The longest chapter in either of Machiavelli's two masterworks - The Prince and The Discourses on Livy - is not about war, statecraft, or virtue. It is a detailed, practical guide to conspiracy. Harvard political philosopher Harvey Mansfield has explained why this matters far more than scholars typically acknowledge, and why the chapter's influence extends directly into modern political thinking.
Speaking to Tyler Cowen on his podcast, "Hvylya" reports, the 93-year-old Mansfield laid out what made Machiavelli's treatment of conspiracy revolutionary. Previous thinkers had debated whether killing a tyrant was just. Machiavelli, characteristically, skipped the moral question entirely and went straight to mechanics. "He tells you how to do it before, during, and after. There's three stages of a conspiracy and the things to watch out for," Mansfield said.
This practical turn was not accidental. It grew directly from Machiavelli's core philosophical innovation - what Mansfield calls "effectual truth." Politics, in Machiavelli's view, "isn't what it looks to be, but it's always what's going on behind the scenes. What is behind the scenes is more important." Principles, justifications, public talk - all secondary. The real action is hidden.
When asked whether America's 20th-century experience refutes or confirms the conspiratorial worldview, Mansfield split the difference. The great wars America fought "were not undertaken by us. They were not intended. They were wars of defense" - a considerable accomplishment "which wasn't intended or conspired for." In that sense, Machiavelli was wrong about America.
But Mansfield immediately qualified this. "It is always necessary for government to be secret," he said. Planning requires secrecy, and "secrecy includes conspiracy." Even trivial authority operates this way: "Even a babysitter can't say everything to the baby." Execution of any plan demands that some information be held back. The truth may come out eventually, but only after the plan succeeds - at which point, Mansfield noted, people tend to assume the outcome was right simply because it worked.
He pointed to the capture of Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro as a recent example of power that "impresses people regardless of principle" and leads them to retroactively justify what succeeded. Machiavelli, Mansfield suggested, understood this dynamic better than any thinker before or since.
Also read: From Venezuela to Iran: Foreign Affairs Uncovers the Pattern Behind Trump's Undeclared Wars.