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One of the chapters in The Dilbert Principle actually bears the title "Machiavellian Methods." Adams provides a parenthetical notice that this part of the book is "Written by Dogbert," who seems to be the smartest operator in the Dilbert cast of characters. And Dogbert does sound like he has read The Prince. "The earth is populated by shallow and ignorant people. That's why form will always be more important than substance. You can waste your time complaining about how that should not be the case in a perfect world, or you can snap out of it and follow my advice."
In Dogbert's Top Secret Management Handbook, Dogbert is presented as a large-brained expert at making "the exploited masses" serve his interests. "Leadership isn't only about selfish actions," he counsels; it also requires mastery of the kind of "empty, meaningless expressions"—such as "It's a new paradigm"—that will dupe your hapless coworkers into conforming to your manipulative designs.
Is Scott Adams a Machiavellian, then? I would say he probably is. The interesting question, though, is whether Niccolo Machiavelli deserves to be branded with that label. This question looms large in Harvey Mansfield's collection of essays on Machiavelli's thought.
As Mansfield demonstrates, the question is not susceptible to a straightforward answer. He is obviously not satisfied with the conflicting assessments of Machiavelli current these days. On the one hand is the popular notion that Machiavelli was indeed a Machiavellian—that is, a Dogbert-type teacher of amoral manipulative techniques for getting ahead in competitive settings. On the other is the rather bland assessment common among political theorists, that Machiavelli was simply an important—and rather benign—shaper of today's science of politics, a pioneer in insisting that we focus in a nonjudgmental way on what really happens in political life rather than spinning out, in the manner of Plato and Saint Augustine, idealized schemes of moral "oughts."
Mansfield finds some truth in each of these depictions, but each by itself is too simple. For a properly nuanced understanding of Machiavelli, Mansfield suggests, we do well to follow a piece of advice that Leo Strauss once offered: we must begin with the Machiavellians and ascend from there.
Mansfield makes his case by focusing on Machiavelli's conception of virtue. He complains that Machiavelli's translators have consistently refused to translate the frequent references to virtu as "virtue": they prefer to "call it ingenuity or valor or vigor, thereby revealing that something new is intended while concealing the fact that Machiavelli calls it virtue."
While Machiavelli did indeed reject the traditional notions that moral virtue is either good for its own sake or good for the sake of glorifying God, he did not mean thereby to reject the very idea of virtue out of hand. For one thing, Machiavelli knew that his own recommended designs for political leaders required the continuing acceptance of the older ideas of virtue in the larger community. The effective prince needs to appear to be virtuous in the classical sense. It is only by maintaining this appearance that he can effectively use vice on occasion to achieve his ends.
The selective use of arbitary executions, for example, is an important strategy in Machiavelli's scheme. But this kind of thing must come as a surprise, thereby keeping people off guard. The followers must generally believe that the prince is a person of good will, while not being lulled into thinking that his good will can be taken for granted.
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