The Marxist Prince

the people do not wish to be ruled nor oppressed by the nobles, and the nobles wish to rule and oppress the people

That is a quote from Machiavelli - but you would be forgiven if you mistook it for agitprop. As I hope to demonstrate, the Prince is a strong contender for the most misunderstood work of all time. You will not find a manual purely for villains, nor will you find the writings of a man with no regard for the common people. What you will find is a guide to political strategy which imagines a fictional perfect ruler albeit very much placed in a 16th Century context. Maybe I’ve become one of those cranks who reads predictions into the writings of Nostradamus, but I found most of it surprisingly sound advice even for modern rulers.

Gramsci writes:

The basic thing about The Prince is that it is not a systematic treat­ment, but a “live” work, in which political ideology and political science are fused in the dramatic form of a “myth”.

I won’t go so far as to say the work is truly dialectical, but it is fundamentally an an an analysis of the contradictory forces and motives at play in the seizure and control of a principality. As Lenin once wrote of Hegel’s dialectics:

The splitting of a single whole and the cognition of its contradictory parts is the essence (one of the “essentials”, one of the principal, if not the principal, characteristics or features) of dialectics.

This is precisely what Machiavelli spends much of his time on. We should also consider Machiavelli’s analysis of cause and effect:

Two men working differently may bring about the same effect, and of two working similarly, one attains his object and the other does not.

Does this not have an echo Spirkin’s words in ‘Dialectical Materialism’?

That there can never be two exactly identical phenomena, even if they are generated by the same causes.

I would argue, as Engels did of the old Greek philosophers, that Machiavelli is something of a natural dialectician.

Relevance

Machiavelli was not an idle figure nor merely a diplomat. He was in favour of a unified Italian republic, quite a revolutionary idea for the time and he was tortured for his (alleged) part in a conspiracy. To quote Gramsci:

Machiavelli did not merely abstractly desire the national unification of Italy; he had a programme, and it was one which revealed his “precocious Jacobinism”. He intended through the institution of a citizen militia to bring the great mass of peasant farmers into political life.

He had this in common with Lenin, who said the following:

‘Jacobinism’ in Europe or on the boundary line between Europe and Asia in the twentieth century would be the rule of the revolu­tionary class, of the proletariat, which, supported by the peasant poor and taking advantage of the existing material basis for advancing to socialism, could not only provide all the great, ineradicable, unforgettable things provided by the Jacobins in the eighteenth century, but bring about a lasting world-wide victory for the working people

And as Gramsci will tell us:

Machiavelli himself remarks that what he is writing about is in fact practised, and has always been practised, by the greatest men throughout history. So it does not seem that he was writing entirely for those who are already in the know; nor is his style that of dis­interested scientific activity; nor is it possible to think that he arrived at his theses in the field of political science by way of philosophical speculation-which would have been something of a miracle in that field at the time, when even today he meets with such hostility and opposition. One may therefore suppose that Machiavelli had in mind “those who are not in the know”, and that it was they whom he intended to educate politically.

Machiavelli himself reveals that he has a higher regard for the common man than for the nobles both as a political agent and as human beings in passages like this:

one cannot by fair dealing, and without injury to others, satisfy the nobles, but you can satisfy the people, for their object is more righteous than that of the nobles

Where would others have done well to read it?

I find it instructive to consider Machiavelli’s advice when looking at not only historical events, but also the acts of our current political figures.

One Allende would have done well to bear this one in mind when he took office:

There never was a new prince who has disarmed his subjects; rather when he has found them disarmed he has always armed them, because, by arming them, those arms become yours

One of Allende’s failures was to be too moderate in cementing his power and solidifying his base in the working classes who put him into office. Had he armed them, we don’t know if he’d have managed to keep his office and his life, but we can be fairly certain he would have had more of a chance.

And a Mr. Johnson would do well to appreciate this one:

a prince who is not wise himself will never take good advice, unless by chance he has yielded his affairs entirely to one person who happens to be a very prudent man. In this case indeed he may be well governed, but it would not be for long

I’m sure we can see from the latest ‘herd immunity’ fiasco that Mr. Johnson has placed a little too much trust in one certain advisor, and might do well to consider also taking advice from a non-eugenecist.

And finally, a certain Leon Trotsky might’ve done well to appreciate this line:

He who is the cause of another becoming powerful is ruined; because that predominancy has been brought about either by astuteness or else by force, and both are distrusted by him who has been raised to power.

There are so many revolutionary figures who might’ve done well to bear this one in mind. When two leaders have worked together to gain control of a state or a region, we often see this kind of betrayal - and it makes total sense - and it will happen again. If we ever take power, it will necessarily be a consideration.

What can we learn?

Machiavelli offered me a few insights into the Tory party:

A prince, therefore, provided that he has not to rob his subjects, that he can defend himself, that he does not become poor and abject, that he is not forced to become rapacious, ought to hold of little account a reputation for being mean, for it is one of those vices which will enable him to govern.

He even has a criticism of Tory Austerity on the basis that it leaves the government in a bad place in the event of a crisis:

And above all things, a prince ought to live amongst his people in such a way that no unexpected circumstances, whether of good or evil, shall make him change; because if the necessity for this comes in troubled times, you are too late for harsh measures; and mild ones will not help you, for they will be considered as forced from you, and no one will be under any obligation to you for them.

I’m sure we’ve seen the following bait and switch many times before - the occasional cabinet minister thrown to the dogs, high profile resignations, that sort of thing.

Thereupon he promoted Messer Ramiro d’Orco, a swift and cruel man, to whom he gave the fullest power. This man in a short time restored peace and unity with the greatest success. Afterwards the duke considered that it was not advisable to confer such excessive authority, for he had no doubt but that he would become odious, so he set up a court of judgment in the country, under a most excellent president, wherein all cities had their advocates. And because he knew that the past severity had caused some hatred against himself, so, to clear himself in the minds of the people, and gain them entirely to himself, he desired to show that, if any cruelty had been practised, it had not originated with him, but in the natural sternness of the minister. Under this pretence he took Ramiro, and one morning caused him to be executed and left on the piazza at Cesena with the block and a bloody knife at his side. The barbarity of this spectacle caused the people to be at once satisfied and dismayed.

We can also find insights into why terrors so frequently accompany revolutionary events:

it is impossible for the new prince to avoid the imputation of cruelty, owing to new states being full of dangers

I also caught a glimpse at a materialist explanation for why divide-and-conquer strategies such as racism become more prominent - with the surplus providing for a professional army - the mass of the population is no longer a necessity for the state’s defence. Of course, writing in pre-industrial Italy he says:

when the enemy comes upon you in divided cities you are quickly lost, because the weakest party will always assist the outside forces and the other will not be able to resist

What we might do to get power

Gramsci writes not about an individual in control of the state, but of a party fighting for that control. He says the party must hold together in a dialectical unity the two levels “of force and of consent, authority and hegemony, violence and civilisation, of agitation and of propaganda, of tactics and of strategy”, but we can also apply many of the ideas from The Prince to a large organisation. A democratic structure like this, as we know, will only work if there is a high level of political education, and political strategy is a key part of that.

Machiavelli will also remind us that the ruling class will not constrain itself to legalistic means when it comes to the class struggle, and nor can we:

You must know there are two ways of contesting, the one by the law, the other by force; the first method is proper to men, the second to beasts; but because the first is frequently not sufficient, it is necessary to have recourse to the second.

Machiavelli may also point us towards an essential precondition for revolution:

I consider that a prince ought to reckon conspiracies of little account when his people hold him in esteem; but when it is hostile to him, and bears hatred towards him, he ought to fear everything and everybody.

What we might do to keep power

Of course, we know that Stalin annotated his own copy of The Prince, and few have been so successful in retaining their grip on power. It is not possible to imagine that this section was left unmarked:

Upon this a question arises: whether it be better to be loved than feared or feared than loved? It may be answered that one should wish to be both, but, because it is difficult to unite them in one person, it is much safer to be feared than loved

Of course, we cannot follow Stalin’s path, but there is always a terrible risk of ‘a revolution betrayed’ as it were. If we want to confront this possibility again, we must understand the methods of those who would carry out the betrayal.

Most of the work is dedicated to the various forces at play in the control of a state, and I think it would be foolish for the left to ignore the whole work: because many (though certainly not all) of these forces will continue to exist if we take power. I shall not bore you with quotes on this, but it is, I think, an essential read for anyone with an interest in achieving anything in politics - for even if you find his strategies contemptible - they will be used against you.

Final thoughts

We will need political strategy if we are to succeed politically - both to understand the tactics of our opponents and some of those that we should adopt ourselves - and there cannot be many more useful, concise and pleasant reads than The Prince. We must achieve social and economic progress but we must firmly root ourselves in the conditions of the world as they exist. Of course Machiavelli writes this with a little more art:

he who neglects what is done for what ought to be done, sooner effects his ruin than his preservation

And returning now to where we began:

the people do not wish to be ruled nor oppressed by the nobles, and the nobles wish to rule and oppress the people; and from these two opposite desires there arises in cities one of three results, either a principality, self-government, or anarchy.

Personally, I’m hoping for self-government.