The fragility of power: Reading Machiavelli in context

Why is a book written over 500 years ago still important today? Niccolò Machiavelli’s 'The Prince', written in 1513, presents this conundrum. The answer depends on how you read it: as a liberal reading a satire, if it were read by one like Raja Ram Mohan Roy; a manual of brutal state building, when it serves as bedside reading for fascist leaders; or as a primer for amoral politicians, as in our times, on realpolitik to suppress dissenting populations and purge the political firmament of men and women of character.

'The Prince' remains a deeply influential political text, while Machiavelli himself, in common perception, is remembered only by the pejorative ‘Machiavellian’, meaning unscrupulous, especially in politics. This is a pity, for in real life, Machiavelli was a mild-mannered scholar and one of the early champions of liberty. 'The Prince' deserves to be read, if only, for what it says so eloquently underlines the significance of what it does not say.

Born in 1469 in Renaissance Italy, Niccolò Machiavelli served as a civil servant in the city-state of Florence, until the Republic was overthrown and the Medici seized power. He was then tried for treason, imprisoned, exiled and banned from public life. How must rulers rule, was a question that had engaged intellectuals before Machiavelli; the originality of Machiavelli was in his ability to interpret evidence and give new meaning to a central question -- what kind of a polity must we foster?

Far from instructing tyrants, that a simplistic reading of the book might suggest, Machiavelli was laying bare the truth about the ways of venal politics, so that the citizens know better what their leaders really were. 'The Prince' represents a watershed in political philosophy. Before Machiavelli, politics was intertwined with ethics, in theory if not in practice. Machiavelli was the first political thinker who decisively separated politics from ethics, and gave political statecraft a certain autonomy, that laid the foundation for the later study of modern political economy. Ironically, in the history of political philosophy, he is not nearly as important as a Rousseau, for instance, who triggered the Enlightenment and was the inspiration for the French Revolution; or Marx, who influenced social and political transformations in the 20th century.

Yet I dare say, the reason why readers across the world still read 'The Prince' is because this little book is quite simply a classic. Its importance is not so much the advice that it offers to rulers, but the manner in which it articulates a world view -- a particular way of looking at the world.

The timeless value of Machiavelli is that 'The Prince' shows us what the world looks like when viewed from an amoral, unethical perspective. Even while rendering advice to rulers to be realistic and ruthless, it presents, by implication and in brilliant fashion, the unstated counterfactual -- the superiority of republican values.

When reading 'The Prince', don’t miss the allegory; think instead of the present-day political class that displays explicit cynicism for democratic values, believes that politics is nothing but power and naked ambition, and uses deceit and muscle and money power to expand its own selfish interests, singularly devoid of ethical considerations, even while it masquerades as pragmatist. What such politicians miss, though, is the heart of what 'The Prince' encapsulates: the tragedy of power, once it is divorced from ethics. There is no more compelling cautionary tale than the power struggles of Cesare Borgia (1475-1507), the illegitimate son of Pope Alexander VI and a mercenary politician in the Italy of the time, his spectacular rise and dramatic downfall, that inspired Machiavelli to write 'The Prince'.

What Machiavelli really points to by imputation in 'The Prince', as if against his own doctrine, is that statecraft or the practice of power politics, where the end justifies any means to secure and consolidate power, is doomed to never really flourish. To paraphrase Isaiah Berlin, his singular achievement was to plant a permanent question mark in the path of posterity -- that ends equally ultimate, equally sacred, may contradict each other -- and rulers cannot espouse one value as superior to all others, for that becomes the basis for suppression.

Machiavelli was one of the makers of pluralism, and of its acceptance of tolerance. If as readers of 'The Prince' in this post-truth world, we must draw just one lesson, it is this: be wary of politicians who claim their legitimacy from a singular value -- whether religion or virtue. When political power claims moral authority, a good question to ask is why this claim is being made and what those political leaders stand to gain. If 'The Prince' compels us to ask these questions of our own ruling class, it should be reason enough to read, arguably, the most famous book on politics ever written.