History of Political Thought

1) DIVISION OF LABOR – PLATO
Everything concerning our civilization begins in Greece from 5th century BC, even the
word “politics” comes from “polis”, the small political and free communities such as
Athens and Sparta. They were legally and politically divided into classes; the citizens
were the only one who had the right to participate in the public (and political) life, so
citizenship meant membership. There was no distinction between social life and political
life, hence a good man must first be a good citizen. Socrates lived during 5th century BC
in Athens and is considered the philosopher of “human ignorance”. He believed that the
conscience of being ignorant leads to freedom from hybris (dangerous arrogance). He
also thought that Areté, which is the moral virtue that could be attained by reason and
studying, is open only to the philosopher who will devote his entire life to the good, true
and moral. Indeed, according to Socrates, leadership is not open to everyone. His
aristocratic inclination irritated the Athenians and condemned him to death. Plato was
born about an eminent family in 427 BC; his intellectual development depended on his
association as a young man with Socrates, who soon became his master. He totally
identified with him, from whom Plato inherited the idea that virtue is knowledge and
leadership is better in the hands of the best. Plato’s main work is “Republic”; it deals
with a utopian society ruled by the philosopher-king, the one who owns the truth and so
can free the others from ignorance. The other two well-known works are “Statesman”
seeking the definition of poltikos and identifying him with the philosopher and “Laws”
an historical treaty about poleis.
In the “Republic” books 8-9 Socrates uses his theory of the tripartition of the soul in
order to explain a variety of psychological constitutions which correspond to different
kinds of men. There are people ruled by reason who adore truth and wisdom (i.e.
philosophers), people governed by spirit who love victory and honor (i.e. warriors) and
people ruled by appetite who adore money and profit (i.e. epicures and merchants).
Therefore, human beings are not equal and they must not be regarded as they are. Since
the division of functions rests on the difference of aptitude those three classes depend
upon the fact that there are three sorts of men: those who are fitted for the highest
duties of statesmanship (philosopher-king), those who are fitted to rule but only under
the control and direction of others (warriors) and those who are fitted to work and
produce and not to rule (merchants). In Book 1 Socrates and his interlocutors treat the
principle that everybody should do his job and thereby contribute to the city as the
image of justice. It means that each person ought to perform just the task to which he is
best suited, the so-called principle of specialization. He tracks back the principle of the
division of labor to the nature: societies had been created in order to satisfy man’s needs
by people each other exchanging the products of their skills. The origin of the state lies
in the natural inequality of mankind, which is embodied in the division of labor.
Furthermore, division of labour ensures good government: “For ’everyone having his
own’ is the great object of government; and the great object of trade is that every man
should do his own business. Not that there is much harm in a carpenter trying to be a
cobbler, or a cobbler transforming himself into a carpenter; but great evil may arise
from the cobbler leaving his last and turning into a guardian or legislator, or when a
single individual is trainer, warrior, legislator, all in one. And this evil is injustice, or
every man doing another’s business”.
2) CRITICISM OF SOPHISTS – PLATO
Between the 5th and 4th century BC the Sophists started to spread all over Athens. They
showed great rhetorical capabilities proving that even a wrong argument could be
brought to victory; that was a very useful ability in such a democratic city. Protagoras
had been the first representative of such a school. He moved the philosophic
investigation on man instead of the nature (“man is the seize of all things”). In the
Phaedrus, the “Chalcedonian giant”, Thrasymachus, is the personification of the
Sophists, according to Plato’s conception of them, in some of their worst characteristics.
He is vain and blustering, refusing to discourse unless he is paid, fond of making an
oration; but a mere child in argument. He has reached the stage of framing general
notion. But he is incapable of defending people in a discussion, and vainly tries to cover
his confusion with banter and insolence. Sophists only give back to the world their own
opinions; good is what pleases them, evil what they dislike; truth and beauty are
determined only by the taste of the brute. Such is the Sophist’s wisdom, and such is the
condition of those who make public opinion the test of truth, whether in art or in
morals. The curse is laid upon them of being and doing what it approves, and when they
attempt first principles the failure is ludicrous. In Book 6 of the Republic, Plato begins
from the original observation that the Sophists, after all, are only the representatives
and not the leaders of public opinion.
3) JUSTICE IN “REPUBLIC” – PLATO
The “Republic” is a massive dialogue dedicated to politics, divided in ten books, in
which Socrates conversates with docile interlocutors. From the beginning of the first
book introduces the topic of his work: the search of justice “stripped of appearances”;
the opening question is “what is the state based on?”. It is justice and every kind of
community is based on justice, “and this is because injustice creates divisions and
hatreds and fighting, and justice imparts harmony and friendship”. Thereby a state is
as stronger as it is more just, and it is just when every citizen is just. In fact, the polis is
to imagine as a big organism that is the projection of the individual characteristics of its
citizens. Thus, it must reflect the structure of the individual’s soul. According to
“Republic”, every human soul has three parts: reason, spirit, and appetite. The first one
loves wisdom and truth, the second one loves victory and honor and the third one profit
and money. In book 4 reason is characterized by its ability to track down what is good
for each part of the soul as a whole and by its desire for wisdom. So, reason naturally
pursues not just what it takes to be good for the whole soul but also the wisdom that
ensures that it would get this right. Spirit, by contrast, tracks social preeminence and
honor. Finally, appetite seeks material satisfaction for bodily urges. Furthermore, every
part of the soul corresponds to a virtue. As for the rational part wisdom, for the spirit’s
courage and for the appetitive temperance. This consideration provides the basic
division of the world into philosophers, honour-lovers (warriors), and money-lovers
(merchants). A person is just, just in case all the three parts of the soul are functioning
as they should. Justice, then, brings the other virtues in its wake: anyone who is just is
entirely virtuous (the unjust person fails to be moderate, wise or courageous). Books 5-7
show one is virtuous if one is a philosopher and, since virtue requires knowledge, only
philosophers have knowledge. Justice is a more abstract notion than the other virtues,
and therefore, from Plato’s point of view, the foundations of them, to which they are
referred and precedes them as an idea. Then, if the political structure of the ideal city
must reflect the soul’s, it will be divided into three parts (classes) where the best one
should govern the others; thereby, philosophers will govern, then there will be warriors
and finally merchants. The city will be just because every kind of citizen will accomplish
the task he is best suited beginning from his soul’s constitutions. Justice is the perfect
order by which all natures and classes do their own business, the right man in the right
place, the division and co-operation of all the citizens. It is the order of the State, and
the State is the visible embodiment of justice under the conditions of human society. The
one is the soul and the other is the body. In Hegelian phraseology the state is the reality
of which justice is the idea; or, to use a Platonic image, justice and the State are the
warp and the woof which run through the whole texture. According to Plato, education
is the first care of the rulers in a just city: Plato compares the health of the polis with
the individual’s one. Paideia (the intellectual education in the sense of moral perfection)
is the therapy for both the individual and the political community. Children are not
educated by the family, but by and for community; they have to be trained better and
not to suffer the difference of property, the first thing corrupting the soul. It should
become a higher State, in which “no man calls anything his own”, and in which there is
neither “marrying nor giving in marriage” (wives will be in common), and “kings are
philosophers” and “philosophers are kings”.
4) METHODOLOGICAL DIFFERENCES ARISTOTLE – PLATO –
ARISTOTLE
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The 4 century was characterized by the ending of both Greece and polis independence
because of the Macedonian conquest. Aristotle was born in 384 BC and he was native of
Stagira, in Thrace; he loved Athens, although he had never been able to be a citizen. He
is a philosopher, logician and scientist. He studied in Plato’s Academy in Athens until
the death of his teacher; then he was invited by the Macedonian throne to tutor
Alexander (who then will be named “the Great”). He founded “Peripato”. His main
work is “Politics” written to guide the rulers and statesmen.
Plato’s and Aristotle’s approaches to politics are completely different, while Plato had a
more ideal and philosophical vision, Aristotle opposed a truly scientific method in his
investigation; it becomes clear when analysing “Republic” and “Politics”. Plato, when is
sketching the good city, he does not take a currently or previously extant city as his
model offering adjustments, but insists on starting from scratch, reasoning from causes
that would bring a city into being; this feature makes his ideal society and government a
utopia. Critics claim that Plato had an unrealistic picture of human beings who would
be unable to create and sustain such a city, this makes it a nowhere-utopia; he is too
optimistic about the human nature because he underplays the self-interest; he is to
pessimistic about what most people are capable of, since he consigns most humans to
live as slaves or as dependent upon other’s ruling. The point of his ideal is to allow us to
judge actual cities and persons based on how well they approximate it, therefore it
serves as a model, a paradeigma. In sum, he neglects the practical duties of a political
theorist. Oddly, Aristotle was the first philosopher having a real scientific ambition and
was the first who accounted politics as a science, thereby his realism is justified; he
believed that political and social thought must include investigation and knowledge of
reality. According to him, politikè episteme (political science) is an inductive science,
thus based on experience and practical. It studies the task of the politikos (politician or
statesman) which most important is to frame the appropriate politeia (Constitution) for
polis, as a nomothetes (lawgiver). Once Constitution is in place, politician needs to
maintain it, introducing reforms or preventing evil developments. In order to be the
most adherent to reality as possible in presenting his theory, he used a comparative
system in order to figure out which political system was best: he studied every kind of
politeia in Greece (whom we received only the Athenian politeia), where he showed the
progressive stages up to the creation of the democratic system.
5) PRIVATE PROPERTY – ARISTOTLE
The 4th century was characterized by the ending of both Greece and polis independence
According to Aristotle, private property is the best means for man in order to work and
produce and it is not necessarily hostile for the good of the political community as a
whole; it can push men to improve and therefore the city to flourish. The comforts of
private property are very important for the enjoyment of life, and not necessarily bad.
Property should be in private hands, but that it should be used for the good of the
community. Communism is impractical and inimical to human nature and neglects the
happiness of the individual. He distrusted in part the proverb “friends will have all
things in common” already followed by Plato. Some things can be placed at the disposal
of friends, but in general every man has his own property. Aristotle argued that a
communist legislation may have a specious appearance of benevolence but actually it is
not good at reducing conflicts among human beings, rather they originate from the
nature and not from goods. Furthermore, Aristotle believed that one cannot develop a
real love of what is in common. Indeed, political community pursues unity but not
disadvantaging plurality, therefore family and property achieve a positive value.
6) CLASSIFICATION FORMS OF GOVERNMENT – ARISTOTLE
Since Aristotle had a scientific approach to politics, it is not surprising that he made the
first, most-known, distinction of the forms of government, adopting the six-fold
classification already used by Plato in the “Statesman”. His general theory of forms of
government is set forth in Politics III where he begins with a definition of polites, the
one who has the exousia (right) to participate in deliberative or judicial office; polis, an
arrangement of such citizens; and politeia, the way are organized the offices of the polis,
particularly the sovereign office, it is what rules the polis, not a written document but
an immanent organizing principle. The government is the supreme authority in the
polis and must be in the hands of one, or of a few, or of the many. It is called
constitutional when it acts for the good of all and despotic when it acts for the good of
the ruling class, Basically, there are three forms of government, but each one has a
perverted form whether it makes the interest of the ruled or of the rulers. Kingship or
royalty is the govern of one who regards the common interest; aristocracy is the rule of
more than one, but not many, and it is so called “either because the rulers are the best
men, or because they have at heart the best interests of the polis and of the citizens”;
finally, politia is the govern of citizens who at large administer the polis for the common
interest. The perverse forms of the above-mentioned forms are tyranny of royalty,
oligarchy of aristocracy and democracy of politia. “For tyranny is a kind of monarchy
which has in view the interest of the monarch only; oligarchy has in view the interest of
the wealthy; democracy of the needy: none of them the common good at all”. After
having described the classification of forms of government, Aristotle argues that it
would be fragmentary if he didn’t study a range of issues concerning its subject matter.
In fact, since the best form of government is often unattainable it has to be considered
which is best under the circumstances and which is best suited to states in general.
Furthermore, not only what form of government is best, but also what is possible and
what easily attainable by all. And when a polis is formed, how it may be longest
preserved. In conclusion, Aristotle describes his true polis as governed for the general
good, while Plato as law-abiding.
7) MAN AS A POLITICAL ANIMAL – ARISTOTLE
Since Aristotle was the first philosopher who had a very scientific approach in the field
of political science, his political and social thought must include investigation and
knowledge of reality. From his studying of human nature, he came to the conclusion
that “man is a Zoon Politikòn (social or political animal) because he is the only animal
who has speech. At the start of “Politics” (book I) Aristotle sets out to establish that
man is by nature a political animal, and the polis is accordingly a natural entity. The
polis is natural because it comes from the association of families which are associations
established by nature for the supply of man’s everyday wants. Thus, the association of
families origins villages and when villages are united in a single complete community,
large enough to be nearly or quite self-sufficing, the polis comes into existence,
originating in the bare needs of life, and continuing in existence for the sake of a good
life. Polis is a kind of koinonia (community), that is the collection of parts having some
functions and interests in common; existence of it can be explained in terms of 4 causes:
the material cause represented by the compound of a particular population (with some
functions and interests in common) in a given territory; the formal cause represented by
the Constitution, “a certain ordering of inhabitants of polis”; the efficient cause
represented by the ruler or lawgiver, on deeper level, is “the person who first
established the polis is the cause of very great benefits”, on Aristotle’s view, a
community of any sort can posses order only if it has a ruling element or authority; the
final cause represented by the sake of some good. The polis comes into being for the
sake of life but exists for the sake of a good life. In conclusion, human beings are social
animals because they naturally cooperate and live together since they have logos
(language) which also gives them the sense of justice.
8) WHY “MODERN” STATE – THE STATE
First of all, we have to mind the stages of modernity: Early Modernity, from 1453 (fall
of Constantinople) or 1517 (Lutheran Thesis) to 1789 (French Revolution); Classical
Modernity, from 1789 to 1914 (outbreak of WWI); Late Modernity, from 1914 to 1989
(collapse of the Berlin Wall). The Expression “Modern State”, similar in all the
European languages, suggests an idea of evolution. It conveys the notion of an ancient,
medieval and maybe postmodern state, but calling every form of political aggregation
“state” means to believe in the timeless nature of something that is firstly modern; the
term ”modernity” has, at least politically, little sense except in relation to state.
Maravall noted “the modern mindset is projected onto the state and… largely
determined by the state… the state becomes the symbol of all changes… that occurred
in Europe during the historical crisis that ushered in modern times”. Gianfranco Miglio
proposed to alter the traditional form into “(modern) State” because “we had had
nothing like this before”: Medieval and ancient eras didn’t have state-like forms of
political power and their institutions weren’t even remotely comparable to those
belonging to the modern era; the state isn’t merely a natural and organic extension of
political power or organized societies, “it is rather the random result of a series of
historical conjectures”. So the adjective “modern” is also pleonastic. The State is
secondly European, since its chief traits of state (i.e. sovereignty, organization, coercive
control of population, centralization) “cannot be found in any large-scale political
entities other that those which began to develop in the early-modern phase of European
history” (Gianfranco Poggi). Then it became an highly exportable product and no
European state imitated a non-European model; therefore the State followed a one-way
path from Europe towards the rest of the world. Indeed, as Reinhard stated “Europe
invented the state… even indicating its provenance is superfluous”. Thirdly, the State is
Artificial because it is mental construct formed by power of human action. No one has
ever seen a “state”, but only its institutions as instantiations of state power. The State is
thus Modern since it began to exist during a period concerning more or less the Modern
Age, it is European since it originated and developed in Europe and it is “Artificial”
because it is an “invention” of men and not a “discovery”. It is a completely different
organization of power from those that preceded it, that progressively and inexorably
defined and asserted himself (Rotelli). Furthermore, a more accurate definition of the
concept “State” as the product of “a process of rationalization (Weber), born in a
specific historical period (Schmitt), following the progressive disarmament of the
populace in favour of an armed bureaucratic case (Brunner)” clearly evidences,
according to Carl Schmitt, that place and time are consubstantial with the state’s self-
representation. He then points out the absurdity of the migration of concepts tied to a
political and legal organization that is well-anchored in place and time and that the
conceptual confusion is the product of state institutions and their ideological power
(Greek and Roman states, Chinese state...) “but it soon terminated with the era of
statehood”. The critics, who would like to see the state’s presence as far back as
possible, and all over the globe, are but victims of ideological prejudices that arise from
those who fabricated the state image. The boundaries established a “within” and
“without” to the state; they’re the line of discrimination between “being” and “non-
being”. In fact, citizens’ interests, and order had to be fenced to be more recognizable,
and could enjoy various degrees of freedom. The nature of boundary in a world of
states immediately help us understand totally non-modern characteristics of some
ancient political organizations such as Roman Empire which conceived the limes not as
boundary but as temporary stopping for further expansion.
9) STATE AS A MONOPOLY OF FORCE WEBER – THE STATE

Since the end of World War I, the State has been the subject to a more rigorous
investigation and the idea of the full historicity of the state began to take hold. It was
considered the main responsible of the atrocities of the war and a sense of estrangement
and detachment from it spread all around. . It couldn’t be that perennial and natural
something as brutal. This new feeling was the mark that something different and
modern happened and received new attention from many scholars. The origin of the
state is marked everywhere by the attempt to bring territorial peace and it can be done
exclusively if there is a unique depositary of the force (the state itself) which must ban
private violence. Thus, monopoly on violence, the concept that the state alone has the
right to use or authorize the use of physical force, is widely regarded as a defining
characteristic of the modern state. Max Weber’s definition, in his lecture “Politics as a
Vocation” is one of the most famous in the history of the social sciences, a definition
based on means and not ends; that means is the use of force. While, “the state is a
relation of men dominating men, a relation supported by means of legitimate (i.e.,
considered to be legitimate) violence it is a human community that (successfully) claims
the monopoly of the legitimate use of physical force within a given territory”. Under
feudalism, no lords, including the king, could claim a monopoly over the use of violence,
since their vassals promised to serve them but remained free to exercise power in theirs
lands. Moreover, the king and the landed nobility had to share power or compete with
the Roman Catholic Church. The modern state, according to Weber, emerged by
expropriating the means of political organization and domination, including violence,
and by establishing the legitimacy of its rule. Monopolization of violence is not to justify
force but to provide protection. The legitimate use of force depends on conformity to an
abstract principle or on the agreement of the governed. It is a service of protection
which does not tolerate competitors. This concept does not imply that the state is the
only actor actually using violence but rather that it is the only actor that can
legitimately authorize its use. The state can grant another actor the right to use violence
without losing its monopoly, as long as it remains the only source of the right to use
violence and that it maintains the capacity to enforce this monopoly. Gianfranco Miglio
set the period between 1250 and 1350 as “the great century in which the state was
founded, while James Collins set the 17th century as the age of the state in the most
important European country, France.
10) A DECENTRALIZED LEGAL SYSTEM? – THE STATE
No, it isn’t. The destruction of a decentralized legal system, characteristic of the
medieval world, such as the feud, played a crucial role in replacing with something
different. The most important problem of Europe before the state was fragmentation,
and the modern state was the simplest solution because it is centralized. It was born
with a global and universal vocation and in order to represent a political order both
domestic and international in character. As for domestic, there was created one
command centre for all governmental operation and any other body between the state
itself and the individual was dissolved in order to centralize power and public life and
create a strong bureaucratic apparatus. The very fracture with the past was the desire
to create only two entities: the sovereign power and the individual subject (no more
Vassallo, valvassino, valvassore...). The slow revolution which established what we call
sovereignty implied monarchs to destroy all authority and individuality in the territory,
other than their own. The goal of monarchs (thus, the logic of the state) became the
definitive acquisition of plenitude potestas (which will then bring to equality of everyone
before the law). The king was the most important figure of this process because he
carried out centralization. Internationally, there must be created a world of states and a
system of political interdependence among them, so that the ones who didn’t enjoy (the
Hanseatic League, Republic of Venice, Swiss Confederation) were left to die. In
conclusion, in order to succeed and assert itself universally as the model of order, the
State had to become the sole acceptable “political synthesis”. The true calling of the
state is to enfold all existing political relations between individuals in a given
community, where the “political” cannot be conceived outside the state and its
paradigms (different from the polis). It is extremely difficult to imagine politics without
the state, because the state is not an answer, but the answer to the problem of political
order. Indeed the items on the agenda of the modern state are two: the centralization of
power, meaning to create command center for all governmental operations, the absolute
monarchy is the first single center of decisional command of the modern state and the
king is the most important figure because he carried out centralization; the creation of a
bureaucratic apparatus, therefore the dissolution of any other body between the state
itself and the individual, the state became the master and creator of all the other forms
of association between people.
11) FALLACIES ABOUT ORIGIN AND CREATION – THE STATE
Students from other disciplines have drawn their own conclusions about the problem of
the origin and evolution of the state and have generally assumed that the link between
state and modernity can be overlooked altogether. In particular, the sociological and
anthropological approaches have created confusion. Anthropology is itself a field of
research notably and firmly committed to reversing centuries of Euro-centrism, but
birth of state is a quintessential European subject. They tend to fall in love with the
cultures they study. “The state was developed in many places and times under varying
conditions”. They concentrated on other areas of world and on different times, thereby,
they studied the state exactly where it couldn’t possibly be found. There are different
theories about how the state emerged: the evolutionary theory, dealing with the
development of humanity is a continuum that progresses in “stages” and without
interruptions so the era of the state ought to be analyzed in various periods, such as
proto-state, primordial state, mature state; the hydraulic hypothesis, dealing with the
state origin from the cooperation between farmers in order to face the problem of
management of scarce water resource; the aggregation of villages, Robert Carneiro in
1970: socio-anthropological school: “For the first 2 million years of his existence, man
lived in bands or villages which, as far as we can tell, were completely autonomous. Not
until 5000BC did villages begin to aggregate into larger political units. But, once this
progress of aggregation began, it continued at a progressively and faster pace and led,
around 4000BC, to the formation of the first state in history”. However, he has used
different definition of term “state” that is more the one of “political community”. In
fact, he immediately provides the definition: “when I speak of a state, I mean an
autonomous political unit, encompassing many communities within its territory and
having a centralized government with the power to collect taxes, draft men for work or
war, and decree and enforce laws”. Carneiro is simply fantasizing about ancient forms
of power; recruiting men, making laws and taxation became the rarely achieved objects
of monarchies in the modern Europe and no other political community ever dreamed of
doing anything of that sort. The anthropological thought sounds senseless considering
the “scientific testament” of Max Weber because it appeals to the paradigm that human
history reproduces itself pretty much unchanged anywhere, while Weber’s testament is:
“why did not the scientific or the economic development… in China or India… enter
upon that path or rationalization which is peculiar to the Occident?”. In summary, we
have to mind there is historical and methodological leap from speaking about
aggregation of people, “state”, “statehood”, “constitution” and “sovereign community”.
The timeless of anthropological analysis might be helpful to understand some perennial
features of human societies, but nothing more. They ignore any historical perception.
12) HOW DOES HE SEE HUMAN BEINGS? – MACHIAVELLI

At the beginning of the 16th century the prevalent form of government in Europe was
absolute monarchy. Spain unified thanks to the marriage between Ferdinand of Aragon
and Isabel of Castile in the second half of 15th century; in England Henry VII
inaugurated the Tudor dynasty; France starting from the second half of the 15th
century, monarchy called so strongly for the centralization of power that from 16th to
the Revolution, the king had been the only dominus in the political panorama. In
German and Italian areas the dynasties were strong and very old. In Italy, Florence had
been under a republican government since 1494 when the leading Medici family and its
supporters driven from power. 1512 Medici retook power and dissolved gov’t. Niccolò
Machiavelli was born in Florence in 1469 and received an excellent humanist education.
He was appointed as Second Chancellor of Republic of Florence, but after Medici’s
comeback, he was a direct victim of the regime change. He soon had to withdraw into
private life; by the end of his life he returned to the favor of Medici family and was
commissioned by Cardinal Giulio de Medici to compose “History of Florence”.
Machiavelli’s main works are: “The Prince” dedicated to Lorenzo de’ Medici in which
he criticizes at length the moralistic view of authority; “The Discourses on the Ten
Books of Titus Livy” exposing the principles of the republican rule. Both of them show
the indifference to the use of immoral means for political purposes and the belief that
government depends largely on force; they were published posthumously and banned
by the church, because of their complete absence of both Christian faith and morality.
Machiavelli has a pessimistic vision about human beings and it is the reason he is
accounted of to be the beginner of “political realism” because in “The Prince” he states
he is looking for the “actual reality of the thing”. According to him, they are evil: he
does not investigate the causes neither whether they are by nature or by an original sin
(as for Christianity), but evaluates them from experience, inductively. Machiavelli
writes the only real concern of the political ruler is the acquisition and maintenance of
power. For him power characteristically defines the political activity, and hence it’s
necessary for any successful ruler to know how power has to be used. Only by the
means of proper application of power, individuals will obey, and the ruler will be able to
maintain the state in safe and security. Ruler is outside any law or morality; Machiavelli
never talked about the values of politics. Everything is completely amoral, and he wants
to exclude the issues of authority and legitimacy concerning power. There’s no standard
to judge his acts except the success of his political expedients for enlarging and
perpetuating the power of the state. Thus, in order to better govern the state,
Machiavelli acknowledges that good laws and good arms constitute the foundations of a
well-ordered political system and it is coercion which creates legality. So, the legitimacy
of law rests entirely upon the threat of coercive force. Indeed, fear is always preferable
to affection in subjects and violence and deception are better than legality in effectively
controlling them; people obey only because of fear for consequences of not doing so.
Machiavelli admired Savonarola but he was unarmed so he did not succeed, that is an
instance why a successful ruler has to use.
13) VIRTUE AND FORTUNE - MACHIAVELLI

by the church, because of their complete absence of both Christian faith and morality
Virtù is the term that best captures Machiavelli’s vision of the requirements of power
politics. It has nothing in common with Christianity or moral virtue but comes from the
root vir in the sense of courageous. It is referred to the range of personal qualities
necessary for the prince in order to maintain his state and to achieve great things (the
two standard markers of power for him). The concept can be summarized as “flexible
disposition” in order to know what strategies and techniques are appropriate in
different circumstances. The word virtù occurs 60 times in the prince. The link between
virtù and power is Fortuna. It is the enemy of political order, it is the ultimate threat to
the safety and the security of the state. It is malevolent and a source of disasters.
Machiavelli’s most famous discussion of Fortuna occurs in chapter 25 of “The Prince”:
it is compared to a furious ranging river which throws down trees and buildings,
something which everyone flees away from. Thus, the prince has to very mind that, even
though fortuna brings about destruction, its depredations are under human control, so
it is possible to take precautions. Its destructive power occurs where virtue and wisdom
do not prepare to resist it. Preparation to pose an extreme response to the vicissitudes of
fortuna will ensure victory against it and it is what virtue provides: the ability to
response to fortune at any time and in any way that is necessary. Machiavelli also
suggests that a successful Prince would have to develop a psychology entirely different
as far as he will be prepared to face fortuna, and not to deviate from the right conduct if
possible. Indeed, he did not find any example of a successful ruler who, though his
characteristics suited his times, would have been so successful as circumstances have
changed.
14) POLITICS AS A GAME – MACHIAVELLI

Politics is a game and the ruler must follow the game: there are mechanics of
government, means by which states may be made strong, policies by which they can
expand their power, errors that lead to decay. No concern for religion, moral, and social
consideration. It depends always and solely on man. According to Machiavelli, power is
what defines political activity and hence it is necessary for any successful ruler to know
how power is to be used: only by means of the proper application of power individuals
will obey and the ruler will be able to maintain the state in safe and security. The game
places the ruler outside any laws and morality, and he wants to exclude issues of
authority and legitimacy concerning the power. He must prefer fear than affection in
subjects, and violence and deception are better than legality in effectively controlling
them. The methods to maintain the power are varied and depend upon the foresight
that the prince exercises. Thus, the successful ruler needs special training. Since the
prince’s aim is to discuss the concerns of princes and give them rules for how to behave,
Machiavelli provides lists of things the prince should do or not do in order to maintain
the power and advice in order to take the power. Politics is absolute because any
consideration about it is irrelevant.
15) REPUBLICAN, ROYALIST, SCIENTIST? – MACHIAVELLI

As for the political inclination of Machiavelli, it is difficult to understand throughout his
works whether he is a royalist or a republican. On the one side, in the Prince he seems
to be a royalist. He advocates to the individual action for taking the power for a prince
and glorifies his virtues. It seems to be a manual for the perfect prince: how to conquer,
maintain the power, behave with citizens, face fortuna... Machiavelli held that it was
necessary, in his time, to build a new and strong State whose starting point was the
political action of the individual. Furthermore, the ruler was concerned to be outside
law and morality and could rest on violence and fear in order to make subjects
respecting the laws. On the other side, in the Discourses perhaps he expresses honestly
his personal political beliefs and his republican sympathies, since, concerning his idea of
virtue states that “a Republic has a greater vitality and a longer good fortune than a
Principality, for it can accommodate itself better to the differences of the times, because
of the diversity of its Citizens, than can a Principality”. In fact, his arguments in favour
of republican regimes also appeal to his sceptical stance toward the acquisition of virtue
by any single individual, and hence the implication that a truly stable principality may
never be attainable. Changing events require flexibility of response and the republic
implies that people of different qualities fit different exigences. However, most
important for Machiavelli is his consideration as the first (modern) political scientist.
He successfully applied in the field of political science, and for the first time, the method
of natural science, the one of Galileo, by conceiving man as an element of nature and by
reasoning inductively about his behaviour. According to him, politics is not subject to
morality, is autonomous. It has got peculiar laws and human behaviour must be studied
according to these laws: when judging the prince’s actions must be exclusively
evaluated his ability to “maintain the state” and to “achieve great things”, and not the
principles of legitimacy or authority.
16) SOVEREIGNTY – BODIN

The 16th century was a period marked by bloody religious conflicts. The Peace of
Augusta (1555) was signed by Ferdinand of Habsburg and a coalition of Protestant
princes of Holy Roman Empire in order to end the conflict between Catholics and
Protestants that followed the Lutheran Reform; It was assumed principle of: Cuius
regio eius religio The Night of Saint Bartholomew (between 24th-25th August) in 1572 is
the turning point in the panorama of Wars of Religion in France: the main exponents of
Huguenot nobility killed by Catholic League (after the command of King of France
Charles IX), then the religious divisions became almost intolerable and Protestants
published two essays against French Monarchy: “Franco-gallia” about the principle
that the French kings were initially chosen by people, so they can be deposed by people;
“Vindicae contra Tyrannos” about civil life regulated by two different contracts, one for
the religious sphere, the other for politics; the contract which binds the Prince and
populace is the 2nd. Among this debate, it emerges the group of “Politiques”, which
sought to raise the king above all the religious sects and political factions. They
supported Henry IV of Bourbon who aimed for national pacification, neither
Huguenots nor Catholics. A compromise between Catholics and Calvinists was not
possible (i.e. about God’s salvation). Their theory of “tolerance” seemed to suit their
aim: it would reduce the religious belief as non-determinant for the realm, power would
seek a different source of legitimacy from religious one. The monarch would have been
impartial and have strong power recognized and respected by everyone, in order to
fight anarchy and violence. He would have been new source of national unity. Then 30-
Year War (1616-1648), Habsburg and Holy Roman Empire against France; Holy
Empire tried to impose religious uniformity over its domains, but it was against
principle of Peace of Augusta. Protestants set up Evangelical Union and they defeated
Habsurg. Treaty of Westphalia (1648) political restauration, setting up a new
absolutistic monarchy which instituted the principle of state sovereignty confirming the
assumption of Peace of Augusta.
Bodin elaborated his theory of sovereignty in the context of an expanding commercial
economy that needed uniformity and a centralizing State wracked by religious conflict.
It’s a political concept reshaped in juridical terms and tells us we’re out of Middle
Agesmodernity. Sovereignty is supreme power over citizens and subjects,
unrestrained by law and that’s the source of law itself. Bodin tries to camouflage this
“breaking of modernity”, showing new concept as something very old: “For sovereignty
is meant that absolute and perpetual power that belongs to the State. Latin called it
maiestas, Greeks akrà exousìa, kyrìa arké polìteuma; Italians signoria… neither jurist nor
political philosopher had ever defined it”.He seems to define only more accurately
something universally known in politics. The concept itself of sovereignty/sovereign
power is the mark of the State, necessary and indispensable to itwithout it there
would be no political order (sovereignty is Bodinean solution to the problem of order).
Thus sovereignty:
 Is a dutyit doesn’t lie in the figure of monarch but in the throne and the
crown, so that wouldn’t vanish
 Derives from system itselfnot from divine elements
 Is the source of lawthere’s a center that gives you law; it’s the end of laws
given by custom and tradition!
 Needs a supreme decisional center of powerexceptional cases (i.e. Truman:
“the buck stops here” power won’t pass to higher authority)
 No limitationlaw binds subject not who establishes it (Absolutistic!!!)
Shortly, the unique, inalienable, invisible perpetual and absolute central power is the
State where supreme power (monarch or assembly) holds sovereignty and can delegate
power to a gov’t formed in different ways. It wouldn’t be a distribution or division of
sovereignty (no mixed gov’t!) because monarch must hold power to make and unmake
laws and implement policies (final test of sovereignty). Sovereignty is a cluster of ideas
of modernity about politics:
 Assumption that Rex est imperator in regno suo with no foreign interference of
any sorthe has supremacy over territory and citizens (jurisdiction). Borders of
states the being or not part of it
 It’s a pluralistic arrangementthere are many States which employ sovereignty
 It’s independentfree of legal subordination to any other authority (it’s not a
question of power but freedom)
 It’s assumed on a potentially limitless concentration of powerno place for
classical liberalism, divisionism and limitation of power
 Makes sense only in relation to birth and consolidation of State
Bodin’s theory of sovereignty was more prescriptive than an actual depiction of
fragmented powers and authorities in 16th century France. In the following century,
Henry IV and Louis XIII brought France closer to a state of undivided sovereignty
17) ASPECTS OF CONSTITUTIONALISM – BODIN
The 16th century was a period marked by bloody religious conflicts. The Peace of
Augusta (1555) was signed by Ferdinand of Habsburg and a coalition of Protestant
princes of Holy Roman Empire in order to end the conflict between Catholics and
Protestants that followed the Lutheran Reform; It was assumed principle of: Cuius
regio eius religio The Night of Saint Bartholomew (between 24th-25th August) in 1572 is
the turning point in the panorama of Wars of Religion in France: the main exponents of
Huguenot nobility killed by Catholic League (after the command of King of France
Charles IX), then the religious divisions became almost intolerable and Protestants
published two essays against French Monarchy: “Franco-gallia” about the principle
that the French kings were initially chosen by people, so they can be deposed by people;
“Vindicae contra Tyrannos” about civil life regulated by two different contracts, one for
the religious sphere, the other for politics; the contract which binds the Prince and
populace is the 2nd. Among this debate, it emerges the group of “Politiques”, which
sought to raise the king above all the religious sects and political factions. They
supported Henry IV of Bourbon who aimed for national pacification, neither
Huguenots nor Catholics. A compromise between Catholics and Calvinists was not
possible (i.e. about God’s salvation). Their theory of “tolerance” seemed to suit their
aim: it would reduce the religious belief as non-determinant for the realm, power would
seek a different source of legitimacy from religious one. The monarch would have been
impartial and have strong power recognized and respected by everyone, in order to
fight anarchy and violence. He would have been new source of national unity. Then 30-
Year War (1616-1648), Habsburg and Holy Roman Empire against France; Holy
Empire tried to impose religious uniformity over its domains, but it was against
principle of Peace of Augusta. Protestants set up Evangelical Union and they defeated
Habsurg. Treaty of Westphalia (1648) political restauration, setting up a new
absolutistic monarchy which instituted the principle of state sovereignty confirming the
assumption of Peace of Augusta.
This claim justifies Bodin’s favor for monarchy because it’s:
 Most “natural” regime
 Could best limit class conflict as well as religiousmixed gov’t was rule of rich
over poor and poor over rich (unstable!); “wisdom for ruling is the natural
capacity of very few. What stupider than plebs?”
 Closest to his doctrine of sovereignty
 Non despotic (even absolute)sovereign has limitations according to the Leges
Imperii (rights of nature, divine laws and fundamental laws of realm such as
Salic succession). He was legibus solutus but would face at least God if he
committed injusticeidea of limitation of power through the law
Leges Imperiithey’re a peculiar class of laws connected with application of
sovereignty that even sovereign cannot change. With their violation sovereignty
would vanishsovereign is both the source of law and subject of certain
Constitutional laws which he hasn’t made and can’t change
Paradox it seems the crown was just an officereal sovereign power is the system,
law, Constitution. It’s impossible that:
 Realm has laws that even sovereign power can’t change
 Sovereign identified with the Prince if political community has already laws and
Constitution on its own
Furthermore, Bodin precluded taxation without consentFrench Crown could subsist
on its royal domains, with supplementary incomes from colonies, tolls, gifts, and, last
and least desirable, its levying of imposts on subjects, only when clearly necessary
preferably with consent. (John Hearsey MicMillan Salmon”it is a very strange
conception of sovereignty which is not financed”)
18) GIVING UP LIBERTY FOR POWER AND SECURITY – HOBBES
The 17th century was a period of civil wars in England and France. Revolts against
taxation in England led to civil war (1642-1651) between Royalists and Roundheads,
and in the end tyranny of Oliver Cromwell. Then in 1660 there was restauration of
monarchy.
In France there were too hard struggles between Catholics and Huguenots. It was a
period of immense changes in intellectual outlook of Europe as concerning philosophy
and science: Machiavelli stated politics rests on force and selfishness; Bodin (during
French war of religion) introduced the concept of sovereign power; Descartes who
distrusted human beings (he extended to his ability to understand things); Galileo and
his theory of mechanism; Grotius dealt with the natural law is not founded on God
anymore but in human nature. Thomas Hobbes was born in England and studied at
Oxford; he had connections with Galileo and Descartes and because of his link to the
royalist side he was forced to go on exile in Paris. His main works are “The Elements of
Law”, “Elements of Philosophy”: “De Cive”, “De Corpore” “De Homine” attempts to
arrange components of natural science, psychology and politics from the most
fundamental to the most specific; “Leviathan”, the first part about politics and
philosophy and the second part about the Scriptures.
According to Hobbes, the State of Nature where men live before entering the society is
an intolerable condition, inconsistent with any kinds of civilization: no place for
industry, navigation, art... life of man is solitary and poor. It is a State centred on the
natural right of self-preservation, that would be limited but in practice becomes an
unlimited right to potentially anything, a right to “all things”. Thus, self-preservation
leads to struggle for power, which aim is the supremacy on others. Thereby this kind of
competition brings men to kill each other, which means that man, if left alone, is
brought to the auto-destruction: “I put for a general inclination of all mankind, a
perpetual and restless desire of power after power, that ceaseth only in death...”. Thus,
people continuously challenge each other so that the basic security upon which
comfortable and civilized life depends, is impossible. Own’s security is always unsafe,
and men realize that peace and cooperation have a greater utility for self-preservation
than violence and general competition and Leviathan (which brings peace) is the only
solution. It is the foresight of their own preservation and a more contented life the final
cause in the introduction of that restraint upon themselves. The only way to erect such a
common power, as may be able to defend them from the invasion of foreigners, and the
injuries of one another, is to confer all their power and strength upon one man, or upon
one assembly of men, that may reduce all their wills, by plurality of voices, unto one
will. This is more than consent, or concord; it is a real unity of them all in one and the
same person, made by covenant of every man with every man, in such manner as if
every man should say to every man: I authorise and give up my right of governing
myself to this man, or to this assembly of men, on this condition. This done, the
multitude so united in one person is called a State; in Latin, Civitas. This is the
generation of that great. And who carries this person is called sovereign and said to
have sovereign power; and everyone besides, his subject.
19) LIBERTY – HOBBES

monarchy.
According to Hobbes, liberty is to be found in the silence of the laws (silentium legis,
libertas civium). Liberty, or freedom, signifies properly the absence of opposition (by
opposition, I mean external impediments of motion); and may be applied no less to
irrational and inanimate creatures than to rational. But when the impediment of motion
is in the constitution of the thing itself, we use not to say it wants the liberty, but the
power, to move; as when a stone lies still, or a man is fastened to his bed by sickness.
And according to this proper and generally received meaning of the word, a freeman is
he that, in those things which by his strength and wit he is able to do, is not hindered to
do what he has a will to. When men submitted to the Leviathan, they have also made
artificial chains, called civil laws, which they themselves, by mutual covenants, have
fastened. As liberties, in such a State governed by Leviathan we must consider what
rights we pass away when we make a Commonwealth because in the act of our
submission consists both our obligation and our liberty. However, there is no State in
the world wherein there be rules enough set down for the regulating of all the actions
and words of men (as being a thing impossible): it follows necessarily that in all kinds of
actions, by the laws pretermitted, men have the liberty of doing what their own reasons
shall suggest for the most profitable to themselves. The liberty of a subject lies therefore
only in those things which, in regulating their actions, the sovereign has pretermitted:
such as is the liberty to buy, and sell, and otherwise contract with one another; to
choose their own abode, their own diet... Since sovereignty is by covenant of every one
to every one, it is manifest that every subject has liberty in all those things the right
whereof cannot by covenant be transferred. There are things which, though
commanded by the sovereign, he may nevertheless without injustice refuse to do: If the
sovereign command a man, though justly condemned, to kill himself, he has the liberty
to disobey. If a man is interrogated by the sovereign, or his authority, concerning a
crime done by himself, he is not bound (without assurance of pardon) to confess it;
because no man can be obliged by covenant to accuse himself unless he declares the
following words: “I authorise, or take upon me, all his actions”, in which there is no
restriction at all of his own former natural liberty. As for other liberties, they depend on
the silence of the law. In cases where the sovereign has prescribed no rule, there the
subject has the liberty to do, or forbear, according to his own discretion. And therefore,
such liberty is in some places more, and in some less; and in sometimes more, in other
times less, according as they that have the sovereignty shall think most convenient. As
for example, in some places of the world men have the liberty of many wives: in other
places, such liberty is not allowed.
20) POSSIBLE FORMS OF GOVERNMENT – HOBBES
monarchy.
According to Hobbes, the top ambition of the rational man is the abandonment of the
State of Nature, thus every kind of Leviathan/State is better than the former condition.
In chapter 19 of the Leviathan, Hobbes describes the different kinds of Commonwealth:
“The difference of Commonwealths consists in the difference of the sovereign. When the
representative is one man, then is the Commonwealth a monarchy; when an it is a
democracy, or popular Commonwealth; when an assembly of a part only, then it is
called an aristocracy. There cannot be other kind: it must have the sovereign power
(which is indivisible) entire. Tyranny, oligarchy and anarchy are not the names of other
forms of government, but of the same forms misliked. For they that are discontented
under monarchy call it tyranny; and they that are displeased with aristocracy call it
oligarchy and they which find themselves grieved under a democracy call it anarchy.
The difference between these three kinds of Commonwealth consists, not in the
difference of power, but in the difference of convenience or aptitude to produce the
peace and security of the people; for which end they were instituted. And to compare
monarchy with the other two, we may observe: first, that whoever becomes the
representative of the people though he is careful in his politic person to procure the
common interest, yet he is more, or no less, careful to procure the private good of
himself, and for the most part, if the public interest chance to cross the private, he
prefers the private. Now in monarchy the private interest is the same with the public.
The riches, power, and honour of a monarch arise only from the riches, strength, and
reputation of his subjects. For no king can be rich, nor glorious, nor secure, whose
subjects are either poor, or contemptible, or too weak through want, or dissension, to
maintain a war against their enemies; whereas in a democracy, or aristocracy, the
public prosperity confers not so much to the private fortune of one that is corrupt, or
ambitious. Secondly, that a monarch receives counsel of whom, when, and where he
pleases; and consequently, may hear the opinion of men versed in the matter about
which he deliberates, and as long before the time of action and with as much secrecy as
he will. But when a sovereign assembly has need of counsel who intervenes the most are
those who have been versed more in the acquisition of wealth than of knowledge.
Thirdly, that the resolutions of a monarch are subject to no other inconstancy than that
of human nature; but in assemblies, besides that of nature, there arises an inconstancy
from the number. Fourthly, that a monarch cannot disagree with himself, out of envy or
interest; but an assembly may; and in extremis that may produce a civil war. Fifthly,
that in monarchy there is this inconvenience: that any subject, by the power of one man,
may be deprived of all he possesses; but the same may as well happen where the
sovereign power is in an assembly. Sixthly, that even if the descendant of the sovereign
is an infant, or one that cannot discern between good and evil, all the danger that can
occur will arise from the contention of those that, for an office of so great honour and
profit, may become competitors. We have to admit that this inconvenience., if it
happens, is to be attributed, not to the monarchy, but to the ambition and injustice of
the subjects.
However, there shall consider the particular arising from these mingled together. As for
example, elective kingdoms: where kings have the sovereign power put into their hands
for a time; or kingdoms wherein the king has a power limited. Concerning an elective
king, when sovereign is elected, he has absolute power. Concerning that king whose
power is limited it will mean he is no sovereign, the sovereignty therefore was always in
that assembly which had the right to limit him, and by consequence the government not
monarchy, but either democracy or aristocracy; as of old time in Sparta, where the
kings had a privilege to lead their armies, but the sovereignty was in the Ephori”.
21) STATE OF NATURE LOCKE-HOBBES – LOCKE
In the 16th century England became the first country which abandoned the absolutistic
model thanks to two Revolutions. The first Revolution Jacob I succeeded to Elizabeth I
and unified the reigns of England (catholic) and Scotland (puritan); he supported the
Anglicans and forced people to attend the religious functions. While some Catholics
organized the so-called Gunpowder Plot, Puritans preferred to go away first to Holland
and then to the New World (Pilgrim Fathers, 1620). Charles I came to power after
Jacob and imposed new taxes ignoring the claims of Magna Charta Libertatum (“no
taxation without parliamentary consent”) and established special courts against
political and religious opponents. Then he had to impose other high taxes for the war
against Spain, but revolts spread almost everywhere and broke out in a civil war (1642-
1651) between Cavaliers (Royalist side) and Roundheads (Parliamentary side), these
ones headed by Oliver Cromwell. In the Battle of Worchester, Roundheads won and
Cromwell’s tyranny began. In 1683 there was the Stuart Restoration. The second
revolution was different, since it was a bloodless revolution: the Glorious Revolution
(1688-1689), marked by the struggle for the succession that led to the deposition of
James II and his substitution with William III (d’Orange). It was period of tension
between Whigs (liberal party) and Tories (conservative party). With the introduction of
Habeas Corpus (the right to be brought before a judge or court before being
imprisoned, 1679) and the Bill of Rights (it outlined the specific constitutional and
civil rights and ultimately gave Parliament power over the monarchy, 1689) the project
of Magna Charta Libertatum finally reached fulfillment. It moved the balance of power
from the throne to the Parliament, and from now on the constitutional and civil rights
had to be followed by the government, and the king must not appoint himself as Prime
Minister. England became a monarchy controlled by parliament lines fixed by the
results of civil wars (the so-called Constitutional Monarchy). Then the Act of Settlemnt
(1701) designed the Protestant succession to the throne and strengthened the guarantees
for ensuring the parliamentary system of government. John Locke was born in
Wrington in 1652; his parents were Puritan, but he studied medicine in order to become
physician. Because of his link with the Whig party he went exiled in Holland. He died in
1704. For his claims on private property he’s considered the founder of classical
liberalism and, in Marxist view, the prophet of the bourgeois revolution. His main
works are “An Essay Concerning Human Understanding” (1689) and “Two treatises on
Government” (1689), his most important political work; it was written as a Manifesto of
the future Revolution, not to worship the already established regime. Indeed, it was
published anonymously because he feared possible persecutions and plots.
The distinction between Hobbes and Locke mainly origins from their different
historical context in which they lived. Though the period was really narrow, they faced
in England two completely difference situations: Hobbes witnessed the first bloody
revolution, while Locke the bloodless and positive one. Thus, it is easy to understand
why according to Hobbes, the most important thing to be avoided is the civil war, while
for Locke it is the loss of freedom. According to Hobbes, the state of nature is a state of
chaos, without government nor common authorities to resolve disputes. He ascribes to
each person a natural right to preserve herself, that would be limited but becomes in
practice an unlimited right to potentially anything (“right to all things”). He also
assumes that men are all equal but dominated by egoism and this is the cause of their
unstoppable competition. In fact, the instinct of self-preservation leads to the struggle
for power, which aim is the supremacy on others and brings them to kill each other, to
the auto-destruction. Thus, such a natural state becomes a “state of war”, a war of “all
against all”: “I put for a general inclination of all mankind, a perpetual and restless
desire of power after power, that ceaseth only in death... he cannot be content with a
more moderate power... he cannot live well... without the acquisition of more”. It is
clearly an intolerable condition, where justice and injustice does not make any sense at
all (it is a bellum omnium contra omnes which originated from the fact that homo
homini lupus). It is inconsistent with any kind of civilization: there is no industry,
navigation, art...; life of man is solitary and poor. The only way to solve the problem of
the order in the state of nature, according to Hobbes, must be radical, and it is the
Leviathan, which includes the abandonment of all individual rights. According to
Locke, the state of nature is “Men living according to reason, without a common
superior on earth, to judge between them, is properly the state of nature” (Two
Treatises). People lack a common judge, but it is not a state of war nor the people are
abandoned to the chaos, they follow natural laws that allow them to acquire private
property on what is in common, beginning from the self-ownership. People have natural
rights, but it does not mean that it is a state of licence: in fact, since they all belong to
God thus, they are His property and equal, it implies some limitations such as men
cannot kill or hurt other man, nor can suicide. State of nature becomes a state of war
whenever someone i.e. invades his neighbour’s property: “force, or a declared design of
force upon the person of another, where there is no common superior on earth to appeal
to for relief, is the state of war”. It is not an intolerable condition, in fact people might
not enter the organized society if they do not feel the necessity. It is better than some
forms of government, i.e. absolutist monarchy, which threaten individual liberties. The
condition why people might enter is merely the difficult attainment of law and order in
disputes where each one is judge of his own cause and so has the executive power.
Furthermore, if people decide to enter the society, they do not give up any natural rights
apart from the right of self-defence.
22) LABOR IN THEORY OF PROPERTY – LOCKE

results of civil wars (the so-called Constitutional Monarchy). Then the Act of Settlemnt
According to Locke, property is one of the three main natural rights which are life,
liberty and property. If life and liberty were already accounted to be natural rights
wanted by God, the very breaking with the past Locke made, was to justify also private
property as a mandate of God. Before Locke’s theory, private property originated
exclusively from consent, covenant, now, since it became a natural right, man in
acquiring private property followed the law of nature. Locke wanted to demonstrate
that beginning from the earth given the people in common, it is possible to acquire
private property: Though the earth and all inferior creatures be common to all men, yet
what is not in common is self- ownership. This nobody has any right to but himself. The
“labour” of his body and the “work” of his hands, we may say, are properly his.
Whatsoever, then, he removes out of the state that Nature hath provided and left it in,
he hath mixed his labour with it, and joined to it something that is his own, and thereby
makes it his property. Being by him removed from the common state of nature, had
something new annexed to it that excludes the common right of other men. That added
something to it, more than Nature, the common mother of all, had done, and so it
became his private right. And the taking of this or that part does not depend on the
express consent of all the commoners. Thus, the grass my horse has bit, the turfs my
servant has cut, and the ore I have dig in any place, where I have a right to them in
common with others, become my property without the assignation or consent of
anybody. The labour that was mine, removing them out of that common state they were
in, had fixed my property in them. God gave the world to men in common, but since He
gave it them for their benefit and the greatest conveniences of life, they were capable to
draw from it, it cannot be supposed He meant it should always remain common and
uncultivated. He gave it to the use of the industrious and rational; not to the fancy or
covetousness of the quarrelsome and contentious. Furthermore, there are two Lockean
provisio that restrict the accumulation of property in the state of nature: one must leave
“enough and as good” for others (sufficiency restriction). “Nobody could think himself
injured by the drinking of another man, though he took a good draught, who had a
whole river of the same water left him to quench his thirst. And the case of land and
water, where there is enough of both, is perfectly the same”. And one may only
appropriate as much as one can use it before it spoils (spoilage restriction) “Whatsoever
he tilled and reaped, laid up and made use of before it spoiled, that was his peculiar
right; whatsoever he enclosed, and could feed and make use of, the cattle and product
was also his. But if either the grass of his enclosure rotted on the ground, or the fruit of
his planting perished without gathering and laying up, this part of the earth,
notwithstanding his enclosure, he offended against the common law of Nature, and was
liable to be punished: he invaded his neighbour’s share, for he had no right further than
his use called for any of them, and they might serve to afford conveniences of life”.
23) SOCIAL CONTRACT – LOCKE

results of civil wars (the so-called Constitutional Monarchy). Then the Act of Settlement
According to Locke, state of nature is “Men living according to reason, without a
common superior on earth, to judge between them, is properly the state of nature”
(Two Treatises). In the state of nature people follow natural laws that allow them to
acquire private property on what is in common, beginning from the self- ownership.
“But though state of nature is a state of liberty, yet it is not a state of licence; though
man in that state has an uncontrollable liberty to dispose of his person or possessions,
yet he has not liberty to destroy himself, or so much as any creature in his possession,
but some nobler use than its bare preservation calls for it. The state of Nature has a law
of Nature to govern it, which obliges every one, and reason, which is that law, teaches
all mankind that being all equal and independent, no one ought to harm another in his
life, health, liberty or possessions; for men are all the workmanship of one omnipotent
and infinitely wise Maker... they are His property. And, being furnished with like
faculties, belonging to the same owner, sharing all in one community of Nature, there
cannot be supposed any such subordination among us that may authorise us to destroy
one another, as if we were made for one another’s uses. For as much as we are not by
ourselves sufficient to furnish ourselves with competent store of things needful for such
a life as our Nature does desire, a life fit for the dignity of man, therefore to supply those
defects and imperfections which are in us, as living single and solely by ourselves, we
are naturally induced to seek communion and fellowship with others; this was the cause
of men uniting themselves as first in politic societies. Men being by nature all free,
equal, and independent, no one can be put out of this estate and subjected to the
political power of another without his own consent. But I moreover, affirm that all men
are naturally in that state, and remain so till, by their own consents, they make
themselves members of some politic society. And this is done by barely agreeing to unite
into one political society, for their comfortable, safe, and peaceable living, one amongst
another, in a secure enjoyment of their properties, and a greater security against any
that are not of it. It is nothing more than the consent of any number of freemen capable
of majority to unite and incorporate into such a society which begins and actually
constitutes any political society. And this is that, and that only, which did or could give
beginning to any lawful government in the world. When any number of men have so
consented (they expressly agreed), they have thereby made that community one body,
with a power to act as one body, which is only by the will and determination of the
majority, or else it is impossible it should act or continue as one body. The act of the
majority passes for the act of the whole, thereby has the power of the whole.
24) WHY HUMANS GET OUT STATE OF NATURE – LOCKE

results of civil wars (the so-called Constitutional Monarchy). Then the Act of Settlement
According to Locke, state of nature is “Men living according to reason, without a
common superior on earth, to judge between them, is properly the state of nature”
(Two Treatises). People lack a common judge, but it is not a state of war nor the people
are abandoned to the chaos, they follow natural laws that allow them to acquire private
property on what is in common, beginning from the self-ownership. People decide to get
out of it and enter the organized society with a contract only because some
complications of the state of nature: the attainment of law and order is difficult in
disputes where each one is judge of his own cause so has the executive power “in the
ordinary state of Nature, he has a liberty to judge of his right, according to the best of
his power to maintain it”. On the one hand, people want to defend their property that,
according to Locke, is a natural right; on the other, one might invade another’s man
right, his neighbour’s property , thereby “force, or a declared design of force upon the
person of another, where there is no common superior on earth to appeal to for relief, is
the state of war; and it is the want of such an appeal gives a man the right of war even
against an aggressor, though he be in society and a fellow-subject”. Such a condition is
unreasonable, so the only right people renounce to, with the social contract, is the right
of self- defence and they do not give up other rights apart from it. Thus, in the new
society becomes crucial the figure of the judge to resolve controversies: “Those who are
united into one body, and have a common established law and judicature to appeal to,
with authority to decide controversies between them and punish offenders, are in civil
society one with another; but those who have no such common appeal, I mean on earth,
are still in the state of Nature, each being where there is no other, judge for himself and
executioner”. Finally, the supreme end of the state is to ensure defence of property
because the state itself origins in order to defend property, and its power is limited to
the public good. It is a power that has “no other end but the preservation of property”.
Furthermore, entering the new society is better than staying in the state of nature only
in some cases and forms, differently from Hobbes. Absolute monarchy is worse because
a monarch who is legibus solutus would violate natural rights of the people without
punishment; and it is also impossible because no one belongs to someone else except to
God.
25) IMPACT OF PROGRESS IN HUMAN NATURE – ROUSSEAU

The 18th century was marked by the spread of a new political, cultural and philosophical
movement called the age des lumières (age of Enlightenment). It had roots in English
philosophy based on empirical reason and scientific knowledge, in particular thanks to
the thoughts of Locke, Newton and Hume. France soon became the main center of the
movement. Jean-Jacques Rousseau was born in the Calvinist city-state of Geneva in
1712; he was influenced by the education received by his father: republican patriotism
and reading classical authors. As adult he moved permanently to Paris where he got in
contact with many figures of French Enlightment and wrote contributions to
“Encyclopèdie”; in 1749 he participated to an essay competition about “whether the
development of the arts and sciences had improved or corrupted public morals”; he
won it with a big no as answer. In the last part of his life Rousseau was condemned of
heterodoxy in both Paris and Geneva and moved to England. He suffered from mental
instability and died in Paris in 1778. His main works about politics are “Two
Discourses” and “The Social Contract” (1762) and his main work about education is
“Emilie”.
Rousseau’s conception about progress and its impact on human life clearly emerges in
his Discourse on the sciences and arts as a reply to the essay competition organized by
the academy of Dijon in 1744. The theme of the contest was “whether the development
of the arts and sciences had improved and corrupted public morals” and his answer was
a big no: he believed that sciences and arts had kept human away from important
values and had enslaved him in the civil society. According to Rousseau, modernity is
like a cage that imprisons man and tries to reduce him as a single rational reality. His
thesis was already being held by Calvinists two centuries earlier, but he missed the
divine element. He believed that cultural products of history moved man backward not
forward his evolution, and society was the only responsible. Culture was responsible for
the softening of customs (indeed the model to get inspired from is the Greek polis of
Sparta, a warrior republic, fierce and virtuous). It was such evil for humankind that he
stated, “a thinking man is a depraved animal”. The worst consequence of the progress is
the loss of traditional and authentic virtues “our habits were rustic but natural, and
differences in behaviour announced at first glance differences in character…
Nowadays... a vile and misleading uniformity governs our customs, and all minds seem
to have been cast in the same mould...”. He attacked society and civilization through
attacking culture: he claimed that philosophy was responsible for the destruction and
defamation of all that men hold sacred, intelligence for undermining reverence, science
for taking away faith and reason for being against moral intuition. The path toward
society brought man out of the state of nature, where he lived isolated but virtuously,
held all the positive values which had not been already degenerated because of society
and, most important, could feel the sufferance. Rousseau criticized Hobbes because he
believed that the State of War, the bellum omnium contra omnes, was the result of
society and belonged to “public persons”, it was not the state of nature. Man fought not
as detached individual but as citizen. In the second discourse he imagined a multi-stage
evolution of humanity which lead to the modern society and identified in the creation of
small settled communities the origins of inequality. In fact, they originated private
property and society, and it was the end of cooperation. Then, economic inequality
came to mean ranking inequality because landowners owned the power too. According
to him, property was the original sin, the conspiracy of owners to build a civil society.
Rousseau’s point of view about progress was clearly antithetic to his contemporaries’ of
the ages des lumières. Nevertheless, enlightenment thinkers such as Voltaire pushed and
supported him in writing the first discourse and let him write contributions in the
popular Encyclopedie, as well as distrusted him after he published the second discourse
(Voltaire said that it was “an essay against the human species”).
26) SOCIAL CONTRACT ROUSSEAU-LOCKE – ROUSSEAU
“Emilie”.
Before comparing Rousseau’s and Locke’s social contract, it is important to consider, in
order to better understand the nature of each one, their different accounts of the state of
nature. Rousseau believed that the state of nature was a mental construct that maybe
didn’t exist at all, useful to make us understand how far society modified. He shared
nothing with the precedent theorists of natural right (such as Locke): it couldn’t be an
intellectual projection in order to demonstrate the origin of society nor the source of
goods and values to be preserved in the society. It was probably a state were the society
(if it could not exist) didn’t exist and where lived the natural man, a man who lived
simply and virtuously, potentially held all the positive values, the ones then corrupted
by the society, and could feel the sufferance. By contrast, Locke’s State of Nature is
“Men living according to reason, without a common superior on earth, to judge between
them, is properly the state of nature” (Two Treatises). It is not a state of war nor the
people are abandoned to the chaos, but only the lack of a common judge. It is governed
by natural law that are discovered thanks to human reason. Thereby, according to
Rousseau, the social contract is the therapy for humans, the solution of the two
impossibilities of his period (impossible to bring back the state of nature neither tolerate
the civil one). It is the only means to guaranteeing freedom and equality, what makes
the society united: people will associate in a community that will give back as much
freedom as possible through self-imposed laws; they will serve their homeland giving up
their own individualities thus submitting to the general will. What people lost forever
(because of the former owners) was the natural freedom but in exchange they gain civil
freedom that is autonomy (obedience to a moral law which we impose upon ourselves).
People who “do not obey to general will shall be compelled to do so by the whole body...
will be forced to be free”. It’s not an agreement between a superior and an inferior, but
an agreement between the body and each of its members—an agreement that is
legitimate, because it is based on the social contract, equitable, because everyone takes
part in it, useful, because the only object it can have is the general good, and stable,
because guaranteed by the public force and the supreme power. So long as the subjects
have to submit only to agreements of this sort, they don’t obey anyone, only their own
will. No principle of majority nor representation is possible because sovereignty (which
belongs to the general will) is inalienable and it will mean loss of freedom, a form of
slavery. The general will cannot be reduced merely as a pursuit of most of the social
body, but is the general interest interpreted as the product of the conflict of individual
interests that cancel reciprocally. According to Locke, people decide to enter the
organized society because of some difficulties of the state of nature. They realize it is
difficult the attainment of law and order in disputes where each one is judge of his own
cause and so has the executive power. Since such a condition is unreasonable, the judge
is the main figure the society origins, who must protect the natural rights of the
individuals. People do not abandon their natural rights, but only the right of self-
defence (take justice into their own hands). It is not a contract between the superior and
the inferior but is a bilateral pact that provides the right of resistance. Legitimacy of
government is based on the idea of separation of powers (and people must have
representatives with sufficient power to block attacks on their liberty) and the
promotion of public good. Society will be moved by the principle of majority; thus, the
consent is the modus operandi of the government. While Rousseau’s social contract
brings equality for all people who submit to the general will (“everyone forces himself to
the same conditions and must benefit the same rights...”), Locke’s founds itself on the
condition of equality among men because they’re all equally property of God.
27) LIBERTY AS AUTONOMY – ROUSSEAU
“Emilie”.
Rousseau gave the classic definition of positive liberty, which is that, in the civil State,
man, as part of the political body and member of the common self, obeys only himself, is
autonomous in the very sense of the word (auto-nomos: he obeys only the laws he gave
himself). Thus, Rousseau maintains that the liberty people gain after the social contract
is civil freedom/liberty that means autonomy (obedience to a moral law which we
impose upon ourselves).→Social Contract I,8 “We could add on the profit side the fact
that in the civil state a man acquires moral liberty, which alone makes him truly master
of himself: for the drive of sheer aptitude is slavery, while obedience to a law that we
prescribe to ourselves is liberty”. To put it simple, this conception of liberty is what
Isaiah Berlin means with: "I am my own master", which lays claim to a freedom to
choose one's own pursuits in life. He does not interpret freedom by as simply being left
alone (negative freedom), but as self-mastery. The laws we impose upon ourselves comes
from the General will, which originated from the social contract, that is the general
interest of citizens interpreted as the product of the conflict of individual interests that
cancel reciprocally, and which aims for the common interest. The general will reflects
the rational interest of the individual as a citizen, as well as that of the citizens’ as a
whole. (It is not a naïve altruism, but rather it is democratic institutions so designed that
we have an incentive to impose laws on ourselves that advance common interests.)
Ultimately Rousseau has to admit that if, even after participation in a democratic
assembly, an individual finds himself at odds with the general will, he must be enslaved
by his lower self and therefore unfree→the individual may be “forced to be free” by
coercive laws because it will be like he wants to enjoy the rights of being citizen without
satisfy the duties of being subject: it will bring about the crumbling of the political
body. The ethical basis that explains its origin is the full identity between who rules and
who obeys. In such a system the populace is sovereign, and this implies self-legislation.
Law is not antithetic to liberty anymore (as Bentham claims) because in obeying the
law, the individual citizen is thus only obeying himself as a member of the political
body. His definition of positive liberty really influenced Immanuel Kant’s “Perpetual
peace” and “Metaphysics of morals”. In political theory, liberty as autonomy, is
generally referred to a general will, that of the state, nation, community or birthplace: it
means that in political theory the main problem is not the autonomy of the man as an
individual, but rather the autonomy of the political body whose the individual is a part.
Theories which claims this kind of liberty, from Rousseau to Hegel’s, have an organic
conception of the society, not atomistic, they’re looking for the liberty of the whole, not
the individual’. Liberty as autonomy is much more than the absence of restraints,
because it refers specifically to the range of options that is open to a person and to the
conditions necessary for the achievement of a variety of goals. According to John Gray,
liberty as autonomy does not, as the more extreme theories of positive liberty, require
the complete obliteration of individual subjective choice by the state, but it does demand
that institutions provide a range of facilities that turn abstract choices into real
opportunities.
28) GENERAL WILL – ROUSSEAU
“Emilie”.
According to Rousseau, the general will is the first product of the social contract and
implies the full identity between who rules and who obeys so that it can direct the State
to the common good, the very aim for its creations. By submitting to the general will,
people enter a system where the populace is sovereign, and sovereignty is inalienable,
indivisible (cannot be given up nor taken away from the political body because belongs
to the whole body), infallible (it is always right and aims for the public good) and
absolute (it is exercised over every member of the political community limitlessly). As he
described in his political economy (1755), advocating an extreme organicism, the
general will cannot be the will of the majority because it is conceived as “an organised,
living body, resembling that of man. The sovereign power represents the head; the laws
and customs are the brain, the source of the nerves and seat of the understanding, will
and senses, of which the Judges and Magistrates are the organs: commerce, industry,
and agriculture are the mouth and stomach which prepare the common subsistence; the
public income is the blood, which a prudent economy, in performing the functions of the
heart, causes to distribute through the whole body nutriment and life: the citizens are
the body and the members, which make the machine live, move and work” which lived
thanks to the absolute unity of its components. It is never the sum of the individual wills
of the people (it will be the “will of all”) and cannot be reduced merely as a pursuit of
the social body. It is the general interest interpreted as the product of the conflict of
individual interests that cancel reciprocally. Thus, it corresponds to the moral
dimension of the political community. There cannot be basis for distinctions among
people because submission to the general will provides equality to every citizen “the
social compact creates an equality among the citizens so that they all commit themselves
to observe the same conditions and should all have the same rights. Thus, from the very
nature of the compact, every act of sovereignty... obliges or favours all the citizens
equally; so that the sovereign recognises only the body of the nation and doesn’t
distinguish among the individuals of whom it is made up”. As it is never the will of the
majority, thus it cannot have government nor representatives: government is merely
“an intermediate body set up between the subjects and the sovereign to enable them to
communicate with one another; it’s job is to apply the laws and to maintain civil and
political liberty”; and about representation: “I hold then that sovereignty, being
nothing less than the exercise of the general will, can never be alienated, and that the
sovereign, which is nothing but a collective being, can’t be represented except by itself:
the power indeed may be transmitted, but not the will”. In general, any form of
representation is impossible because it would mean loss of freedom, a form of slavery.
29) MARX AND HEGEL – MARX

Karl Marx was born in 1818 in Trier, Germany. He studied law and philosophy at
university; due to his political publications, Marx became stateless and lived in exile in
London.
Since Marx, as a young man, was strictly linked to the Hegelian left, it is not by chance
that his thought is very influenced by critiques to Hegel’s philosophy. To develop the
dialectical approach (his method is called historical materialism or dialectical
materialism), Marx transformed ideas he found in the works of Hegel (1770-1831).
Hegel’s approach reveals that there is something more behind the appearances and
contradictions people see in the world and to discover it, they must find a way to
reconcile things that seem to be conflicting opposites. The goal is to discover a synthesis
which unites the truth in each of the opposites. This process of reconciliation is repeated
over and over through history until a final or highest synthesis is reached. His basic
assumption for the dialectical process was that ideas make up reality. The, he held that
society is a moving force of antithetical forces which generate social change by their
tension and struggle and social history is an international or almost logical evolution of
the forces themselves. He identifies the state as the synthesis that reconciles subject (the
altruism of the family, limited to a few) with object (civil society expressing universal
selfishness). Through the state, people find a meaning in their lives. The state is the end
of history because it crushed selfish individualism and upheld duty through obedience.
Building on his method, Marx reversed Hegel’s dialectical theory: according to Marx, it
is the material (or economics) that makes up reality. Marx added materialism to Hegel’s
dialectical view of history. To Marx, people can have a truly scientific understanding of
the reality that is human history only by applying Hegel’s dialectic to material things.
This is because, according to Marx, the underlying driving force behind all history is, in
fact, material or economic. Material forces (and not spirit) are the motor of the progress
and the driving force of social change is struggle, and the determining factor in the last
resort is power. The struggle is between social classes rather than nations, and the
power is economic rather than political (political power is only a consequence of
economic position). Note that Marx does not prove but simply assumes that politics is
the result of economic forces and accompanies class struggles. Like Hegel, Marx also
assumes that history is a series of necessary evils with a clear goal, which for him is
classless society that provides economic justice for all, while for Hegel is the
establishment of the state.
30) CLASS STRUGGLE CAPITALISTIC MODE PRODUCTION - MARX
According to Marx, it is crucial the role of the individual belonging to a class in history:
the driving force of social change is struggle between social classes (not nations) and the
last resort is economic power (rather than political). Engels, in the preface of the
Manifesto of the Communist Party, reported Marx’s thought “...consequently (ever
since the dissolution of the primaeval communal ownership of land) all history has been
a history of class struggles, of struggles between exploited and exploiting, between
dominated and dominating classes at various stages of social evolution; that this
struggle, however, has now reached a stage where the exploited and oppressed class (the
proletariat) can no longer emancipate itself from the class which exploits and oppresses
it (the bourgeoisie), without at the same time forever freeing the whole of society from
exploitation, oppression, class struggles”. The key to human history, then, is the epic to
class struggles. Their origin, development and promise of a better future form the
substance of Marx’s argument. Everyone has an inescapable physical need to sustain
life. To fulfil this need, people need organize economic systems or modes of production.
At each stage of history, economic forces give rise to two major classes, whose relations
are grounded in oppression and injustice, since the ruling class (made up of the few)
dominates and exploits the subject class (the many). Marx saw in the industrial
revolution potentially the most important fact in modern history. On the one hand there
was a class defined by ownership of the means of production and motivated by the
necessity of creating profits; on the other ab industrial proletariat having no power
except through the pressure of well-organized masses and obliged to sets as its end not
political liberty but the maintenance or improvement of its standard of living.
Capitalism which originated, is an institution, only a phase in the evolution of modern
society. According to capitalism, labour is a good like others, thus it is sold in the
market. Capitalists need laborers in order to make the means of production work, and
proletarians need to work in order to survive. The former buys work and the latter sells
it. Though Marx had never formulated the word “Capitalism”, his economy consists of
the description of the capitalistic mode of production which is characterized by private
ownership of the means of production, extraction of surplus value by the owning class
for the purpose of capital accumulation, wage-based labour and being market-based. It
is a social system in which those who own the means of production can buy services of
the workers. According to Marx, economic systems which preceded capitalism had the
form G-M- G: one produces the good, sells it and with the money earned from its selling
buys another good in order to survive. The capitalist mode of production has a different
form: M-G-M+: it means anew dominant position for those who have M and the whole
system evolves around capital, and M+, which means accumulation of wealth, is the
beginning and end of the economic production. Increase of capital value is generated
exclusively by unpaid human labour. This continuous creation of capital and its
dominance over labour is the most important fracture with the past because impressed
dynamism in human history since economy became able to increase limitless (before
could only reproduce itself). Another difference is that in the capitalistic society, the
worker is “free” and has nothing to do with slaves. According to Marx, the antagonism
between bourgeois and proletariat origins from this new capitalistic mode of
production: For the bourgeoise to increase money more and more, it is compulsory to
low more and more proletarians’ wages.
31) STAGE OF HISTORY ECONONOMIC MATERIALISM – MARX

Like Hegel, Marx also assumes that history is a series of necessary evils with a clear
goal, which for him is classless society that provides economic justice for all. As a result,
he s certain that bpth the fall of the bourgeois “and the victory of the proletariat are
equally inevitable”. Marx’s goal is worked out through history in definable stages or
time periods, with the last stage yet to come. Writing on these stages, Engels says that
every stage of human history is marked by class struggle, between exploiting and
exploited, which origin from the mode of economic production. According to Marx,
everyone has an inescapable physical need to sustain life. To fulfil this need, people need
organize economic systems or modes of production. At each stage of history, economic
forces give rise to two major classes, whose relations are grounded in oppression and
injustice, since the ruling class (made up of the few) dominates and exploits the subject
class (the many). In each historical period, the authority of the ruling class stems from
its economic role; it holds political power because it commands production. Social class
and economics serve as the base (substructure) on which a complex superstructure is
founded (politics, family, law, religion, ideas...). Actually, people do not choose their
ideas or forms of government but are defined for them by their economic class system.
It is the substructure that determines superstructure. Ideology is a part of the
superstructure thus it is defined by the substructure and it justifies existing class
relations. “Life is not determined by consciousness, but consciousness by life”, “it is not
the consciousness of men that determines their existence, but, on the contrary, their
social existence determines their consciousness”. Class struggle in one stage are related
to those in other stages, and every system prodeuces the seeds of its own destruction
because the exploited class will always be driven to overthrow its rulers and install
himself as the new ruling class. However, a new ruling class can be placed only when the
former becomes economically obsolete due to changes in technology. But after the
falling of capitalism there will not be class struggles anymore: when workers will
triumph, their victory will free everyone. According to Marx, the first stage of history
was Prehistory. It has nothing in common with Hobbes’s or Lockes’s state of nature, he
concentrates on the tribe where all decisions were made collectively. There was no
division between rulers and ruled and everyone participated in a pure democracy.
Economically, the system was a primitive communism. If there was a simple division of
labour, it was not artificial. No class divisions and no private property. Precapitalism
coincided with development of agriculture and tool making. This led to a class-based
division of labour and creation of a system of private property that produced an
artificial poverty which was unjust, as some suffered, and others flourished.
Governments were created to support the rights of the newly empowered class. The two
major classes in dialectical opposition were master and slave which soon become lord
and serf, after a series of revolutions which led to the Middle Ages. The new classes of
new urban merchants who transformed medieval economics, bankers who funded
monarchs in war against their nobles, and urban residents who secured royal charters
giving them autonomy from local lords in return for their political support Capitalism
was the product of industrial revolution which marked the shift from the feudal to the
capitalist stage of history. The two major classes in dialectic contention are bourgeois
and proletariat. Following the pattern of the past stages, the bourgeoise used
government to rule and oppress the proletariat. Capitalism is based on wage labour,
and the worker is free to work for the employer offering the best pay. Workers are freer
than serfs were because are not property of the capitalists who have also less power
than lords did. Under capitalism, everyone is formally equal under the law.
32) SURPLUS VALUE AND CAPITALISM AS EXPLOITATION - MARX
According to his theory of exploitation, Marx held that workers in a capitalist society
are exploited insofar as they are forced to sell their labour power to capitalists for less
than the full value of the commodities they produce with their labour. This additional
labour is called surplus labour and it produces, for the capitalist, surplus value. For
Marx, however, exploitation was a phenomenon that characterized all class-based
societies, not only capitalism. Indeed, in feudal society the exploitative nature of class
relations is very clear: serfs use some of their labour power for their own benefit, while
another part (the corvée) is used for the benefit of the feudal lord. In contrast, under
slavery workers appear to work entirely for the benefit of their masters (though in
reality a part of their labour goes toward providing for their own subsistence). And
under capitalism workers appear to work entirely for the benefit of themselves, selling
their labour to capitalists as free independent contractors. In reality, Marx thought,
workers’ labour under capitalism is neither truly voluntary nor entirely for the benefit
of the workers themselves. They are forced by their lack of ownership of the means of
production to sell their labour power to capitalists or else starve. And workers are not
labouring entirely for their own benefit because capitalists use their privileged position
to exploit them, appropriating for themselves some of the value created by workers’
labour. To understand Marx’s charge of exploitation, it is first necessary to understand
Marx’s analysis of market prices, which he largely inherited from earlier classical
economists such as Adam Smith and David Ricardo. Under capitalism, Marx argued,
workers’ labour power is treated as a commodity. And because Marx subscribed to a
labour theory of value, this means that just like any other commodity such as butter or
corn, the price (or wage) of labour power is determined by its cost of production—
specifically, by the quantity of socially necessary labour required to produce it. It is the
amount of labour time performed by a worker of average skill and productivity and
becomes the average unit labour cost which determines the value of any good. The cost
of producing labour power is the value or labour-cost required for the conservation and
reproduction of a worker’s labour power. In other words, Marx thought that workers
under capitalism will therefore be paid just enough to cover the bare necessities of
living. They will be paid subsistence wages.
But while labour power is just like any other commodity in terms of how its price is
determined, it is unique in one very importance respect. Labour, and labour alone,
according to Marx, has the capacity to produce value beyond that which is necessary for
its own reproduction. In other words, the value that goes into the commodities that
sustain a worker for a twelve-hour work day is less than the value of the commodities
that worker can produce during those twelve hours. This difference between the value a
worker produces in a given period of time and the value of the consumption goods
necessary to sustain the worker for that period is what Marx called surplus value.
According to Marx, then, it is as though the worker’s day is split into two parts. During
the first part, the labourer works for himself, producing commodities the value of which
is equal to the value of the wages he receives. During the second part, he works for the
capitalist, producing surplus value for the capitalist for which he receives no equivalent
wages. During this second part of the day, the labourer’s work is, in effect, unpaid, in
precisely the same way (though not as visibly) as a feudal serf’s corvée is unpaid.
Capitalist exploitation thus consists in the forced appropriation by capitalists of the
surplus value produced by workers. Workers under capitalism are compelled by their
lack of ownership of the means of production to sell their labour power to capitalists for
less than the full value of the goods they produce, or they will be replaced by the
industrial reserve army. Capitalists, in turn, need not produce anything themselves but
are able to live instead off the productive energies of workers. And the surplus value
that capitalists are thereby able to appropriate from workers becomes the source of
capitalist profit, thereby “strengthening that very power whose slave it is”.
33) COLLAPSE OF CAPITALISM – MARX
It appears to follow from this analysis that as industry becomes more mechanised, using
more constant capital and less variable capital, the rate of profit ought to fall. For as a
proportion less capital will be advanced on labour, and only labour can create value. In
Capital Volume 3 Marx does indeed make the prediction that the rate of profit will fall
over time, and this is one of the factors which leads to the downfall of capitalism.
Marx’s analysis of market prices, which he largely inherited from earlier classical
economists such as Adam Smith and David Ricardo became obsolete while the
controversy was still in progress. However, surplus vale was the keystone of his
argument, since it provided the ground of his conclusion that a capitalist system must
ultimately be self-destructing. In the third volume of “Das Kapital”, published by
Engels in 1894, Marx clearly explains how capitalism will collapse because of what
Marx called in 1857 the “tendency of the rate of profit to fall” which is “the most
important law of political economy”. The tendency was already foreshadowed in
chapter 25 of the first volume, but now he dedicates a deeper analysis. The TRPF means
that during times surplus value is doomed to get smaller and smaller. Technological
innovation will increase physical productivity but will decrease the value of goods
because it will take less to produce them. Simultaneously, however, technological
innovation will replace people with machinery, thereby it will become harder and
harder to low labourers’ wages and to produce surplus value. In a short time,
competition and technology investments will make profits smaller compared to the
value of production capital invested. Capitalism becomes a spiral out of control made of
events linked each other. Technology will fall rate of profit. Use of machinery will
replace human labour and thus create an “army” of unemployed workers, the
“industrial reserve army”, always ready to replace someone who would like to be paid
more. Unemployment will bring polarization of wealth in the hands of capitalists
exclusively. Lower salary for labourers means that labourers, who are costumers too,
could not afford the goods they produce anymore (overproduction and under
consumption). Capitalists will lose their costumers and there will be produced more
goods than demanded. Finally, all these conjunctures will reduce the number of
capitalists who will give up their industries and then become proletarians. In the end,
proletarians will have to defeat only a small number of capitalists, “the knell of
capitalist private property sounds. The expropriators are expropriated.” Decline of
capitalism was consubstantial in capitalism itself. And socialism will origin from its
auto-destruction. Capitalism is distinctive, Marx argues, in that it involves not merely
the exchange of commodities, but the advancement of capital, in the form of money,
with the purpose of generating profit through the purchase of commodities and their
transformation into other commodities which can command a higher price, and thus
yield a profit. Marx claims that no previous theorist has been able adequately to explain
how capitalism as a whole can make a profit. Marx’s own solution relies on the idea of
exploitation of the worker. In setting up conditions of production the capitalist
purchases the worker’s labour power — his ability to labour — for the day. The cost of
this commodity is determined in the same way as the cost of every other; i.e. in terms of
the amount of socially necessary labour power required to produce it. In this case the
value of a day’s labour power is the value of the commodities necessary to keep the
worker alive for a day. Suppose that such commodities take four hours to produce.
Thus, the first four hours of the working day is spent on producing value equivalent to
the value of the wages the worker will be paid. This is known as necessary labour. Any
work the worker does above this is known as surplus labour, producing surplus value
for the capitalist. Surplus value, according to Marx, is the source of all profit. In Marx’s
analysis labour power is the only commodity which can produce more value than it is
worth, and for this reason it is known as variable capital. Other commodities simply
pass their value on to the finished commodities, but do not create any extra value. They
are known as constant capital. Profit, then, is the result of the labour performed by the
worker beyond that necessary to create the value of his or her wages. This is the surplus
value theory of profit.

History of Political Thought

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1) DIVISION OF LABOR – PLATO

9) STATE AS A MONOPOLY OF FORCE WEBER – THE STATE

12) HOW DOES HE SEE HUMAN BEINGS? – MACHIAVELLI

13) VIRTUE AND FORTUNE - MACHIAVELLI

14) POLITICS AS A GAME – MACHIAVELLI

15) REPUBLICAN, ROYALIST, SCIENTIST? – MACHIAVELLI

16) SOVEREIGNTY – BODIN

19) LIBERTY – HOBBES

22) LABOR IN THEORY OF PROPERTY – LOCKE

23) SOCIAL CONTRACT – LOCKE

24) WHY HUMANS GET OUT STATE OF NATURE – LOCKE

25) IMPACT OF PROGRESS IN HUMAN NATURE – ROUSSEAU

29) MARX AND HEGEL – MARX

31) STAGE OF HISTORY ECONONOMIC MATERIALISM – MARX

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