Political Imagination, Conflict, and Democracy: Machiavelli's Republican Realism

Machiavelli’s critique of those writers who “have imagined republics and principalities that have never been seen” is well known. And the interpretation of Machiavelli as a theoretician of political science, based on “objective” laws, is still influential, despite the awesome revival of Machiavelli as a republican thinker, retriever of the “ancient prudence”. But the traditional realistic interpretations risk pulling Machiavelli’s work anachronistically out of his context, and flattening him on a conservative political position. On the other side, some of the republican interpretations risk confining Machiavelli’s writings in the framework of literary genres, underestimating the originality and modernity of his thought. On the background of a re-moralization of Machiavelli’s politics, moderation is viewed as the key to Machiavelli’s republicanism. This chapter is aimed to reconsider the question of Machiavellian realism avoiding to reproduce for the thousandth time the typical pendulum movement that has characterized the history of critical literature, i. e. Machiavelli the political realist vs Machiavelli the virtuous republican. The discontinuities introduced by Machiavelli in Western political thought cannot but be acknowledged: Machiavelli himself presents the systematic following of effective reality as his original contribution and emphasizes the competitive element of politics and its tragic dimension. But Machiavelli does not propose a “value-free” political theory. Republican interpreters, beginning with Quentin Skinner, are right in emphasizing that for Machiavelli political action is inspired by substantive principles and values, which moreover can neither be reduced to the mere end of the conservation of power, nor to the principles of “reason of state”. But the idea that he “emphasizes ‘the autonomy of politics’” cannot be accounted as a misunderstanding. In turn, this does not mean an underestimation of Machiavelli’s republicanism, as in traditional interpretations; actually, Machiavelli’s realism has to be qualified. In the chapter three points are proposed (1) Machiavelli, far to be a neutral scientist, assumes a partisan perspective – i.e. that of the people – and claims this move as a scientific acquisition. He overcomes the oligarchic-republican idea that commoners and aristocracy are endowed with different capacities for political deliberation, an idea which implies a sort of political division of labor; eventually he considers the people “regulated by the laws” as “more prudent, more stable, and of better judgment than a prince”. (2) Machiavelli’s theory of conflict is particularly relevant, but the widespread idea that he considers virtuous only moderate disputes has to be challenged; rather he distinguishes between conflict that arises from the juxtaposition of well-defined social groups, expressing the fundamentally different interests within citizenship, and conflict stemming from the search for personal power, which is connected to the formation of clienteles, factions and armed groups. The first is virtuous and produces liberty; the second is pathological and leads to tyranny (3) The inclusion of the people in citizenship via political conflict presupposes an idea of rule of law that is far from traditional, anti-democratic one; the people “wish to live according to the laws” whereas the powerful want “to control them”. In 1513 Machiavelli writes The Prince while experiencing a triple crisis – of Italian politics, of Florentine Republic, of his own life. In proposing a creative solution to such a crisis his political realism performs a surplus of political imagination.