The power of “wealth, nobility and men:” Inequality and corruption in Machiavelli’s Florentine Histories
| Published date | 01 October 2020 |
| Date | 01 October 2020 |
| Author | Amanda Maher |
| DOI | 10.1177/1474885117730673 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
EJPT
Article
The power of ‘‘wealth,
nobility and men:’’
Inequality and corruption
in Machiavelli’s
Florentine Histories
Amanda Maher
University of Chicago, USA
Abstract
This article draws a connection between socio-economic inequality and political cor-
ruption based on a reading of Machiavelli’s Florentine Histories. Prevailing interpretations
of the Histories attribute the moral corruption and civil conflict Machiavelli condemns as
the source of Florence’s republican failure to the unique historical conditions of early-
modern Florence. In this article, I trace Florentine corruption and factionalism to the
perennial problem of inequality. Through his narration of the two centuries of
Florentine history leading up to Cosimo de Medici’s ascent to first citizen, I contend,
Machiavelli demonstrates the deleterious effect of inequality on the social relations,
organizational forms, and modes of collective action in Florence. At the same time,
his depiction of Florence’s transformation from a quasi-feudal commune dominated by a
nobility with private armies to a modern commercial city ruled through patronage
illustrates the contingent modality of inequality and the particularly subversive way it
can manifest in the more civil republics of the modern era.
Keywords
Corruption, inequality, Machiavelli, Republicanism, Florentine Histories
What are the implications of wealth inequality for politics and freedom? Relying on
certain fundamental though often implicit assumptions regarding human nature
and society, republicans, like Machiavelli, take for granted the notion that eco-
nomic power does (and will always) translate into political power. Yet, for many
early figures associated with the republican tradition, this inequality of political
influence was not seen as altogether illegitimate. Wealth, with its connection to
European Journal of Political Theory
2020, Vol. 19(4) 512–531
!The Author(s) 2017
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DOI: 10.1177/1474885117730673
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Corresponding author:
Amanda Maher, University of Chicago, 5828 S. University Ave., Chicago, IL, 60637, USA.
Email: amaher@uchicago.edu
birth, education, and leisure time, was often relied on by ancient and early-modern
republicans as an imperfect indicator of moral character and capacity for both
citizenship and political leadership.
1
Machiavelli, in contrast, condemns economic
inequality, and the disproportionate socio-political power it affords the wealthy
few, as the single greatest cause of the political corruption and civil conflict that
destroys republics.
This divergence from the tradition regarding wealth and its relationship to virtue
originates in the distinct approach Machiavelli takes to the study of political soci-
ety. For his ancient and civic humanist predecessors, the central questions with
respect to politics were primarily ethical in nature—who deserves citizenship? And
what does it mean for those in power to govern well (more generally see, Mansfield,
2000)? Machiavelli, however, is less concerned with defining the moral obligations
of those in power than with understanding the sources of that power and the
possibility of its constraint and dispersal over time (Najemy, 2010).
2
Both the
Discourses on Livy (1996) and the Florentine Histories (1988) exhibit this concern
to understand power and wealth from a sociological perspective.
3
What
Machiavelli concludes based on this socio-historical approach to politics is that
significant inequality corrupts republican politics because of the way it structures
collective action and shapes the strategic and cultural practices of society.
4
In
conditions of concentrated wealth, the wealthy and powerful few exploit their
resources to cultivate dependents and partisans from among the many citizens
with only modest resources and no direct access to political power. The effect of
this for a republican way of life, according to Machiavelli, is catastrophic.
The Roman republic, Machiavelli’s favored example of ancient republican virtue,
was ruined due to the ‘‘great inequality’’ that eventually arose there under the
commander-patrons of the Roman army (FH III.1).
5
Likewise, as I hope to dem-
onstrate in what follows, Machiavelli blames the persistence of inequality in
Florence, and the unrelenting civil conflict and political instability it gave rise to,
for the failure of his city to live up to its republican aspirations and its capitulation
to the princely rule of the Medici.
I elaborate this connection Machiavelli makes between inequality, factionalism,
and corruption in Florence through a reading of his Histories. Machiavelli begins
the Histories by making it his express intention to explain the source of the civil
conflicts that undercut Florence’s republican aspirations (FH Preface). Yet, as
readers of the Histories know too well, Machiavelli’s dense and complicated nar-
rative style makes this promised explanation far from easy to discern. Prevailing
interpretations trace the divisions Machiavelli condemns in Florence to the unique
historical circumstances of early-modern Italy. Harvey Mansfield (1996), for exam-
ple, ascribes Florentine sectarianism to the temporal and ideological influence of
the Church in modern Italy.
6
Others trace the origins of Florentine corruption to
the defeat of the Florentine nobility at the beginning of the 14th century and to the
political machinations of the new merchant elite that took their place (Bagge, 2007;
Benner 2009; Black, 2005; Clarke, 2013; Najemy, 1982). Taking a somewhat dif-
ferent approach, Mark Jurdjevic (2014) attributes Machiavelli’s apparent disillu-
sionment with Florence in the Histories to his recognition of the Florentine
Maher 513
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