Basics,
Part 2
The Prince
Like the communists of today, Niccolò Machiavelli 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, while
Machiavelli’s work 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 above), in the
hope that the young man would give Machiavelli a job as a consultant, consigliore, or something of that sort.
No job resulted for Machiavelli but what he 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 in conception 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 in advance, one chapter could be selected
and read out loud. The chapters are very short, but powerful.
Machiavelli had a good basic 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 eternal
fame.
- The above is to
introduce the original reading-text: Four selected
parts from The Prince, by Machiavelli.
- A PDF file of the reading text is attached
- To download any of the CU courses in PDF files please click here.
