Machiavelli

by Miles J. Unger

  This shift from virtue to interest is also the key to capitalism, where selfishness and greed are regarded as the source of our common prosperity. In David Hume’s formulation, since “every man is naturally impelled to extend his acquisitions as much as possible,” the role of government is to make sure that it is in the “interest, even of bad men, to act for the public good.” Once we have accepted Machiavelli’s contention that human beings are motivated by a desire for gain and a lust for power, it is incumbent upon those who make the laws to ensure that those drives are put to use in ways that serve society as a whole.

  While admitting that political health derives from a creative tension between the haves and have-nots—what Marx would later call the class struggle—Machiavelli, like the good bourgeois he is, makes his allegiance clear:

  [I]f we ask what it is the nobility are after and what it is the common people are after, it will be seen that in the former there is a great desire to dominate and in the latter merely the desire not to be dominated. Consequently the latter will be more keen on liberty since their hope of usurping dominion over others will be less than in the case of the upper class. So that if the populace be made the guardians of liberty, it is reasonable to suppose that they will take more care of it, and that, since it is impossible for them to usurp power, they will not permit others to do so.

  These are ideas that would not have seemed out of place in Philadelphia in 1787. Despite his reputation as an apologist for tyranny, there is more of Madison than Mussolini in Machiavelli.

  Machiavelli comes even closer to the great architects of American constitutional government in his “Discourse on the Remodeling of the Florentine Government,” written around the year 1520 for Pope Leo X. Here he explicitly sets out a three-part structure that largely resembles our own. “I believe it is necessary, since there are three sorts of men . . . that there be also three ranks in a republic,” he asserts. Each of these groups is to elect its own representative body: a Signoria, the chief executive, made up of the city’s most distinguished citizens; a Council of Two Hundred, representing the merely wealthy; and a Council of One Thousand, speaking for the people.xvii John Adams, the founder who studied Machiavelli most closely, argued for a similar structure: “When the three natural orders of society are all represented in the government, and constitutionally placed to watch each other, and restrain each other mutually by the laws, it is then only, that an emulation takes place for the public good, and divisions turned to the advantage of the nation.”

  The similarities are not merely coincidental but stem from a shared belief that human beings are inherently flawed. Wisdom and justice are not the monopoly of any one man, no matter how well intentioned, but are best achieved in the give-and-take of competing interests and points of view.xviii This is not an approach that would have occurred to either Aquinas or Erasmus, who saw their mission as constructing ideal states so that man might live according to God’s plan. But such thinking came naturally to Machiavelli and to Madison, who believed that the job of government was to allow men to live in society by allowing each of us a constructive outlet for our destructive appetites. By shifting his focus from what ought to be to what is, Machiavelli gave birth to political science and transformed speculative political philosophy into a tool that could aid in the practical task of building a civil government.

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  Machiavelli’s jaundiced view of humanity and his tendency to see the present through the lens of the past gives his writing a pessimistic cast. Machiavelli could have found ample backing for his gloomy perspective in the text that served as the basis for his Discourses. Writing in the first century before Christ, Livy already thought he detected in history a downward trajectory, “the sinking foundations of morality as the old teaching was allowed to lapse, the rapidly increasing disintegration, then the final collapse of the whole edifice, and the dark dawning of our modern day when we can neither endure the vices nor face the remedies needed to cure them.” And, like Machiavelli, Livy believed that only by studying the past could we hope to arrest the steep descent: “The study of history is the best medicine for a sick mind; for in history you have a record of the infinite variety of human experience plainly set out for all to see; and in that record you can find for yourself and your country both examples and warnings; fine things to take as models, base things, rotten through and through, to avoid.”

  History as “the best medicine for the sick mind” could serve as Machiavelli’s own motto. Both the Roman historian and the former Second Chancellor of Florence regarded the study of the past not as an antiquarian pastime but as a moral imperative. History is a kind of secular scripture that offers a guide to right living and cautionary tales pointing out the dire consequences of sin. The Prince and The Discourses jump back and forth between current and ancient events, seeking the common thread and drawing useful lessons from the comparison. In Machiavelli’s writing there is no vision of progress; the best we can achieve—if we actually heed those lessons, something Machiavelli often doubts we are capable of because we “lack a proper appreciation of history”—is to learn from our mistakes.

  A proper appreciation of history, particularly the history of ancient Rome—the high point of civilization, according to Machiavelli—provides us with the best opportunity to remedy current ills. He justifies his focus on the past by stressing the constancy of human nature: “If the present be compared with the remote past, it is easily seen that in all cities and in all peoples there are the same desires and the same passions as there always were. So that, if one examines with diligence the past, it is easy to foresee the future of any commonwealth, and to apply those remedies which were used of old.”

  The tragedy of history, or perhaps the farce, lies in the fact that while man’s nature is fixed, the world is always in flux: “There are two reasons why we cannot change our ways. First, it is impossible to go against what nature inclines us to. Secondly, having got on well by adopting a certain line of conduct, it is impossible to persuade men that they can get on well by acting otherwise. It thus comes about that a man’s fortune changes, for she changes his circumstances but he does not change his ways.” Success leads not to success but to failure, as we cling to attitudes and methods that have outlived their usefulness. Thus are the mighty undone and the meek raised up to take their place, only to be humbled in their turn as Fortune’s wheel rotates once again.

  Because human beings in every place and every time are essentially the same, it is possible to extrapolate the future from the past.xix But even with the gift of prophecy, the prospects for mankind are gloomy. An understanding of history’s lessons is helpful but the wisdom conferred by careful study of the past cannot overcome the fundamental conditions created by the struggle between human nature, incapable of reformation, and Fortuna, incapable of constancy.

  In casting his skeptical eye across the vast panorama of human history Machiavelli believes he detects a cyclical rather than a linear structure. He borrows his basic architecture from the ancient Greek historian Polybius, who wrote: “Such is the recurring cycle of constitutions; such is the system devised by nature, according to which constitutional forms change and are transformed and return again to their original state.” Machiavelli combines this cyclical structure with the threefold division articulated by Aristotle (monarchy, aristocracy, democracy, or, in their debased form, tyranny, oligarchy, anarchy). “[I]f anyone sets up one of the three first forms of government,” Machiavelli observes, “he sets up what will last but for a while, since there are no means whereby to prevent it passing to its contrary, on account of the likeness which in such a case virtue has to vice. These variations are due to chance.” It is a theme he returns to in his Florentine Histories when he declares: “Thus [states] are always descending from good to bad and rising from bad to good. For virtue gives birth to quiet, quiet to leisure, leisure to disorder, disorder to ruin; and similarly, from ruin, order is born; from order, virtue; and from virtue, glory and good f
ortune.”

  Despite his pessimism, Machiavelli does not succumb to fatalistic apathy. As he does in his famous chapter in The Prince where he compares fortune to a raging river, he proposes in The Discourses at least a partial solution to the futile repetitions of history. While it is true that no perfect form of government is possible in a world ruled by fickle Fortune, history teaches us that those societies most able to adapt endure and prosper the longest. By adopting a mixed form of government in which the elements of monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy are combined, mankind can slow the turn of Fortune’s wheel, if not stop it entirely. Even the most successful states founded on the finest constitutions—such as republican Rome and Sparta after Lycurgus—eventually come to grief. Machiavelli’s analysis might be described as organic: birth is merely the prelude to death; growth is inexorably followed by decay. In time, all societies must follow the same dismal path.

  Nothing could be more inimical to the Christian view than this endless parade of folly. Instead of the Christian narrative in which human history, born in original sin, ends in the Final Judgment, Machiavelli’s history is a Sisyphean exercise in futility. Temporary improvement is possible, but this leads to a complacency that is the prelude to disaster. Notably absent from his narrative is the world-changing death and resurrection of Christ that was to have placed humankind on an entirely new path.xx

  Machiavelli provides no comforting alternative to this redemptive eschatology. In more recent centuries faith in a narrative of spiritual redemption has been replaced by belief in technological or material progress, but the very structure of The Discourses, with its constant looping backward toward a past that in most respects shames the present, undermines any reading of history as moving ever forward and upward. At worst, we will continue to ignore the models provided by the great leaders of the past and stumble along blindly. But even if we take to heart the lessons they teach, we will only buy ourselves a temporary reprieve. In either case, Fortuna will win in the end, reducing once thriving metropolises to dust and mingling the bones of kings and paupers in the same indifferent ground.

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  i A reference drawn from novella Geta e Birria, based in turn on a comedy by Plautus, involving a servant (Geta) who, while delivering books from his master to his home, interrupts his master’s wife in an illicit liaison with Jupiter.

  ii His most sustained literary effort to date, the First Decennale, was simply a chronicle of contemporary politics in verse form. After his dismissal he tried to complete a sequel, but he left his Second Decennale unfinished because he no longer had access to the government documents that served as source material.

  iii Like Machiavelli, Cicero worked for a republican government and got into trouble when it was overthrown by tyrannical forces. He was ultimately assassinated—a parallel that must have struck Machiavelli as too close for comfort.

  iv “Benefits,” what Machiavelli calls utili, are those tangible profits to be made from service to the state. The highest offices of the land pay only in terms of honori.

  v The idea that leisure is essential to civilization was first articulated by the ancient Greeks. Plato and Aristotle both defended slavery as the means by which gentlemen were provided with the freedom to philosophize. “Indeed, some things are so divided right from birth, some to rule, some to be ruled” (Aristotle The Politics, I, 5). Machiavelli, however, is suspicious of leisure and of the class of men who live off the labor of others. See, for instance, his claim that “quiet [gives birth] to leisure, leisure to disorder, disorder to ruin” (Florentine Histories, V, 1).

  vi Cicero’s disdain for the rough and tumble of politics was more rhetorical than real. He continually involved himself in politics even as he feigned indifference.

  vii Machiavelli began The Discourses in 1513, the same year he wrote the bulk of The Prince, but it is clear that it took him many years to complete. It is dedicated to two men, Zanobi Buondelmonti and Cosimo Rucellai, with whom he became friendly sometime after 1515, after he became a regular attendee of the get-togethers at the Orti Oricellari. There are also references to events, such as the conquest of Urbino (Discourses, II, 10, 301), dating to as late as 1517, indicating that Machiavelli was still refining the text at that time.

  viii Titus Livius (Livy) was a Roman scholar from the reign of Augustus who wrote a monumental history of Rome from its founding to his own day. Only thirty-five of the original 142 books survive. The first ten books, which provide the starting point for Machiavelli’s own meditations on government, take us to the third century B.C., just as Rome was poised to become a world power.

  ix Machiavelli’s opening salvo was mirrored by Galileo in his seminal Dialogues Concerning Two New Sciences, where he begins: “My purpose is to set forth a very new science dealing with a very ancient subject.” (Quoted in Cassirer, “The Triumph of Machiavellism and Its Consequences,” in Essays in the History of Political Thought, p. 127.) Galileo, like Machiavelli, was able to topple millennia-old systems of belief through the power of direct observation.

  x Machiavelli makes a similar point in The Art of War when he criticizes the vogue for gardens laid out in the classical manner by observing: “How much better, then, would those princes have done . . . if they had endeavored to imitate the ancients in bearing hardships and inconveniences, instead of giving themselves up to ease and indolence, in performing such exploits as were done in the sunshine and not in the shade, in following their example while they continued honest and wholesome, and not when they became dishonest and corrupt” (The Art of War, I, 10).

  xi Machiavelli praises, for instance, Numa Pompilius, who pretended to receive his law code directly from a nymph in order to give his legislation supernatural sanction (see Discourses, I, 11).

  xii It is unclear whether Machiavelli saw the irony in dedicating The Prince to a member of a family whose current power stemmed from the fact that one of the Medici was now the Pope. Any chance that either Giuliano or Lorenzo de’ Medici would rally the disunited forces of Italy depended on the resources and influence of the papacy.

  xiii On this topic, Machiavelli pulled no punches, even in his Florentine Histories, a work commissioned by and dedicated to Pope Clement VII: “So henceforward, all the wars waged by the barbarians in Italy were for the most part caused by the pontiffs, and all the barbarians who invaded it were most often called in by them. This mode of proceeding continues still in our own times; it is this that has kept Italy disunited and infirm” (Florentine Histories, I, 9, p. 20).

  xiv Direct attacks on the Church and the Pope were not unusual among intellectuals of the era. Erasmus, a more spiritual man than Machiavelli, was no less harsh in his condemnation of a corrupt institution: “[S]ince the Christian Church was founded in blood, strengthened by blood and increased in blood, they continue to manage its affairs by the sword as if Christ has perished and can no longer protect his own people in his own way” (Erasmus, Praise of Folly, 59). It is also at this time (1517) Martin Luther nailed his ninety-five theses to the door of All Saints Church in Wittenburg, ushering in the Protestant Reformation.

  xv Later in the same essay he makes it clear which form is more suited to his beloved Florence: “[I]n order to have a princedom in Florence, where equality is great, the establishment of inequality would be necessary . . . . [T]o form a princedom where a republic would go well is a difficult thing and, through being difficult, inhumane and unworthy of whoever hopes to be considered merciful and good” (p. 107). Given the recipient of this essay, the statement must be regarded as courageous, if perhaps a bit foolhardy.

  xvi Machiavelli does not make the temporary nature of the dictatorship he was advocating explicit in The Prince, but in “A Discourse on Remodeling the Government of Florence” (c. 1520), written at the behest of Pope Leo X, he directly, and perhaps rashly, makes just such an appeal. After admitting that at the moment “Florence cannot continue without a director; and since she has to have one, it is much better that he be of the house the people
are accustomed to bow down to” (p. 104), Machiavelli assured the head of the Medici family that “[n]ever will the generality of the Florentine citizens be satisfied if the Hall [of the Great Council] is not reopened” (p. 110–11, in Chief Works, 1). In this work Machiavelli advises the Pope to use his great prestige to put the government of Florence on a sound footing and then relinquish power, an act, he says, “the most pleasing to God” (p. 114).

  xvii While Machiavelli’s republic would have fallen well short of the universal franchise we have come to regard as the key to democracy, the same criticism could be leveled at Madison’s proposals. Both Machiavelli and the Founding Fathers believed the franchise should extend only to property-owning, tax-paying men.