I like Machiavelli, and I’ve been thinking about making a hefty post about it. However, I thought the better of it, and decided to make a much more open thread. I love reading the Prince, and have been trying to get around to his earlier writings on Republics, which I’ve only read in summary.
Machiavelli wrote The Prince, which is popularly regarded as a bad move and has been widely criticzed ever since. The irony is that he hit pretty close to the mark, which is probably why he was so disliked for it. He took a long, cold look at politics and wrote an uncannily accurate treatise on what it takes to make a nation, and how you keep it together.
The key comes in that he writes a great deal about people doing bad things, which led many to think he said you should do bad things, which is patent nonsense. But that’s clearly not what he suggested. Instead, he was pointing out by evil men kept winning, and often good ones ended paying the price of being soft-hearted. His ideal prince was bold, cunning, and noble - capable of honor and mercy but not stupid enough to throw away other goods things for them. Or, as another noted figure said, “Be wise as serpents and innocent as doves.”
He barely mentions Caesar, but I think the model clearly presents itself and I doubt a thinker of Machiavelli’s caliber would have forgotten it. Some modern thinkers criticize Caesar for ending the Roman Republic, but this is misplaced: he simply directed its dying to his advantage and began the process of creating an Empire which could function without tearing itself apart every few years. Caesar was necessary, in short, because the powerful and elite would not listen to Cicero* except when it was to their advantage.
This tension lives all through Machiavelli’s work, because it was also alive in his time. Machiavelli was among the first pro-Republican theorists following the Renaissance, but his beloved Republic of Florence kneecapped itself to such a degree that he could not save it. Thus having failed to help his home through politics and war, he hoped to unite Italy through wisdom. Thus, The Prince shows how states are formed, how they can be defended against internal sedition and foreign powers, and how a Prince should live, rule and die.
*Posters not familiar with Cicero should know he was a philosopher, writer on oratory, and great lawyer and Senator in the dying days of the Republic. He was a remarkably human figure in history and survives by hudnreds of his own letters. Cicero was a conservative in the best sense of the word: flexible about and changes, opposed to corruption, urging everyone to work together, and an effective legal system which kept old values while adapting to new circumstance. He was also vain, witty and occaisionally petty.
You might get a better read on Machiavelli from the Discourses on Livy. Some historians believe The Prince was intended mainly as a resume (it did not land him a job with any prince).
Whether satire, prescription, resume or lark, The Prince manages to teach evil. Both Stalin and Hitler kept a copy bedside. Without The Prince, The Discourses might be long forgotten. The Discourses are the useful materials that Machiavelli has left to political philosophy.
I second this. I read the Discourses years ago after reading The Prince and Machiavelli gives himself much more room in them to expand on his themes. (It also served as an inducement for me to read Livy, now, along with Tacitus, one of my favorite Roman historians.)
I was always under the impression that The Prince was based on Cesare’ Borgia, not Julius Caesar, and that it wasn’t about preaching the practice of evil in government, but the practice of Pragmatism.
i.e. Sometimes it is better for the greater good NOT to pander to popular opinion and take the "fluffy"option.
But to instead grasp the nettle and do what works,and then not get all apologetic about it afterwards.
Well, that’s not really what The Prince is about. That would be the Discourses. The Prince is just a set of instructions for a prince to hold on to his power.
Cesare is one person examined in the book. Caesar, on the other hand, I think is taken as an implicit model of how a would-be Prince should behave.
But more importantly, it’s not actually about Pragmatism. Machiavelli refers to moral issues often, and definitely does not take the easy way out by handwaving it away as “The End justifies the Means” - which he never wrote.
What he does say is more guarded and much tougher to deal with, and essentially boils down to, “Bad men are going to do bad things and you have to be hard to protect yourself from them. Nobody benefits from you being such a nice guy you cause chaos, and it’s better to be rationally self-interested than cut your own throat.”
Or, as another poster on this board once wrote, “Do what you must to get what you need.” But no farther. Machiavelli accepts that the world is often harsh and that people who should support you will stab you in the back.
I’m not quite sure satire is the best word for it, or if it is then it’s really prone to Poe’s Law. It’s not like Swift’s *Humble Proposal *which is immediately identifiable as a spurious idea to begin with (and funny). The Prince is a rather straightforward guide on how to get power as an autocrat and how to keep it, or perhaps an illustration of the means autocrats have historically gained and kept power. It’s also a pretty unfunny read.
OTOH, the means in question *are *thoroughly despicable and immoral and to me there’s little question old Mack meant the reader to close the book with one thought in his mind: “And this is why we don’t want autocrats”.
The point is even clearer in historical context. For one thing, he ostensibly wrote it for the benefit of Giuliano de Medici who had just annexed and dissolved the Republic of Florence (which Machiavelli loved very much); and also happened to have had Machiavelli stripped of his offices, tortured and exiled in the process. Bit of a “fuck you right back”, there.
For another, he takes Cesare Borgia as an example to follow multiple times. Machiavelli loathed that motherfucker, with good reasons. The guy was like a weasel crossbred with a viper.
Which is why I’m consistently baffled by honest to god admirers of the book, the same way I’m baffled by thug & gangsta types who idolize Scarface. The whole point of the film is that “the life” is shit through and through fer chrissakes !
We’d have to get into the whole “what is moral ?” debate, the nature of ethics and all that happy philosophy 101 crap. Which, while entertaining enough after a round of beers or twelve, tends to get tiresome on a sober and nitpicky forum. I’ll pass.
Let’s just say that the society ruled by The Prince would not be a very fun one to live in if you’re not The Prince (and arguably not even if you’re The Prince) and leave it at that, shall we ?
No hard cite, just what I remember from an old college class. Paging doctor **Mississipienne **!
Anyway, as I recall he liked the father well enough (or at least thought he was clever) but thought the son was worthless in comparison. His opinion was that what people attributed to Cesare’s cunning had basically been handed down to him by his father, as further evidenced by the fact that as soon as a new Pope rolled in Cesare crashed in flames within months.
How so? Machiavelli explicitly demands that a wise Prince defend the poor and innocent, protect private property, and administer the state under known and accepted laws, while maintaining reasonable taxes.
Uh… I think I definitely need a cite on that. That’s completely and utterly against what he said about Cesare himself, in print. He points out further that Cesare, despite his labors, was ill and died a few short years later, unable to complete his state.
You must have read only half the book. Most (all?) chapters follow the same pattern: first he states what a good, proper ruler should do. Then he goes “but that doesn’t seem to work so fuck it, just be a dick”. Allow me to demonstrate.
1) defend the poor and innocent
OK, we’re off to a bad start, I can’t find that one at all. He talks at length about the place of clemency, cruelty and cultivating the appearance of being just, but not whom to that I can find in a quick skim.
**
2) protect private property**
A good ruler keeps his mitts off his subjects’ stuff.
Translation: “if you have to murder a dude, don’t take his shit too because then his heirs will have it in for you. Besides, there are plenty of ways to have his shit confiscated if you really want it, you really don’t have to bother killing him over it”. So much for keeping your mitts off their stuff.
**
3) administer the state under known and accepted laws**
Well that one was quick at least.
4) while maintaining reasonable taxes
There’s nothing of the sort. I think you might refer to chapter XVI which begins thus:
That part regards the reputation of the Prince himself for generosity or avarice and merely enjoins him not to give away too much free shit in an effort to get & maintain a reputation as a generous guy because down that road extraordinary taxes lie.
However:
So Machiavelli counsels against frivolous spending because of the risk of sudden tax hikes down the road, but he’s down with taxing the chumps juuust below their revolt threshold on a permanent basis. IOW, if you cut taxes when the kingdom’s flush, you’ll have to raise them back later and they’ll hate you for it. Just keep taxes high, all the time. Need it, don’t need it, just take the money and run, dude. Embrace your inner dick !
Even taken at face value*, The Prince* is not a book about forging a good, happy, functional kingdom ; or a functional one only insofar as it keeps ticking for the foreseeable future*. It’s a book about keeping one’s arse on a throne. Punkt. Carriage return. EOF. Every other consideration is wholly accessory to that end, which doesn’t bode well for the subjects. That is, in my opinion, the point.
Yes. Hence the Poe’s Law comment.
But do re-read chapter VII with this assumption in mind, and you’ll see that he’s really damning the Borgias with faint praise.
He’s gushing over how Alexander VI (a foreigner himself - he was Spanish) consorted with foreign powers in order to secure a kingdom for his son by sending all of Northern Italy into a spiral of internecine warfare, praises how much land Cesare stole from their rightful owners, how good he was at murdering them and their whole families afterwards so they wouldn’t get a chance to rile a hypothetical future pope against him, how fast he was to turn one ally against another, how very smart he was to assassinate all of his armies’ captains at once etc…
Renaissance Italy wasn’t exactly the cloud of the Carebears, but it wasn’t bad enough that “wow, you’re a really good assassin of women and children !” could have been an actual compliment.
Finally, he laments that Cesare had planned such marvellously for each opportunity and dug such mighty foundations for his own eventual rule and was so independent and yadda yadda and oh, but what a tragedy it was that he turned out to be so very ill when his father died - couldn’t do anything. Such terrible luck, really.
But the truth, that everyone who would have read the book at the time would have known, is that
a) he had been so unsubtle and downright obnoxious in his attempts to manipulate the first papal election that the entirety of the conclave eventually had him basically kicked out of Rome just so they could try and get some voting done.
b) the Pope who got elected was quite friendly to him. Maybe not entirely in his pocket, but on the good side of neutral shall we say. He died 3 weeks into his reign, very extremely presumably of poisoning, even though at the time Rome was positively crawling with Cesare’s goons. Oops.
3) Hi, Opal !
c) he got conned by the next one something fierce - Julius II, whom he had so openly schemed against mere weeks ago, secured Cesare’s support to get himself elected by promising him he’d keep doing for him just what Alexander had, pinky swear. Then he predictably flipped the second he’d donned the funny hat, had Cesare arrested, deported and took him for all he had.
d) Cesare wasn’t sick enough not to be able to break out of jail. Twice. He would die in Spain 4 years later, without a flat in the projects to his name, hale and hearty save for a regrettable overdose of iron (he died in battle).
When you have this context in mind, this:
takes a different light, doesn’t it ? Heh, old wrongs :p. Oh, if only Cesare hadn’t been ill that day, surely everything would have been different. Really, the only thing he may be blamed for was giving a resentful enemy enormous amounts of power over himself !
Not that he had a choice, really - as Machiavelli slyly notes, one way or another he had made an enemy of all of the Italian cardinals at this point as well as most of the French ones ; and the conclave would never have voted for another Spanish Pope right after Rodrigo Borgia.
Machiavel basically accuses him of having shot himself squarely in both feet.
Which leads us to the closing line of the chapter:
Or, if you read between the lines: all of his power stemmed from having Daddy as the Pope. Without Daddy (and the Papacy’s coffers) propping him up he couldn’t hold on to squat, got kicked out of Italy and good riddance.
Hence the topic of that chapter, which is that Princes who got their principalities by the *virtu *of someone else usually aren’t worth spit.
and just in case, no, that’s not a praiseworthy achievement in and of itself. Republics have a better track record of keeping on ticking than autocracies.
Kobal2… You are, how do we say it? Assuming what you set out to prove.
First off, don’t insult someone, including me, like that here. I assume you’ve read the book if you say so. I’ve read about a dozen times.
He repeatedly talks about the importance of maintaining order and justice, and does not distinguish between persons. In fact, he quite clearly expected the Prince to show less mercy towards the powerful.
Machiavelli is blatantly saying not to even start stealing, not even through legal proceedings. I will grant the grammar is not quite modern English, but you’re misinterpreting it in a rather silly way. The point is exactly the opposite of what you wrote.
Absolute nonsense. Again, you are deliebhrately reading it in an aggressively hostile manner and adding your own opinion from nothing, when what Machiavelli actually says is much simpler: “Spending a lot will hurt you down the line.” He specifically approves of keeping traditional taxes (which includes not hiking them) and managing finances parsimoniously so as to avoid having to raise more.
You missed, however, that Machiavelli knew this and deliberately showed how Alexander labored mightily to build a worthwhile foundation (which he came close to doing). He was undone by the act that his father died at exactly the wrong time, by being ill, and by sheer bad luck. Despite that, he was able to build a functioning state.
Second, you completely miss that the Borgias were blamed (elsewhere) for being aggressors - not that they were bad rulers. To Machivelli, they killed very bad people and actually ruled, a critical difference. hey didn’t cause Italy’s problems; nor did they make them worse. Instead, they took advantage of those problems in such a way that they fixed many of them.
You can argue the morality if you like, but Machiavelli certainly saw them as cunning and often cruel, but less cruel than the alternative. And that’s the point. He accepted that a Prince might have to be cruel, but understood that was not the same as being evil, and the difference between the two was vast.
Kobal2, all you’re doing here is trying to find some passage you can twist to your immediate whim, regardless of the thrust of whole chapters, or even distorting the meaning of the very passages you’ve chosen. First off, that’s extremely poor argument. Second, it’s insulting. If you won’t read it honestly, then there’s no point in you posting here. If you can’t, I can find you an annotated version.