Conspiracy : James Martel

In this essay, I will focus on the latter, leftist sorts of conspiracies, not because the other variants aren’t equally powerful but rather because their effects are generally oriented towards the preservation of what already is. There are, of course, also right wing conspiracies that seek to radically change the world but these tend to be at the very margins of political theory.⁵ Yet, it is the leftist conspiracies of authors and readers, which are both a critical part of political theory and which seek to revisit the history of its doctrine by reading it anew, according to Derrida’s “immense rumor.”

I will focus on three figures to make this argument: Machiavelli and Hobbes, who are well established and canonical figures, and Walter Benjamin, who isn’t normally considered part of the political theory canon. Reading these authors not only as builders and critics of western forms of politics, but also as active conspirators within and against it, we can rethink the heritage of western thought as offering a radical alternative by and through these very same architects.

In the pages that follow I will engage in a conspiratorial mode of reading these texts, treating them in such a way that their meaning serves the purpose of decentralizing authority (including at times their author’s own authority over the text). Of the three authors that I am engaging with, only Benjamin readily fits into the model of a leftist conspiracy; Machiavelli and Hobbes’s texts can be and have been used for centralizing and authoritarian purposes. Yet, my purpose is to read them in a way that allows us to see them to as being “in” on this conspiracy, countering and subverting much of the doctrine we normally attribute to them. From a Benjaminian perspective, this is a worthy endeavor because, in his view, the more a thinker is ensconced in dominant power relationships, the more subversion they foment from within and the more secrets they have to reveal to the rest of us.

2. Machiavelli and Open Conspiracy

Machiavelli is one of the chief thinkers in the western canon who discusses conspiracy directly by name. In fact, he devotes the single largest chapter of his Discourses on Livy to the subject of conspiracy. The tone of that chapter, at first brush, suggests that Machiavelli is chiefly interested in suppressing conspiracies and that he shares a widespread aversion to this form of political practice. He starts out by stating that:

It seems to me proper now to treat of conspiracies, being a matter of so much danger both to princes and subjects; for history teaches us that many more princes have lost their lives and their states by conspiracies than by open war. But few can venture to make open war upon their sovereign, whilst every one may engage in conspiracies against him. On the other hand, subjects cannot undertake more perilous and foolhardy enterprises than conspiracies, which are in every respect more difficult and dangerous; and thence it is that, although so often attempted, yet they so rarely attain the desired object. And therefore, so that princes may learn to guard against such dangers, and that subjects may less rashly engage in them, and learn rather to live contentedly under such a government as Fate may have assigned to them, I shall treat the subject at length, and endeavor not to omit any point that may be useful to the one or the other.⁶

This seems to be a pretty straightforward argument against conspiracy. Yet, as is often the case with Machiavelli, the very fact of his detailing the nature of conspiracies, how they work and how they are foiled, suggests the possibility of teaching his readers how to be conspirators in the guise of warning them against such actions. In other words, if we read Machiavelli himself in a conspiratorial fashion, we see a potential—and political–plot amidst his formal denunciations.

Indeed, the examples that Machiavelli offers of conspiracies include many that he clearly finds laudable. His chapter “Of Conspiracies” is replete with examples of actual conspiracies in which Machiavelli almost always seems to be on the conspirator’s side. At one point, for example, he writes:

There is another and still more powerful motive that makes men conspire against their princes, and that is the desire to liberate their country from the tyranny to which it has been subjected by the prince. It was this that stirred up Brutus and Cassius against Caesar; it was this that excited others against the Falari, the Dionysii, and other usurpers. And no tyrant can secure himself against such attacks, except by voluntarily giving up his usurpation. But as none of them ever take this course, there are but few that do not come to a bad end.⁷

We see here that for all his admonishments that conspiracies are “rash’ and tend to fail, Machiavelli is showing us that they can succeed in eliminating tyrants. Although Machiavelli tells us that political subjects should learn to “to live contentedly under such a government as Fate may have assigned to them,” the sense of fate and inevitability is exactly what Machiavelli sets himself against (as Benjamin does as well). Many of his examples of conspiracies describe the various unanticipated events that can often foil conspiracies. He discusses for example how a conspiracy to kill the Medici (the very family who imprisoned and exiled Machiavelli after the fall of the Florentine republic and which crushed a conspiracy by many of his friends—including one to whom he devoted the Discourses) was foiled when one of the Medici family members (Giuliano) suddenly decided not to go to a dinner where the plotters planned to kill him (among others).⁸ The carefully orchestrated plan, in which each conspirator was assigned to kill a particular person in a particular place, had to be radically and suddenly changed with the result that it was foiled.

Machiavelli counsels steadfastness and prudence in the face of such contingency insofar as “want of firmness in the execution [of a conspiracy] arises either from respect, or from the inner cowardice of him who is to commit the act.”⁹ He also offers that not only secrecy but deceit are often required for conspiracies to succeed. In a passage in the Discourses that appears slightly before the chapter on conspiracies, Machiavelli writes:

[I]f their [i.e. the conspirator’s] condition be such that their forces do not suffice for open war against the prince, then they should seek by every art to win his friendship, and for this purpose employ all possible means such as adopting his tastes, and taking delight in all things that give him pleasure. Such intimacy will insure tranquility without any danger, and enable you to share the enjoyment of the prince’s good fortune with him, and at the same time afford you every convenience for satisfying your resentment.¹⁰

This could be read as an explanation in the Discourses, which has clear republican sympathies, for what Machiavelli appears to be doing in The Prince (which is usually read as a pro-authoritarian book): cozying up to the Medici in order to get closer to them for the purposes of killing or otherwise getting rid of them. For all of his initial suggestion of being against conspiracy then, it seems Machiavelli will do or countenance almost anything for them to succeed.

^{5. There are also leftist conspiracies that seek to control meaning for a select few as well.↩}

^{6. Niccolò Machiavelli, The Prince and the Discourses (New York: Modern Library, 1950), 410.↩}

^{7. Machiavelli, The Prince and the Discourses, 412.↩}

^{8. Machiavelli, The Prince and the Discourses, 424.↩}

^{9. Machiavelli, The Prince and the Discourses, 424.↩}

^{10. Machiavelli, The Prince and the Discourses, 403-4.↩}