Marxist Interpretations of James Harrington: Early Modern Economics and Politics

This essay analyzes two Marxist interpretations of James Harrington. The first, developed by Achille Loria at the end of the nineteenth century, uses Harrington to force Marxism into a mechanistic and determinist dimension that imagines the relationship between economics and politics reductively. The second, by Antonio Negri, removes the ontological dimension of Harrington’s thought because it is incompatible with a polemical and conflictual conception of politics. Our thesis is that both interpretations of Harrington are wrong, because they are partial and overlook or ignore some key aspects of Harrington’s theory. Yet their comparison, along with the awareness of their partiality, sheds light on a central element of historical materialism, namely the importance (and difficulty) of an articulation between critique of political economy and critique of politics.