232 Review Articles / Historical Materialism 20.

2 (2012) 232246

Machiavellian Democracy, John P. McCormick, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011

Abstract
McCormicks book engages with the theoretical and political positions discussed by the Italian
philosopher Niccol Machiavelli about five centuries ago, and, in particular, the creation of the
tribunes of the plebs. In ancient Rome, plebeian power had been institutionalised through
the creation of tribunes. According to McCormick, a similar institution would offfer a legitimate
forum for expression to the people in modern democracies. In fact, following Machiavellis
suggestions, this would contribute to the implementation of a new form of democracy, more
respectful of the people and more eager to defend values such as freedom and independence
from the influence of the powerful and the rich. In this review, Filippo Del Lucchese comments
on McCormicks book from a Marxist point of view. One of the strongest points of the book is the
discussion of the opposition between democracy and republicanism. Over the last decades,
the latter has in fact been absorbed into the sphere of influence of the Cambridge School, and
neutralised, or at least defused its most interesting and radical aspects. McCormicks attempt to
repoliticise the Machiavellian discourse is indeed praiseworthy, yet, by mainly focusing on the
institutionalisation of popular power, McCormick fails to discern the most radical elements of
Machiavellis thought. From this angle, the review discusses McCormicks use of the category of
class and offfers a diffferent perspective on the revolutionary dimension.

Keywords
Machiavelli, democracy, conflict, history, republicanism, class, law, constituent power, common
good

The beautiful cover-image chosen by Cambridge University Press for this book is The Death
of Virginia. The painting is by Guillaume-Guillon Lethire, a native of Guadeloupe (and
perhaps the first mulatto to be successful in European painting), a man of strong republican
sympathies and an admirer of Brutus, Dessalines, and the Republic of Haiti.
Depicted in front of the macellum under a dark, foreboding sky are all the actors in this
sordid afffair: Virginia, deathly pale from the stab-wound just inflicted by her father, Virginius;
Appius Claudius, the decemvir whose illicit lust for the girl ended in rape after a failed
seduction; the lictors, ready to rush to his defence; Icilius, her legitimately betrothed; the
weeping matrons; and finally, the excited crowd who intervene in defence of the weak.
The story is a familiar one: Appius Claudius claims that the girl is his. He accuses the
people of plotting in the night against peace and justice. A corrupt court finds in his favour
and rules that Virginia belongs to him. The father then retires into the temple of Cloacina
and stabs his daughter with a knife, uttering the famous words: In this one way, the only one
in my power, do I secure to you your liberty. At the same time, he threatens his hated rival:
With this blood I devote thee, Appius, and thy head.
The event lies at the origin of what is commonly referred to as the second secession of
the plebeians to the Sacred Mount. In reaction to the injustice and blatant mistreatment
they sufffered, the people responded with the secession that would lead to the creation
of the tribunician power, a milestone in the institutional history of ancient Rome and in
the resistance of the people against the nobles. One of the arguments running throughout
John McCormicks book is that over the centuries to come these plebeian tribunes will
represent the institutionalisation of the popular parts legitimate power in the republican
and democratic imagination.
Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2012 DOI: 10.1163/1569206X-12341237
 Review Articles / Historical Materialism 20.2 (2012) 232246 233

In McCormicks view, however, the two concepts of republic and democracy should not
be made to overlap. Because they develop along diffferent avenues and through diffferent
traditions philosophical ones during the centuries of the early modern period, and then
historiographical ones in recent reconstructions by historians of ideas these categories
need to be kept strictly distinct. If the concept of the republic stands for depoliticisation and
aversion to the popular element in ancient and modern political communities (Cicero,
Francesco Guicciardini, James Madison, and, most recently, Philip Pettit, to name but a
few), democracy represents the repoliticisation of these communities, and a political and
conceptual empowerment of the popular element. As McCormick sees it, democracy is the
common name of politics ex parte populi, and Niccol Machiavelli this is the main thesis
of his book is the thinker we need to go back to if we identify with the second rather than
first of these divergent traditions.
Of the seven chapters that make up the book, the last two are more directly theoretical,
while the others are purely historical and provide an in-depth treatment of Machiavellis
thought. The first analyses the main actors who populate the works of Machiavelli: the
people, the patricians, and the prince. The second develops an interpretation of the
Discourses on Livy by focusing on the letter of dedication to Bernardo Rucellai and Cosimo
Buondelmonti. The third explores the characteristics and virtues of popular participation in
politics, in terms of the common good. The fourth explores the principle of assigning
political offfices by lottery rather than by election, offfering an original reading of the
Discursus Florentinarum Rerum. The fifth examines the rle of political trials and popular
participation in judgements, illustrated by Machiavellis judgement of Girolamo Savonarola
and Francesco Valori. The sixth develops a critique of the republicanism of Pettit and the
Cambridge School. The seventh, by way of conclusion, summarises and synthesises the
characteristics of Machiavellian democracy.
This is not simply an important book. For various reasons, McCormicks text is perhaps
the most important book on Machiavelli and the theoretical significance of Machiavellianism
to be written in English in recent years. Framed in open conflict with the most influential
currents of contemporary historiography (the Cambridge School and Pettits republicanism),
the book has both historiographical and theoretical ambitions. It offfers itself, in other words,
as both an original reconstruction of Machiavellis thought and an equally original
contribution to political theory. For this reason, it makes sense to identify its strong and
weak points.
One of the main ideas of this book is that Machiavelli is a representative of democratic
thought and not a republican. Machiavelli himself, who fought all his life for the glory of his
republic, might be surprised by this categorical conclusion. And yet, says McCormick, we
need to distinguish between these concepts in the light of their history subsequent to
Machiavelli, through the centuries of modernity up to the contemporary theories of
republicanism put forward by Philip Pettit, John Pocock, and Quentin Skinner. As a
theoretical and historical category, republicanism has indeed been absorbed lately into the
sphere of influence of the Cambridge School, which has neutralised it or at least defused its
most interesting and radical aspects. Today when we employ the term republicanism, what
comes to mind are the litist and aristocratic positions of Madison, certainly not the
dramatically populist ones held by Machiavelli.1

1.See also Senellart 1995 and Gaille-Nikodimov 2007.

234 Review Articles / Historical Materialism 20.2 (2012) 232246

McCormicks theoretical contribution is somewhat problematic from the historical point

of view. In actuality, republicanism after Machiavelli and Guicciardini did not appear
exclusively in the litist form that converged into the constitutional systems of modernity,
especially in those of the Anglo-Saxon world. Republicanism also means the version
formulated by Spinoza and the radical Enlightenment; or by that of Rousseau and, later,
Jacobinism, both of which are viewed with suspicion by McCormick for various reasons
(the first because it is inegalitarian and based on census-sufffrage, and the second because
for him it is synonymous with totalitarianism). Although understandable, therefore,
McCormicks intent does not appear to justify a complete abandonment of the republican
terminology as wielded by the litist philosophers or contemporary theorists, the source
of its depoliticisation. Instead, it might be worth challenging them for the category, by
making the fault-lines that run through it (and which McCormick rightly insists on)
re-emerge into view.
Even broader criticisms can be directed toward McCormicks political proposal, however.
In his reconstruction, democracy contains the most radical and critical aspects of what
in republicanism remains only implicit. And yet, he fails to take this radicalisation to
completion. Why abandon republicanism if democracy means solely (or primarily) the
institutionalisation of political practices, and not radical politics in itself, beyond the
necessarily neutralising dimension of the institution? If we accept the fact that the concept
of the res publica is by now disempowered and unusable, the concept of democracy may
indeed be a powerful substitute. But only as long as we give as much value to the element of
kratos as we do to demos. The etymology of democracy is politically important here, because
it reminds us of the partial and conflicting element that distinguishes democracy over
and above the comprehensive and pacifying aspect of its institutionalisation and
constitutionalisation. As McCormick rightly points out, the notion of republicanism has
undergone deterioration and inflation over the past few decades; but the same thing has to
be said about the category of democracy. The idea of relaunching it would be worthwhile,
then, but only if emphasis is given to its most radical and Machiavellian aspects compared
to republicanism.
McCormick himself seems aware of this risk when he says that his approach may overlook
the necessity of the kind of ground-up, self-initiated citizen activism already so sorely
lacking within contemporary democracies (p. 14). His approach, as we shall see, is based on
the implementation of institutional techniques for controlling lites. After all, he maintains,
anticipating criticisms of this sort,

my approach may concede too easily the fact that elites will continue to rule,
while promising only that a Machiavellian remedy will ensure that they do so
under greater constraints than common citizens usually impose on them. In this
sense, doesnt Machiavellian Democracy necessarily place the people in a
hopelessly reactive position vis--vis elites such that politics continues to be
conducted on the grandis terms? Only to a limited extent, I would argue. (p. 15.)

And while we should recognise that McCormicks theoretical efffort is meant to empower
certain democratic elements against a washed-out republicanism by now synonymous with
litism (in both theoretical and political terms), it nevertheless remains incomplete if it fails
to grasp the specifically partial and dominating element of kratos that democracy and
 Review Articles / Historical Materialism 20.2 (2012) 232246 235

Machiavellian democracy in particular entail, in the sense that one part (the people)
dominates the others (the grandi). A critique of McCormicks interpretation can take this as
its point of departure.
We can start with a linguistic problem. McCormick is extraordinarily careful to use proper
terminology in order to render into English the complex social and political categories
employed by Machiavelli (such as the humours, the appetites, the orders, the good and
virtuous citizens, governments that are larghi, and so forth). In the world of fairly recent
English-speaking Machiavellian studies, where attention to the language despite the
emphasis given to it has not always been the centre of attention, this efffort is highly
necessary. Machiavelli needs to be translated to be understood. But his work must also be
respected, to avoid projecting contemporary concerns onto concepts and issues that do not
belong to him or his age.
McCormicks uninhibited use of the language of classes, however, does give rise to a
number of problems. One of the main theses of the book, as we have said, relates to the need
to implement mechanisms of institutional control in contemporary democracies in order to
curb the ambitions of the grandi (in Machiavellian terms) or the influence of the wealthy
(in a language more familiar to us). McCormick develops his analysis of the diffferent rle
and the diffferent aspirations of the people versus the grandi in terms of class, without any
definition or specification regarding the meaning and the way classes may be legitimately
spoken about to describe the political and social categories used by Machiavelli.
Machiavelli never talks about classes. An unambiguous definition of the concept of class
is probably impossible and perhaps undesirable in this context. The term of class was not
invented by Marxism; Roman public law already distinguished and classified citizens in
diffferent classes based on their census. The category reaches nineteenth-century
philosophical debate through the mediation of classical political economy. If Marx initially
follows Hegel by using Stand rather than Klasse, he slowly moves toward the re-elaboration
of the concept of class, first in the Manuscripts of 1844, and then, increasingly, from the
German Ideology onward.
A tension has been recognised between the use, on the one hand, of the terminology of
class in order to describe every division within societies (both ancient and modern), and, on
the other hand, in order to characterise the peculiar nature of bourgeois society and the
precapitalist societies, for which Stnde is still preferred.2 We might consider taking classes
in the widest possible sense of the term, making them correspond to groups that have
significant economic diffferences, or social inequalities, or closer to the Marxist sense a
diffferent position in the productive processes of a given society. None of these attempts at
defining the term would respect the reality of late-Renaissance Florentine society, however,
or the political complexity of Machiavellian discourse. Nor does McCormick make any efffort
to clarify things from this perspective.
Now, one could argue that his intent is purely political, and therefore there is no need to
go into subtleties in terms of historical categories: McCormick wants to reassess a type of
politics and its consequent juridical and institutional implementation from a popular
perspective, meaning, from a class-standpoint, in the sense of the class of the people versus
the class of the rich. This desire is both laudable and appealing. But it is precisely from the

2.De Giovanni 1976.

236 Review Articles / Historical Materialism 20.2 (2012) 232246

political point of view that, in a subtle way, his unexamined use of classes conceals
something that needs to be brought into view.
McCormicks discourse lacks what in my opinion lends the concept of class such
extraordinary heuristic power in the history of philosophy as well as in political theory:
namely, class-conflict. In a nutshell, is there any way that classes can be conceived without
class-conflict? Without endorsing a strictly Leninist point of view, I think the answer should
be no. Classes only come into being politically, by and through struggle with the opposing
class. The answer in Machiavellian terms, to my way of thinking, is also no. No matter how
loosely the concept of class is used, it can only be done in this context if the element of
political and social conflict that riddled the history of Florence during the waning centuries
of the middle ages and the early modern period is brought to the forefront.
Now, Machiavelli is a writer of extraordinary importance because he succeeds in bringing
out the recursive relationship between the political dimension and the juridical dimension
of the clash between the people and the grandi. Political conflict in itself informs the
institutional history of Florence, which in turn gives rise to conflicts and political dynamics
in a completely original and diffferent way from ancient Rome, for example. Rather than
being simply a point of arrival what is at stake in the clashes constitutional reforms are
always a starting-point as well: they are the source of new conflicts and new dynamics of
exclusion, domination, and struggle.
McCormick clearly writes from a perspective ex parte populi, with no ambiguity
whatsoever. However, his people is a class without class-conflict. His interest is focused on
the institutions that allow the people to participate and have significant weight, that prevent
the grandi from exercising disproportionate and destructive influence, that reassume in a
somewhat idealised fashion a renewed institutional balance in the face of the imbalance
toward the wealthy that Machiavelli had to deal with in his time and that we face today. Not
much is said in this book on the relationship between conflict and politics, or on the
relationship between conflict and law for that matter.
In the first chapter (pp. 29fff.), for example, McCormick emphasises some of Machiavellis
conclusions on the passive nature of the people (the well-known passage describing the
ambition of the people to not be dominated versus the ambition of the great to dominate).
However, says McCormick, although the people are passive, they can exert active control on
the wealthy by means of appropriate institutional mechanisms, such as a tribunician power:
the peoples liberty requires an institutional framework through which the people
consistently expose instances of aristocratic oppression and within which they can respond
efffectively to it. (p. 31.)
The problem with most critics for McCormick (such as Maurizio Viroli, for example) is
that they have examined these conclusions in the abstract, and in the void of theoretical
frameworks, rather than as part of the concrete legal and institutional mechanisms that
embody their essence. Nonetheless, I would say that McCormick himself puts excessive if
not exclusive emphasis on institutional and juridical aspects over political and conflictual
ones. Historically, where did the institutional forms of popular control come from, if not out
of the struggle the people itself led against the grandi, which was by definition extra-
institutional? How do these class-institutions arise, if not through open class-conflict?
The conclusion underlying McCormicks thesis is the need to institutionalise popular
control in the form of these institutions. Without naming it openly, then, what McCormick
alludes to here is the problem of constituent power, in the history of which Machiavelli has
 Review Articles / Historical Materialism 20.2 (2012) 232246 237

earned a prominent place.3 However, if the essential importance of the peoples conflict with
the grandi an extra-institutional and radical one is not made obvious, and thus along
with it the recursive relationship between law and conflict, the originality and significance
of Machiavellis conclusions are lost.
This can happen even in a framework that is deeply sympathetic to the popular part, as is
the case for McCormick. In the relationship between conflict and law, he allows the first
term to be overshadowed by the second. As far as classes are concerned, he neglects their
origin in struggle. When it comes to democracy, he extols the demos, forgetting the kratos.
At the end of the first chapter, when the opportunity arises to open the discussion up to the
question of constituent power, McCormick liquidates the issue by reducing it to a paradox
and restricting it to such a limited literature that the reference seems like a caricature
(Honig, Michelman, Moufffe, Olson).4 The paradox is likely related to the title of the recent
book by Chantal Moufffe, The Democratic Paradox. A political theorist such as McCormick
who is so attentive to the history of concepts could have emphasised the greater complexity
and the noble tradition of the problem of constituent power: from Emmanuel Joseph Sieys
to Carl Schmitt, from Costantino Mortati to Santi Romano and Ernst-Wolfgang Bckenfrde,
the verfassungsgebende Gewalt is truly more than a paradox, as Machiavelli knew very well.
The complexity of the Florentines analysis of the recursive relationship between law and
conflict is not simply a problem that can be summed up in its institutionalisation.
The tension is also apparent in Chapter 5, dedicated to political trials and popular
participation in the administration of justice. Taking his lead from Machiavelli, McCormick
argues for the need to acknowledge the peoples rightful place through the mediation of the
institutions or charismatic individuals. The example he gives regards Girolamo Savonarola
and Francesco Valori who lost favour with the people because, out of ambition and personal
convenience, they did not respect the popular prerogative in their judgements, a prerogative
that they themselves had previously promoted. Because of their political shortsightedness,
therefore, they were abandoned by the people and lost their lives.
At least in the case of Savonarola, Machiavellis political judgement is far more complex
and developed than what is claimed by McCormick (who does not analyse other key pages
dedicated to Savonarola, such as the letter to Ricciardo Becchi of 9 March 1498). The tension
appears to be even greater in another conclusion McCormick arrives at, one of fundamental
importance. He maintains that

Machiavelli seems to assert, either implicitly or explicitly, that there exists no

external standard by which one might evaluate whether the peoples decision in a
political trial is good or bad. More important than the content of the judgment
that is, the genuine guilt or innocence of the accused person evaluated objectively
is the identity of the judge. Apparently, what matters most to Machiavelli in these
cases are (1) the fact that the people decide that is, the people are incapable of
making a bad, incorrect, or extraordinary decision; and (2) the expedient efffects

3.Negri 1992 and 1999.

4.But apart from these problems, McCormicks conclusions are at times barely comprehensible.
See, for example, Democracies and governi larghi, from ancient Athens and Rome to contemporary
Poland and Chile, emerge out of authoritarian regimes, whether autocratic or oligarchic.
(McCormick 2011, p. 35.)
238 Review Articles / Historical Materialism 20.2 (2012) 232246

resulting from popularly judged political trials that is, these trials effficiently
eliminate the aristocratic enemies of republics, and they do so without provoking
particularly intense partisan retaliation. (p. 136.)

Although McCormick simplifies Machiavellis comprehensive assessment of Savonarola,

here he successfully grasps a particularly powerful aspect of Machiavellian thought. The
people is a legitimate instrument and ordinary (i.e., legal) judge by definition. Its decision
is by definition good, regardless of its content. The people, we might say, is the measure of
itself and others. But it is precisely at this point, assuming that we want to avoid rigidly
reducing Machiavelli to some form of Jacobinism, that we must note the problem and the
constituent character of the popular element. The legitimacy of its conflict-based demand
goes far beyond the problem one that is entirely Jacobin in this case of institutionalisation.
What makes the people the legitimate judge by definition is the political and conflictual
element, not the juridical and axiological one. In other words, the conflictual existence of
the people is what makes it the measure, not its juridical essence.
When he develops his historical analysis in the direction of a new political theory and
critically discusses the ambiguities and unjustifiable caution of authors such as Pettit
regarding the political capacity of the people, McCormick emphasises even more the need
for a juridical-institutional structure that is chronologically anterior and ontologically
superior to the judgement of the people, a structure whose function is to rationalise popular
decisions that otherwise remain inefffective at best or dangerous at worst: Machiavelli
demonstrates how arrangements like minipublics or citizen juries that formally empower
the people to make real decisions actually compel the people to clarify their preferences
when such preferences are unclear and to moderate their impulses when such impulses are
excessive. On the contrary, it seems, it is precisely when the people are completely
disempowered, or when their only recourse is to ask intermediaries to act for them, that the
people allow themselves to succumb to political confusion and fancy often demanding
that representatives behave more rashly and harshly than they would themselves if formally
empowered to judge. (p. 161.) McCormick tries to suggest, against the washed-out
republicanism of authors such as Pettit, that the people are not to be feared when they are
driven by institutional structures that rationalise their actions. What Machiavelli suggests,
however, is perhaps something more complicated than the peaceful image of a popular
force preventively channeled into a constitutional cage, as McCormick would seem to
suggest. Can a constituent power be pacified and institutionalised? Machiavellis answer
lies in the famous return to principles that opens the third book of the Discourses:

In regard to this, those who governed the state of Florence from 1434 to 1494 used
to say that it was necessary to reconstitute the government every five years;
otherwise it was diffficult to maintain it; where by reconstituting the government
they meant instilling men with that terror and that fear with which they had
instilled them when instituting it in that at this time they had chastised those
who, looked at from the established way of life, had misbehaved. As, however, the
remembrance of this chastisement disappears, men are emboldened to try
something fresh and to talk sedition. Hence provision has of necessity to be made
against this by restoring that government to what it was at its origins.5

5.The Discourses, Book III, Chapter 1 (Machiavelli 2003, p. 388).

 Review Articles / Historical Materialism 20.2 (2012) 232246 239

The plebeian tribunes, so rightly dear to McCormick, are one of the forms this return to
principles takes in Machiavellis view. Let us return for a moment to the cover-image, the
killing of Virginia and the secession of the plebs onto the Aventine. McCormick considers
this to be a founding event, but he uses it as the basis for distinguishing the nature of the
people from that of the grandi. The wealthy are said to be naturally prone to oppression and
exploitation, while the people are naturally peaceful and respectful of an institutional
balance as long as it respects and recognises their rle in turn.
McCormicks interpretation seems overly neutralising on this point as well. True,
secession does not involve immediate bloodshed, and leads instead to an institutional
change (another example of conflict generating law). Yet, calling this a peaceful and non-
violent event, as McCormick does, is an understatement that twists Machiavellis
interpretation.6
The first secession of the plebeians took place in 494. At this time in history, the plebs and
the army were the same thing. When they withdrew onto the Sacred Mount, their purpose
was certainly not to make a peaceful demonstration of their moral grievance. During the
same period, the war against the Volsci, the Equi and the Sabines was underway. Rome itself
was threatened with destruction. The plebs withdrew from the city and built a fortified
military camp against the grandi, who were left alone in the city. In 449, during the second
secession, it was once again the army, virtually identical with the plebs, that withdrew onto
the Aventine. These are not exactly peaceful actions, or, in any case, no more peaceful than
those implemented by the grandi.
The diffference between the people and the great, in short, is entirely political for
Machiavelli, not ontological or anthropological. The fact that their ambitions are diffferent
(that of the grandi, to dominate, versus that of the people, to not be dominated), does not
mean that they have a diffferent nature at all. Machiavelli never tires of repeating that all
men are equal and share the same nature. In a striking passage from the Florentine Histories
(a work that is notably absent from McCormicks entire book), he puts these words into the
mouth of an anonymous plebeian: 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 make us unequal.7
The diffference between the people and the grandi is political, therefore, not
anthropological. The realm of institutions cannot be the preventive condition for this
diffference. It can be the result of a radical conflict that gradually destroys the ambition of
the grandi, through conflict and through law, in a recursive relationship that is not
unidirectional or predetermined.
Machiavellis most mature writings on the diffference between the history of Rome and
the history of Florence should be read in this light. It is true that in Rome the clashes caused
a limited number of killings and exiles, while those in Florence were violent and extreme,

6.McCormick 2011, p. 25: Machiavelli intimates that the peoples decency or onest entails a
fundamental disinclination to injure others. The following contrast between the humours verifies
this point: when the Roman people felt oppressed by the grandi and saw no recourse to relief via
civic institutions such as the tribunes, they did not lash out by murdering patricians or destroying
their property; rather, their first reaction was to secede peacefully from the city.
7.Florentine Histories, Book III, Chapter 13 (Machiavelli 1988, pp. 1223).
240 Review Articles / Historical Materialism 20.2 (2012) 232246

precisely because as McCormick rightly points out Florence lacked the ordinary avenues
by which the people could participate in political life. It is also true, however, as Machiavelli
points out in another passage left unexamined by McCormick, that this institutional
development did not lead Rome to democracy but, on the contrary, to empire. In Florence
the opposite took place: the nobility was gradually decapitated (not always metaphorically),
and the conditions for true democracy were created out of the socio-political situation.8
These passages are thus to be read as a confirmation of the positions taken by Machiavelli
in the Discursus Florentinarum Rerum, the reform-project that he addressed to Giulio
and Giovanni de Medici. I completely agree with McCormicks view that the text is of
fundamental importance,9 but for reasons that are somewhat diffferent from his and that
deserve attention.
McCormick dates the Discursus between 1519 and 1520 (p. 103). However, as critics have
long established, the text cannot have been written earlier than the autumn of 1520 or early
1521. The dating is important in order to demonstrate as McCormick himself recognises
that Machiavellis engagement, which was sincere and free of compromises, did not fade
during the late 1520s and actually intensified during the most critical years of the crisis.
Machiavelli was commissioned to write the text under the same condotta that contracted
him to write the Florentine Histories. This fact is not secondary and is not purely symbolic:
what we should be listening for in the apparently cautious pages of the Discursus are the
echoes of the most provocative positions that he takes up in the Histories (hardly in keeping
with the Medicean past of Florence), not their negation.
McCormick, as I have said, believes that the Discursus is of paramount importance,
because Machiavelli seeks in this text to implement an institutional rle in the Florentine
constitution similar to that of the plebeian tribunes in Rome: the preposti or provosts. The
provosts are the direct representatives of the people. Their function in the constitutional
project of the Discursus is to be able to block any action that is suspicious or runs counter to
the interests of the people and the common good (we will get back to this concept), so that
it can be put back in the hands of a representative assembly with a wider base. In this way,
the provosts can impose a veto on any provisional decision taken by a smaller council,
ensuring that it is brought under discussion by the broader and more representative body of
the whole people, the Great Council.
This had been sought by Savonarola, during the republic of 14948, and was obviously
unpopular with the grandi. When the Soderini rgime fell in 1512, aristocratic violence broke
out against this institution, to the point of physically destroying the Hall where the Council
met. In the Discursus, Machiavelli proposes to Cardinal Giulio, almost provocatively, to
reopen the Hall, and to reinstate the people into the government of Florence through
this institution.

8.Florentine Histories, Book III, Chapter 1 (Machiavelli 1988, pp. 1056).

9.This is contrary to some interpreters (such as Guidi 1969) who view these pages as the
product of someone whose aspirations were in decline by this point. According to this
interpretation, when Machiavelli wrote this it appeared that all was lost and nobody believed
anymore that the Cardinal (who was then at the height of his power) could be sincerely interested
in listening to his past enemies, Machiavelli included. For more along the same lines, see Villari
1891, pp. 351fff.
 Review Articles / Historical Materialism 20.2 (2012) 232246 241

McCormicks argument is that critics have only pointed to the importance of reopening
the Hall in the Discursus, never dwelling on the creation of the provosts.10 This is the true
revolutionary element of Machiavellis text in his view, since it would correspond to the
implementation of a tribunician and veto-power in the hands of the people. As agents of
the common people, the provosts, and not the Council itself, would represent the essential
core of the revived democratic element in the Discursus.
McCormick is unfair to the critics on this point. It is true that the reopening of the Hall
has received more attention than the institution of the provosts. But there is no dearth of
reasons for this. Beyond the immense symbolic value that the reopening of the Hall would
have had in the 1520s under the Medici government, at least equal to its real political impact,
the Great Council seems to occupy a much greater space in Machiavellis mind than any
other element. On this point he never hesitates when he writes about the subject. The
function of the provosts, on the other hand, although having a wide scope in the Discursus,
never reappears in a similar context in later works. Is this due to caution? Perhaps: when he
returns to the same topics in the Minuta di provvisione per la riforma dello Stato di Firenze
in April 1522 (a text that is surprisingly ignored by McCormick), the provosts disappear.
It could be an implicit, tone-downed response to the criticism the Discursus had received in
Medici circles.11 The provosts do correspond to the tribunes, as Machiavelli himself indicates.
But in the Discursus he then gives another example, comparing them with a few virtuous
citizens who had the task of controlling the Great Council in Venice. I think the reference
to the Venetian Republic is somewhat enigmatic, since in the mind of Machiavelli the
lagoon-city is certainly not a good example of what he is proposing for Florence, namely, a
popular republic.
Finally, as regards the critical literature, while it is true that the provosts do not get the
same attention as the Council, it is certainly not true that they are completely overlooked.12
To limit ourselves to only some of the early historiographical works on Machiavelli: the
provosts had already attracted the attention of Oreste Tommasini, in the second volume of
his monograph (1911), albeit without any enormous emphasis. They were also described as
no less than exceptional powers of surveillance by Francesco Nitti.13 They have therefore
not gone completely unnoticed, as McCormick claims.
In any case, apart from the historical details that will interest historians of Machiavellis
thought more than political theorists looking for a real democratic alternative to washed-
out republicanism, McCormicks thesis is clear and important: the people are more and
better capable than the grandi, and more and better capable than the prince himself, to

10.McCormick 2011, p. 103: Unfortunately, the manner in which Machiavelli presents the
provosts may have been too subtle and understated for commentators on the Discursus: most
scholarly interpreters simply ignore them. Curiously, McCormick only cites Giovanni Silvano
and Maurizio Viroli.
11. Alessandro de Pazzi described it as strange and eccentric. See de Pazzi 1842.
12.McCormick 2011, p. 8: Even commentators who understand Machiavelli to be an advocate
of the people, an antagonist of the grandi, or albeit more rarely a democrat pure and simple
largely neglect the crucial role that the Roman tribunes play in his political thought and
consistently overlook his proposal to establish Florentine tribunes, the provosts, within his native
city. The literature to which McCormick is referring in this case is, again, peculiarly limited to a
few English-language sources: de Grazia, Hulliung, Gilbert, Silvano, and Viroli.
13.Nitti 1876, p. 359.
242 Review Articles / Historical Materialism 20.2 (2012) 232246

represent, express, and implement the common good of the city. This concept, widely used
by McCormick, also needs further comment, however.
At the beginning of the fourth chapter, introducing the subject of a democracy as opposed
to republicanism, McCormick says:

Democrats should worry when philosophers employ the language of republicanism.

When philosophers espouse purportedly objective principles, such as the common
good, the rule of law, depoliticization that is, normative standards that they
claim will make democracy operate more justly democrats should be very
worried indeed. History teaches that this discourse of republicanism of a
common good not fully achievable through extensive popular participation and
ultimate majority judgement enjoys a rather dubious legacy. (p. 141.)

And the legacy is truly suspect. McCormicks conclusions, as well as his focus and passion in
critiquing this powerful and anti-democratic tradition of thinking is laudable in every
way. Yet, here too, it seems to me that the argument somehow betrays the radically
democratic spirit of Machiavelli. McCormick explicitly suggests, in opposition to the
republican tradition, that the common good is fully achievable through extensive popular
participation. McCormick does well to emphasise the dubious legacy of republicanism. But
is this the way Machiavelli himself discusses the common good? In his eyes, the origin and
meaning of the common good are actually no less dubious. Where does this category of
the common good come from in the history of political thought?
The common good is a legacy of the Aristotelian and Ciceronian tradition, which is also
somewhat anti-conflictual in a larger sense. The democratic Savonarola14 and the aristocratic
Guicciardini15 are entirely in agreement on this issue. But this is precisely the argument
Machiavelli sought to distance himself from through his theory of social conflict. If what we
mean by common good means the good of all social groups, necessarily in conflict in the
city (in Rome as in Florence), this good simply does not exist in the radically realistic thought
of Machiavelli. If it is common, we might say, then it is not a true good. It has always been
the end of those who start a war, Machiavelli wrote, to enrich themselves and impoverish
the enemy.16 This striking conclusion is valid not only internationally, but also domestically,
as shown by the events of Florence where the grandi seek a foreign war specifically in order
to be able to oppress and subjugate the people.17
Machiavelli explicitly uses the notion of bene comune. But, as he does for many other
categories, to boost the rhetorical impact of his thinking which he knows is revolutionary,
he empties them from inside and redefines them, even turning them against their original
meaning.18 Moreover, to return to a topic discussed above, how is it possible in McCormicks
view to reconcile the rhetoric of the common good with the language of classes? It should

14.See the letter to Ricciardo Becchi of 9 March 1498 referred to above.

15.Guicciardini will write that to praise discord is like praising a sick mans illness because of
the virtues of the remedy applied to it. See Guicciardini 2002.
16.Florentine Histories, Book VI, Chapter 1 (Machiavelli 1988, p. 230).
17.See the chapters devoted to the war with the Visconti, also omitted from McCormick.
18.Along these lines, see the studies on the language of Machiavelli, efffectively developed by
French scholars. See, for example, Fournel and Zancarini 2000 and 2004.
 Review Articles / Historical Materialism 20.2 (2012) 232246 243

be assumed that the originality of Machiavellis theoretical thought does not lie in the
emphasis it places on the conflict between the classes (if one can speak of classes), but in the
fact that one of these classes, the people, is more and better capable than the other of
interpreting the common good.
As he continues to develop his in-depth criticism of republicanism, for example,
McCormick argues that Pettit does not recognise the peoples capacity to impartially
interpret the common good.19 And yet, the studies that have been written on the significance
of the common good in Machiavelli, especially by Marxists, point forcefully in a diffferent
direction, one that I believe deserves consideration.20
Marx himself was a reader of Machiavellis Discourses in the 1840s. Although the Florentine
could not inscribe his analysis of the social and political conditions of Rome or Florence
within the historical developments leading toward the revolution, Marx nonetheless
considers the Florentine Histories as nothing less than a masterpiece.21 He wrote in a letter
to Engels about the importance of studying the development of the Italian military system
in the fifteenth century... to understand better the connection between productive forces
and social relations.22
The history of Marxists engagement with Machiavellis thought is not as rich as one
might expect. However, at least one name must be mentioned here: Antonio Gramsci. In the
Prison Notebooks, Machiavelli is a constant reference for Gramsci, both at the historical and
the political level. Sometimes, the political use of Machiavelli from the perspective of the
political party which is Gramscis point is problematic.23 Yet what is more important is
the fact that Gramsci grounded his critique of Croces position and the re-evaluation of the
political-practical nature of Marxs thought precisely on his analysis of Machiavelli.24
Military organisation becomes central to Gramsci for the necessity of preparing ones
own force to intervene in history. The political and the military are therefore intertwined in
a clear attempt to build a class-based concept of the modern Prince. This cannot be a real
person, but only a complex element of society, with a collective will: in a word, the political

19. McCormick 2011, p. 157: Pettits attempt to depoliticize a wider range of important policy
spheres suggests that he largely subscribes to the traditional philosophical narratives concerning
the peoples inability to judge political matters dispassionately and impartially that, as weve
observed repeatedly, Machiavelli explicitly criticized (e.g. D I.58); and again: Pettit is generally
much more wary of the people than he is of elites, and he frequently goes to great lengths to
generate rationales for why elites can be expected to act on behalf of the common good, while he
tends to accept as fact the notion that the people simply cannot. Pettit insists that popular
judgement is prone to collective unreason, and he asserts definitively (i.e., without the softening
qualifier probably) that majoritarian tyranny is the real danger posed by democracy.
(McCormick 2011, p. 158.)
20. For a fuller discussion of this topic I refer the reader to Del Lucchese 2007 and 2009.
21. Letter of 25 September 1857, in Marx and Engels 1983, p. 186.
22. See Barthas 2010, p. 266. In his famous and intriguing comment, the liberal Benedetto
Croce defines Marx himself as the Machiavelli of the proletariat. See Croce 1900, p. 134.
23. See, for example, the connection Gramsci established between the Jacobins and the
context of physiocracy, asking if Machiavelli had anticipated those times as well as, in some way,
a demand that later found expression in the Physiocrats. See Gramsci 1977, p. 1575.
24.Frosini 2003, pp. 1645. See also Thomas 2009.
244 Review Articles / Historical Materialism 20.2 (2012) 232246

party.25 Machiavellis prince, for Gramsci, was a partial element, an actor in the struggle,
not a transcendent legal principle that governs from above and organises the conflict from
above, but one that works within and through the conflict in a radically immanent way.
Machiavellis theory does not speak to us of a purported impartiality, but rather of a frank
partiality, and of a conflictual basis that is inherent and certainly not extraneous to the
possibility of using the language of classes. Machiavellis popolo is a profoundly partial
entity that never aspires to the quintessence of the common good, viewed rather as true
political alchemy, something the realist Machiavelli never believed in, even for a moment.
It seems to me, in conclusion, that this point gives rise to strong tensions in McCormicks
study. In particular, it does not seem possible to me to relaunch the category of common
good within a democratic approach and at the same time distance oneself from a type of
republicanism coming from the Aristotelian-Ciceronian-Guicciardini tradition, which has
made the notion one of its theoretical linchpins. Once again, McCormicks inspiration to
play the card of Machiavellian democracy against washed-out, litist republicanism is fully
laudable. It is welcome from a political point of view and from a historiographical one (as
long as, in the latter case, the complex political history of republicanism itself is properly
characterised and fully articulated). And yet, along a diffferent line from the one proposed by
McCormick, and paraphrasing a highly undemocratic realist, we could say: entweder bonum
commune, oder Demokratia.
A final word on McCormicks audience. Although it has a wide-ranging scope, this book
is deeply immersed in the political issues of American society and politics. From a
historiographical point of view, this does not justify the limited attention that McCormick
devotes to the non-English-language critical literature.26 It does, however, explain the
emphasis on some theoretical kernels around which the entire book is constructed, in
particular the need to limit the political influence of the rich in todays liberal democracies.
McCormick argues that Machiavellis Discourses are to be read in light of the dedication
to Zanobi Buondelmonti and Cosimo Rucellai. In the eyes of Machiavelli, these two young
cultured and intelligent patricians at least potentially represented the best part of the future
Florentine ruling class. Unfettered by Medicean power and willing to give the people a
larger rle in the government of Florence, these nobles were to be educated toward a
diffferent political discourse. The Discorsi would thus be there to teach them something.
It is no coincidence, then, that Machiavellian Democracy a deeply optimistic book has
seen the light of day at this time. It could be said that what McCormick intends to do with
some American lites is what Machiavelli himself would have done with the Florentine
lites. Although this book collects together a series of ideas developed by the author over a
number of years, this really appears to be an attempt to inform the project of a new
democracy in the era of Obama. If this is his intent, despite the tensions that I have tried to
bring out, McCormicks choice is entirely welcome: there is no better author than Machiavelli

25.Gramsci 1977, pp. 15589.

26.Especially Marxist-inspired thinkers, not that this is necessary and indispensable in every
case, but since this book is intended to describe a Machiavellian political theory in terms of class,
I believe that a broader dialogue with this literature would have strengthened his arguments. See,
for example, Morfino 2002.
 Review Articles / Historical Materialism 20.2 (2012) 232246 245

as a source of inspiration. Provided, however, that the radicality of Machiavellis thought is

assumed to the core, even the aspects of it that are not completely compatible with a liberal
democracy, including that of Obama.

Filippo Del Lucchese

Brunel University
filippo.dellucchese@brunel.ac.uk

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