Lehal Library

xxxvii Introduction communist leader Antonio Gramsci would even see The Prince as looking forward to the dictatorship of the proletariat. Others took a more traditional view: Bertrand Russell described The Prince as ‘a handbook for gangsters’, and in so doing did no more than repeat the position of Frederick the Great, who wrote a book to refute Machiavelli and present a more idealistic vision of monarchical govern- ment. Others again ( Jakob Burckhardt and Friedrich Meinecke) found a space between denigration and admir- ation to suggest that the novelty of Machiavelli was to present leadership and ­nation-­building as creative processes that should be judged not morally but aesthetically; in a manner that looked forward to Nietzsche the charismatic leader made a work of art of himself and his government. Mussolini simply took the book at face value: it was a useful ‘vade mecum for statesmen’, he enthused. But whatever our interpretation of his intentions, one reaction that Machiavelli never seems to provoke is indif- ference. Reading The Prince it is impossible not to engage with the disturbing notion that politics cannot be governed by the ethical codes that most of us seek to observe in our ordinary lives. And however we react to this idea, once we have closed the book it will be very hard to go on thinking of our own leaders in quite the same way as we did before.