As indicated in my post of August 21, I am delivering on this site a very short course on the classics of literature on leadership. (See the post for how “classic” is defined.)
The course will draw on my edited volume, Leadership: Essential Selections on Power, Authority, and Influence (McGraw-Hill, 2010). Here I can provide only short bursts of texts. My hope is that they will prompt you to dig deeper.
The selections are grouped into three parts. Part I comprises classics About Leadership. Part II is a compilation of Literature as Leadership. And Part III consists of selections by Leaders in Action. Leaders who have used words – written, oral, or both – as instruments of leadership.
In the coming weeks, each of the entries is in Part I. Each is About Leadership.
Today we turn to Machiavelli, to The Prince, which scarcely needs an introduction. The Prince was described by Harvard professor Harvey Mansfield, “the most famous book on politics ever written.” So famous is the book, the manual really, that the adjective, “Machiavellian,” has come over five centuries to be part of the English language. But Machiavelli’s mind was far more nuanced, and The Prince far more complex, than the charge “Machiavellian” seems to suggest.
I refer to The Prince as a manual because it was written as an instruction. As I wrote in the above-mentioned book, “Machiavelli believed that rulers require education of a special sort and training of a certain kind. So, think of The Prince as a primer, a how-to-book if you will, particularly for Lorenzo de’ Medici, who became Duke of Urbino in 1516.”
The Prince is utterly pragmatic. It is a deeply personal manual, intended for the prince, the duke, the leader, only. Who, Machiavelli presumed, had lessons to learn on how to preserve his power. This is not to say that the prince’s subjects – the leader’s followers – are slighted. They are not. In fact, Machiavelli makes clear the preferred way for the prince to preserve his power is to keep his people content, or at least content enough. Still, the prince must always, without exception, put his interests above everyone else’s. This applies even when he concludes that he must be cruel as opposed to what is preferred, which is to be merciful.
From Book XVII:
- I say that each prince should desire to be held merciful and not cruel; nevertheless, he should take care not to use this mercy badly.
- A prince, therefore, to keep his subjects united and faithful, should not care about the infamy of cruelty, because with very few examples he will be more than those who for the sake of too much mercy allow disorders to continue… for these customarily hurt a “whole community.”
- From this a dispute arises whether it is better to be loved than feared, or the reverse. The response is that one would want to be both the one and the other; but because it is difficult to put them together, it is much safer to be feared than loved…. For one can say this generally of men: that they are ungrateful, fickle, pretenders and dissemblers, evades of danger, eager for gain.
- I conclude, then, returning to being feared, and loved, that since men love at their convenience and fear at the convenience of the prince, a wise prince should found himself on what is his, not on what is someone else’s. He should only contrive to avoid hatred, as was said.