Society, class, and state in Machiavelli’s Discourses on Livy

The power of “wealth, nobility and men:” Inequality and corruption in Machiavelli’s Florentine Histories

“…Consequences of these misguided histories rebounded in Machiavelli’s time. For Machiavelli’s aristocratic contemporaries, like Francesco Guicciardini, the period immediately prior to Cosimo’s rise to power represented a golden age of Florentine republican history in which the city was united and strong under the rule of the best families led by the Albizzi (Najemy, 2008: 434–445). In his History of Florence , Guicciardini (1970) praises the Albizzi for restoring Florence to the path of republican glory following the devastation of the Ciompi revolt that convulsed Florence in the late 14th century.…”

“…The families that dominated the medieval period in Florence were called nobles or the great (grandi), but they were not a legally designated political class. The elite families of this period distinguished themselves culturally from the people and from the merely wealthy popular families by the age of their lineage and by the cultivation of a courtly ethos of knighthood and honor or what Machiavelli calls a ''generous spirit'' (FH II.6, FH III.1; more generally, see Lansing, 2014;Najemy, 2008). Yet their power, and, in turn, the ability of particular families to thwart attempts made by their peers and later the people to order Florentine political life, depended on their ability to amass men from the middling ranks of Florentine society who could be mobilized to follow them on ritual and festive occasions and support them in the councils and, most importantly, on the streets during times of tension and conflict (Najemy, 2008: 25).…”

“…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.…”

La educación política en Maquiavelo y otros escritos

“…El sentido histórico y sociológico desde el que Maquiavelo comprendía los fenómenos políticos lo hacía un pensador sensible a las diferenciaciones sociales, hoy diríamos, a las distinciones de clase, a su dinámica y a la importancia de su influjo en la vida y en el futuro de cualquier república (Najemy, 2010). Más no sólo a esto sino, también, al hecho de la coexistencia inevitablemente conflictiva, dentro de cualquier comunidad política, de clases, grupos u organizaciones sociales que están naturalmente enfrentados por intereses contrapuestos.…”

Da honra ao patrimônio: conflito social e instituições políticas nos Discorsi de Maquiavel

“…Estudos recentes têm refutado essa separação entre a dimensão socioeconômica e a dimensão político-institucional em Maquiavel(Brudney, 1984;Najemy, 2010;Lucchese, 2009; McCormick, 2011).…”