Op-Ed article, 1979
Commentators agree that the Shah lost Iran, with help from his enemies, right and left. They agree that the Shah’s loss may be America’s loss. They agree that the Shah and America misread the feelings of the Iranian people, that both underestimated popular resentment of despotism, of administrative blundering of ruling-class self-indulgence. They agree that the Shah alienated almost every significant Iranian group: Muslims, Marxists, bourgeoisie, intelligentsia, even segments of the army and the secret police.
They overlook one thing. They overlook the fact that the Shah, far from being too Machiavellian for his own good, wasn’t Machiavellian enough.
A clarification before I go on: I am not one of Machiavelli’s romantic admirers. I do not imagine that the Florentine was `really’ a democrat, or a `great Italian patriot,’ beneath that reputation as a cynic. No, Machiavelli advised tyrants as well as republicans, and his idea of republicanism should not delight the world’s humanitarians. By any decent standard, Machiavelli was a vicious man.
Nevertheless (to deploy a Machiavellian locution), vicious men can teach us useful things, especially if they combine cleverness with their brutality. Machiavelli is the one political philosopher who pushes cleverness to the point of genius. Consider, then, the twenty-fifth and twenty-sixth chapters of the First Book of the Discourses. And think of them in terms of the Shah’s efforts to modernize a tradition-bound country.
Obviously, a ruler can attempt to modernize either rapidly or gradually. The Shah desired to modernize rapidly. To do so, one must use force; democratic meandering takes time. Machiavelli recommends that a non-republican ruler “organize the government entirely anew,” appointing new governors with new powers, making the poor rich, destroying old cities and building new ones, transferring inhabitants “from one place to another,” so that no rank, grade, honor, or material reward is seen to come from anyone but the prince himself.
The twentieth century has suffered a number of rulers like that. Lenin, Stalin, and Mao imposed modernization `from above,’ with force. Each murdered millions of people, smashed religious opposition, orchestrated a Terror. Machiavelli hastens to write that “these means are cruel and destructive of all civilized life, and neither Christian nor even human, and should be avoided by everyone.” In other places he seems more permissive.
Indeed, the Shah was brutal. But he did not rival the aforementioned butchers; according to his enemies, he murdered thousands, not millions. We needn’t guess what Lenin, Stalin, or Mao would have done in Iran in 1978, when Muslims and others rebelled. We know they had the means to prevent such uprisings from reaching a point dangerous to themselves; we know they had the will to use those means.
Machiavelli discusses another way to reform a country. He who would liberalize a traditional society should take care to preserve the outer forms of life, the beloved customs of the people. “For the great majority of mankind are satisfied with appearances, as though they were realities, and are often more influenced by the things that seem than by those that are.” Therefore, “as all novelties excite the minds of men, it is important to retain in such innovations as much as possible the previously existing forms.” This applies especially to religious customs; in another chapter, Machiavelli recommends “as a general rule” that “in changing a religion the invitations should be much stronger than the penalties,” for a religion may be changed quietly not by shocking the soul of the believer but by causing him to become indifferent. In Europe, with the help of Machiavelli and his somewhat gentler philosophic successors, economic life gradually replace Christian life. In India, Nehru encouraged modernity, letting nuclear reactors coexist, for the time being, with sacred cows. (His daughter got too heavy-handed, and suffered because of it). Iran might have modernized peacefully too, had the Shah acted prudently.
But the Shah foolishly outlawed the traditional dress of Muslim women, replaced the Islamic calendar with one celebrating himself, and tried to change other popular customs–all while making gestures toward liberalization. Such forms should be the last things the gradualist replaces; let them become empty of content and the people themselves will agitate for their removal. One can thereby influence popular consent without overt coercion. Specifically, the successful modernizer introduces economic changes gradually, allowing the desire for comfortable self-preservation and material acquisition, the principal motives of `economic man,’ to moderate the religious ardor of his people. It is true that Islam, a much more militant and political religion than Christianity or Hinduism, presents difficulties in this regard; however, in view f the partial secularization of most Islamic regimes, one needn’t regard the difficulties as insuperable.
Machiavelli complains that many rulers “know neither how to be entirely good nor entirely bad.” They do not reform gradually and prudently; they do no tyrannize thoroughly Like the Shah, they try to liberalize and tyrannize simultaneously, with disaster as their reward. Their people resist the carrot, spurn the stick and leave the world pondering who the ass really is.
As Americans, we are committed to being “entirely good,” not “entirely bad.” (Cynics claim that that is our asininity). We want our dictatorial allies to liberalize their regimes as they modernize, and leave the mass murder to such tyrannically-backed tyrannies as Vietnam and Cambodia. After Iran, we see that a mere campaign for human rights, backed by economic prodding, won’t do. The Soviets run schools in which young men learn how to overthrow repressive regimes and institute `proletarian’ tyranny. Our despotic allies, too old for school, nevertheless need sound political advice, along with our preferred (by us) and coveted (by them) technical assistance. We can begin by reminding them of Machiavelli’s less vicious side.
A fundamental question remains: being “entirely good” by Machiavellian standards has nothing to do with goodness according to any religion worthy of the name. Whether one kills a religion by smashing it or seducing it, the religion in its original form is just as dead. Modernizing–devitalizing religious feeling by appealing to economic feeling–destroys one of the ways by which people orient themselves in the world, replacing it with activity that seem to satisfy human nature. America shows that a balance of sorts is negotiable, with laws both protecting and limiting religion in modernity. As usual, America is an exception. The Iranian crisis, clearly understood, forces us to confront ourselves and the world we want to influence.
2016 NOTE: This article never saw the light of day, although I sent it to a couple of publications whose editors in their wisdom ignored it. It’s hard to blame them, although it actually holds up fairly well, some 37 years later. Reza Pahlavi, the Shah of Iran, had been a U. S. ally against Soviet allies during the Cold War. In 1978-79 a revolutionary conflict was orchestrated by a coalition of his numerous enemies, who had formed a new version of the sort of coalition called the “Popular Front” in the 1930s. As was often the case, after the common enemy was removed, the elements of the coalition turned on one another and the strongest faction prevailed–in Iran’s case, the Shi’a clerical oligarchy headed by the Grand Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. The phrase “a mere campaign for human rights” refers to the policy of the Carter Administration in the United States (1977-1981), which made much of human rights and too little of America’s geopolitical necessities.
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