Is it better to be feared or loved? That was the question posed by Italian philosopher Niccolò Machiavelli over 500 years ago, yet it still remains relevant to contemporary philosophy. Marxist philosopher Antonio Gramsci, whose concept of of cultural hegemony marked a turning point in nineteenth and twentieth century Marxist thought, developed his theory in part by reading Machiavelli’s The Prince. He saw Machiavelli as the first philosopher to theorize that the nature of political leadership must be redefined, and that politics should be founded upon “the people.” Because Gramsci’s theory of hegemony is unsystematic and diverse, it can serve a multitude of analytical purposes, both philosophical and theological. One such purpose is analyzing the leadership tactics of Moses and Aaron in the golden calf narrative contained in Exodus 32.
To understand Gramsci’s interpretation of Machiavelli’s The Prince as it relates to the Biblical figure Moses, it is first important to understand Gramsci’s theory of hegemony. Hegemony (egemonia) is a term that Gramsci encountered during his time in the USSR from the Russian Bolsheviks. His use of the term can be traced back to the Russian revolutionaries, specifically Lenin, Plekhanov, and Axelrod. Lenin mainly used hegemony as a general term for domination, and the basic meaning of the term is “political leadership based on the consent of the led, a consent which is secured by the diffusion and popularization of the world view of the ruling class.” Gramsci’s theory of cultural hegemony revolves around the premise that people are not only ruled by force, but by the ideas of the surrounding culture. He believed that ideas, while not powerful enough to defeat class struggle alone, certainly played a vital role in “preserving the ideal logical unity of a whole social bloc.” The ruling class (bourgeoisie) is the class that defines what is part of the status quo and what lies outside of it. Similarly, Marx and Engels wrote that “the ruling ideas of each age have never been the ideas of its ruling class.” Hegemony, as understood by the Bolsheviks, was when the ruling class imposed their ideology onto the people they were governing, an ideology that then became the status quo. On the ideology of the ruling class, Marx and Engels wrote, “your very ideas are but the outgrowth of the conditions of your bourgeois production and bourgeois property, just as your jurisprudence is but the will of your class made into law for all, a will whose essential character and direction are determined by the economic conditions of existence of your class.” Gramsci was intimately involved with the concept of hegemony during his time as General Secretary of the Italian Communist Party and after his subsequent imprisonments under Mussolini’s fascist regime. Italy, according to Gramsci, was authoritarian because its hegemony was weak, because the state, in order to maintain its power, had resorted to force due to the absence of “spontaneous” consent from the people. Italy’s ruling class, he knew, wanted to dominate, not to lead. They wanted their ideology to be dominant, not their people. He viewed fascism as a hegemonic crisis, and the product of post-war instability. He completely rejected the idea of “Actualist” philosophy, and the Gentilian Ethical State, which laid out the theoretical foundation for fascist dictatorship. Gramsci believed it was merely a symptom of, and an extension of, the post-war crisis. Gramsci’s stance regarding this dispute with Gentile is important for understanding his interpretation of hegemony and its relation to the state. Gentile did not view Mussolini as a dictator or fascism as protecting the interests of the bourgeoisie, but Gramsci knew that the ethics of the state must be evaluated through a historical lens. He saw Gentile’s view as one of “anti-historicity”.
Gramsci’s concept of leadership from a cultural and historical viewpoint relied on a reprisal of the Marxist concept of “superstructure,” a concept that is highly debated in the world of Marxist analysis. The superstructure embodies whatever is not directly related to the forces of production, like politics, culture, or ideology. His study of the role of the intellectual in influencing culture led Gramsci to divide the superstructure into two “floors”: civil society and political society.” Civil society includes churches, schools, and media, while political society includes government institutions like the police, or the military, which have “direct dominion”, and are synonymous with the state. The ruling class uses both floors to exert power over society, but in very different ways. Gramsci’s contribution to the theory of hegemony was his understanding that domination is not only maintained through physical force, but through the influence of culture. While political society is able to rule by brute force, civil society is a “marketplace” of ideas, where intellectuals can bring the ideology of the rulers to the masses, and gain their “free” consent. If the intellectuals of a society are unable to create cultural hegemony, unable to gain consent, then the state must use force to police those who do not consent.
Unlike the Bolsheviks, Gramsci did not view hegemony as serving only the ruling class. Hegemony, as he understood it, is not merely about class domination, but about the balancing of competing forces. Gramsci’s theory of cultural hegemony involves leading a social group by securing their consent (active or passive) rather than leading by physical force. This kind of hegemony could involve leading “from below” and act as a mechanism of “mediated subordination.” Marxist scholar Perry Anderson argued in his essay, “The Antinomies of Antonio Gramsci,” that Gramsci’s hegemony is the direct opposite of domination or coercion, and was “an alternative, ‘consensual’ political strategy for the working-class movement to that of the dictatorship of the proletariat, which relies largely upon coercive measures.” He argued that Machiavelli’s centaur (half-man, half-beast), was one of Gramsci’s “starting points” for formulating his concept of hegemony. The centaur symbolically represents both “force and consent, domination and hegemony, violence and civilization.” For Machiavelli, consent gives way to coercion, but for Gramsci, coercion is obscured by consent. In other words, a civil society, the people consent to be ruled, allowing themselves to be governable, rather than submit to the absolute force of the state. Therefore, according to Anderson, Gramsci believed it was the goal of socialists to convert the working class to socialist ideology and gain their consent, thereby subtracting their consent from bourgeois rule. Anderson made the assumption that consent and coercion are antithetical to each other, but Gramsci’s analysis shows that the relationship is more dialectical. He wrote in the first of his notebooks penned during his imprisonment that leadership (which is synonymous with hegemony as used by Lenin) “constitutes a moment of domination” and that “a class is dominant in two ways, that is, ‘leading [dirigente]’ and ‘dominant’. It leads the allied classes and dominates over the adversarial classes.” In order for a class to have the ability to lead, it must get the consent of its allies, and secure domination over its opponents. Gramsci distinguishes between two types of leadership: hegemony that moves towards a position of dominance, and leadership that exists after dominance has been achieved that maintains that dominance. In order for a class to come to power, it has to lead. Once it achieves power, it has to continue to lead in order to preserve its dominance. This cannot be done solely through force, but through the exercise of political leadership or hegemony, which becomes an aspect of domination. Gramsci defined political hegemony as the point of contact between consent and coercion. Consent and coercion are theoretically distinct, but Gramsci’s concept of political hegemony unites them in a historical-dialectical relationship. One of the ways Gramsci sought to rectify the contradictory nature of the dialectical relationship between consent and force (hegemony and domination) was by moving away from Lenin’s rigid definition of hegemony (domination) and redefining it by analyzing the role of the intellectual in politics and culture. As previously stated, Gramsci understood that leaders must rule through culture, and it is the role of the intellectual to influence culture. He classified two kinds of intellectuals: the organic and the traditional. Traditional intellectuals promoted the ideals of the bourgeoisie, while organic intellectuals promoted the interests of the proletariat. One of the tasks of the organic intellectual was to make the proletariat aware of capitalist domination and exploitation. Traditional intellectuals represented the interests of the bourgeoisie, while the organic intellectual served to further revolutionary causes, and gain the consent of the people, rather than protect the status quo. As political and ideological documents written in mythical form, both Machiavelli’s The Prince and Exodus are living books that deal with concepts of law, consent and force, the question of the state. The text of Exodus, as well as the entire Pentateuch, can be considered political myth. Moses is not unlike that of Machiavelli”s ideal prince, as both Moses and the ‘prince’ are not historical figures. Instead, they act as symbolic leaders whose narratives contain dramatic, emotional, and mythical elements. Gramsci described Machiavelli’s The Prince as a “utopian” text. There is a utopian characteristic to The Prince, that lies in the fact that the hypothetical prince is not a historical leader, but one that represents, in a purely abstract doctrinarian way, an ideal leader. Some scholars believe that Gramsci’s use of the word “utopia” was actually a code word for socialism, as Gramsci would have been subjected to censorship during his time in prison. Evidence for this position can be found in the Prison Notebooks themselves. Gramsci claims that the “utopian aspect” of Machiavelli’s ‘prince’ lies in the fact that the ‘prince’ is not a historical figure at all, but a symbolic and ideal condottiere who can organize the collective will of the Italian people. He went on to clarify this position by writing,
The modern prince, the myth-Prince, cannot be a real person, a concrete individual; it can only be an organism; a complex element of society in which the cementing of the collective will, recognized and partially asserted in action, has already begun. This organism is already provided by the historical development and it is the political party: the first cell containing the germs of collective will which are striving to become universal and total.
Arguably, Gramsci used this analogy to describe the function of the Italian Communist Party. He pondered these questions: why did attempts at creating national-popular collective continue to fail? Why did regimes such as Mussolini’s in Italy become successful, while the attempts of the Communist Party to gain power are never realized? He used the symbolic ‘prince’ to form a new strategy for the Italian Communist Party in its struggle against fascism. Using the Catholic Church as an analogy, Gramsci believed that in order to fully understand Catholicism the way it is today, one must look all the way back to the Roman Empire. In the same way, in order to understand Mussolini, one first needed to understand the history of Italy, and view it as a whole. This analogy does not just apply to Italy, but to any given country or institution. To understand why the social structure of a country is the way it is, why a powerful regime succeeds or fails, a historical analysis must be made. A utopian reading of Exod 32 relies on keeping Moses’s history with the Israelites in mind from earlier chapters of Exodus. Moses can then be viewed as a liberator, the one who helped free the Israelites from their enslavement in Egypt. When understood from a Marxist perspective, “Exodus becomes a lasting paradigm, no matter how mythical, of a revolutionary and utopian drive that is profoundly biblical in origin.”
One of the main paradoxical themes in Machiavelli’s The Prince is cruelty and clemency. This is the same paradox seen in the golden calf story in Exod 32. In Exod 32, Aaron responds to the complaints of the people with clemency and generosity. He asks that the people bring him gold so that he can then shape the golden calf for the people to worship (32:2-4). Yahweh, by contrast, responds in anger towards the idol. vv. 9-10 say, “‘I have seen these people,’ the Lord said to Moses, ‘and they are stiff-necked people. Now leave me alone so that my anger may burn against them and that I may destroy them.’” Moses replies, saying, “Turn from your fierce anger, relent and do not bring disaster on your people. Remember your servants Abraham, Isaac, and Israel to whom you swore your own self: ‘I will make your descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and I will give your descendants all this land I promised them, and it will be their inheritance forever.’” This convinces Yahweh to relent, as it says in the following verse, that Yahweh “did not bring his people the disaster he threatened,” (v. 14). When compared to Yahweh in these verses, Moses seems to be more merciful than Yahweh. However, Moses is shown to be much crueler when compared to his brother Aaron after he has spoken to Yahweh. It says in vv. 19-20 that when Moses saw the golden calf, “his anger burned”, and that he subsequently had the calf destroyed in v. 20. Ironically, despite first appearances, Aaron is not really acting with clemency and generosity. When confronted with Moses’s fury, Aaron tries to shirk responsibility for Yahweh’s fury and shift the blame onto the people, as it says in vv. 22-24, “‘Do not be angry, my Lord,’ Aaron answered. ‘You know how prone these people are to evil. They said to me, ‘make us gods who will go before us. As for this fellow Moses who brought us up out of Egypt, we don’t know what has happened to him.’ So I told them, ‘whoever has any gold jewelry, take it off.’ Then they gave me the gold, and I threw it into the fire, and out came this calf!’” Aaron’s framing of these events makes it seem as though he had no choice but to become leader by “seeking to rule by consent” which he does at the peoples’ expense.
In the very first verse of Exod 32, there is an interesting phrase that the people say to Aaron: “As for this fellow Moses who brought us up out of Egypt…” It was not Moses, but Yahweh, who had brought them out of Egypt. Earlier, in Exod 20, the people are told, “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery” (v. 2). Yet, by Exod 32, the Israelites have already reframed their liberation as not Yahweh’s miraculous doing, but by Moses’s doing. In 32:7, Yahweh ironically mimics the peoples’ words, “Go down, because your people, whom you brought up out of Egypt…”
An interesting contradiction exists in v. 4 and v. 8. In v. 4, the reader is told that Aaron is the one who made the calf, as it says, “He [Aaron] took what they handed him and made it into an idol.” Yet, in v. 8, Yahweh tells Moses that the people are the ones who made the calf. It says, “They have been quick to turn away from what I commanded them and have made themselves an idol.” Despite what Yahweh had told him, Moses directly confronts Aaron anyway. There is no clear reason for this, but it could be because Moses somehow already knows the full story, or because he believes that Aaron’s role as leader means that he bears the final responsibility for what the people have done.
Moses punishes the people through various means. The most extreme of which is commanding the Levites to kill their brothers, friends, and neighbors, resulting in the death of 3,000 people (vv. 27-28). On the surface, it may seem as though Moses is more cruel than Aaron when acting in a leadership role. However, it is through punishment that Moses attempts to “make atonement” with Yahweh for the sin of the Levites (v. 30). Yahweh still punishes them by striking them with a plague “because of what they did with the calf Aaron had made” (v. 35). Therefore, Aaron is the one at fault for the suffering of the people, as he was the one who inspired Yahweh’s wrath in the first place. This is how Moses, despite inspiring fear instead of love among the people he leads, somehow manages to avoid their contempt. This begs the question: is it better for a leader to be feared or loved? Machiavelli argues that, “only the ruler whom the people fear can be loved, for fear is a far better basis for stable rule.” In this way, it can be argued that Moses is not unlike that of a Machiavellian prince. Though difficult, Moses is able to inspire fear without inspiring hatred, because his punishments are not erroneous, but justified. Although he is obliged to slaughter the 3,000, he does not do so without the proper justification. Both Aaron and Moses are paradoxical leaders. Aaron’s surface-level generosity is actually only thinly-veiled cruelty, while Moses’s cruel punishments are actually merciful by comparison, as they help the people avoid the even greater cruelty of mass annihilation. As shown in v. 10, Yahweh had intended to destroy all of Israel. However, he relents, but does not completely forgive, after Moses speaks to him. Therefore, Moses’s slaughter of the 3,000 is likely not out of cruelty, but a desperate measure in the hopes of avoiding the wrath of Yahweh. Exod 32, and other Biblical stories of rebellion, show that Yahweh will punish his people for covenant violation and disobedience in every generation. Not only does Yahweh expect obedience, he also expects obedience to those prophets he chooses to represent him. Texts like Deut 18:15-19 say,
The Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among you, from your fellow Israelites. You must listen to him…I will raise up for them a prophet like you from among their fellow Israelites, and I will put my words in his mouth. He will tell them everything I command him. I myself will call to account anyone who does not listen to my words that the prophet speaks in my name.
The text implicitly states that, as interpreters of God’s will, there are prophets like Moses whose word must be feared. Machiavelli mentions Moses by name several times in The Prince. He uses Moses as an example when he claims that, “all armed prophets have conquered and unarmed ones failed.” He also claims that those “prophets”, like Moses specifically, would not have been as successful if they had been “disarmed.” In Moses’s case, he is not armed with weapons, but with God’s wrath.
From a surface-level reading of the Exod 32, the story is about law. However, from a Gramscian perspective, it is also a story about consent and law. There is no law without the consent of the governed. Exod 32 seems to suggest that such consent requires a certain amount of force or coercion. It is not just a story about law, but about hegemony. This can be said not just of Exod 32, but of all of Exodus, of the whole Pentateuch. Referring to Moses as the ‘author’ of these texts, referring to the Torah as the “Five Books of Moses” has a hegemonic logic to it.
Exod 32 can be seen as a kind of counter-hegemony, a notion also developed by Gramsci. The narrative gives the reader an example of hegemony that does not protect the status quo, but does the exact opposite. A key issue in Exod 32 is that the people have forgotten their exodus out of Egypt, and forgotten that Yahweh was the one who had liberated them. They had not literally forgotten, but the Exodus had fallen out of the forefront of social consciousness. As mentioned, from v. 1, the people said, “As for this fellow Moses who brought us up out of Egypt, we don’t know what has happened to him.” They had forgotten that it was really Yahweh who had brought them up out of Egypt, and Moses was, for all intents and purposes, out of sight, and therefore, out of mind. The people regressed to their old ways (burnt offerings, gold contributions) under the regressive leadership of Aaron. A Gramscian reading shows Moses in the role of revolutionary reformer, a force for change, who moves the people back in the direction of the law and in the direction of obedience to Yahweh.
Exod 32 is not the only text in the Bible where Moses causes those under his leadership to fear him. Earlier in Exodus, in chapter 20, Moses frightens the Israelites with his changed appearance and must cover his face with a veil. The reason for this is revealed in 34:30, “When Aaron and all the Israelites saw Moses, his face was shining, and they were afraid to come near him.” After speaking with Yahweh on Mount Sinai and receiving the two tablets, Moses spoke to Aaron and the rest of the Israelites to communicate the commands that Yahweh had given him. Notably, Moses chooses to keep his face uncovered as he speaks to them, despite being aware of his frightening appearance, and only covers his face once he has finished speaking them. This is not a one time occurrence, as it happens several times while Moses is performing his role as mediator between Yahweh and the people. For example, v. 33 says, “When Moses finished speaking to them, he put a veil over his face,” and v. 35 says, “they saw that his face was radiant. Then Moses would put the veil back over his face until he went in to speak with the Lord.” Moses’s leadership was predicated on his ability to communicate the commands of Yahweh, and perhaps it is not insignificant that Moses chose to lead with his fear-inducing face uncovered. Reflecting back on chapter 20, it may not be a coincidence that Moses’s frightening appearance appears in the narrative when it does. In v. 18 of that chapter, it says that the people “trembled in fear” after hearing thunder, lightning, the sound of a trumpet, and seeing the mountain in smoke. They are afraid that if Yahweh speaks to them, that they will die (v. 19). Moses responds to their fear by saying, “Do not be afraid. God has come to test you, so that the fear of God will be with you to keep you from sinning” (v. 20). When Moses tells them to not be afraid, contextually it seems that the command is limited to the people’s fear of death. He does clarify that Yahweh is willing to use fear in order to encourage obedience, and to keep them from sinning. However, the fear instilled in them in chapter 20 by Yahweh is clearly not enough, as the golden calf incident occurs twelve chapters later. Therefore, Yahweh’s altering of Moses’s face to appear frightening in chapter 34 seems like an appropriate time to once again instill fear in the continually disobedient people.
In addition to Moses, there are leaders in the Hebrew Bible such as Solomon, Samuel, David, and Joshua, who can be analyzed from a Machiavellian perspective. There are texts that reference proper governance of a monarch, such as Deut 17:14-20, which is probably the closest example of direct advice to a leader that the Hebrew Bible gives. However, the text says little about the relationship between leader and people, other than that a fellow Israelite should be chosen as king (v. 15), and that the king should consider himself better than his fellow Israelites (v. 20). There is no mention of whether the king should be feared or loved, only that he should obey Yahweh (vv. 15, 19). This text is in agreement with accounts of Samuel’s leadership in 1 Sam 12 and David’s in 2 Sam 23. In 1 Sam 12, Samuel asks the people twice to fear Yahweh (vv. 14, 24), and warns them that if they do not obey, “[Yahweh’s] hand will be against you, as it was against your ancestors” (v. 15). Samuel groups himself with the people when commanding fear and obedience to Yahweh (vv. 14, 15, 25), and fear of Yahweh is seen as praiseworthy. This is similar to the text of 2 Sam 23, where David also cites fear of Yahweh for his success as a leader. For example, vv. 3-4 say, “The God of Israel spoke, the Rock of Israel said to me: ‘When one rules over people in righteousness, when he rules in the fear of God he is like the light of morning at sunrise on a cloudless morning, like the brightness after rain that brings grass from the earth.’” When the Hebrew Bible does mention proper governance, the people’s fear of their leader is not usually referenced. However, fear is very often a factor. Kings typically point to fear and obedience to God as a reason for political stability, and, as in the case of Samuel, exhorts the people to fear God as well. There are verses, such as Prov 24:21, that command, “Fear the Lord and the king,” but theses cannot be called Machiavellian when viewed in context. Machiavelli is concerned with the effectiveness of a leader, and what is good for the state, but the narrator’s motivation in Prov 24 for this fear is based on self-preservation, and not with more political matters like Machiavelli was concerned with. Out of the six leaders of united Israel mentioned in the Hebrew Bible, four are said to inspire fear in the people: Moses, Joshua, Samuel, and Solomon. Saul and David are the two outliers. Saul was a failed leader not only because he did not obey God, but because he feared the people instead of being feared by the people. 1 Sam 15:24 says, “Then Saul said to Samuel, ‘I have sinned. I violated the Lord’s command and your instructions. I was afraid of the people and so I gave in to them.’” David’s leadership is harder to analyze through a Machiavellian lens. He is also never described in the text as being feared by the people, but his rule can serve as an example of the fragility of governing based on love without fear.
Both The Prince and Exodus are revolutionary documents that have each become an enabling, ideological force. Gramsci considered Machiavelli to be the “Italian Luther” as he was a revolutionary man who spurred others to act. During the time Machiavelli wrote The Prince, in the sixteenth century, Italy was in dire political straits. Machiavelli used The Prince as a manifesto of sorts, to argue that “princes” (leaders) must occasionally use questionable methods—force, fear, coercion—to achieve their goals, and that these means were justified. Using Moses as an example, he said,
And if, as I said, it was necessary in order that the power of Moses should be displayed that the people of Israel should be slaves in Egypt, and to give scope for the greatness and courage of Cyrus that the Persians should be oppressed by the Medes, and to illustrate the pre-eminence of Theseus that the Athenians should be dispersed, so at the present time, in order that the might of an Italian genius might be recognized, it was necessary that Italy should be reduced to her present condition, and that she should be more enslaved than the Hebrews…without a head, without order, beaten, despoiled, lacerated, and overrun, and that she should have suffered ruin of every kind.
The hegemonic logic Machiavelli discussed is cross-cultural and timeless. It does not just apply to the Israelites in Egypt, the sixteenth century or early twentieth century Italians, the Persians, or the Athenians. Gramsci, who understood the importance of understanding hegemony from a historical perspective, saw it as applicable to his own situation under Mussolini’s fascist regime in Italy. What Exod 32 shows is a failure in leadership that requires swift and decisive correction from a new leader who does not concern himself with people-pleasing, but who has the best interests of the people at heart. vv. 31-32 say, “So Moses went back to the Lord and said, ‘Oh, what a great sin these people have committed! They have made themselves gods of gold. But now, please forgive their sin—but if not, then blot me out of the book you have written.’” These verses are an attestation of Moses’s willingness to endure punishment and condemnation in order to do what is right by Yahweh and the people under his leadership. Aaron, by contrast, was more afraid of the people than he was of Yahweh, and was quick to abandon them and blame them (v. 22) rather than take responsibility for his poor leadership. Machiavelli’s ‘prince’ and Moses are both models of fierce revolutionary leaders who do what needs to be done.
Bibliography
Bates, Thomas R. “Gramsci and the Theory of Hegemony.” Journal of the History of Ideas 36, no. 2 (Apr.-Jun., 1975): 353-366. https://www.jstor.org/stable/2708933.
Boer, Roland. Marxist Criticism of the Hebrew Bible. New York: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2015.
——Criticism of Heaven: The Author’s Cut. Chung Li, Taiwan: Chung Yuan Christian University, 2012.
Comaroff, Jean and John. Of Revelation and Revolution, Volume 1: Christianity, Colonialism, and Consciousness in South Africa. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991.
Fontana, Benedetto. Hegemony and Power: On the Relation Between Gramsci and Machiavelli. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1993.
Gramsci, Antonio. The Modern Prince and Other Writings, trans. Louis Marks. New York: International Publishers, 2020.
——Selections from the Prison Notebooks, trans. Quintin Hoare and Geoffrey Nowell Smith. New York: International Publishers, 2020.
Machiavelli, Nicollo. The Prince, trans. Luigi Ricci. London: Grant Richards, 1903.
Marx, Karl and Frederich Engels. The Communist Manifesto. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1964.
Propp, William H. C. “Exodus 19–40: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary.” The Anchor Yale Bible (2006): 539-623. https://doi.org/10.5040/9780300261103.
Thomas, Peter D. The Gramscian Moment: Philosophy, Hegemony and Marxism. Chicago: Haymarket Books, 2010.
Wilson, Stephen M. “Fear, Love, and Leadership: Posing a Machiavellian Question to the Hebrew Bible.” Journal of Biblical Literature 139, no. 2 (2020): 233-253. https://www/jstor.org/stable/10.15699/job.1392.2020.1.
Our Lady of Light 