(bell tolling)
- [Alan] Niccolo Machiavelli,
16th-century Italian diplomat,
political thinker, arch-baddie.
His name conjures up everything
that's sly about human behavior.
- Well, we have an image of what the Machiavellian is.
I mean, the word is in our dictionaries, he is an adjective.
- [Man] "Machiavellian: astute, cunning, intriguing."
- Controlling, powerful.
- Sinister, underhand.
- Devious, scheming.
- Cunning, subtle.
- Nefarious, manipulative
and to a degree, cruel.
- Peter Mandelson regularly gets described as Machiavellian,
I was regularly described as Machiavellian.
- [Alan] And it's all because of this: The Prince,
written 500 years ago.
It's about power, how to get it and how to keep it.
- "It can be said of men that they are ungrateful,
"fickle liars and deceivers.
"They shun danger and are greedy for profit.
"Therefore, it is necessary for a ruler
"who wishes to maintain his position
"to learn how to be able not to be good."
- [Alan] Machiavelli wrote The Prince in 1513.
It was shocking then and it's shocking now.
- It's almost as if his name, itself, machi-evil,
it just lends itself to a form of demonization.
- "Chapter 17, of cruelty and mercy,
"and whether it is better to be loved than feared.
"Or the contrary."
- There is absolutely nobody in history
who's had more influence on modern affairs, on politics,
than Niccolo Machiavelli.
- [Alan] So what are we to make of The Prince on this,
its 500th anniversary?
How useful and relevant is it today?
- One of the most important books ever written
and a really useful how-to guide for contemporary reality.
- [Alan] Was Machiavelli right?
Should we all learn how not to be good?
Is it better to be feared than loved?
And who are the 21st-century Machiavellians?
(dramatic music)
(birds chirping) (wings fluttering)
(ominous music)
Actually, we're not in Florence.
we're 10 miles south of Florence in San Casciano.
This was Machiavelli's country house in the 1500s
and I'm here for a guided tour.
(knocking)
(speaking in foreign language)
Where he wrote The Prince?
- Si, exactly.
- [Alan] And what is this?
- That is his coat of arms.
His family's coat of arm.
The cross and the nails.
- [Alan] The cross and the nails.
- [Lucia] Mmm-hmm.
Machiavelli.
- [Alan] What does that mean?
- It refers back to his name, Machiavelli,
so related with the cross and the nails of Christ.
- [Alan] Not a bad coat of arms for a man who,
for centuries, was known as the Antichrist.
But the cross and nails might just as well stand
for the violent times Machiavelli lived through.
- Florence was a city-state,
occupying and controlling only a very small portion
of a very chaotic Italy,
surrounded by other city-states that were allies on Tuesday,
enemies on Wednesday and then allies again on Thursday.
The situation was constantly changing.
It was very treacherous,
you didn't know who your friends were
and you couldn't trust anyone,
so they had to be clever.
- [Alan] Before he wrote The Prince,
Machiavelli worked here at the Palazzio Vecchio in Florence.
The old regime, run by the Medici, had just been deposed.
A new regime was in charge and Machiavelli served them
as a high-flying diplomat.
- Machiavelli found himself at the center
of all the diplomatic and political
negotiations within that period.
And it was his ability as a political analyst
that enabled him to advance.
- [Alan] But just when things were going
so well for Machiavelli,
the Medici returned to power
and events took a dramatic turn,
events that would ultimately lead
to the writing of The Prince.
- He was falsely accused in February of 1513
of taking part in an anti-Medician conspiracy.
And he's horribly tortured.
And then he's thrown into prison.
- [Alan] There aren't many documents
relating to Machiavelli at this time.
But this year British historian Stephen Milner
discovered one of the most important of all.
He was researching Florentine town criers
when he stumbled across Machiavelli's arrest warrant.
- Florence was an incredible place for collecting documents,
partly because they didn't trust each other.
They were, where are we?
There we go.
- Oh, there we go.
So, this is it? You just happened to...
- I ordered this particular volume,
and this was the one that contained
the original proclamation.
It was carried through the city by the town crier,
and that, they actually would have read and held
whilst on horseback through the various places
where these proclamations were made.
You can see there's a little hole in the middle
where they put them on a spike for record-keeping.
And here we see Niccolo di me se Bernardo Machiavelli.
- So, what is the arrest for?
- The proclamation is asking,
it's a notice asking for the whereabouts of Machiavelli
and for people to come forward with information.
It actually says within the hour,
(speaking in foreign language)
which gives you some idea of the urgency
that lay behind his arrest.
And it says, "If they are not informed,
"they will not be excused."
So there were no excuses for not notifying.
- [Alan] Tough stuff. (chuckles)
- It is a kind of most-wanted proclamation, if you like.
I think working in the archives in Florence,
it's kind of a drug, in a sense, of archive fever.
You never know when you turn a page
what you're going to bump into.
There's a lovely proverb from the Renaissance
period that says,
(speaking in foreign language)
"Get it in writing, you can't trust anybody."
It's almost a kind of mantra for
Machiavelli's own writing, I think.
- Well, here we are in the Bargello,
which is the Florentine police headquarters,
and this is where Machiavelli was brought
shortly after he was arrested.
He claimed that he was tortured,
that he was actually put on a form of rack,
that he went three notches on the rack without cracking.
But there's absolutely no evidence
that he was involved in this conspiracy.
- But he has a stroke of good fortune as well,
which is, the next month,
the Pope Julius dies
and the Medici acquire the papacy, Leo X.
And he declares great rejoicings in the city and an amnesty,
and so Machiavelli is freed.
- [Stephen] But he was in effect banned from the city,
he was sent out to his farmhouse
and kept under house arrest.
Rather like being on probation,
he had to remain within a certain distance of the city
and that's where, in his study, he began to write
what we now know as The Prince.
- And here he is.
- "Those who wish to win the favor of a prince
"will generally approach him
"with gifts they believe will most delight him.
"Hence we see princes being offered horses, arms,
"vestments of gold and similar accoutrements.
"I have found among my possessions
"nothing I value higher
"than my knowledge of the deeds of great men."
- [Alan] This is how Machiavelli
begins The Prince in 1513,
with a dedication to Lorenzo the Magnificent,
the young Medici ruler.
It was a blatant attempt to suck up to the new regime.
You need me, he's saying,
because I know the secrets of power.
The book is in essence a job application.
- We have here The Prince manuscript.
As you see, it is beautifully illuminated
and it's datable about 1520s,
and it's in the hand of the closest friend of Machiavelli,
Biagio Buonaccorsi.
It's one of the most eldest copy absolutely ever.
And, as you see here,
Niccolo Machiavelli addresses the book
to Lorenzo The Magnificent
and here you have no title.
So, the book is without title.
The Prince is the title the editors gave the book
when the book was actually published,
five years after the death of Machiavelli.
This is another fascinating detail of this book.
- [Alan] So, The Prince wasn't actually
called The Prince
and there are more surprises, too.
- Well, the first thing you notice if you pick up The Prince
is that it's an extremely short book,
it runs to only 90 pages.
It's a book really about two things.
One is how to gain power,
and that's what the first half of the book is about,
but the rest of the book
and the real interest for Machiavelli
of why he wrote it is
how do you hold on to power once you've got it?
- "I find it more fitting to seek the truth of the matter,
"rather than imaginary conceptions,
"because how one lives
"and how one ought to live are so far apart
"that a ruler who persists in doing what ought to be done
"will undermine his power."
- He says, "I'm trying to write something useful, utile,
"and so what I say in this book departs massively,"
the Italian says massima,
"it departs massively from what anyone has ever written
"on this subject."
So he knows that it's a revolutionary book.
- The intent of the book was to be a guide,
a kind of handbook for politically ambitious leaders.
You can play the game for good or you can play it for ill.
For Machiavelli, it's more important to play the game well
than to be morally good.
- Chapter 18, Of the Need for Princes to Keep Their Word.
"Everybody knows how commendable it is for a ruler
"to keep his word and live by integrity
"rather than by cunning,
"and yet experience shows us
"that rulers with little regard for their word
"have achieved great things,
"being expert at beguiling men's minds."
- The first generation who opened this book,
if they came to chapter 18 and read it,
they would have been astounded by this.
In Roman law, there is a maxim which says
good faith must always be kept.
You must always keep your promises.
(speaking in foreign language)
And that chapter was, I think,
the one that gave it its most sinister reputation.
- "A prince must be a fox to spot the snares
"and a lion to overwhelm the wolves.
"Those who rely merely upon the lion's strength
"do not understand this.
"Therefore, a prudent ruler cannot keep his word,
"nor should he,
"when it would be to his disadvantage to do so.
"If all men were good, this rule would not stand.
"But as men are wicked
"and not prepared to keep their word to you,
"you have no need to keep your word to them."
- He knew very well the nature of human beings
and how they behave or not behave.
So he is a man who is used to being in the world.
- "Those best able to imitate the fox have succeeded best.
"But foxiness should be well concealed.
"One must be a great feigner and dissembler.
"A deceiver will always find someone
"willing to be deceived."
- What's interesting about the book,
it's a bit like it says,
"We've inherited an idea about human nature
"from Christianity and classical humanism."
And this idea of human nature is encouraging us to be good.
And what Machiavelli is saying is,
what about if we thought differently about this?
What about if we thought that vices and virtues
were things you could use to survive?
- "If a ruler who wants always to act honorably
"is surrounded by many unscrupulous men,
"his downfall is inevitable.
"Therefore, it is necessary
"for a ruler who wishes to maintain his position
"to learn how to be able not to be good."
- To any Christian reader of Machiavelli at the time,
they're going to say,
but you're forgetting the Day of Judgment.
On the Day of Judgment, all your sins will be revealed
and you will very much wish that you hadn't
behaved like that.
Now, Machiavelli pays no attention to that.
That's a huge silence in the book.
It's just not there as a consideration.
The book is predicated on the assumption
that the idea that your sins will find you out
is a childish superstition, they will not find you out.
- Machiavelli is saying something very simply, which is,
these are wonderful pictures,
but they've got nothing to do with reality.
It's not as though if you're good, you'll be rewarded,
it's not a deal.
Actually, it doesn't matter whether you're good or bad
in terms of, it doesn't predict anything.
So what Machiavelli is saying in contemporary language is,
we need to get real.
- [Alan] This is Jonathan Powell.
He used to be Tony Blair's Chief of Staff.
Now, he's written a memoir
called The New Machiavelli:
How To Wield Power In The Modern World.
- "The choice of advisers is very important for a prince.
"One can assess their prince's intelligence
"by looking at the men with whom he surrounds himself."
- So I'm kind of asking myself
why you called your book The New Machiavelli?
I mean, what made you do that?
Because a lot of people might have thought
that was a term of abuse.
- Well, I wanted to write a book
that was actually useful to people
who were in government.
There are an awful lot of books of theory,
constitutional books,
most of which are completely useless
because they describe the way things should be,
rather than the way things are.
What's great about Machiavelli is, he writes about reality.
He busts myths, he cuts through all of that.
- The word "Machiavellian" was used 358 times
by the newspapers in the first year of Tony Blair's reign.
Somewhere in there, there's a connection.
There are quite a lot of factors about Machiavelli
which are ones that many politicians would not
want to own up to.
For instance, chapter 15,
"It is necessary for a prince who wishes
"to maintain his position
"to learn how to be able not to be good."
- Machiavelli was saying not that princes
should go around being evil,
what he was saying is,
you have to check your personal morality at the door
when you become a leader.
Personal morality is all very well as an individual,
but if you are thinking about the greater
good of the community,
sometimes you'll have to do things
that are not good as an individual,
but are good for society as a whole.
- "A prince must therefore be a fox to spot the snares
"and a lion to overwhelm the wolves."
- This is one of Machiavelli's most interesting lessons.
You must be a lion, a courageous person,
but you also had to be a fox
and have the intelligence and the guile to avoid traps.
There was an example for Tony Blair
when he was running in the 2005 election.
Tony Blair decided he had to make a speech on immigration.
- [Newsreader] Tony Blair said controls on immigration
had already had a positive effect.
- When he finished, I said to him,
I noticed the teleprompter had gone wrong,
because large parts of the speech,
you were looking down at your notes
as opposed to looking at the camera.
What happened?
He said, "There was nothing wrong with the teleprompter,
"just certain bits of the speech
"I didn't want shown on television,
"so I made sure I was looking at my notes,
"so those bits wouldn't be used by television news."
That was the fox bit.
- [Alan] Did Tony Blair ever talk about The Prince?
Did he ever read it, do you think?
- I've no idea if he read it.
He certainly never talked about it.
I think he might be slightly horrified to be thought of
as a Machiavellian leader, but I mean it as a compliment.
- [Alan] Robert Greene has also been bringing
The Prince into the modern world.
He used to work in Hollywood.
Now, he writes bestsellers like The 48 Laws Of Power.
- The traditional way of looking at politics
is veiled with all of these concepts
of what's good for the public,
of politicians' intentions,
of being altruistic and generous.
And what Machiavelli did is take all of that away.
Look at power as it is.
Watch the moves of the various people on the chessboard.
So, it's pure strategy and it was absolutely brilliant,
he's the first person to ever come up with that concept.
There are different types of political leaders.
There are the types who come into office with high ideals.
They want to change things, they want to reform.
They believe that they're doing something
for the good of the public
and then they realize very quickly
that politics is warfare.
And they have to adapt to this environment
and leaders like that,
perhaps Obama would fit into that category,
can do very well if they're adaptable.
Then you have other types like a Bill Clinton,
perhaps a Tony Blair,
or if you're Angela Merkel,
these are more political animals by nature.
They are very Machiavellian, it's in their DNA.
They don't need to read The Prince,
they understand how the laws of power operate.
So, if you are in a position of power,
you have to play a game.
The dynamic doesn't matter,
whether it's a dictatorship or a democracy.
- What The Prince is, in a sense,
is a portrayal of the attributes and qualities
that you need to take the power that you have
and develop that power in a way that is most useful to you
and what you are trying to do.
Well, that is the case today for Barack Obama,
today for Angela Merkel, David Cameron,
and all the rest of them.
That's partly what they're about,
because we can be very squeamish about this, if we want,
but the truth is, power is, it is a force.
- Money is the McMansion in Sarasota
that starts falling apart after 10 years.
Power is the old stone building that stands for centuries.
I cannot respect someone who doesn't see the difference.
- [Alan] The allure of power is a big theme
in drama at the moment.
In the hit series House of Cards,
Kevin Spacey plays the Machiavellian senator,
Frank Underwood.
It's a remake of the earlier series
starring Ian Richardson as Francis Urquhart,
written by Margaret Thatcher's Chief of Staff,
Michael Dobbs.
- There's a dramatic thread that runs
all the way from Machiavelli
through Richard III through Francis Urquhart
and Frank Underwood just talking to you,
letting you in on the secrets of power.
- I think you could achieve anything you wanted.
- You might think that, Mattie,
I'm afraid I couldn't possibly comment.
- And you think that this is wonderful,
you're being trusted,
you're being made a co-conspirator.
- I'm terribly sorry.
- Thank you, Francis.
You're a good man.
- The Tory Party in the 1987-88 period when
just before Margaret Thatcher was pushed out,
which was when I wrote House of Cards,
it was like Florence under the Borgias.
I mean, it was full of conspiracy in dark corners
and people whispering wicked things.
So it wasn't so much that
I must write something which is Machiavellian.
I had, I think, lived though a time
and was living though a time
which I think Machiavelli himself would have recognized.
I think that this particular book of mine
goes back to my university days,
and it's stayed with me ever since.
It's a wonderful book for dipping into.
He's actually saying, this is the way you do it.
And you could be the most principled
politician on the earth,
but unless you get your fingers on power
and know how to pull the levers,
you're wasting your time.
- [Alan] For centuries, The Prince has been inspiring
the powerful and the tyrannical.
Napoleon read it.
So did Stalin.
He made notes in the margin.
Mussolini even did his dissertation on it.
It's always been the book of choice
for political operators.
- It's true that The Prince was the favorite
bedside reading of
Henry Kissinger and Nixon.
And for a good reason,
because they were hard-nosed political realists.
And part of the fascination of The Prince
is that it shows us what the world looks like
when the ethical dimensions have been
removed from the picture.
And I think for someone like Henry Kissinger or Nixon,
there was a certain pleasure in reading a book
that looked at the world the same way they did
and the same way many other people do.
- [Alan] Machiavelli is perhaps most famous for the phrase
"the end justifies the means."
Actually, he never said it.
But he may as well have done.
- The exact thought that's there in The Prince is,
"the action is accused and the outcome excuses it."
So in the Italian, it's very beautiful.
It's accusata and scusata.
It accuses you, but it excuses you.
So you are excused if the motivation for the action
was the good of the state.
- We have to do justice to Machiavelli
because it's not a matter of personal career
or for just his own sake,
it's also for a political purpose.
He was really convinced that
the stability of government in Florence
was the most important thing to do.
For the sake of the common good,
you have to act in a bad manner.
Just sometimes.
- But if you have to do something which is really terrible,
then you have to recognize that it's really terrible.
But you still have to do it.
- I want them dead, mother and child both.
And that fool Viserys as well.
Is that plain enough for you?
I want them both dead.
- You'll dishonor yourself for ever if you do this.
- Honor?
I've got seven kingdoms to rule!
- It's tough to be a ruler,
whether in Machiavelli's time or today.
- George R.R. Martin understands the burden of command.
This is your chair.
This is your throne.
- [George] My throne?
- [Alan] He's the best-selling author
behind the TV series Game of Thrones,
set in an imaginary world of warring kingdoms.
- Game of Thrones is a fantasy, of course.
I think a lot of the fantasy that had gone before me
has this unspoken assumption
that if you are a good man,
you will be a good king or a good prince.
But if you look at the real world,
if you look at real history,
or if you look at contemporary times,
it's not enough just to be a good guy, you know.
I read The Prince back in college,
which was, of course, many years ago.
And obviously, I absorbed quite a few of its lessons.
- It is a terrible thing we must consider,
a vile thing, yet we who presume to rule
must sometimes do vile things
for the good of the realm.
- It's not enough just to say
I will be good and wise
and do the right thing.
What is the right thing?
That's the question.
- [Alan] Don't Be Evil.
That's what Google say is the right thing.
But isn't it precisely these user-friendly
global corporations
that are the modern day Machiavellians?
- Corporatism presents a much more pleasant
face to the world,
but in that sense it may be even more Machiavellian,
because it's smiling at us.
Is it benign?
I don't know.
Is it benign?
But it's certainly subtle.
- The motto of Google is don't be evil.
But don't look at the words, look at their actions.
The data they are gathering on individuals,
the global presence they have.
But in order to exercise power in the world,
you have to give the appearance of being nice and good.
If you look to be too ambitious for power,
people are gonna see that,
they're not gonna to like it.
The public wants to feel
that you are motivated by some higher aspiration.
So you have to manage appearances.
And all of these companies play the game like that.
- The mission of the company is to make the world
more open and connected.
Everyone's gonna have a much better experience
when they're doing different things with their friends.
- "When ones sees him,
"a ruler must be a paragon of mercy,
"loyalty, humanness, integrity and scrupulousness.
"Indeed, there is nothing more important
"than appearing to have this last quality.
"For the common people are impressed
"by appearances and results."
- Machiavelli is the first person ever
to analyze that phenomenon.
I think we're living in a period now
that's remarkably similar to what Machiavelli
was living through.
- [Alan] And it's not just with global tech companies
that appearances matter.
Machiavelli's rule applies everywhere,
not least, as Robert Greene found out, in Hollywood.
- If you go into a meeting and you give off confidence,
like you could pull this off,
like you can see it all the way to the end,
that you know what you're doing,
you're gonna go a lot further
than somebody who might have a brilliant idea,
but doesn't know how to pitch it as well.
I know, for example,
that I made that mistake recently in a meeting,
that we didn't exude that insane sense of confidence
that we were gonna get this project done.
So it's a realm of appearances, basically.
- [Alan] But for Machiavelli,
no one who wants to succeed in the game of power
can escape one key factor.
Luck.
Fortuna, he calls it, that capricious turn of the wheel
by which the ambitious rise and fall,
and never more so than in politics.
- What does it mean to be able to make your fortune?
It is to have the qualities that enable you
to dominate luck.
So wow can you hope to dominate luck?
Well, in the end, you can't.
Fortune is always more powerful than reason.
But there are qualities that enable you,
as the excellent American phrase puts it, to get lucky.
But, of course, you could, as a politician,
simply have an amazing stroke of luck
from which everything follows.
And Tony Blair would certainly be an example of that.
- [Man] The body of John Smith was carried
into the parish...
- John Smith, who was Leader of the Opposition,
dies very suddenly in his mid-fifties.
So Blair becomes Leader of the Opposition at the age of 41,
when he had no expectation of the leader
dying in the mid-fifties.
People don't die in their mid-fifties.
But John Smith did.
- This morning, I'm announcing my candidature
for the position of Leader of the Labour Party.
- Now there's no successful politician
who hasn't, at some point, had pure good luck.
And Tony Blair's pure good luck, terrible thing to say,
but was the death of John Smith.
Surely he would have won that election,
so he would have been Prime Minister.
But instead, it was Blair.
- A new dawn has broken, has it not?
(crowd cheering)
- He had the Fortuna, he had the luck, and he grabbed it.
He had the opportunity to become Leader of the Labour Party
when John Smith died, and he grabbed it.
And he made something of it.
So I think he was a classically Machiavellian leader,
from that point of view.
- [Alan] For Machiavelli, the flip side of Fortuna is Virtu.
He doesn't mean virtue, of course,
he means a kind of virtuosity.
- In Latin, the word for a man is vir,
the source of our word virile.
It's this principle of manliness,
of courage, of prudence,
of knowing how to master fortune.
So that's what virtue is, because if you can master fortune,
you can maintain your state and thereby gain glory.
- "This raises the question of whether it is better
"to be loved than feared.
"My reply is that one would like to be both,
"but as it is difficult to combine love and fear,
"it is far safer to be feared,
"because it can be said of men
"that they're ungrateful, fickle liars and deceivers.
"They shun danger and are greedy for profit."
- He recommends fear over love.
Of course, he says it's better to be both,
but if you have to choose between the two,
it's better to be feared.
- "The bond of love is one that men break
"when it is to their advantage to do so,
"but fear is strengthened by the dread of punishment,
"which is always effective."
- Fear is something that you can rely on
as a very stable sort of emotional foundation
to build your power on.
Machiavelli was all about power,
of the Prince or of the state.
- This is a remarkable moment in The Prince
because it's the only moment
when he really generalizes about human nature.
He says that most people are fickle, you can't trust them.
They are going to do everything
that is in their own interest
and not in your interest.
So what would be the point of trying to
bind them to you by affection?
They'll simply sell you down the river.
You've got to make them frightened.
- "If one has to choose between them,
"it is far safer to be feared than loved."
- Very true of politicians now.
If you think about politicians,
you can be absolutely beloved of your party.
Neil Kinnock was beloved of the Labour Party.
Every time he went through a Prime Minister's question
or was bashed to pieces by Mrs. Thatcher,
the whole Labour Party suffered with him.
But he could never be elected because
he didn't have that aspect of fear.
Mrs. Thatcher was never much liked by her troops,
she was feared and respected.
So she was someone who was feared rather than loved.
Machiavelli says the point is
that being loved is a reciprocal relationship.
The person can stop loving you,
whereas fear is a one-way thing.
They can't stop fearing you
as long as you have the means to make them fear.
- Through it all, the fear point
is really, really important.
When the leader goes into a gathering,
there has to be a sense that that person
is the main event in that room at that time.
Now they can emanate all sorts of charm
and niceness and all the rest of it,
but, you know, look at what happens
within our political system
in the run-up to a re-shuffle.
I can remember the very first time he did a re-shuffle.
I mean, he wasn't quite physically sick,
but he wasn't far off it.
He absolutely hated it.
And he definitely got tougher as time went on.
- Out went Charles Clarke, after so many bad headlines...
- Come the last re-shuffle that I was,
as it were, directly involved in,
once he'd done the big beasts,
and done them all face-to-face,
he kind of had a list of people that he did by phone.
And was pretty swift about it as well.
Look, you've probably heard I'm doing a re-shuffle
and I'm afraid I'm going to have to ask for your job
because we need to make some changes.
And um, well, there we are.
- [Alan] Is it useful that they feel slightly fearful?
- I think if leaders are being really,
really honest about it,
I think that is quite useful at times.
- The ruler needs to be able to intimidate people,
for lack of a better word,
needs to be able, well, in extreme cases
like Renaissance Italy, to execute his enemies.
In modern times, it would be more to fire people.
- [Alan] For Machiavelli,
not even the most loyal servant should be spared.
If you have to get rid of them to maintain power,
then they must go.
- Better to be feared than loved.
I would say that to be feared
is far better than to be loved.
There has to be, between an employer and employee,
a tiny little bit of fear.
But I certainly don't need to be loved
by anybody in business.
- [Man] These are the Dragons.
Five of Britain's wealthiest
and most enterprising business leaders.
- [Alan] Multimillionaire businesswoman
and former Dragon Hilary Devey
first read The Prince when she was at school.
16th century political analysis may have felt like a chore
but it's certainly left its mark.
- Let's face it, for a 15-year-old,
even for a 50-year-old,
it's heavy going, it's a hard read.
Because it's very thought-provoking,
which is what it's meant to be.
I think I can bring a lot to the party.
I've a lot of access into major retailers.
So I'll offer you the full 70,000.
But I'd like 20%.
If you actually watch Dragons' Den,
it couldn't be more Machiavellian if it tried.
And if you look at each one of the Dragons,
every single one of them has something
Machiavellian about them.
- I'll offer you 70,000 pound
for 10% of the company.
- I simply couldn't believe how Machiavellian they were.
And it took me a little while,
perhaps a month, six weeks,
to finally understand what the strategy,
what the game plan was.
And once I did, of course,
I joined in and I became one of them.
- [Man] Only Hilary Devey remains.
Will she see an opportunity where her rivals have not?
- If I was to offer you the 50,000 pound
for 95% of your company,
what would you say?
I think it is an important book.
And I think his principles are the same
principles as mine, in a way,
where I say the only difference between me and Machiavelli
is that I make a commercial decision.
And I will take whatever amount of
compassion is required out of that commercial decision.
But what I will then do is put compassion back in.
So I'm having to do this because XYZ,
now how can I help you?
- Chapter 19.
How to avoid contempt and hatred.
"Princes must delegate difficult tasks to others
"and keep popular ones for themselves."
- The Prince must never be hated.
If you're hated then you'll lose your state
because there will be some good reason
why the people hate you and they wont tolerate it.
Now how can you avoid being hated
if terrible things have to be done?
Well one of Machiavelli's pieces of advice is to say
you must appoint a deputy and you must get him
to do the dirty work.
- [Alan] To make his point,
Machiavelli tells a story about Cesare Borgia.
We think of Borgia as a blood-thirsty monster.
To Machiavelli, he was a hero.
The story begins in Cesena in the Romagna district of Italy.
Borgia wants to take over the area
so he sends in his minister Romero d'Orco,
a man with a ruthless reputation.
- Borgia sends him in to Romagna to pacify it.
He does so by means of unspeakable cruelty
and there is a threat of a rising.
- Borgia was aware that d'Orco had created
hatred among the people
and in order to win them over,
he decided to make it clear that
if there had been any cruelty
it had been triggered by d'Orco and not him.
- And so what happens is,
Machiavelli says, in wonderfully level piece of prose,
he says that one morning Romero d'Orco was found
in the square of Cesena in two pieces.
(dramatic music)
- He had d'Orco placed in two pieces
with a block of wood and blood-stained knife by his side.
This terrible spectacle left the people
both satisfied and stupefied.
- I mean, they thought, wow, well he can do anything.
The hated figure was gone,
Borgia was in no way to blame.
So always put a second in command to do your dirty work.
- Putting that dismembered body on a block, what is that?
It's not only just saying that I executed that man,
but it's almost like a ritual murder, almost mafia-like.
And it's there to inspire awe and respect and admiration
for the man who did it.
To see a leader who's not only killed him,
but put him there so everyone could see as a lesson.
My God, it has a triple effect on public opinion.
Political leaders have been using
this strategy for centuries
without the blood.
So FDR had his henchmen, Clinton had his henchmen.
Tony Blair had it,
Cameron has Osborne.
On and on and on and on.
You've got somebody there to do the dirty work,
and then you can distance yourself from them.
So the sort of violent example is actually
something that goes on every day around us.
- [Alan] Maybe that's why The Prince feels so contemporary.
The rules of power, it seems,
are just as applicable today as they were 500 years ago.
Originally a manual for the Medici,
The Prince could just as easily
be a modern self-help book.
- We tend to think of power only in terms
of politics or business,
but really there's the power to control
your destiny, your life,
how you are in your office.
If you have no control over your career,
if you have no influence over your colleagues
or peers or your boss,
it's the most miserable feeling in the world.
And nobody wants that kind of position in life.
So everybody is scrambling to get more power,
more control, over their individual destiny.
- I taught college once at a tiny little
Catholic girls' college in Dubuque, Iowa.
And...
The power struggles on an academic level
at this little thing were as vicious
as anything in medieval Florence of
who will get to be department chairman
and wield that vast power.
It's all in the context of what you're in.
- It's sort of like once you enter the boxing ring,
you have to fight, you can't sit there and just lie down.
You're gonna get beaten up.
So once you're there, you have to figure out a strategy.
If you don't want to get hit,
you have to at least figure out how to avoid getting hit.
So there's no way to opt out.
But a lot of people are uncomfortable with it
and they play a kind of a negative game of power.
They say that they find power ugly and disgusting
and power people are antisocial, et cetera.
The ones that say they're not interested in power
are often the most dangerous types.
I would say that The Prince is more relevant now
than it almost ever has been.
And that he was ahead of his time,
he was 500 years ahead of his time.
And that this book is absolutely
the perfect template for how to survive
and thrive in the world that's coming up.
(explosion booming)
- [Alan] Using The Prince as a guide to warfare
may sound a bit extreme,
but that's exactly what Colonel Tim Collins
did when he was in Iraq.
Collins is famous for the rousing speech
he made on the eve of battle,
later recreated in a short film starring Kenneth Branagh.
- Now there are some who are alive at this moment
who will not be alive shortly.
Those of them who do not wish to go on that journey,
we will not send them.
As for the others...
- [Alan] What is less known is that, while he was in Iraq,
Collins kept a copy of The Prince with him at all times.
- In Iraq, I kept dipping into it.
I carried it around in my map pocket
and I would take it out and read it.
I would study to find out what it was
he was specifically saying about
what will cause populations to hate you.
Because here's the headline news,
what would have got you hated 500 years ago
is what's gonna get you hated today.
So it's worth studying it to what it is he's saying.
This is the book I had with me in Iraq.
And it's pretty fragile now because
it literally has been through the wars.
And the sand still falls out of it.
If you read Machiavelli,
you realize at the end of the day
what you've got to do is the right thing.
So, if you are in an occupied village,
we could organize a football match
and give out bars of soap.
Or we could have a curfew and tell you,
the first person I catch with a weapon is a dead man,
and I want all weapons handed in tomorrow.
And after that, anybody caught with one is a dead man.
And then get all the weapons handed in.
And once all the weapons are out of the way
and they fear your very shadow,
then we can have a football match.
- [Alan] And do you think, as a manual,
that this had lessons for you?
- Absolutely.
I mean, he is spot on throughout.
I think that all he's saying ultimately is,
for good or for ill, this is what works.
So, on that basis, I think he's the good guy.
What he described was what he saw.
And he did it so accurately
that here we are centuries later still reading it
and still observing it in our everyday lives.
- Chapter Three.
"It should be observed here that men should
"either be caressed or crushed
"because they can avenge slight injuries
"but not those that are very severe."
- What Machiavelli would say is that,
if you decide to do something,
you go through with it to the end.
And that means not to spatter your enemy,
to crush your enemy.
Cause him to cease to exist.
That way you're certain there can be no
comeback on you or your people.
- The crush-your-enemy dynamic
is something that Machiavelli
discovered as a law of power.
And it's timeless.
And it exists in warfare and it totally exists in business.
The classic example was the war
between Microsoft and Netscape in the 1990s,
in which Netscape was one of the hottest things around
and Microsoft completely crushed Netscape.
It doesn't exist anymore.
- Internet wars, Microsoft vs. Netscape,
Goliath takes on David.
- [Robert] You find the same thing with Google.
Every time there is a possible competitor,
they go out and buy them out.
Like YouTube, etc.
- [Alan] Google buys YouTube.
- [Robert] You look at it with Amazon.
On and on down the line,
it's the dynamic in business where you need to consume
the various rivals in your path.
- "It can be said of men that they are ungrateful,
"fickle liars and deceivers.
"They shun danger and are greedy for profit."
- [Alan] I keep coming back to these lines from The Prince.
Is this what people are really like?
Are we all ungrateful, fickle liars and deceivers?
The Machiavelli Test is an attempt to answer that.
It was developed by psychologists in the 1960s.
20 questions tap into our Machiavellian instincts.
You end up with a score that tells you whether
you're a high Mac or a low Mac.
Now this is something I can't resist.
- Alan, in this test there are 20 statements.
I want you to indicate the extent to which
you agree or disagree with each statement.
I want you to answer as truthfully as you can.
Answer one if you strongly disagree with the statement,
two if you disagree,
three if you are neutral,
four if you agree,
and five if you strongly agree.
Okay?
Number one.
Never tell anyone the real reason you did something
unless it is useful to do so.
- Two.
- The best way to handle people is to tell them
what they want to hear.
- Three.
- It is hard to get ahead without cutting corners.
- Four.
- It is wise to flatter important people.
- Four.
Since its conception, there've been around 1,400 studies
that have used the Machiavelli Test.
So what do the results tell us?
- One of the most consistent findings
to come out of our studies
is that men are more Machiavellian than women.
Not by a great deal,
but they come out consistently more
Machiavellian than women.
Machiavellianism tends to peak in adolescence.
And another interesting finding to come from the studies
is that it doesn't matter what
your political orientation is.
That is, right wingers and left wingers
don't differ in Machiavellianism.
You might tend to think that perhaps right wingers
are perhaps a little bit more Machiavellian.
They're not.
- So how did I do?
- Well, Alan, I suppose it's good news.
You came out with a mean score of 2.95 on these questions.
Which means that you're neutral.
Or just tending to disagree
with the Machiavellian questions.
That makes you somewhat less Machiavellian
than the average person.
- But if I were truly Machiavellian,
I would probably be lying, wouldn't I?
- [Man] You probably would in this setting
because you're filming a documentary
and your responses are going out to the nation.
But if you were an anonymous research...
- [Alan] I'm still not sure what to make of Machiavelli.
Is The Prince a manual for tyrants, devoid of all morality,
or is it a realistic guide to life?
Is Machiavelli a goodie or a baddie?
- It seems to me that he holds a place as a cultural icon.
He's a baddie.
Whereas actually the book is about
the exposure of the nature of badness and goodness.
It says, we need to think of morality as a toolkit.
Vices and virtues are artifacts we've invented to survive.
- [Alan] Is it a sort of realistic view of human nature,
and not just of human nature,
but the journey that we all have to make?
- Well, yes, it could be.
But it could be a realistic view of human nature
after you've lost belief in love and kindness.
But you could put it the other way round and think
that what's being said is,
if virtue isn't necessarily rewarded, why be virtuous?
Which is a good question.
And the answer would be something like,
well, virtue is good in and of itself.
It's better to be kind than to be cruel.
Not because you'll do better in life,
but because it's better to be kind than to be cruel.
- I'm keen on the thought that Machiavelli is a moralist,
he's just not a kind of moralist whom I admire.
He is someone who thinks that the quality of your actions
is to be judged in terms of their consequences.
That allows him this great leeway for saying, well,
it's necessary for the goal,
which is a good one, for you to do evil.
And don't worry about the fact that you have done something
which is unjust if you are certain that if you didn't do it
it would have affected the security
and the well-being of the state.
Because your job is to maintain that.
And the point is, you've got to maintain
that whatever happens.
That's the horrible thing about Machiavelli.
I mean, let's be clear.
This is, I think, a horrible book.
I mean it's a horrible book because it says,
don't worry about the virtues,
just worry about consequences.
Your job is to keep people secure.
Do whatever is necessary.
Well, if you think about the implications of that,
they're pretty appalling.
- I also think there's a despair in this.
Because the fundamental despair in it is the assumption that
people don't want to collaborate with each other.
That people don't want to look after each other.
You can imagine it also as a book written
in the aftermath of a trauma.
And in a way, of course, he was in prison.
So there was a trauma.
You could think Machiavelli is very disillusioned
about a lot of things.
So it's a bit like he's saying, once you lose heart,
once you lose belief in human goodness and collaboration
and kindness and love,
this is what the world is going to look like.
And more and more of us are gonna have experiences
in which we feel disillusioned,
so we need to wise up to this.
("Made Niggaz" by Tupac Shakur)
- [Alan] This is Tupac Shakur.
He'd been huge fan of Machiavelli
before he was gunned down 1996.
When was in prison,
he studied The Prince and when he got out
he changed his name to Makaveli.
And made videos like this.
♫ Makaveli the Don till I'm gone
- [Alan] More recently, the rapper 50 Cent
wrote a book with Robert Greene
called The 50th Law,
a Machiavellian bible for success
based on the single principal, fear nothing.
- There is not a single more Machiavellian environment
than the music industry on this planet.
It makes Hollywood look like kindergarten.
It is ruthless.
It's Game of Thrones times five.
And so someone like 50, he said it helped him.
It helped him negotiate this shark-infested environment.
Power is a neutral term.
It can be used for bad and it can be used for good.
It's like a tool.
- [Alan] Apart from Tupac and 50 Cent,
who else these days measures up to Machiavelli?
Who would Machiavelli approve of?
- Well, a lot of what Machiavelli is about
is about being strategic,
about trying to think in a longer term frame.
So if you think about someone like Alex Ferguson
of Manchester United,
he was clearly as strategic manager.
He wasn't trying to think about the next match,
he was thinking on a much longer time frame.
I think someone like that would be
an unconscious Machiavellian.
- I would say that the most person
certainly in my lifetime
that I would resemble to Machiavelli
would be Margaret Thatcher.
She certainly wasn't loved by her Cabinet.
But she was certainly feared.
- I think if you're looking for a very good example
of an institution that has applied well
some of the lessons and the principles in The Prince,
you'll find them in the Royal Family.
I mean, there was a period when
actually the sense of the royal brand,
if you like, was becoming quite negative.
Well, they've seen that off.
Big time.
And I think they've seen it off, in part,
by operating some of these
timeless principles that are set out in The Prince.
But in very a modern context.
- [Alan] The Prince may anticipate a world
five centuries into the future,
but what happened to the book itself?
It was published in 1532
and not surprisingly the Pope banned it.
- The Papal Index is set up in 1559.
It's simply an alphabetical list of books
which you mustn't read.
They are mostly Lutheran and Calvinist books,
works of deep heresy according to the Catholic Church.
But some secular writers are in there,
and Nicholas Machiavelli is in there
under the heading "all his works are totally banned."
- [Alan] But that didn't stop The Prince
from reaching England
and cementing Niccolo Machiavelli's
reputation as Old Nick - the devil.
- England was the country that really
played the biggest role
in spreading this idea that this man was satanic.
(grunting)
- [Alan] Shakespeare doesn't exactly help,
as Machiavelli's name is evoked by
the scheming Duke of Gloucester,
the future Richard III.
- I can add colors to the Chameleon,
change shapes with Proteus for advantages
and set the murderous Machiavel to school.
- [Alan] We may have inherited this idea of Machiavelli
as the devil, but that's not what the Italians think.
In Florence, his statue stands outside the Uffizi
alongside the Italian greats.
The Prince is even a set text in schools.
- If you think for instance that it's one of
the three Italian books
translated all over the world,
in almost all language in the world.
And the other ones are Dante's, of course,
comedy of Dante, and Pinocchio by Collodi.
So The Prince, Pinocchio and Dante,
the three most translated books.
This is something, don't you know? (laughing)
- [Alan] And there's another reason
why Machiavelli is admired.
Ultimately, he was in favor of republics
rather than inherited rule.
- He distinguishes between an old prince and a new prince.
Old princes are people who have inherited their position.
But then there's the new prince who rises from the bottom.
He's completely on the side of the new prince
because he believes that the new prince
can only rise to the top with their own energy.
- Now one of the interesting things about The Prince is
it's got an irony attached to it.
It's saying, if you want to hold onto power,
this is how to behave.
But we can all read it.
So it's a book about trickery which exposes the tricks.
- Here are some different translations of The Prince.
We really received them from the many visitors coming here.
We have French, from the Republica Czecha,
in Norwegian,
from Oslo, in German,
Korean, Russian.
A doctor from Israel sent us this.
Chinese.
This we received from Belgrade.
Polish, Japanese,
Finnish, Turkish,
Argentina, Norwegian,
and English of course.
And this is his land,
his vineyards, his olive trees,
his property.
- [Alan] Today Machiavelli's house is owned
by a wine company.
Across the road, you can order a Chianti
from Machiavelli's vineyard.
Here's to The Prince.
- Okay.
(glasses clinking)
Now tell me,
do many people come here to visit the home of Machiavelli?
- [Lucia] Yes, from all over the world.
Many years ago, came Tony Blair also.
- Really?
- [Lucia] Really.
- When did he come here?
- [Lucia] He came in 1998.
- [Alan] So just a year after he came to power.
- [Lucia] Yeah, mmm-hmm.
- [Alan] Did you take him round the house?
- Si, we went around, and we gave him,
of course, a copy of The Prince.
- Did you really?
- Yeah.
- In Italian or English?
- In Italian.
- [Alan] But what happened to Machiavelli himself?
The whole of the point of writing The Prince was to get
noticed by the most powerful man in Florence.
But Machiavelli totally failed.
As far as we know,
Lorenzo the Magnificent never even read it
and Machiavelli never got his job back.
He ended up here on his estate,
drinking wine and writing books and plays.
- In many ways, Machiavelli was a failure.
Because he gave advice that other people
could never be seen to be taking.
It may well have been very useful to other people,
but the last thing they could do,
according to his own tenets in the book,
is show that they were taking his advice.
- [Alan] The biggest irony in this whole story
is that Machiavelli himself
didn't appear to be in the least bit Machiavellian.
In a letter to a friend, Machiavelli once wrote:
"When evening comes I go back home.
"I take off my work clothes
"and put on the clothes of an ambassador.
"I enter the ancient courts of rulers.
"I forget every worry.
"I'm no longer afraid of poverty
"or frightened of death.
"I live entirely through them."
Machiavelli died in 1527 at the age of 58,
five years before The Prince was published.
Little did he know that 500 years later
what he called his "little pamphlet" would remain
one of the most influential books ever written.
♫ Makaveli the Don, till I'm gone
♫ I maintain my army
♫ Of lunatics that stay armed
♫ Till the day I die
- [Woman] Alan.
Alan.
What about the BBC?
Surely that's a Machiavellian institution?
- You may think that but I couldn't possibly comment.
♫ My life in exchange for yours
♫ Born hated as a thug
♫ House full of babies cryin'
♫ From a lack of gettin' love
♫ Ain't nobody tell me shit
♫ 'Til I got a sack of drugs
♫ Had the block sewn up
♫ 'Cause I learned to pack a gun
♫ Do you feel me