Note 68 — Chapter III · CONCERNING THE INTERPRETATION AND CRITICISM OF SOME CONCEPTS OF MARXISMToC

See Labriola, o.c. l. cit., the remarks on the difficulty with which the theory of historical materialism meets owing to mental dispositions, and amongst those who wish to moralise socialism.

One instance, in some respects analogous to this which arises from the discussions on Marx's ethics, is the traditional criticism of Machiavelli's ethics: which was refuted by De Sanctis (in the remarkable chapter devoted to Machiavelli, in his Storia della letteratura), but which continually recurs and is inserted even in Professor Villari's book, who finds this defect in Machiavelli: that he did not consider the moral question.

I have always asked myself for what reason, by what obligation, by what agreement, Machiavelli was bound to discuss all kinds of questions, even those for which he had neither preparation nor sympathy. Can it be said, by way of example, to some one who is researching in chemistry:—Your weak and erroneous spot is that you have not gone back from your detailed investigations to the general metaphysical enquiries into the principles of reality?—Machiavelli starts from the establishment of a fact: the condition of war in which society found itself; and gives rules suited to this state of affairs. Why should he, who was not cut out for a moral philosopher, discuss the ethics of war? He goes straight to practical conclusions. Men are wicked—he says—and to the wicked it is needful to behave wickedly. You will deceive him who would certainly deceive you. You will do violence to him who would do violence to you. These maxims are neither moral nor immoral, neither beneficial nor harmful; they become one of the two according to the subjective aims and the objective effects of the action, i.e. according to the intentions and the results. What is evident is that a morality which desired to introduce into war the maxims of peace would be a morality for lambs fit for the slaughter, not for men who wish to repel injustice and to maintain their rights. 'And if men were all good, this precept would not be good, etc., etc.' says Machiavelli himself. (Principe, ch. xviii). Villari is also troubled by the old formula concerning the 'end which justifies the means' and the 'moral end' and the 'immoral means'. It is however sufficient to consider that the means, just because they are means, cannot be divided into moral and immoral, but merely into suitable and unsuitable. Immoral means, unless as an expression in current speech, is a contradiction in terms. The qualification moral or immoral can only belong to the end. And, in the examples usually given, an analysis made with a little accuracy shows at once, that it is never a question of immoral means but of immoral ends. The height of the confusion is reached by those who introduce into the question the absurd distinction of private and public morality.

I may be pardoned the digression; but, as I said, questions which are really analogous re-appear now in connection with the ethical maxims of Marxism.