{"id":4646,"date":"2014-10-23T06:28:23","date_gmt":"2014-10-23T06:28:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/berghahnbooks.com\/blog\/?p=4646"},"modified":"2025-06-09T11:40:51","modified_gmt":"2025-06-09T11:40:51","slug":"machiavelli-marx-ramgotra-republicanism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.berghahnbooks.com\/blog\/machiavelli-marx-ramgotra-republicanism","title":{"rendered":"“When I read Machiavelli, Marx rang true”"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>The below is a special guest post written by Manjeet Ramgotra<\/a>, contributor to\u00a0<\/em>Theoria<\/a>, Issue 139<\/a>, and author of ‘Conservative Roots of Republicanism.’<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

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My article \u201cConservative Roots of Republicanism\u201d<\/a> is a result of research I conducted for my PhD.\u00a0 Initially, I had begun to work on Rousseau<\/a>.\u00a0 I developed a critique of Pocock<\/a>\u2019s understanding of republicanism as antithetical to liberalism founded on a discourse of rights and the social contract. \u00a0I contended that as Rousseau combines republicanism, rights and the social contract, that Pocock\u2019s view must be ill-founded.\u00a0 As I began to work on Rousseau and a critique of Pocock\u2019s Machiavellian Moment<\/em><\/a>, my advisers recommended that I read Montesquieu <\/a>who influenced Rousseau and Machiavelli, the central character of Pocock\u2019s work. \u00a0I included these thinkers in my study and was further advised to examine Cicero<\/a>.\u00a0 On reading works of Cicero, I realized that although all individuals can promote the public good, not all participate on an equal basis in the political realm.\u00a0 In fact, the people participate only on a partial basis to protect their freedom to live in security from the arbitrary domination of the nobility.\u00a0 On reading Machiavelli\u2019s Discourses<\/a>, <\/em>it became clear that the class struggle between the nobles (the haves) and the people (the have-nots) was essential to his republicanism.\u00a0 In fact the unequal participation of each class to protect its own interests \u2013 political authority and control for the nobles and political liberty or the freedom to live in security and without fear of arbitrary domination for the people \u2013 made Marx<\/a>\u2019s claim that history is about the struggle between social classes ring true.\u00a0 However, I did not adopt a structuralist or a Marxist approach; rather much of my argument is a result of exegetical and contextual analysis.<\/p>\n

My study developed as a critique of the Cambridge School egalitarian and participatory understanding of republicanism.\u00a0 Hence I queried what are republican institutions, to what extent do the people and nobles participate in these institutions, who makes the laws and what is the role of the people in this process.\u00a0 That the people had a partial role in this process is extremely important as this opens boundaries of the political realm. \u00a0Nevertheless, this popular role was also used to support and legitimise the authority of the nobles.\u00a0 The popular voice did not necessarily contest proposed laws, but rather acquiesced in these. \u00a0My study took me to Rome, to the foundations of Cicero\u2019s theoretical understanding of the Roman Republic.\u00a0 It is here that I found the justification for the hierarchical participation of the nobles and people in the political realm on the basis of an understanding of fairness as equity whereby each participates in the public realm according to his rank and due. \u00a0Cicero argued that the republic ought to combine the political power of the monarchic element with the political authority of the noble few and the political liberty of the many (or rather the upper echelons of the people who owned enough property to have an adequate voice).<\/p>\n

I traced this structure in the thought of Machiavelli and Montesquieu.\u00a0 Machiavelli analyses the Roman Republic in his Discourses<\/em> and sees Rome as a great and exemplary republic precisely because it directs the energy of social conflict to empire and expansion. \u00a0In The Prince<\/a>, <\/em>Machiavelli shows how the power of one man can transform things.\u00a0 The combination of princely power with the republican aristocratic and popular institutions makes the republic both strong and great. \u00a0Montesquieu rearticulates many of these arguments but in a new language dominated by science and mechanics.\u00a0 Through his theory of the separation and balance of powers, Montesquieu understands the constitution in terms of executive and legislative powers that ought to be harmonized.\u00a0 Yet as he divides the legislative power into two chambers for the landed nobility and the people, it is clear that he adopts the republican mixed constitution.\u00a0 Moreover, he combines historical analysis of constitutions and advances the unequal participation of the social classes in the constitution.<\/p>\n

On examining the relationship between virtue and commerce in Montesquieu\u2019s political thought, it became apparent that the commerce Montesquieu discussed was that of the transatlantic trade.\u00a0 The mainstay of this trade was the slave-trade<\/a>. \u00a0I began to read his ideas in a different light.\u00a0 In my view, his work supported the pursuit of colonial empire; for commerce entailed the acquisition and domination of overseas territories.\u00a0 It became clear to me that executive power was very important in the institutional structures that Montesquieu promoted.\u00a0 For executive power could both mediate social conflict between the owners of landed property and owners of mobile property (merchant classes).\u00a0 Concurrently, a strong central executive power facilitated the pursuit of an overseas empire that sought to secure international trade and commerce.<\/p>\n

Subsequently, I read the notion of empire retrospectively and realized that as Montesquieu stood at a moment of great global change so too did Machiavelli.\u00a0 Machiavelli wrote shortly after navigational routes to the Americas and around Africa had been forged and promoted an expansive republic.\u00a0 Cicero also promoted the expansive Roman Republic that extended borders beyond the Mediterranean.\u00a0 So the coherence between the republican views of these three thinkers at very different moments in time became more apparent.\u00a0 Each advocated a particular form of republic and particular republican values of virtue, authority, freedom and the participation of the various elements of political society on a hierarchical basis and expansion.<\/p>\n

Many people have queried how I use the term conservative.\u00a0 My article<\/a> sets out to answer these queries.\u00a0 I described this republican mixed constitution as \u2018conservative\u2019 mainly with regard to the social hierarchy, preservation of the nobility\u2019s privileges and how political communities deal with change. \u00a0To harness change a republic needs to dominate over unstable elements.\u00a0 Cicero, Machiavelli and Montesquieu advocate a set of institutional structures that provide the fluidity to adapt to change without revolution and collapse.\u00a0 In other words, these institutions keep the republic afloat.<\/p>\n

Finally, it is important to uncover the conservative bent of this strand of republicanism.\u00a0 If we continue to assert that radical, egalitarian and participatory conceptions of republicanism originate in the ideas of Cicero, Machiavelli and Montesquieu, we risk inadvertently reasserting hierarchy and empire.<\/p>\n

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Click here<\/a> to see\u00a0Manjeet Ramgotra\u2019s article in Theoria<\/a>. To get a free 60-day online trial of the journal,\u00a0click here<\/a><\/span>.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/h3>\n

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The below is a special guest post written by Manjeet Ramgotra, contributor to\u00a0Theoria, Issue 139, and author of ‘Conservative Roots of Republicanism.’   My article \u201cConservative Roots of Republicanism\u201d is a result of research I conducted for my PhD.\u00a0 Initially, I had begun to work on Rousseau.\u00a0 I developed a critique of Pocock\u2019s understanding of… Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":19,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1,222],"tags":[197,2280,362,286,363,208,307,260,364,105],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.berghahnbooks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4646"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.berghahnbooks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.berghahnbooks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.berghahnbooks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/19"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.berghahnbooks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4646"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/www.berghahnbooks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4646\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4669,"href":"https:\/\/www.berghahnbooks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4646\/revisions\/4669"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.berghahnbooks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4646"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.berghahnbooks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4646"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.berghahnbooks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4646"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}