Machiavelli and Us

Though only appearing as an occasional reference in the Marxist philosopher’s oeuvre, Machiavelli was an unseen constant presence. For together with Spinoza and Marx, Machiavelli was a veritable Althusserian passion. Machiavelli and Us reveals why, and will be welcomed for the light it sheds on the richly complex thought of its author.
"Althusser's archives contain two different sets of texts derived from courses devoted to Machiavelli. The older of them dates back to 1962: it does not display the completion of the later material and is only partially written up. The second com- prises two distinct versions of the text we are publishing under the title Machiavelli and Us, both numbered from page 1 to page 107. The first version (bearing no title, but simply called Course') is an original typescript, revised with countless handwritten corrections and additions, which are difficult to date precisely. In a draft preface dated 1975 by Althusser, we read: 'These pages, which reproduce the notes for a course from 1965, repeated in 1972, could not claim, after so many others, to offer an "interpretation" of Machiavelli's oeuvre/ However, since there is nothing to indicate that a course on Machiavelli was held in 1965, it is reasonable to assume that an error is involved, and that Althusser actually meant to refer to his 1962 course. If this is the case, then far from reproducing' his notes, he wrote a completely new text, very probably after 1968. Citing Maurice Merleau-Ponty's 'Note on Machiavelli', he refers to the reprint of this article in the col- lection Eloge de la philosophie et autres essais, published in 1965. But his own copy of the work, conserved in his library, in which he underlined precisely the passages quoted in this first version, contains the indication 'printed 20 December 1968'. And in a letter of 7 March 1972 to Henri Cretella,"