Machiavelli’s Principals and NAFTA

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Recommended: Machiavelli's Principles of the Prince

"Therefore if a prince wants to maintain his rule he must learn how not to be virtuous, and to make use of this or not according to his need." 1 Thus wrote Niccolò Machiavelli almost five hundred years ago in his handbook to the Prince Lorenzo De’ Medici. Whether Machiavelli wrote these words in a desperate attempt to win a position as advisor or whether he hoped in truth to trap the prince with false advice we can only guess from afar. Yet his book offers both advice and food for thought for today. In the last chapter of the book he offered a dream for a new Italian Moses, someone to free Italy from foreign control. Whether this was Machiavelli’s passionate dream or simply bait for the prince, we are now embarking on what may well be the opposite: the selling out of our own country to foreigners in the dream of one unified North America. It is exactly what Prime Minister John A. Macdonald called "veiled treason" in 1891. 2 If you, Mr Mulroney, are to continue in this decision Machiavelli’s principals of heartlessness and purpose may be invaluable.

Machiavelli warns when a principality invites a new ruler in, expecting to improve their situation they will likely be disappointed and then rebel against the ruler. In Machiavelli’s time this would have meant a full and bloody rebellion, but think how much easier it is now! The people have only to vote at the election, and do not need to remind you that in the most recent election you had only 43% of the vote. The majority of the people are against you, and this is dangerous.

What is it you promise the people, and can you provide? You need not fear giving your word lightly, and I doubt anyone today truly expects you to keep all your promises. Yet still there must be something for you to offer in the end. "The common people are always impressed by appearances and results. In this way there are only common people, and there is no room for the few when the many are supported by the state." (101)

The immediate problem with NAFTA, as I see it, is a shift in the tax burden from the manufacturers to the people. Retired judge Marjorie Montgomery Bowker has suggested that by 1998, when NAFTA will be fully implemented our lost revenues will be 24 billion.

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