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

organisms, claims the author of The Discourses, various humours are to be 1 Marie Curie Fellow, Université de Picardie – Jules Verne (Amiens), Occidental

College (Los Angeles). Email: f.dellucchese@gmail.com1

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

destructive, leading to the ruin of the republic and the tyranny of Caesar. In

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

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

‘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 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

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

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. 615-

43, has brilliantly demonstrated the limits of this interpretation of a ‘republican’ Machiavelli, 4

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

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

highlighting instead the importance of the more democratic aspects in his thought. See also J.

McCormick, ‘Contain the Wealthy and Patrol the Magistrates: Restoring Elite Accountability

to Popular Government’, in American Political Science Review, C (2006), pp. 147-635

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

the nobles, as things much esteemed by men. From this rose the disorder

6

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

Gracchi the struggle switched to the economic terrain, to material goods and

6 The Discourses, I,37.7

(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

violent conflict and, finally, struggle via public apparatuses over struggle that

8

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’

over the agrarian law, the city would have been corrupted ‘even more quickly’

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

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.

The constant characteristic of the parties in Florence, once victory has

been obtained, is that they always discover a ‘new reason’ for further division 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

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

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

15

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

complicated by the fact that the Florentine parties are much less sharply

defined, much more fluid and mutable in their composition than the humours

10 Florentine Histories, II, 12.16

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

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

11 Florentine Histories, II, 26.17

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 counter-

posed 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

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 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.

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

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

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:

16 Florentine Histories, IV, 14.20

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 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

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

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’.21

these ought to be enough for them without wishing not to share the

burdens.18

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

18 Florentine Histories, IV,14.

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 two-

thirds 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)22

portrait of Cosimo, son of Giovanni de’ Medici, is that of a party man, ready

to renew the violence of the clash.20

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

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,

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 European-

wide 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

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

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

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

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

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

23 Florentine Histories, III, 1.

24 Ibid.25

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

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.

25 Ibid.26

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

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 26 See among others G. Cadoni, Crisi della mediazione politica e conflitti sociali (Roma,

1990) and G. Sasso, Niccolò Machiavelli (Bologna, 1993). 27

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

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 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

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

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

categories of monarchical or republican forms of government. Republic and

monarchy may simply be names. What really counts for Machiavelli – and the

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:

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

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

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

31 Florentine Histories, III, 11.31

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

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

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

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,

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

33 N. Rodolico, I Ciompi. Una pagina di storia del proletariato operaio (Firenze, 1954).33

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

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

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

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. 166.34

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

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’.

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,

Tumulti e indignatio. Conflitto, diritto e moltitudine in Machiavelli e Spinoza (Milano, 2004), 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

analogous to the medical concept of crisis, understood as the nodal and

decisive point in the progress of an illness.

contra A.J. Parel, The Question of Machiavelli’s Modernity, in The Review of Politics, LIII

(1991), pp. 320-39.40

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