The Overseer (73 page)

How, then, do they bring their efforts into accord? That is, how, if each gives care only to his own realm, will the designs in each serve the best interests of the state as a whole? Surely, without some principal agent overseeing all actions within each realm, we shall have anarchy. Therefore, one man must stand behind the three to guide them with subtle suggestion and wise counsel. This single individual need not be well versed in the dealings within the separate realms. Rather, he must tend a larger vision—with the insight of an Aurelius, the self-command of a Cincinnatus—a capacity to enable the rivalries between the realms to strengthen the bonds among them all. He is no prince, no sovereign king whose single authority dictates the path of the state. Only at certain moments does he assert such power. At all other times, he sits and observes, happy to remain above the fray. He is not hungry for power, yet he can harness it when the occasion calls upon him to do so. For him, supremacy is but a reflection of stability, and he knows that such stability rests upon the push and pull of the realms that he oversees.

A short digression is needed to consider the character of this man whom I shall call the Overseer hereafter. Only one man from the past has displayed the proper disposition of the Overseer. Cincinnatus, summoned from the plow during the
Minucian
consulship so as to fight back the Aequi, accepted the post of Roman Dictator with the single purpose of restoring order to the Empire; having done so, he returned to his plow in six months. His ambition rested solely in bringing stability to the Empire, not in securing his own authority. Our Overseer is no plowman, nor could he ever leave the central halls of authority, but his use of power must show the selflessness and narrow aim that Cincinnatus upheld.

The relations among the three Prefects and the Overseer will determine the well-being of the state and, as important, the control of the people. Each realm must maintain autonomy. Or at least such separateness must seem real to the people. That is, men will rarely need to learn of the Overseer, who keeps the three realms in harmony. To the simple crowd, the politic, the economic, and the social will be guided by separate hands, each in some way a check to the ambitions of the other two. In this way, republican virtue will blanket the government because power will seem divided among the many. The neat appearance of limits and balances (to borrow again from Polybius) will satisfy the whim of the people.

They will also be convinced at all times that the form of the state meets their desire. When, for example, the crowd cries out for aristocracy, the social realm will dominate. When those same voices beg for oligarchy, the economic realm will hold sway. And when, capricious yet again, they shout for a prince, the political leader will emerge. Thus will the face of government change with the winds of public interest and enthusiasm in order to keep the people diverted and satisfied. And thus will the aggressive desire of the people never have cause to tear at the fabric of a state that slakes their thirst for change.

These alterations, it will be apparent, are built more on deception than reality. For if a state were, in all truth, to assume the trappings of a democracy one day and a tyranny the next, it would be no state at all. Consistency must be the watchword of its leaders. As many have remarked, a state is much like a ship. But the metaphor has little to do with the role of the captain or his sailors, and even less with the difficult question of who controls the wheel. Rather, the similarity lies in the design of the whole. To keep itself afloat, to weather any swell, to remain stable during the turbulence of battle or revolt, a ship relies on a solitary device, hidden from all eyes. The keel. The keel remains constant at all times. Perhaps the ship takes new sails, a higher mast, a larger crew—such changes appear to alter its form, but the foundation remains the same. That which keeps it stable never varies. So it is within a state.

 

It follows, then, that the unwavering arrangement of Overseer and Prefects must remain always at the core of government. Their roles never change in relation to one another, only in relation to the people and to other states. That is, the apparent superiority of one realm over another at any given time depends on circumstance, whether the state must seem more politically dominant, economically forceful, and so forth. And it is the unseen element, the Overseer, that makes possible all the transformations a state will endure. It is his hidden relationship with the Prefects within each realm that grants the state its much prized stability.

That is not to say that the four act in alliance with one another, each aware of the detailed actions required for success within the separate realms. No. Only at certain moments do their efforts unite. The real power of the Prefects rests in their unfailing devotion to their particular realms, together with their knowledge of the unity they must observe under the Overseer, a unity unseen by all others. A second maxim of leadership is therefore: To rule effectively, men must see to their own tasks, outwardly alone in their pursuits, but with the hidden understanding of common fellowship. In this way, the full extent of their power remains masked through feigned indifference to one another. True supremacy will thus emerge through concealed association.

To this point, were this a book of ideas alone, I could be well satisfied for having explained the essence of supremacy and the nature of stability. But what a hollow victory it would be if I fail to offer even a single word on the means whereby shrewd leaders may be able to achieve this end. It now remains to see how a state (as I have described it) may come into being, and how it may flourish. Many before me have written on this subject, but most have done so with the fanciful intent of describing states as they ought to be and not as they are. And they have thus relied on equally fanciful notions of virtue, strength, courage, and the like to ensure stability within these imagined realms. Even Messer Niccolò, with his desire to represent reality, has given us a prince who seems to appear from the mists of providence, his boldness and cunning intact long before we meet him. Likewise, this prince has fortune to thank for creating chaos within the state so that he may exhibit his virtù. As Messer Niccolò himself admits, his heroes from the past and present slip away all too quickly—even those as revered as Cesare Borgia—unable to maintain their arrogance, their steadfastness, their foresight for any long period of time. Is this prince, then, any more practical to the practitioner of statecraft than Plato’s philosopher king or the virtuous princes we find in the writings of Salutati, Guarino, or Poggio? No. They are pure fantasy. In short, my small book will be no more useful than theirs should I stop here. The rest, therefore, must attend to the practical. And for that, we must again start with a clean sheet so as to determine how we might build a state for the ages.

 

Men are governed by their own wills and by the will of fortune, and it is the battle that rages between these two that determines the
well-being
of states. The extent to which one of these wills may dominate is of central importance to us. Messer Niccolò would have us believe that the two fight an equal battle. To be fair, he is the first to give men an honest chance in the struggle, even if, by his own examples, he proves all too well that fortune is history’s victor. Even he must admit, though, that men cannot win because they cannot adapt with sufficient speed to the demands of time. Long-lasting stability (the core of true supremacy) remains a golden dream.

But certain men are more capable than we might believe, even more capable than Messer Niccolò’s prince. Their capacity lies not in their virtù or Thesian cunning. Unlike Messer Niccolò’s prince, these men need have no superhuman quality. Nor do they do battle with fortune as their single nemesis. Rather, their strength lies in their faith in the state itself, in the state’s capacity to achieve permanence in the face of fortune’s whim. Underneath all its many changes, the state keeps an enduring quality, an immortality. Yet most men are unaware of this durability. For this reason, they are reluctant to tear down the faulty structures on which the state rests for fear that they will be left with nothing but anarchy. So great is their fear that they choose to amend the flawed structure and produce the same errors over and over again rather than attempt to build something of worth. What they fail to grasp is that only in the chaos of destruction can strong foundations be established. And only those who place their trust in the capacity of states (and not of men) understand how stability may be achieved.

It follows, then, that leaders who wish to create a stable and long-lasting state must first be willing to throw the present state into chaos. In short, there must always be a place for sacrifice. My purpose here is not to shock but to reveal plain truths. Messer Niccolò certainly understood this point, albeit less completely. His prince reached the heights of power because he knew how to take advantage of a situation mired in chaos. Yet the prince had no cause to know how to instigate such chaos. That task was left to the caprice of fortune. In that way, Messer Niccolò yielded greater power to fortune than to men. But those willing to take the bolder step and to send the state into the chasm wrest such power from the fickle goddess and thus shape their own destinies.

The choice is not so drastic as it might appear. Take, for example, the mathematician who struggles to create an indisputable proof. He clutters the slate with theorem upon theorem, axiom upon axiom, but to no avail. His calculations do not lead to certainty. And so he cleans the slate, save for the one or two statements he considers absolutely necessary for the ultimate proof. And yet, over and over again he arrives at uncertainty. What can he do? His fellow scholars believe that the few statements he has kept are essential to the task. Without these basic statements, they argue, he would not know where to begin. But he is wiser than they and has real vision. And so he wipes the slate clean and begins unencumbered by their outmoded wisdom. He trusts the science and not the men, thus showing his courage to plumb the depths into which the others dare not venture.

So is it with states. To elicit real change, leaders must be willing to tear down every structure that has been built on faulty foundations. For two thousand years, men have erected and destroyed cities, states, even civilizations in the hopes of constructing one perfect realm. But their efforts have been in vain for the simple reason that they have never had the courage, nor the insight, to begin from nothing. The slate must be clean if the new state is to be unaffected by the cankers and disease of the previous regime. It is not enough to replace a tyrant with a legislature, a mob with a king. The facade may be different, but the core remains the same. A smooth transformation from one form of governance to another merely reveals the underlying decay. To put it slightly differently, it is but a stay of execution. That which eroded the first regime lingers to undermine the next, and the next, and the next.

The problem is due to men’s lack of imagination. They cannot see beyond the walls of the past, and thus find security only in what has come before them. Yet real courage asserts itself when faced with possible failure. The unknown provides such a test. To retreat to a flawed but well-tried structure displays only a weak will and an utter resignation to mediocrity.

There can be no easy way to the state I have described. For I have asked that leaders see not only themselves but the state they hope to rule in an entirely new fashion. There is nothing from history to which they might cling so as to make the change more palatable. Nor is there anything from the past that can explain how they might establish the realms and the Overseer. As with all things novel, attack is the best path. It follows that those who hope to rule must seek the total destruction of the standing regime.