A Harsh Moral Dilemma

[Tommy4ever]

OK, most of my shelves are filled with lots of general crap, however, today I cleared a small area of shelf to create a place to keep all my communist books nice. At the moment I have dubbed it 'Communist Corner' (because I'm a sad fuck). Yet, I don't seem to have that many communist books. Aside from Capital, the Manifesto, a couple of Lenin's books and a history book or two things are looking pretty bare. This is where the moral dilemma arises - I put ''The Prince'' in Communist Corner. *gasps*

Should I remove that book from the 'Corner' forthwith? I am divided.

Luckily Communist Corner shall soon be bolstered by a few books I recently ordered, so the issue of the Corner's barren nature may soon be dealt with.

[El Chuncho]

'Il Principe' by Niccolo Machiavelli? Yes you should remove it, he is not a communist and that work is not communist.

[Pirate Utopian]

Maybe rename it the political corner?

[Decolonize The Left]

Maybe rename it the political corner?

Much better option. But no, the Prince should not be in a "communist corner."

- August

[Dumb]

Maybe a "Stalinist Corner."

[La Comédie Noire]

You should use it to prop up a slightly uneven chair and save the integrity of the communist corner.

[28350]

how is this a moral dilemma?

[Per Levy]

leave it there, as i read once marx and engels(and other commies) were quite fond of that book. so why not.

[Tommy4ever]

But if it doesn't make it into communist corner then it goes in with all the other crap. :blushing:

But I realise how it threatens the moral integrity of the Corner.

[Red Commissar]

"The Prince" isn't a Communist text though it is a worthwhile look into politics and the state. I think a lot of its problem comes from people taking a superficial approach to the book- eg the whole tyrant deal. Though I think on the whole Machiavelli's intent was something a lot of Marxists appreciated to some extent- mostly his exploration of Italy at the time. What may seem like a guide for princes to be "tyrannical" is more was his call (and hope) for a stronger leader to progress beyond the feudal conditions of Italy at the time and progress beyond it.

Basically, the embodiment of the Renaissance.

More importantly I think Machiavelli attained an understanding of what the "state" was, its coercive manner and its ways of attaining consent. This was remarkable considering political studies at the time, I think. More over he was much more of a realist in his analysis as opposed to the idealism of the more religiously influenced intellectuals at the time. So to an extent those who followed a materialist analysis appreciated this rare position considering the content of texts from that time period.

For what it's worth Gramsci seemed to have liked "The Prince" to the point that a number of his political writings were masked as a proposal for a "Modern Prince". Much of his discussions on the "Modern Prince" regarding the realities of politics and what one should be aware of when attempting to vie for power. The "Modern Prince", to Gramsci, was the Communist Party.


From the Introduction to "The Modern Prince" in "Selections from the Prison Notebooks" Hoare.

The concept of ''Jacobinism'' is perhaps that which establishes most clearly and most succinctly the unifying thread which links all of Gramsci's prison writing on history and on politics. Machiavelli was a "precocious Jacobin" ; Mazzini and his followers failed to be the "Jacobins" of the Risorgimento ; the "Modern Prince"-i.e. the communist party-must organise and express a national. popular collective will, in other words, must be a ''Jacobin'' force, binding the peasants beneath the hegemony of the proletariat, and rejecting all forms of economism, syndicalism, spontaneism. What has characterized Italian history hitherto is the fact that "an effective Jacobin force was always missing". Now the question is posed of whether the urban proletariat has "attained an adequate development in the field of industrial production and a certain level of historico-political culture". Its historical task can only be accomplished if "the great mass of peasant farmers bursts simultaneously into political life". The writings on the communist party grouped in this section aim to define what type of party could play the role of the "Modem Prince".

In an earlier version of the passage here entitled "The Political Party", Gramsci gave what he wrote the heading "Marx and Machiavelli", and began : "This theme can be developed in a two-fold study : a study of the real relations between the two as theorists of militant politics, of action ; and a book which would derive from Marxist doctrines an articulated system of contemporary politics of the 'Prince' type. The theme would be the political party, in its relations with the classes and the State : not the party as a sociological category, but the party which seeks to found the State." Why did Gramsci attach such importance to Machiavelli ? Because "Machiavelli was the representative in Italy of the recognition that the Renaissance could not be a real one without the foundation of a national State" ; "Machiavelli's political thought was a reaction to the Renaissance [in the narrow sense] ; it was an invocation of the political and national necessity of drawing closer to the people as the absolute monarchies of France and Spain had done . . ." Machiavelli did not merely abstractly desire the national unification of Italy ; he had a programme, and it was one which revealed his "precocious Jacobinism". He intended through the institution of a citizen militia to bring the great mass of peasant farmers into political life. For Gramsci, he was not simply a precursor of the 'historical" Jacobins', but a precursor of the "modern" Jacobins-i.e. the communists-in their task of forging the worker peasant alliance. In his identification of the communists with Jacobinism, Gramsci was developing and expanding a theme already touched on by Lenin-who wrote in July 1917 that " 'Jacobinism' in Europe or on the boundary line between Europe and Asia in the twentieth century would be the rule of the revolutionary class, of the proletariat, which, supported by the peasant poor and taking advantage of the existing material basis for advancing to socialism, could not only provide all the great, ineradicable, unforgettable things provided by the Jacobins in the eighteenth century, but bring about a lasting world-wide victory for the working people".

The notes grouped in this section approach the problem of the "The Modern Prince" from many angles ; they analyse the nature of a political party as such ; the relations between party, class and State ; the ideological dangers of econornism and spontaneism, against which it must struggle ; the type of non-bureaucratic internal regime which is necessary if it is to be effective. But if there is one passage which perhaps more than any other encapsulates Gramsci's conception of the revolutionary party, it is the opening sentences of the section entitled "Prediction and Persp ective" in which he evokes Machiavelli's Centaur as a symbol of the "dual perspective" which must characterise the revolutionary party (and State) . The party must hold together in a dialectical unity the two levels "of force and of consent, authority and hegemony, violence and civilisation, of agitation and of propaganda, of tactics and of strategy"...

So I guess you might need to necessitate the creation of a political corner for books like "The Prince" that is separate from the more Communist texts.

[bcbm]

first world problems

[Tim Finnegan]

'Il Principe' by Niccolo Machiavelli? Yes you should remove it, he is not a communist and that work is not communist.
On the other hand, he was a radical by the standards of his day, and if The Prince is read as it should be- a viciously satirical deconstruction of the politics of his era (and many others!), stripped of its ideological posturing- then it wouldn't be our of place alongside that other great under-appreciated satirical text (http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2006/jul/08/politics), Capital.

[Ostrinski]

Maybe a "Stalinist Corner."This.

[Os Cangaceiros]

I like what Negri wrote about Machiavelli. Homeboy really was a forerunner of republicanism, which does make him a radical, considering the era he lived in.

[28350]

fill the empty spaces with huge busts of bob avakian

[Kuppo Shakur]

This is like saying "Oh no, my house too gigantic and luxurious, HALP!"