The modern prince, its princes, and its condottieres

Abstract

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 a collective will, recognised and partially asserted in action, has already begun. This organism is already provided by 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. In the modem world only an immediate and imminent historicopolitical action, characterised by the necessity for rapid and lightning movement, can be mythically embodied in a concrete individual; this rapidity can only be rendered necessary by a great [and] imminent danger, a great danger which in fact brings about simultaneously the enflaming of passions and fanaticism,