Machiavelli: Evil Mastermind or Subtle Pragmatist?

Steven Fry assaults Olivia as the 'Machiavellian' Malvolio

I first came across the term Machiavellian to describe Malvolio, the hapless puritan from Shakespeare's Twelfth Night. Of course the description was entirely inadequate. Malvolio is an easily deceived fool and killjoy, Machiavelli a subtle schemer and womaniser. Whilst the term Machiavellian offers a handy club to bash politicians you don't like around the head with, its far from the true message of Machiavelli's controversial book: The Prince.

The Prince is a handbook for rulers to gain, and keep, power: The Idiots Guide to Conquering Places. Practical advice is offered: avoid mercenaries, and definitely avoid foreign armies; if you conquer a place it might be a good idea to live there; fortresses: good idea against foreign invaders, next to useless against your own people. This is all supported by endless detailed references to historical examples, the least one can get from The Prince is a real feel for Italian politics during the 15th and 16th centuries. So unless you happen to be a 16th century king who fancies extending his territories (which is always a possibility), all of this is antiquated and next to useless, apart from it being quite fun to contemplate 16th century Italian politics.

But as the book unfolds you sense that Machiavelli is getting a little carried away, and

suddenly you realise where the claims for extreme nastiness creep in. The reader is instructed to be exceedingly generous until the moment he seizes power, as afterwards this will seriously damage the state, unless of course you're spending other people's money and then it's imperative that you make a show of lavish spending. It's incompatible to hold all the traditional virtues while still being a good ruler, so it doesn't really matter if you get a reputation for vice as its more or less necessary. One should never keep promises, as no one else will keep theirs. One must be both aggressive and cunning to outwit one enemies.

From this develops an extremely bleak world view, Machiavelli comments a few times on how awful people are, and then uses this to justify an if-you-can't-beat-them-join-them policy. It gets worse. Machiavelli starts going all gooey over extremely nasty people. Olivoratto decided he'd quite fancy taking over the town of Fermo, so he instructed his Uncle to organise a homecoming feast at which all of the town's leading men would

The murderous Cesare Borgia

attend, and then he had them all killed. Cesare Borgia is even more homicidal, and yet Machiavelli responds "having summed up all the Duke did, I cannot possibly censure him". Really? I could certainly give it a go. And yet Machiavelli makes Borgia the hero of the piece, he just keeps cropping up.

To make all this even worse, Machiavelli then decides to tell us that if you're going to have to do something unsavoury, just make it quick, bloody and threatening. Then you'll be fine. So essentially, if Macbeth had somehow managed to kill all the important Thanes in Scotland rather than just King Duncan at once, in a way that announced to the world that he should be feared, then he could skip happily off into the sunset with Lady Macbeth and the awful Malcolm and embittered Macduff wouldn't come to get him with trees, because they'd be dead.

But, as many before me have also done, I am forgetting what The Prince is about. The book is one of the most focussed I have ever read, it's all about getting power, to the point that moral qualms can be dispensed with. But what Machiavelli is trying to achieve is rather admirable, stable states that hold strong against revolutions and foreign invaders. Its just that the means of achieving this are, quite frankly, horrific. If more world leaders had been reading The Prince back in 1918-19, then the Treaty of Versailles wouldn't have been such an awful mess. Machiavelli has clear advice: either you reconcile with the enemy or crush them. Simple. Germany was left in an odd state of limbo, angry and able to seek revenge.


One of the key questions The Prince poses is how far should one go for the good of the state? Machiavelli demonstrates that private morality and the public good are more or less incompatible: "If a ruler wants to survive, he must learn to stop being good". By the end of The Prince, as well as being morally appalled, the reader becomes aware that Machiavelli's brutal utilitarianism is the only way to be successful in politics. Indeed, perhaps one must do unsavoury things (and I'm not suggesting homicide) for the greater good.

Machiavelli: saint or sinner?