Machiavelli and The Prince

Presentation about Machiavelli

I will confess, I like Machiavelli. He has the distinct advantage of having actually practised what he preaches, which helps in the credibility stakes. Having served the Florentine Republic as a diplomat, Machiavelli knew firsthand what a messy business politics and governance is. There is a distinct absence of ideals and utopia’s in The Prince.

He also is clearly educated and able to think for himself. “The Prince” is a manual for rulers and want-to-be rulers. It is wonderfully pragmatic. It is about as clear eyed and sober a work of political reason as you are ever likely to come across. It is abundantly clear that The Prince, to use a modern phrase “was workshopped” before making it to print with nearly 20 years passing between Machiavelli writing it and a printed version making its appearance.

Machiavelli litters his text with examples of how and how not to do things and the consequences of actions. The example of how and why the French failed in Italy is contrasted with both how the Romans succeeded in Greece and how the Greeks themselves were able to hold the former Persian Empire even after the death of the charismatic and militarily capable Alexander. These examples would have been known by Machiavelli’s audience of rulers. The repeated advice “to exterminate a defeated rulers family” at first seems quite blood thirsty. It ultimately involves the murder of infants, but when thought about, makes a lot of sense because it removes entirely any possible foci of rebellion by the subject peoples and or ambitious nobles.

Machiavelli is matter-of-fact, clinical and utterly pragmatic. It is little wonder that “The Prince” has gained such stature as a work of political realism. I think that in a lot of ways it is the Wests version of Sun Tzu’s “Art of War”, which overshadows Machiavelli’s own work of the same title and was published before The Prince. The Prince was simply one work by a man who spent most of his adult life occupied with the question of effective governance, I found no less than fourteen other works by Machiavelli and the vast majority of them are political in theme.

I especially liked chapter 5 in The Prince in which Machiavelli sums up the differences between monarchies & republics:

But when a city or country has been used to living under a prince, and his family has been exterminated, the people won’t be able to choose from among themselves a new prince to replace the old one; and having acquired the habit of obedience. They won’t know how to live in freedom. So they’ll be slow to take up arms, making it easier for an ·invading prince to win them over to his side. Republics, on the other hand, have more vitality, more hatred, and a stronger desire for revenge, which will never allow them to forget their former freedom; so that the safest way is to destroy them or to go and live among them.

“The Prince” easily rates in the top 5 of influential works on political theory, assuming that it doesn’t top the list. The list of people known to have read and been influenced by “The Prince” reads as a “who’s who” of politics since the Renaissance with: Cromwell, Charles V, the Medici family, the founding Fathers of the US, Frederick the Great of Prussia, Napoleon, and Mussolini, all being known to have read and possessed copies of The Prince. Even the Mafia with the Godfathers John Gotti and Roy DeMeo have considered The Prince essential reading.…but noticeably NOT Hitler or any other top Nazi’s which came as a surprise given the political realism inherent in the quote from Joseph Goebbels: "If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.” Which could just as easily come from the pen of Machiavelli.

I’m buying my copy of The Portable Machiavelli tonight.