Marxist Machiavellianism

Merleau-Ponty's 1947 coinage for the form of political action distinctive to Marxism: a dialectical politics that names its detours and subordinates them to a general definition of the phase, distinguishing it from "pure" Machiavellianism in which detours operate without articulation. The concept is articulated in *Humanism and Terror* (1947) Ch. IV as the structural difference between Marxism and the raison d'État tradition: Marxism is a politics of consciously detoured action, where Lenin's "we are retreating" is the philosophical content of the retreat. The current Soviet pathology is precisely that it has stopped calling its detours detours — it has reverted from Marxist Machiavellianism to pure Machiavellianism.

Key Points

Governing formulation: "Marxist Machiavellianism differs from pure Machiavellianism inasmuch as it transforms compromise through awareness of compromise, alters the ambiguity of history through awareness of ambiguity, and it makes detours consciously — calling them detours. Marxism calls a retreat a retreat and it places the details of local politics and tactical paradoxes in the larger perspective." (H&T Ch. IV)
The Lenin paradigm: MP's empirical demonstration is Lenin's 1922 NEP speech (Report to the Fourth Congress of the Communist International). Lenin describes the 1921 crisis ("the gravest internal political crisis"), explains why "the direct transition to purely socialist forms... was beyond our available strength," and articulates NEP as a "retreat" toward "State capitalism." MP's reading: Lenin's frankness — naming the discontent of the masses, naming the foolishness of certain Bolshevik moves, naming the retreat as a retreat — is what makes the move Marxist Machiavellianism rather than pure Machiavellianism.
The structural difference: rule vs. no rule: in Marxist Machiavellianism, compromise has a rule — Lenin's "raising the general level of proletarian class-consciousness, revolutionary spirit, and ability to fight and win" (Left-Wing Communism). In pure Machiavellianism, compromise has no rule that can be philosophically articulated and sustained; compromise is instrumentally licensed by whatever the agent in power requires.
The dialectic without bewitchment: a Marxist dialectic is "a world on the move where every idea communicates with all others and where values can be reversed; all the same, it is not a bewitched world where ideas operate without any rule, where at any moment angels become devils and allies friends. Within a given period of history and a given policy of the Party, values are decided upon and are strictly adhered to because they arise out of the logic of history."
The current Soviet pathology: under Stalinism, "values" no longer have the named status they had under Lenin. The dialectic has reverted to the bewitched form (allies become enemies overnight without articulation, retreats are not named as retreats, values are reversed without acknowledgment). The break is precisely the loss of the named dialectic — the regression from Marxist Machiavellianism to pure Machiavellianism.
Connection to the changement-quantite-qualite thesis: the qualitative break between Leninism and Stalinism is the forgetting of the rule. Means become ends not by adoption of a new rule but by the abandonment of the rule that distinguished means from ends. Marxist Machiavellianism's calling-detours-detours is what made Leninism a philosophical-political practice; its loss is what makes Stalinism a purely political practice without philosophical articulation.

Details

The Lenin NEP Speech as Paradigm

H&T Ch. IV gives Lenin's 1922 Report to the Fourth Congress of the Communist International an extended quotation. The structure of Lenin's reasoning, as MP reads it:

Frankness about the crisis: "We felt the impact of a grave — I think it was the gravest — internal political crisis in Soviet Russia. This internal crisis brought to light discontent not only among a considerable section of the peasantry but also among the workers."
Frankness about the cause: "The reason for it was that in our economic offensive we had run too far ahead, that we had not provided ourselves with adequate resources... the masses sensed what we ourselves were not then able to formulate consciously but what we admitted soon after."
Frankness about the response: "We decided unanimously... to adopt the New Economic Policy."
Frankness about the form: "It seems very strange to everyone that a non-socialist element should be rated higher than, regarded superior to, socialism in a republic which declares itself a socialist republic." — Lenin defends NEP as "a retreat" toward "State capitalism," using the Marxist-philosophical vocabulary of Marx (state capitalism as a transitional form) to articulate the move.
Frankness about the foolishness: "I have said that we have done a host of foolish things, ... four enemies blame us and say that Lenin himself admits that the Bolsheviks have done a host of foolish things, I want to reply to this: yes, but you know, the foolish things we have done are nonetheless very different from yours. We have only just begun to learn, but we are learning so methodically that we are certain to achieve good results."

MP's commentary: "Rarely has a chief of government been seen to admit so frankly the discontent of the masses, to provide reasons for the discontent and upon it to construct a new policy, himself pointing out the risks of failure, recognizing his mistakes, schooling himself with the masses, with foreigners, and with the facts. It is easy to see Lenin has no fear of 'giving weapons to the reactionaries.' He does not ignore the use that might be made of his words. Nevertheless he believes that speaking openly brings in more than it costs because it associates the government with its subjects, and by giving it the support of the masses throughout the world it reconciles it with what for Marxism is the principal agent of history."

What Distinguishes Marxist Machiavellianism

The structural distinction:

Pure Machiavellianism: politics as the manipulation of forces by an agent who occupies the standpoint outside the ordinary moral-philosophical articulation. The Prince is the figure: above the moral law, secretive in his strategies, willing to do what is necessary even when (especially when) the necessary is unsayable.
Marxist Machiavellianism: politics as the manipulation of forces within a shared philosophical-historical articulation. The Marxist leader is not outside the philosophical-political frame; he is the agent who articulates the frame as he acts. Lenin's NEP speech is the philosophical content of NEP — the move and its naming are the same act.

The key conceptual move: Marxist Machiavellianism transforms compromise through awareness of compromise. The transformation is not a reduction of the moral cost of compromise (Lenin's NEP retreat is still a retreat, still costly, still risky); it is a change in the political-philosophical character of the action. The compromise is taken into the dialectical movement of history by being articulated as compromise.

The Dialectic Without Bewitchment

H&T's formulation of the Marxist dialectic:

"Within a given period of history and a given policy of the Party, values are decided upon and are strictly adhered to because they arise out of the logic of history. It is this absolute within a surrounding contingency which constitutes the difference between the Marxist dialectic and vulgar relativism."

Two features:

Values within a phase: even though the dialectic permits reversal of values across phases, within a phase values are stable. "Within a given period... values are decided upon and are strictly adhered to." The "absolute within a surrounding contingency" is the structural form.
Phases articulated as phases: the dialectic is not bewitched precisely because the phases are named. "The Marxist dialectic subordinates tactical deviations at a particular moment to a general definition of the phase concerned and makes that definition known." The dialectical reversal is not arbitrary because the reversal itself requires a public articulation of the new phase.

The contrast with "vulgar relativism" is structural: relativism treats values as locally arbitrary; dialectic treats values as locally stable but globally subject to dialectical movement. The local stability is what gives the dialectic its rationality; the global movement is what gives it its temporal openness.

The Stalinist Reversion

The implicit critique: under Stalinism, the named-phase structure of the Marxist dialectic has been lost. Reversals occur without articulation (the Hitler-Stalin pact named only retroactively as a defensive measure; the Trotsky-was-always-a-traitor narrative imposed without acknowledgment of the prior alliance; the Right Opposition condemned with the Left Opposition's program intensified). The dialectic has reverted to the bewitched form: angels become devils and allies enemies overnight, without the articulation that would make the reversal dialectical rather than tactical-instrumental.

This is the structural content of H&T's diagnosis of Stalinism. Not that Stalin has betrayed Marxism (the standard Trotskyist line) and not that Stalinism is the inevitable consequence of Marxism (the standard anti-Communist line) but that Stalinism is Marxism-without-the-naming-of-detours — pure Machiavellianism that has retained the Marxist forms (state planning, party discipline, anti-bourgeois rhetoric) while evacuating the Marxist articulating practice.

The connection to changement-quantite-qualite: the qualitative break is the loss of the named-phase structure. Salary differentials cease to be transitional measures (because they are no longer named as transitional); compromise ceases to have the rule of "raising class-consciousness" (because the rule itself is no longer articulated); the dialectic ceases to be dialectic and becomes "zigzag" (because the zigs and zags are no longer subordinated to a general definition of the phase).

The Method as Method

Marxist Machiavellianism is not just a political-strategic style; it is a method. The political agent who practices Marxist Machiavellianism is engaged in a continuing public articulation of his action's place in the dialectical movement of history. The articulation is not optional; it is the content of the action.

This is one of the senses in which H&T is a phenomenological-political work. The phenomenological method's commitment to the public articulation of phenomena (the description of phenomena as phenomena, not as objects) is structurally identical to Marxist Machiavellianism's commitment to the public articulation of detours (the naming of detours as detours, not as ends). MP's political-philosophical analytic and his phenomenological method converge on the same structural commitment — the refusal of the unsaid premise.

Distinction from Trotsky's Practical Dialectic

The wiki's Trotsky page (drawing on AD) records Trotsky's practical dialectic as the supple, precise, complex political reasoning Trotsky exhibits in Their Morals and Ours and similar texts. The practical dialectic of Their Morals and Ours is Marxist Machiavellianism in H&T's sense:

"In practical life as in the historical movement the end and means constantly change places." (Trotsky, quoted AD 75)

"Each revolutionary act is efficacious not only through what it does but through what it gives people to think about. Action is the pedagogy of the masses, and explaining one's actions to the masses is acting again." (Trotsky, quoted AD 76)

These are the formulations of named-detour politics. The "explaining one's actions to the masses is acting again" formula is precisely the structural form of Marxist Machiavellianism: the public articulation is part of the action, not commentary on the action.

The MP / Trotsky relation: Trotsky in his practical dialectic exemplifies Marxist Machiavellianism; Trotsky in his theoretical naturalism (the pure-philosophy passages of In Defense of Marxism) reverts to pre-dialectical scientific materialism that does not exemplify Marxist Machiavellianism. The two Trotskys are in tension. H&T's engagement with Trotsky in Ch. III draws on the practical dialectic against the theoretical naturalism — even as Ch. III's central critique of Trotsky-in-exile is that his rationalism and Kantian ethics depart from the practical dialectic.

Positions

MP 1947 (this source): Marxist Machiavellianism as the structural difference between Marxism and pure Machiavellianism; Lenin's NEP speech as the paradigm; the Stalinist reversion as the regression to pure Machiavellianism.
Lenin (the historical exemplar): the 1922 Report to the Fourth Congress of the Communist International is H&T's paradigmatic Marxist-Machiavellian text. Lenin's "we are retreating; we are calling it a retreat; here is what the retreat means" is the form.
Trotsky's Their Morals and Ours (1938): another exemplar — "explaining one's actions to the masses is acting again" is the structural form of Marxist Machiavellianism in Trotsky's practical-dialectical voice.
Stalin and Stalinist orthodoxy (the regression): the named-phase structure has been lost; the dialectic has reverted to bewitched zigzag. This is the structural diagnosis of *changement de quantité en qualité*.
Machiavelli (the historical figure): Marx and Engels both engaged Machiavelli with respect; H&T preserves this engagement. Engels said Machiavelli was "the first writer of modern times worth mention" (cited H&T Ch. IV); Marx considered Machiavelli "with Spinoza, Rousseau, and Hegel, in the company of those who had discovered the working laws of the State." But Machiavelli's raison d'État tradition operates without the philosophical articulation that distinguishes Marxist Machiavellianism. See niccolo-machiavelli and virtu-machiavelli for further development.
Liberal tradition (Locke, Mill — implicit interlocutor): treats political action as either rule-following (the lawful state) or unprincipled violation (the criminal exception). Marxist Machiavellianism is neither — it is rule-following within a phase whose articulation transforms what would otherwise be unprincipled violation into the dialectical movement of history.

Connections

is exemplified by Lenin's 1922 NEP speech — the empirical paradigm of Marxist Machiavellianism in H&T Ch. IV.
is the philosophical content of Trotsky's practical dialectic in Their Morals and Ours — though Trotsky is in tension with himself between the practical dialectic and the theoretical naturalism.
grounds the degeneration thesis — the qualitative break is the loss of the named-phase structure that distinguishes Marxist Machiavellianism from pure Machiavellianism.
is the political-philosophical correlate of MP's phenomenological method — the public articulation of phenomena as phenomena is structurally identical to the public articulation of detours as detours.
contrasts with "pure Machiavellianism" — the raison d'État tradition of unspoken-strategy politics.
contrasts with "vulgar relativism" — the relativism of values without dialectical structure.
is the political form of a dialectic without synthesis in MP's later vocabulary — though H&T's formulation predates MP's hyper-dialectic.
is the political-philosophical articulation of what MP later calls indirect language — language whose meaning is public and in motion, and whose meaning includes its own awareness of being indirect.
contrasts with Sartre's later "ultrabolshevism" (per *Adventures of the Dialectic* Ch. 5) — which is pure voluntarist Machiavellianism in MP's diagnosis, retaining no Marxist articulating practice.
is read by MP's later "Note on Machiavelli" (1949) in different register — Machiavelli's virtu is Marxist Machiavellianism's non-historical ancestor: the political agent who can act under contingency without retreating into either moralism or instrumentalism. See virtu-machiavelli and play-as-political-virtue.

Open Questions

Is "Marxist Machiavellianism" a stable concept in MP's later work, or does it become absorbed into the movement / regime distinction (1955)? The 1955 reformulation is structurally similar (movement = articulated-detour politics; regime = unarticulated-detour politics) but does not retain the Machiavellian framing. The concept is most explicit in 1947.
The relation between Marxist Machiavellianism and MP's 1949 "Note on Machiavelli" (in *Inédits I* / Signs) is not worked out in H&T but is suggestive: the "Note on Machiavelli" returns to Machiavelli as a political-philosophical resource, and the virtu recovered there is structurally what Marxist Machiavellianism articulates in dialectical register. See virtu-machiavelli.
The contrast with "pure Machiavellianism" is structural in H&T but somewhat schematic. Machiavelli himself, on a closer reading, does not unambiguously fit the "pure Machiavellianism" pole — Machiavelli's Discorsi and Florentine Histories contain extensive public articulation of political reasoning that is closer to Marxist Machiavellianism than H&T's schematism allows. A future engagement with Machiavelli's actual texts might modify the contrast.
The relation to Hegelian "ruse of reason" (the world-historical individual whose private interests serve the historical-rational outcome) is suggestive: the ruse of reason is un-articulated historical articulation (the world-historical individual does not know what he serves); Marxist Machiavellianism is articulated historical articulation (the leader knows what he is doing and says it). The contrast is worth registering.
Modern political-theoretical developments (Schmitt's "decisionism," Strauss's "esoteric writing," Foucault's "governmentality") are alternative readings of the raison d'État tradition that could be read against H&T's Marxist Machiavellianism. The wiki does not engage these.

Sources

merleau-ponty-1947-humanism-and-terror — Ch. IV "From the Proletarian to the Commissar" is the primary engagement. The governing formulation is in the discussion of Lenin's NEP speech (Ch. IV around the long quotation of Lenin's Report to the Fourth Congress of the Communist International). The characterization of the Marxist dialectic ("a world on the move... not a bewitched world") is in the same section.
(Lenin, "Report to the Fourth Congress of the Communist International," November 13, 1922 — Collected Works Vol. 33; the H&T exemplar) — extensively quoted in Ch. IV.
(Marx, Capital — references in Ch. IV the engagement with Marx's "concrete Phenomenology of Mind" framing) — the philosophical background of the analytic.
merleau-ponty-1955-adventures-of-the-dialectic — the movement / regime distinction is structurally continuous with Marxist Machiavellianism though does not use the Machiavellian framing.
(MP's "Note on Machiavelli," 1949) — see virtu-machiavelli and *Inédits I* for the Machiavelli return that H&T's Marxist Machiavellianism prepares.