Thoughts on Machiavelli

I had read The Prince a while ago and have been trying to digest it a bit. It raises some interesting questions for politics. Now, Machiavelli has a name for advocating ruthlessness and backstabbing in order to keep power. But his project is actually much more than that.

First, he sets out to write about how politics actually work. Too many people have been writing about the politics of some ideal, morally perfect world, he complains. He wants to tell it like it is. He is not saying that one should be a jerk, he's just pointing out that, actually, many good Roman emperors who kept the peace were assassinated by their own soldiers for the very fact. Do what you want with that information, but at least face the world we live in.

Second, Machiavelli brings up ethical problems in ruling a state. You might think that the gentle ruler is better than the brutal ruler - but what happens when your region is in chaos? He gives some examples from Italy of his day of a ruler who was nice and all, but whose city then was conquered, which of course destroyed the social fabric. By contrast, he points out another ruler who was horribly brutal. But after a few well-placed executions, his city ran smoothly. The latter actually brought peace to his city, which means that the citizens actually lived better lives. The former actually lost that peace. And the goal of ruling is to procure actual peace, stability, and comfort for one's own citizens.

This bothers me about politics, by which I mean any attempt to bring order to a community of people. When is force justified? Not just force in war, but also in pushing through opinions that will actually improve the lives of people, even if they don't realize it (and may even be antagonistic to it). What do we do when ideals of justice don't actually lead to good consequences? The world works the way it does, and complaining about corruption and social inertia doesn't change their existence. Procuring peace at the price of justice won't secure that peace, but pursuing through only just ends might not get anything at all. And this is ultimately Machiavelli's point: not that one should do whatever it takes to get power for oneself (he actually doesn't care much for such people), but that one needs to do what it takes to improve ones community (in this case, the incessantly warring states of Italy).