social whole as the shepherd does his flock, the state may act to other societies, and even on occasion to its own subjects, as the individual members of a society in their dealings with one another may not. It may kill, rob, subject the unwilling to control, lie, deceive, entrap, without and within (in the latter case, through its courts and executioners, taxation-agencies, compulsory schools, and police)—acts absolutely forbidden to private persons.[1] In a sense it is "immorality organized,"[2] which is not, however, a reflection on it as might be imagined, but rather an indication of the limited range of morality. Nietzsche remarks that the study of societies is particularly instructive, as man shows himself more naïve in them—societies always using morality (and by implication, dispensing with it, on occasion] for their own ends (of force, power, order).[3] In other words, politics in essentially Machiavellian—i.e., it has its aim (the good of the social body) and does whatever is necessary to secure it; its rule is expediency entirely, though to know all the depths and refinements of expediency, and to have the courage to act accordingly, may require almost superhuman powers.[4] A statesman, for example, who does not believe in parliaments on principle, may none the less make use of them—he may find them extremely useful, when he wants something upon which he can support himself, on to which he can shift responsibility.[5] The state and the statesman have to reckon with much greater complexes of effects than private morality does, and a world economy is conceivable with such long-range perspectives that all its single requirements would seem for the moment unjust and arbitrary.[6] That a state may do whatever
- ↑ Werke, XIII, 195-6, § 431. Cf. Will to Power, § 755, where it is said that there is an element of violence in law, and of hardness and egoism in every kind of authority.
- ↑ The phrase is, I think, Nietzsche's own, though I cannot locate it (I borrow it from Ribot's summary of Orestano's Le idee fondamentali di F. Nietzsche in the Revue Philosophique, April, 1903, p. 456). On the other hand, it is just for moral reasons that he fulminates against the state in Zarathustra, I, xi—but I think that he really has in mind there the artificial political formations of modern times (see later, p. 459).
- ↑ I follow Faguet (op. cit., p. 240) here, not being able to place the original passage.
- ↑ Will to Power, § 304. In speaking here of Machiavellism as the type of perfection in politics, Nietzsche calls it something "superhuman, divine, transcendent."
- ↑ Werke, XIII, 349, § 864.
- ↑ Will to Power, § 927.
