in the early days of the republic’s existence the parties
struggled over political responsibilities and ‘honours’, at the time of the
6
The Discourses, I,37.
7
Gracchi the struggle switched to the economic terrain, to material goods and
(to use a term of Machiavelli’s) ‘belongings’. The transition from the struggle
for ‘honours’ to one for ‘belongings’ is thus the first cause of the degeneration
in the phenomenon of conflict.
The second cause derives from this switch onto the economic terrain
and consists in the violent development of conflicts. History in fact reveals
that struggles for ‘honours’ are moderate and hence positive, while those for
‘possessions’ are extremely violent and hence destructive. Thus, the increase
in violence and the transfer to the economic terrain emerge – in this phase – as
the cause of the loss of Roman liberty and, more generally, of the
transformation in the conception of conflict in Machiavelli.
In all, the following characteristics are to be found in Machiavelli’s
oeuvre: the theme of the goal of the struggle – i.e. ‘belongings’ as opposed to
‘honours’; the theme of violent struggles and moderate conflicts; and, finally,
the theme of public and private – the distinction, in other words, between the
nature of the parties and that of the factions engaged in struggle. But it
nevertheless seems possible to go beyond this dichotomy, which the majority
of Machiavelli’s interpreters stop at. While it is true that Machiavelli describes
and compares these characteristics of conflictual mechanisms, he does not
restrict himself to a simple prioritization of the first element at the expense of
the second. That is to say, he does not limit himself to elevating the struggle
for ‘honours’ over that for ‘possessions’, moderate conflict over excessively
8
violent conflict and, finally, struggle via public apparatuses over struggle that
occurs in ‘private’ mode. This linear contrast in fact already runs into
difficulty in the very same chapter 37 of Book One of The Discourses.7
What caused the decline was the plebs who, from fighting out of
necessity, passed to fighting out of ambition, in accordance with the natural
mechanisms of human desire. But it is precisely here that we have the first
reversal. In this same chapter 37 we return to the ambitions of the nobles. The
negative role played by the plebs recedes and the object of condemnation is
once again the attitude of the nobles. All things human are in motion and
cannot be arrested as we read in The Discourses I,6. Hence even Rome must
‘ascend’ or ‘descend’. But if it had not descended as a result of the ‘conflict’
7
Here, after having described how the contending parties, considering an ‘institutional’
solution of their contest to be impossible, assign themselves private heads and transform
themselves into factions, Machiavelli makes it clear that ‘Such were the beginning and the end
... of the Agrarian Law. And though we showed above how the enmities at Rome between the
Senate and the multitude kept Rome free by producing laws in support of liberty, and
therefore the result of this Agrarian law seems out of harmony with my belief, I say that I do
not for that reason abandon my opinion. To a great extent the ambition of the rich, if by
various means and in various ways a city does not crush it, is what quickly brings her to ruin.
So if the quarrels over the Agrarian Law took three hundred years to make Rome a slave, she
would perhaps have been brought much sooner to slavery if the people, with this law and with
its other cravings, had not continually checked the ambitions of the nobles’. (I, 37) The main
elements that render a simple, linear opposition between two conflictual models inconsistent
are already present.
9
over the agrarian law, the city would have been corrupted ‘even more quickly’
on account of noble ambitions, which are a constant threat to the liberty of any
republic.
The straightforward opposition between two types of conflict is here
already undermined. In The Discourses Machiavelli does not go more deeply
into the question, as he was to do in the subsequent Florentine Histories.8 He
seems to point to a general normative principle in a politics that bases the
economic power of the state on public wealth, as opposed to large private
fortunes. This could ensure a more tranquil political existence, where the
pursuit of virtue prevails over ambition. In Sparta, for example, it was
Lycurgus’s laws that realized the ‘equality of property’ which eliminated the
cause of conflict between nobles and plebs. And the same end was to be
achieved by Agis and Cleomenes, who are referred to in Book One, chapter 9
of The Discourses. As some ancient law-makers understood, virtue is more
readily realized where there is no possibility of accumulating great fortunes
and where, as a result, major inequalities between citizens do not develop.
8
His interest is still predominantly focused on the institutional effects of the agrarian law,
setting to one side the economic causes of the crisis, which were nevertheless well known.
Moreover, at the end of chapter 37 we read that without the Gracchi the crisis could perhaps
have ‘spent itself’ without perverse effects, because ‘to make a law that looks far into the past,
is a badly considered decision; as was set forth at length above, it does nothing else than
hasten the evil toward which that irregularity is taking you. But if you delay, either the evil
comes later, or before it comes to its completion, with time it disappears of itself’.
10
In this sense, Machiavelli forcefully argues in The Discourses, book
One, chapter 37, that the virtuous Republic must keep ‘the state rich and the
citizens poor’. Hence the goal of the agrarian law was just and ‘laudable’, but
its authors found themselves confronting enormous private power, based on
the wealth of the nobles, who had no intention of giving in to the demands of
the plebs. ‘To touch’ private fortunes means unleashing the violence of the
nobles and hence those mechanisms that possess the requisite characteristics to
be placed, in a ‘dualistic’ schema like that of The Discourses I, 37, in the
category of negative conflicts.
Interpreters who defend a moderate, civic image of conflict on the part
of Machiavelli generally stress the need to keep his major writings – The
Discourses on the one hand and The Prince on the other – separate. In reality,
however, precisely on this point the two works are consistent and exhibit a
profound unity in the thinking of their author. In Book Three, chapter 19 of
The Discourses, for example, Machiavelli affirms that for men thinking about
money is superior to any other sentiment and value. To ‘avoid hatred’, it is
necessary ‘to let your subjects’ property alone, because no prince desires their
blood except when compelled, if greed is not hidden under his desire; and such
compulsion seldom comes. But desire for blood, when greed is mixed with it,
appears continually, and there is never a lack of cause or desire for
bloodshed’. Machiavelli thus recommends a policy that avoids ‘robbery’ of
citizens’ private fortunes, because (as we read again in chapter 17 of The
11
Prince) ‘men forget more quickly the death of their father than the loss of their
patrimony’ .
Now, if the analysis could be terminated at this point; if Machiavelli
had halted at producing The Prince and The Discourses without composing
the Histories, it could be claimed that the ‘tension’ present in the first part of
the commentary on Livy finds an almost definitive systematization in those
two texts. Keeping the state rich and the nobles poor; favouring popular and
middle-class economic power – such might run a synthesis of the principles
illustrated in The Discourses and The Prince, for the purposes of hitting upon
a theoretical solution to the problem represented by the agrarian law in Book
One, chapter 37 of The Discourses, where the social conflict effectively
becomes the cause of the loss of liberty, but where the necessity to strike at the
aristocratic class is ‘nonetheless’ confirmed.
Thus matters stood up to the Florentine Histories. In these pages from
Machiavelli’s final years, the tension implicit in this argument re-emerges in
force, putting in question the solution offered in the preceding works.
Economics, which seemed to provide a solution to the aporiae in the theme of
conflict, precisely compels Machiavelli to reflect anew on the mechanisms of
this phenomenon. The theme of conflict in the Histories does not entirely
confirm the schema present in Book One, chapter 37 of The Discourses. In
certain respects, it changes it.
12
‘From inequality to a wonderful equality’: Crisis and Power in Florentine
Histories
Florentine Histories offers a highly original vision of politics and one
that is in some respects different from that of the previous works. What
emerges is a genuine revision of the dualistic schema employed in the
description of conflict in Book One, chapter 37 of The Discourses, which now
proves inapposite to describe the Florentine situation.
In the preface to the Histories, Machiavelli proudly takes his distance
from his great predecessors in Florentine historiography, Leonardo Bruni and
Poggio Bracciolini. These ‘very excellent historians’ are accused of not having
made sufficient reference to ‘civil discords and internal enmities’ and of
having been ‘altogether silent about the one and so brief about the other as to
be of no use to readers or pleasure to anyone’. Social conflict was pervasive in
The Discourses, but it is in the Histories that the theme becomes absolutely
central and predominant.
The whole history of Florence is one of conflicts and ‘dissensions’.
Rome’s is a history of virtue and power, which ultimately experience decline
and crisis. For Florence, by contrast, crisis is the very substance of history.
There is not a moment of this history which is not at the same time a moment
of crisis. But – and this is one of the work’s most interesting aspects – that
does not exclude the principle of power, in a mode notably different therefore
13
from the example of Rome. Rome experiences virtue and its crisis,
characterized by the two contrasting models of conflict. Florence experiences
nothing but crisis and its conflict is foreign to any facile schemas or positivity.
In this instance, crisis includes power without being, as was true of Rome, its
exact opposite.9 The new conception of the conflictuality of Florence is not
presented as a model complementing that of Rome. Instead, it is indicated as a
more useful tool for political understanding. Machiavelli does not disown the
works prior to Florentine Histories, but intends to underline the change in his
previous standpoint dictated by new reflection.
9
See Florentine Histories, Preface: ‘In Rome, as everyone knows, after the kings were driven
out, disunion between the nobles and the plebs arose and Rome was maintained by it until its
ruin. So it was in Athens, and so in all other republics flourishing in those times. But in
Florence the nobles were, first, divided among themselves; then the nobles and the people;
and in the end the people and the plebs: and it happened many times that the winning party
was divided in two. From such divisions came as many dead, as many exiles, and as many
families destroyed as ever occurred in any city in memory. And truly, in my judgement no
other instance appears to me to show so well the power of our city as the one derived from
these divisions, which would have had the force to annihilate any great and very powerful
city. Nonetheless ours, it appeared, became ever greater from them; so great was the virtue of
those citizens and the power of their genius and their spirit to make themselves and their
fatherland great that as many as remained free from so many evils were more able by their
virtue to exalt it, than could the malice of those accidents that had diminished it overwhelm
it’.
14
The constant characteristic of the parties in Florence, once victory has
been obtained, is that they always discover a ‘new reason’ for further division
and for renewing the terms of the conflict. Florence is thus the subject most
adapted for speaking of ‘divisions’. Rome is not forgotten, but – the times
having changed – it is appropriate to change the ‘matter’ of reflection. In
chapters 7 and 8 of Book One of The Discourses, Machiavelli had asserted the
importance of offering an outlet, through the laws, for the opposed ‘humours’
present in any city. If these laws are absent, the conflict develops along
extraordinary paths, as in Florence, allowing private forces to ruin ‘free life’.
In Florentine Histories the condemnation of Florence persists. At the
same time, however, the image of a history that cannot overcome the negative
mechanisms of divisions is sketched. The various elements are blended and it
is no longer possible to separate, and precisely distinguish, the ‘humours’,
physiological element of any republic, from the ‘parties’, pathological element
of Florentine politics. From the opening pages of the Histories, the possibility
of transferring Roman models to Florentine history loses any foundation.
In Book Two, Machiavelli exhibits the characteristics of conflict
development in the irreconcilable form typical of Florence. The city’s
constitutional history is modelled on that of conflict. With the continuous
creation of new offices and new responsibilities, an attempt is made to stem
the violence of the clash between the parties, in search of a seemingly
impossible equilibrium. The ‘guardianship of liberty’, something useful and
15
positive for the political life of Rome, is now only a memory and a pale
shadow of what it was still able to represent in the Roman order. Conflict is
now absolute, as in the time of the Gracchi. The ‘parties’ are no longer the
negative element, opposed to ‘humours’ which, if they find a legal outlet, can
produce virtuous effects on the model offered by Rome. The problem comes
to the surface overwhelmingly – it is the absolute will to power and
domination:
The wars outside and the peace within had almost eliminated the
Ghibelline and Guelf parties in Florence. Only those humors were still
excited that are naturally wont to exist in all cities between the powerful
and the popolo; for since the popolo want to live according to the laws
and the powerful want to command by them, it is not possible for them
to understand together. While the Ghibellines made them fear, this
humor was not discovered; but as soon as they were subdued, its power
was revealed.10
In contrast to Rome, it is not possible for the two humours to coexist.
The frantic search for legislative solutions to the problem of conflict is
presented as ineffective, wrecked by the desire of the contending subjects. The
creation of guilds is no more sufficient than the nomination of a gonfalonier of
justice to placate the nobles’ desire to oppress the popolo. The situation is
10
Florentine Histories, II, 12.
16
complicated by the fact that the Florentine parties are much less sharply
defined, much more fluid and mutable in their composition than the humours
in Rome were. Now Machiavelli speaks of popolo and grandi, immediately
after referring to Cerchi and Donati. These, like the other ‘fatal families’, are
often positioned transversely with respect to the city’s social structure. The
line horizontally separating high from low – i.e. grandi from the popolo –
tends to be dissolved in the contra-position of groups rooted in popular and
noble strata alike. Consequently, in the Histories we no longer encounter the
schematism employed in The Discourses to describe conflict. What is still
frequently present is condemnation of this new form of conflict, alongside an
awareness that history knows no differently structured struggle. It is therefore
pointless to censure its results. Instead, one must seek to understand the
causes. And – once again – it is economic causes that generate the extreme
violence of the struggle.
Any war, states Machiavelli, is conducted to enrich oneself and
impoverish the enemy. But this inevitably also applies to grandi and the
popolo, as is demonstrated by the story of Castruccio Castracani. The siege of
Prato by the lord of Lucca precisely reveals that nobles and popolo, although
engaged in the same war, are each other’s enemies and that their interests are
opposed and irreconcilable.11
11
Florentine Histories, II, 26.
17
At the time of the war with Filippo Visconti, Florence was once again
divided into two parties, with one favourable to peace and agreement, while
the other was more disposed to fight. The war-mongers prevailed, imposing
new taxes to sustain the expenses, which ‘weighed more on the lesser citizens
than the greater, [so that] they filled the city with complaints, and everyone
condemned the ambition and greed of the grandi, accusing them of wishing to
start an unnecessary war so as to indulge their appetites and to oppress the
popolo so as to dominate them’12.
Once the war had broken out, because of military miscalculations the
Florentine army suffered a serious defeat at Zagonara, unleashing the counterposed humours of those who had not wanted this engagement. Unequivocally
exposed, for both Machiavelli and readers of the Histories, is not only the
nobles’ goal in this war, but the mechanism that always guides the parties’
interests, which links foreign policy to domestic policy and, more generally,
the economic and the political aspects of the conflict. This goal is simply that
of enriching oneself and impoverishing the enemy. And here we discover that
the popolo is the real enemy.13
12
Florentine Histories, IV, 4.
13
Rinaldo, son of Maso degli Albizzi, member of one of the leading Florentine families, is
called upon to calm the popular humours. At times empty and incoherent, his speech can be
read as the negation of many of Machiavelli’s teachings: «Rinaldo ... spoke at length, pointing
out that it was not prudent to judge things by their effects because many times things well
advised do not have a good outcome and things ill advised have a good one; and if wicked
18
In 1427, in order to continue the war with the Duke of Milan, a new
law was introduced that proved favourable to the popular party.14 This affords
Machiavelli an opportunity to dwell on a central argument of domestic
Florentine politics – the question of taxes and the tax authorities. The new law
takes the name of the catasto and, because of its nature as a proportional tax,
rekindles the conflict between the grandi and the popolo.15 At this point it is
important to note how the catasto is highly reminiscent of the agrarian law.
One of the most important characteristics of that measure by the Gracchi was
its retroactive character. The goal of the law was positive, says Machiavelli,
but its application was belated. The law should have been applied ‘from the
outset’ in order to avoid the negative and destructive effects that it ended up
having.
advice is praised for a good outcome, one does nothing but inspire men to err, which results in
great harm to republics because bad advice is not always successful. So likewise it was an
error to censure a wise course that might have an unhappy outcome, because it would take
away from citizens the spirit to advise the city and to say what they mean» (IV.7). One has the
impression of reading a page from The Prince, but with the meaning and evaluative signs
reversed. Machiavelli always maintained the opposite and confirms it with the argument in
question. There is nothing one can ask the people to judge if not of the effects of this war,
because they are consequences which the city has suffered.
14
Florentine Histories, IV, 14.
15
On the catasto and the fiscal policies of this period see E. Conti, L’imposta diretta a Firenze
nel Quattrocento (1427-1494), (Roma, 1984) and J.M. Najemy, A History of Florence.
19
Although the economic situation and the nature of the laws were
different, the catasto presented an analogous problem. In fact, the popolo, not
satisfied by the proportional character of the measure, ‘demanded that they
return to time past to see how much less the powerful had paid according to
the catasto and to make them pay enough to be equal with those who, so as to
pay what they did not owe, had sold their possessions. This demand, much
more than the catasto, alarmed the grandi’.16 For Machiavelli the analogy with
the agrarian law is inescapable. Although different, both measures aimed to
impact upon fortunes with retroactive effect. But this time the author of the
Histories does not restrict himself to a brief comment, asserting as in the case
of the Gracchi that retroactive laws are bad. On the contrary, he enters into a
detailed and reasoned description of the two opposed positions – that of the
supporters and that of the opponents of the catasto:
The grandi ... in defending themselves from it, ... condemned it
ceaselessly, declaring that it was most unjust because it was also
imposed on movable goods, which might be possessed today and lost
tomorrow; and that beyond this, many persons had hidden money that
the catasto could not find.17 To which they added that those who had
16
Florentine Histories, IV, 14.
17
See J.M. Najemy, A History of Florence, p. 258: ‘Cavalcanti claims that Niccolò da Uzzano
had never been assessed more than 16 florins in the prestanza rolls and was now faced with a
tax obligation of 250 florins unted the Catasto. He was close to the mark: Niccolò and his
20
left their businesses in order to govern the republic ought to be less
burdened by it, as it ought to be enough that they had labored in person;
and it was not just that the city should enjoy their belongings and their
industry and only the money of others. Others who were pleased with
the catasto answered that if movable goods vary, the taxes could also
vary, and frequent variation of them could remedy that inconvenience.
And as for those who had hidden money, it was not necessary to take
account of it, as it is not reasonable to pay for money that bears no fruit;
when it does bear fruit, it must be discovered; and if to take trouble for
the republic did not please them, let them put it aside and not try
themselves over it, because the republic would find more loving citizens
to whom it would not appear difficult to help it with money and advice;
and so many are the advantages and honors that go with governing that
these ought to be enough for them without wishing not to share the
burdens.18
brother Agnolo were assessed jointly at 20 florins in the prestanza of 1403, and Niccolò alone
owed 232 florins every time the government collected Catasto assessments’.
18
Florentine Histories, IV,14.
21
This passage clearly indicates that the ‘matter’ of the quarrel is the
very essence of these subjects and their power.19 Realistically, when it comes
to the government of the few and the government of the popolo, ‘it is not
possible for them to coexist’. Both parties are now placed on the same level,
the inevitable and irreconcilable one of struggle. We do not have the elevation
of one over the other. There is only conflict. The whole of history and the
whole of politics are encapsulated in this conflictual dimension. The economic
interest that grounds the political life of Florence is made explicit. It is
significant that the rise to power of the Medici, despite obvious issues of
political opportuneness bound up with the commission of the Histories, is not
‘saved’ from this mechanism but in fact entirely deposited within it. The
portrait of Cosimo, son of Giovanni de’ Medici, is that of a party man, ready
to renew the violence of the clash.20
19
J.M. Najemy, A History of Florence, provides an effective account of the strictly political
nature and consequences of the new taxation measures. Rinaldo degli Albizzi supported the
initiative, while Giovanni de’ Medici’s initial lukewarm opposition later transformed into
open support. In any case, ‘the Catasto needed every vote it could get. On May 22, 1427, the
Council of the Popolo approved it by a vote of 144-70 (only one vote over the required twothirds majority); the next day the Council of the Commune gave its assent by a vote of 117-58
(with not a single vote to spare). Arguments on both sides had brought divergent class
interests back into Florentine political debate’. (p. 258)
20
Florentine Histories, IV, 26. The importance and the impact of this taxation policy on the
balance of powers in Florence, which was in the process of becoming increasingly Medicean,
22
The entire city is prey to division: ‘It was by this city, thus divided,
that the campaign against Lucca was undertaken, in which the humors of the
parties were excited rather than eliminated’.21 As is indicated by the
unprecedented expression Machiavelli uses, never have humours and parties
been so close – so much so as to become confused – as in this period. The
private life of governing the res publica is no longer merely an aspect –
degenerate and pathological – of political existence: from the ‘extraordinary’
and ‘brutal’ modes that lead to the parties in The Discourses, we pass to the
tragic and profound definition of Florence as a ‘naturally partisan’ city. From
humours counter-posed to parties, we pass to the ‘humors of the parties’.
‘Those who win, no matter how they win, are never ashamed of it’:
Anatomy of Conflict
cannot be overemphasized. See J.M. Najemy, A History of Florence, pp. 259-60: ‘Although
the Medici […] paid enormous sums between 1425 and early 1433 […], it did not have the
same disasrtous effect on them that it had on the Strozzi, because, as bankers with Europeanwide investments, they were able to hide much wealth, as is clear in comparing their Catasto
declarations with the bank’s secret account books, and also because their lucrative banking
operations continued to generate enough profits to compensate for the fiscal drain. Moreover,
his immense wealth gave Cosimo a crucial role in the management of the commune’s
finances, a role that brought him profit and power, but also the fear and resentment of many
within the elite who saw the inexorable political consequences of his wealth’. Machiavelli was
among them.
21
Florentine Histories, IV, 26.
23
In Book Three of Florentine Histories we reach the final and highest
level of social conflict in Florence. The secular struggle between the parties
has gradually exhausted the strength of the nobility in favour of the popolo,
the new productive forces. In the popolo resides maximum power and that is
why it ends up fighting with the plebs. We are at the end of the fourteenth
century and Machiavelli is about to narrate the revolutionary mouvement of
the Ciompi (wool-carders).22 At the start of Book Three, the author again
states:
The grave and natural enmities that exist between the men of the
popolo and the nobles, caused by the wish of the latter to command
and the former not to obey, are the cause of all evils that arise in cities.
For from this diversity of humors all other things that agitate republics
take their nourishment. This kept Rome disunited, and this, if it is
permissible to compare little things with great, has kept Florence
divided, although diverse effects were produced in one city and the
other. For the enmities between the popolo and the nobles at the
beginning of Rome that were resolved by disputing were resolved in
22
On the revolutionary mouvement of the Ciompi see also G. Brucker, ‘The Ciompi
Revolution’, in Florentine Studies: Politics and Society in Renaissance Florence, ed. N.
Rubinstein (London, 1969), pp. 314-56, Il tumulto dei Ciompi (Florence, 1981), A. Stella, La
révolte des Ciompi. Les hommes, les lieux, le travail (Paris, 1993).
24
Florence by fighting. Those in Rome ended with a law, those in
Florence with the exile and death of many citizens; those in Rome
always increased military virtue, those in Florence eliminated it
altogether; those in Rome brought the city from equality in the citizens
to a very great inequality, those in Florence reduced it from inequality
to a wonderful equality.23
Crisis and power go hand in hand. Once again, Rome and Florence are
compared on the basis of two opposed models of conflict – positive and
moderate in the Roman case between nobles and popolo, negative and violent
in the Florentine case. The Roman popolo wanted ‘to enjoy the highest honors
together with the nobles’ and because of that encountered minor resistance to
its demands. The desire of the Florentine popolo, by contrast, was ‘injurious
and unjust’, causing bitter, violent conflicts, such that ‘the laws that were
made afterwards were not for the common utility but were all ordered in
favour of the conqueror’.24
About Machiavelli’s preference for the first model there should be no
doubt, as is confirmed by the theme of military virtue. Yet, reversing the
argument in surprising fashion, Machiavelli emphasizes the effects of this
moderate conflict, which allowed the nobles to maintain and in fact increase
23
Florentine Histories, III, 1.
24
Ibid.
25
their domination over the popolo. In Florence, by contrast, a ‘wonderful
equality’ has been attained. Viewed in a different light, the negative model of
conflict in Florence now seems to contain something potentially positive.
In Rome the clash eventually led to decadence, while in Florence it is
possible to found a new power. Rising to the highest administrative duties, the
popolo of Rome acquired the virtue of the nobles. By contrast, in Florence the
removal of honours from the nobility also brought about an irredeemable loss
of the city’s virtue, which could not be rediscovered in the popolo. Yet the
desire of the Roman popolo to govern not on their own but together with the
nobles, while more reasonable and moderate, leads to the loss of liberty. The
reversal of the Florentine situation occurs in similar fashion: ‘And whereas
Rome, when its virtue was converted into arrogance, was reduced to such
straits that it could not maintain itself without a prince, Florence arrived at the
point that it could easily have been reordered in any form of government by a
wise lawgiver’.25 Thus the positive effect caused by a violent and extreme
conflict is that it ‘eliminated’ the nobility once and for all.
Unmistakable in this passage is the quasi-enigmatic sense of
Machiavelli’s unprecedented assertion that Florence can be reorganized ‘in
any form of government’. While a slip on the author’s part is inconceivable, it
certainly cannot be claimed that ‘any form’ automatically signifies ‘in
republican form’. Among the most accredited hypotheses as regards
25
Ibid.
26
interpretations of this passage is the suggestion that we assimilate this page to
so-called ‘crisis’ points in Machiavelli’s thinking.26 This expression generally
refers to Book One, chapter 55 of The Discourses and to Discursus
florentinarum rerum post mortem iunioris Laurentii Medices, composed
between 1520 and 1521. In these writings, in fact, what seems to emerge is the
weakness of the theory of the popular principality – in other words, of a
principality that bases its power not on the nobility but on the popolo, as
recommended in chapter 9 of The Prince. On closer inspection, however, even
The Discourses Book One, chapter 55 and the Discursus do not renounce the
popular perspective articulated in many other parts of the oeuvre.
The most important conclusion of Book One, chapter 55 of The
Discourses is that a republic cannot be constructed where there are so many
‘gentlemen’; and, vice versa, that a principality cannot be established where so
much ‘equality’ obtains. But that is precisely the situation in Florence, as we
read in the same chapter and as is often asserted in Florentine Histories.
‘Equality’ is the matter of Florence and a republic created from a broad-based
popular government is the form that best suits it. Given the circumstances in
which it was composed, we cannot but note that in the Discursus Florentine
‘equality’ suggests a political act that has nothing symbolic about it and which
is quite the reverse of the harmless move depicted by Machiavelli in order to
26
See among others G. Cadoni, Crisi della mediazione politica e conflitti sociali (Roma,
1990) and G. Sasso, Niccolò Machiavelli (Bologna, 1993).
27
reassure the illustrious addressee of his programme. In fact, it is a question of
reopening the Hall of the Grand Council, the democratic body desired by
Savonarola and which the nobles physically wrecked immediately after his
death. The ‘hall’ represented the presence of a large popular stratum in the
government and, in the circumstances in which the Discursus was composed,
it is far from trivial to continue to argue that ‘Without satisfying the generality
of the citizens, to set up a stable government is always impossible. Never will
the generality of the Florentine citizens be satisfied if the Hall is not reopened.
Therefore, if one is to set up a republic in Florence, this Hall must be reopened
and this allotment made to the generality of the citizens’.27
The principle that dominates these pages seems to be precisely that of
‘equality’, which characterizes the political and economic structure of
Florence.28 The genesis of this ‘equality’ has been described in Florentine
27
Discursus Florentinarum rerum post mortem iunioris Laurentii Medicis.
28
Contrary to what has been argued by many interpreters (among them, F. Gilbert,
Machiavelli and Guicciardini: Politics and History in Sixteenth Century Florence (Princeton,
1965), I do not believe that Machiavelli intended to maintain a separation between political
domination and economic domination, regarding wealth without exception as an ‘evil’ for
politics. Contra Gilbert and G. Bock, ‘Civil Discord in Machiavelli’s Istorie Fiorentine’, in
Machiavelli and Republicanism, ed. G. Bock, Q. Skinner and M. Viroli (Cambridge, 1990),
pp. 181-202, the equality to which Machiavelli refers is not only institutional and political but
also economic. These two aspects hang together in Machiavelli’s thinking, which, for the
28
Histories as the outcome of struggles among the grandi, and then between the
grandi and the popolo, and finally between popolo and plebs. The phrase we
have encountered – ‘in any form of government’ – is not thereby rendered
unproblematic. But it is possible to attempt to formulate an interpretive
hypothesis.
This expression implies that Machiavelli wrong-foots the traditional
debate on forms of government while at the same time breaking out of the
conceptual cage that some contemporary critics would like to place him in.
Machiavelli is truly unique and original and cannot be cornered into a
lukewarm, moderate republicanism, a sort of precursor to modern liberal
states. On the one hand, different forms of governments such as republics and
monarchies may require similar political solutions.29 On the other,
governments with the same form, republics like Sparta and Venice and ones
similar to Florence, for example, call for completely different solutions.
The reopening of the Hall represents the desire to finally create a
governo largo for the first time in Florence, moving beyond the classical
categories of monarchical or republican forms of government. Republic and
monarchy may simply be names. What really counts for Machiavelli – and the
entire span of Florentine history, in fact demonstrates the link between institutional democracy
on the one hand and wealth on the other.
29
Both, for instance, “need skilled rhetoricians who can persuade men into seeing what is
right in the circumstances and for the salus populi.” See J. Coleman, A History of Political
Thought From the Middle Ages to the Renaissance, (Oxford, 2000), pp. 266-7.
29
reason why this theory appears in both The Discourses and The Prince as well
as in the Histories – is that the people finally have their own part in the
government. The important thing, in other words, is that the necessary and
sufficient condition for freedom to be more than just a meaningless word will
finally be realized – regardless of the form of government.30
We can return to Book Three of Florentine Histories. In the midst of
the description of the revolt of the Ciompi, according to a tried and tested
narrative scheme, Machiavelli counter-poses the speech of the gonfalonier
Luigi Guicciardini to that of an anonymous rebel leader. The gonfalonier’s
speech is in sum an exhortation to moderation, maintaining that all the
reasonable demands of the popolo have already been satisfied. But his own
party – and this is the problem for Machiavelli – actually retains all power and
wealth. Guicciardini is here demanding the superiority of his party in the city’s
economy. The relations of production – this is the meaning of his speech –
cannot be changed:
What do you get out of your disunion other than servitude? Or of the
goods that you have stolen or would steal from us other than poverty?
For those are the things that, with our industry, nourish the whole city;
and if it is despoiled of them, they cannot nourish it; and those who will
30
Ibid., p. 273: ‘[…] despite his apparent preference for republics, Machiavelli argued that un
vivere politico can be either a republic or a monarchy. Both a regnum and a republic can ‘live
politically’ or civically; that is, both can have constitutional government’.
30
seize them, as things ills acquired, will not know how to preserve them:
for this, hunger and poverty will come to the city. These Signori and I
command you, and if decency permits we prey you to still your spirits
for once and be content to rest quietly with the things that have been
ordered through us, and if ever you wish something new, be pleased to
ask for it with civility and not with tumult and arms. For if they are
decent things, you will always be granted them, and you will not give
occasion to wicked men, at your charge and to your cost, to ruin your
fatherland on your shoulders.31
For those who possess wealth and capital, to call into question the
relations of production would mean leading the whole society to ruin, hunger
and poverty. The gonfalonier’s words confirm the opposition between a
conflict in which the popolo fight for ‘honours’ and one where it struggles for
‘belongings’. When demanded by the popolo in peaceful and moderate
fashion, honours have never been refused and never will be. To touch
possessions, on the other hand, leads to ‘tumult and arms’. Guicciardini’s
words sum up the preceding reflection on two types of conflict and perhaps
signal the point of greatest awareness of departure from that model.
It is important to stress that at this point in the Histories, for the first
time, the concept of ‘belongings’ not only concerns wealth, but more
31
Florentine Histories, III, 11.
31
profoundly encompasses the whole of the city’s economic order and relations
of production. Never has the goal of the plebeian party been so ‘unjust and
injurious’, because never in the course of the narrative have we found
ourselves so close to the most profound and radical aspect of the issue.
That is why it is so important to analyse in depth the indirect response
of the opposing party. The speech of the anonymous Ciompo in fact brings
into play precisely this aspect of the question. It does so with great lucidity
and power. Certainly, we are dealing with a partisan interpretation, like the
opposed one of Luigi Guicciardini. Machiavelli thereby indicates how both
orators have clearly understood the nature of the ongoing conflict.32
Defending the natural equality of men, the anonymous Ciompo
challenges the wealth of the opposing party in the face of the poverty of the
plebs, who create that wealth by their labour. The argument then broadens out
to encompass conceptions of justice. It should straight away be made clear that
the Ciompo’s speech is not a direct expression of Machiavelli’s thought,
32
G. Bock, ‘Civil Discord in Machiavelli’s Istorie Fiorentine’, underlines the rhetorical
character of this argumentative strategy. The contra-position of two opposed speeches
supposedly leaves the reader with a wider margin for choosing and ‘positioning himself’
politically vis-à-vis the ongoing conflict. L. Strauss, Thoughts on Machiavelli (London, 1958)
has dwelt on this rhetorical strategy. By contrast, I believe that Machiavelli characterizes the
opposed speeches of his characters without any ambiguity, clearly indicating the ‘party’ that
approximates most closely to the ‘actual truth’ (verità effettuale).
32
contrary to what Rodolico has argued.33 On the other hand, in Florentine
Histories it is difficult to find orations or speeches that do directly represent
the author’s position. Nevertheless, in the Ciompo’s words many of the
themes given expression by Machiavelli in his works are taken up. The
general vision of the Ciompo cannot be Machiavelli’s, but the latter seems
disposed to lend the anonymous orator many of his arguments.
From his point of view, the Ciompo asserts an absolute principle of
power and proposes a violent and direct clash with the ruling party, urging his
comrades not to miss the chance that fortune is offering them. In other words,
they must take advantage of the favourable circumstances and the weakness of
the enemy, maximizing the force of their own party, so as to reverse the
current balance of power. The Ciompo is the plebeian principle of power in
revolt against the popular power of the opposing party. The conflict between
the parties unfolds in absolute fashion because it invests the very roots of that
power – i.e. the relations of production. Once again, the dimension of
necessity makes its appearance. This is not an uncritically positive evaluation
of violence by Machiavelli, but the registration of a tragic necessity. Just as
the victory of the popolo Grasso over the nobles was absolute, and completely
swept away that party, so the victory of the plebs must be absolute and sweep
away the adversary’s power. In this respect it is not Luigi Guicciardini who
33
N. Rodolico, I Ciompi. Una pagina di storia del proletariato operaio (Firenze, 1954).
33
describes the historical experience of the conflict, but precisely the anonymous
Ciompo who reveals and recounts what the ‘actual reality’ truly signifies.34
The oration proceeds supported by a philosophical argument that
defends a principle of radical equality between men. The very conception of a
right based on inequality is demolished here, with a profundity that renders the
Ciompo’s to his comrades especially effective. The overthrow of the system of
values, of the very idea of nobility, does not occur at the level of social merit
or an abstract principle of superiority, but at the concrete level of wealth and
economic power.35 The anonymous Ciompo utterly denies the superiority of
social merit and value that Luigi Guicciardini had proudly proclaimed for his
34
Through the wool-carder’s speech, Machiavelli also shows his grasp of the tensions that
traverse and redefine the category of the popolo during this highly sensitive period of
Florence’s history. In his A History of Florence, J. M. Najemy provides a cogent description
of this mechanism, in the tragic conclusion of the Ciompi revolt: ‘It may seem ironic that,
even as the government [of Michele di Lando] called upon the twenty-tree guilds to assist in
suppressing the Ciompi and driving them from the piazza, the Ciompi met the assault with
cries of ‘long live the popolo and the guilds’ […] But the irony was built into the origins of
the confrontation, with each side grounding the legitimacy of its cause in the century-old guild
republic,” p. 166.
35
See Florentine Histories, III.13: ‘Do not let their antiquity of blood, with which they will
reproach us, dismay you; for all men, having had the same beginning, are equally ancient and
have been made by nature in one mode. Strip all of us naked, you will see that we are alike;
dress us in their clothes and them in ours, and without a doubt we shall appear noble and they
ignoble, for only poverty and riches makes us unequal’.
34
own party. He simply wants to reverse history, to overturn the domination and
superiority that his own party has hitherto suffered. In his view, this can occur
by conquering the enemy’s wealth. It is wealth, not honours, that confers
superiority and power. And no superiority exists – this is the major discovery
– apart from power bound up with wealth:
But if you will take note of the mode of proceeding of men, you will see
that all those who have come to great riches and great power have
obtained them either by fraud or by force; and afterwards, to hide the
ugliness of acquisition, they make it decent by applying the false title of
earnings to things they have usurped by deceit or by violence. And those
who, out of either little prudence or too much foolishness, shun these
modes always suffocate in servitude or poverty. For faithful servants are
always servants and good men are always poor; nor do they ever rise out
of servitude unless they are unfaithful and bold, nor out of poverty
unless they are rapacious and fraudulent. For God and nature have put
all the fortunes of men in their midst, where they are exposed more to
rapine than to industry and more to wicked than to good arts, from
which it arises that men devour one another and that those who can do
less are always the worst off.36
36
Ibid.
35
There is no reality in history apart from wealth and servitude,
domination and exploitation. For a moment the strength of the ‘grandi’ seems
to fade, diminished by disunity and fear. To seize the chance, before the
opposed party can ‘still spirits’, re-organize itself and regain control of the
situation – this is the only thing that counts for the Ciompo and which
Machiavelli is anxious to show in action. Only the unfolding of force in
immediate, revolutionary fashion, can seize the chance – warned to be unique
and unrepeatable – before it is too late.
Once again, the wool-carder’s political manifesto is not that of the
author of the Histories. A fortiori, therefore, we must underline the importance
of the fact that Machiavelli advances so realistic and profound a description of
the conflict precisely in the words of the Ciompo. In reality, Machiavelli is
restating and reproposing the most radical conclusions that he had reached in
his previous works, but with an even stronger political verve: that fraud and
force are the instruments by which the popolo come to power was the doctrine
of The Prince. That usurpations based on violence and deceit are subsequently
masked as honest gain, is something Machiavelli showed on many occasions.
That ‘good’ men – if such have ever existed – are crushed by the violence of
politics is another truth many times affirmed. We must therefore appreciate the
truly scandalous character of this conception, as a result of which many critics,
36
like Badaloni37 or Sasso,38 have felt the need to separate ethically or morally
the author’s position from that of the actor who makes the speech.39
The scandal represented by the Ciompo is the recognition, more direct
and immediate, that politics is principally the violent assertion of force – in
fact, is the discovery of the indissoluble bond between politics and violence. It
is the recognition that great wealth and great power are acquired with such
force and fraud. It is the recognition that any ‘acquisition’ is the fruit of deceit
and usurpation which the victors subsequently ‘make ... decent by applying the
false title of earnings’. It is the recognition that no such thing exists as an
honest earning, if by ‘honest’ is meant something which excludes the use of
force and fraud. Was not what Luigi Guicciardini and his party ‘make decent’
37
N. Badaloni, ‘Natura e società in Machiavelli’ in Studi Storici X (1969), pp. 675-708.
38
G. Sasso, Niccolò Machiavelli.
39
Once again, G. Bock, ‘Civil Discord in Machiavelli’s Istorie Fiorentine’, indicates the
difference between the speech of the wool-carder and that of the many other historical
characters who ‘speak’ in the Florentine Histories. The wool-carder is the only one who never
makes any reference to the fatherland. Contrary to Bock, I do not think that this automatically
betokens an indirect condemnation by Machiavelli of the wool-carder’s positions, for the
excessive violence of his statements. On the contrary, it seems to me more likely that in these
pages there emerges the converse condemnation – that is to say, of the ‘ideological’ character
(to use an anachronistic term) of the very category of ‘fatherland’. In Machiavelli’s pages,
even tyrants appeal to the fatherland, to liberty, and to the civic values of the ‘common good’.
But this does not lead Machiavelli to side with them. See, for example, the speech of the Duke
of Athens in chapter II, 35 of the Florentine Histories.
37
under the title of ‘earnings’ conquered and wrested from the preceding
nobility with the same force and violence now preached by the wool-carders?
This is the scandal represented by the Ciompo: the recognition that
conflict is mainly for the accumulation of wealth. This is the essence of any
‘earning’. It is a violent mechanism, suffered and denounced by the rebels, and
in turn reversed by them into a positive violence. The course that leads the
Florentine popolo to become the dominant class is the history of this city and
its inherently conflictual nature. This is where Machiavelli’s mature thought is
to be found. The conception of social conflict, of the historical and theoretical
terrain of Rome in the classical age, is now put to work on the historical and
political terrain of Florence. From it derives a considerable sharpening of this
conception, together with an awareness that the origin, not only as a
theoretical site of philosophical reflection, but as a specific terrain of historical
experience, is principally a place of conflict and violence.
In this experience there is no room for a positive conflictual model,
like the Roman one. Some aspects of this reflection were already present in
The Prince and The Discourses – for example, the relationship with time and
‘chance’ – but only in the political history of Florence do they reach this level
of maturity. One cannot think of certain pages devoted to Valentino without
relating them to the Ciompo’s exhortations. The anonymous wool-carder’s
oration is the point at which the change in the conception of conflict in the
transition from The Discourses to the Histories is most readily observable. It is
38
also one of the most tragic and profound pages in the whole of Machiavelli’s
oeuvre.
These passages may also shed some light on the widely debated
question of Machiavelli’s so-called “modernity”. Janet Coleman has correctly
criticized the tendency to interpret the Renaissance, and especially
Machiavelli’s thought, from a teleological point of view and according to a
philosophy of history that is said to culminate in the construction of a modern,
liberal, secular identity. It is significant that Machiavelli chose to express
some of his most radical conclusions through a historical-political analysis of
Florence’s situation back in the late medieval period and during the
Renaissance crisis of the 1300s. In demolishing classical thought in the
Aristotelian tradition, Machiavelli is effectively laying the groundwork for a
radical, new approach to political reflection,40 one that will at the same time
tend to evade the political and anthropological matrices of liberal modernity. 41
40
On Machiavelli’s peculiar, polemical dialogue with Classical and early modern thought, see
V. Morfino, ‘Tra Lucrezio e Spinoza, La ‘filosofia’ di Machiavelli’, in Machiavelli:
Immaginazione e contingenza, ed. F. Del Lucchese, L. Sartorello e S. Visentin, (Pisa, 2006),
pp. 67-110 e P.A. Rahe, ‘In the Shadow of Lucretius: The Epicurean Foundations of
Machiavelli’s Political Thought’, History of Political Thought, XXVIII (2007), pp. 30-55.
41
For more on Machiavelli’s modernity see C. Lazzeri, ‘Les racines de la volonté de
puissance: le ‘passage’ de Machiavel à Hobbes’, in Thomas Hobbes. Philosophie première,
théorie de la science et politique, ed. Y.C. Zarka, J. Bernhardt (Paris, 1990), pp. 225-46, G.
Procacci, Machiavelli nella cultura europea moderna, (Bari-Roma1995), F. Del Lucchese,
39
Without conflating the political with the economic, the transition from
The Discourses to the Histories reveals deeper sensitivity in historical
investigation and greater attention to the economic facts of political life. The
struggle for economic supremacy, absolute and exclusive, enrichment as a
universal goal – these are placed at the centre of the reflection and find an
effective description in the conflictual history of Florence. These phenomena,
with the importance they acquire in Machiavelli’s thinking, cannot but alter
his conception of conflict and hence of politics.
As has repeatedly been said, condemnation of extreme conflict is not
abandoned. But more important is the discovery that Machiavelli makes of this
new conflictuality. Important, because Machiavelli is thus in a position to
describe the mechanisms of wealth accumulation. The sensitivity of the author
of the Histories is something altogether new, and projected in effective fashion
onto the history of the recent centuries of Florence, which leads to intuiting the
concept of crisis as a paradigm of possible development, of maturity and
power. Earlier, mention was made of elements derived from medical culture,
classical and medieval, in Machiavelli’s pages. Even if this term is never used
directly, it may be supposed that Machiavelli has in mind something
Tumulti e indignatio. Conflitto, diritto e moltitudine in Machiavelli e Spinoza (Milano, 2004),
contra A.J. Parel, The Question of Machiavelli’s Modernity, in The Review of Politics, LIII
(1991), pp. 320-39.
40
analogous to the medical concept of crisis, understood as the nodal and
decisive point in the progress of an illness.
In The Prince and The Discourses, interest was focused on the
principle of power and its necessity. In this respect, the Histories do not alter
the object of the research. But what does change is the relationship between
virtue and crisis. The power of Rome, nourished by its virtue and by the
positive conflictual model in accordance with the description given in The
Discourses, enters into crisis with the introduction of the agrarian law. Crisis
diminishes virtue and cancels power. In the Histories, by contrast, crisis in
some sense becomes the motor of the history of Florence, the spring of its
development, outside of and contrary to any teleological model.42 Decadence
and development go hand in hand, overturning some of the conclusions
contained in The Discourses. As is affirmed in the Preface to the Histories,
and chapter 1 of Book Three, the crisis and negative conflictuality of Florence
have led the city to a ‘wonderful’ equality. Unlike in Rome, crisis is the
interpretive paradigm of the history of Florence and it is what contains the
principle of power. Crisis does not exclude power; it contains it.
42
See L. Althusser, La solitude de Machiavel (Paris, 1998).
41