Basics, Part 2
The Prince
As befits a “Basic” series we now start to stretch our historical perspective with Machiavelli who like the communists of today cultivated “long experience in contemporary affairs and a continual study of antiquity”. Both Machiavelli and Marx were familiar with the politics of ancient Greece and Rome.
Machiavelli’s “Prince” was written about 500 years ago, in Florence, Italy, and published in 1512. According to Karl Marx the sixteenth century was when capitalism first arose on the earth, especially in the Netherlands and in England, but it was Italy that had the most developed political culture at that time.
Hence “The Prince” appeared much earlier than the first writings on Political Economy such as those by Thomas Hobbes, William Petty and Nicholas Barbon, which appeared between 1650 and 1700. Karl Marx was familiar with all of these, and with Machiavelli’s work, which has been foundational for politicians throughout the five centuries of its existence.
Machiavelli was needing employment when he wrote this user-friendly text for the 20-year-old Florentine prince Lorenzo di Piero De’ Medici (pictured), in the hope that the young man would give Machiavelli a job as a consultant, or something of the sort. No job resulted for Machiavelli and Prince Lorenzo died young of a sexually-transmitted disease, but what Machiavelli left us as a result of this attempt was a set of “short texts” of very frank and still-useful political education, not very different from a Communist University “Generic Course”.
The chapter in this selection of four that corresponds most closely to the politics of today is Chapter IX, “Concerning a Civil Principality”. All of them are very interesting and all contain advice that is still good after 500 years. Our discussion should be about this advice. If people have not read the material, one chapter could be selected and read out loud, as was quite probably done for the playboy Prince Lorenzo. The chapters are very short, but powerful.
Machiavelli had a good understanding of class politics, which is perhaps why his works were put on the Pope’s Index Librorum Prohibitorum (Index of Forbidden Books) not long after his death – thereby quickly guaranteeing their fame.
Please download and read the text via the following link:
Further reading:
