Macedonian Machiavellianism: Satire and flattery

Ilo Trajkovski

Some human dilemmas have lingered since the beginning of time. And they will last as long as there someone to philosophize, to think and act. To act either as a creator of new works, either as a passive social or as an apologist and an indecent man, whatever. So, nowadays we see, read and hear how many of our politicians, prominent journalistic and academic writers are fighting with one of the oldest dilemmas, and we too, along with them. Of course, the most prominent are those who carry time two or three hats on their thinking heads at the same – advisers and columnists, former or current politicians and former or current university professors and diplomats. They, as confidential interpreters of the truth, with all their superior authority, convince the public that the end justifies the means.

In their efforts to justify the current policies of Prime Minister Zaev to push the Prespa agreement through at any cost, and the conditional constitutional amendments coming from the agreement, these interpreters call on Niccolò Machiavelli. Machiavelli is attributed that in his work “The Prince” he promoted the realpolitik formula that the end justifies the means, that the main purpose of each ruler is the maintenance of power, and that in the name of that purpose all means are justified. In that so-called Machiavellian spirit and our apologists openly recommend to the current government that, simply by virtue of being a power, it has a legitimate right to use all means to maintain its power.

In doing so, they place such Machiavellianism in a Macedonian packaging. In that version, the pushing of the agreement and the constitutional amendments are presented as a matter of preserving the country, not as a matter of maintaining the current government. Even Niccolo Machiavelli himself would be envious of this Machiavellian formula.
It was at least very clear to Machiavelli that politics is more important than the appearance or, in today’s sense of the word, the public image is more important than the real goals and actions of the government. In that direction, addressing the ruler to whom he is courting, he says: Everyone pays attention to the way you look, but only a few people know what you really are… and even those few who know what you really wouldn’t dare to go against the general public opinion. Therefore, they too publicly represent you as you would like to portray yourself and the way you would like to be seen by the public.

In that spirit, our apologists are confronted with the inconvenience of the fact that the government violates the right with its policy, they still gather courage and tell the public that even so it is less evil compared to the evil that would be done if it the law were respected! Not only does the policy of government come before and above the law, but rather the insistence of some on the rule of law “violates the state’s perspectives.” Another scholarly Machiavellian even more explicitly admits that it is not very virtuous to say what the ruler is really doing – that he is acting unjustly. But, however, with an ethical somersault mortal, he points out that in the name of the historical character of our “ruler’s” politics, he is allowed to put the parliament in the hands of suspected criminals! This is where Machiavelli enters the scene – the ruler is allowed to do this on behalf of the revolutionary decision and the policy of liberating the Republic of Macedonia from the “slavery of its nationalism!”

It is interesting that the aforementioned and other self-promoted Macedonian Machiavellians rely on Machiavelli as a reference authority for their Machiavellianism. But there is no written basis for it. The ones familiar with his work point out that Machiavelli himself has never written the maxim that “the end justifies the means”. So Machiavellianism persisted and survived even without Machiavelli. Just as Gruevism have survived and will survive without Gruevski – not only without him in power, but also without him in the country! From that perspective, I ask what would be the difference between the Machiavellianism practiced by Gruevski and the Machiavellianism recommended to Zaev? Could the latter be better off than the former and why!
It is said that Lorenzo de Medici, the ruler of Florence to whom Niccolo Machiavelli dedicated his book “The Prince”, was not thrilled at all by this gift. Lorenzo despised Machiavelli because he had previously served the Florentine Republic. The gift was obviously not sufficient for de Medici to grant Machiavelli some kind of royal privilege. Accordingly, Machiavellianism did not pay off to Machiavelli himself. He spent the rest of his life away from politics and any public function.

The people of the De Medici family, who were in power at that time, probably understood that Machiavelli saw them as a means of fulfilling his own personal ambitions. Perhaps the people who are in power today in our country will realize this in relation to the goals of the Macedonian Machiavellians. In political practice and political theory there are virtuous politicians. For them, as well as for other virtuous citizens, it is not immoral to use other people as means of achieving certain goals. Emmanuel Kant, for instance, two centuries after Machiavelli, formulated the principle of ethical imperative. Kant, like Machiavelli, also recognized and acknowledged the imperfection, and even the corruption of human nature. But, unlike Machiavelli, Kant felt that people as humans have purely moral – meaning not manipulative – obligation to work on fixing and removing injustices, and not cut deals with the unrighteous ones. Peace, eternal or short-term, is not possible without justice.

Society cannot survive long on the principles of Machiavellianism. Especially not what society declares as “one society for all”. Societies aimed only at the order and stability of power and the state are not just societies. They are more like a house of cards. They dissolve quickly and in a short period of time. In order not to come to this, society must provide justice and fairness. The first assumption is righteous rule, a just state. Without a just state, society falls into a Machiavellian state in which everyone seeks to exploit and threaten the other. Only a righteous state can generate a just society.

But! There are people familiar with the character and work of Machiavelli who say that he was not such an orthodox “Machiavellian” in what he recommended to the ruler, as they present him to be, but that he was only satirical. In this thesis I believed in the moment I heard the terms “international constitutional law” and “international constitution!” They were expressed during one of the public hearings on the draft text of the constitutional amendments in function of the Prespa agreement. They were said by a former, respectable professor of constitutional law. Surely he became a Machiavellian, but a satirical one!