The lecture which I am to give at your request will necessarily disappoint you in various ways. You are bound to expect a talk on the profession of politics to take a stand on the topical questions of the day. Yet that will only happen at the end of my lecture in a purely formal way and in response to particular questions concerning the significance of political action within our conduct of life as a whole. What must be completely excluded from today's lecture, on the other hand, are all questions concerning the brand of politics one ought to practise, which is to say the content one ought to give to one's political activity. For this has nothing to do with the general question of what the profession of politics is and what it can mean. Let us get straight down to things.

What do we understand by politics (Politik)? The term is an extraordinarily broad one, embracing every kind of independent leadership (leitende) activity. We talk about the banks' policies on foreign exchange, the bank-rate policy of the Reichsbank, the policy of a union during a strike, one can speak of the educational policy of the community in a town or village, of the policies of the management committee leading a club, and finally we even talk about the policies of an astute wife in her efforts to guide her husband. Naturally, our reflections this evening are not based on a concept as broad as this.

Towards a political critique of officialdom and the party system

Preface

This political treatise is a reworked and extended version of articles which appeared in the Frankfurter Zeitung in the summer of 1917. It has nothing new to say to the constitutional expert, nor does it take cover behind the authority of a science, for the ultimate positions adopted by the will cannot be decided by scientific means. Anyone for whom the historical tasks of the German nation do not take precedence, as a matter of principle, over all questions of the form the state should assume, or anyone with a fundamentally different perception of these tasks, will not be open to the arguments advanced here. For in this respect they proceed from certain assumptions, on the basis of which they attack those people who still consider that this is an appropriate juncture to discredit the popularly elected parliament (Volksvertretung) in particular, while favouring other political powers. Unfortunately, this has been going on for the past forty years, including the war years, especially in fairly wide academic and academically educated circles of littérateurs, very often in the most arrogant and intemperate manner, with dismissive animosity and without the least sign of any goodwill even to try to understand the vital conditions required by parliaments if they are to be effective.

Gentlemen!

Honoured as I am by this, my first opportunity to address the Officer Corps of the Royal and Imperial Army of Austria, you will understand that the situation is also a somewhat embarrassing one for me, particularly in view of the fact that I have absolutely no knowledge of the conditions under which you operate, of the internal organisational relations in this army which are decisive for any influence the officer corps may exert on the men. It is obvious that an officer of the Reserve or the militia is always an amateur, not only because he lacks preparatory scientific training at a military academy, but also because he is not in constant touch with the whole internal nervous system of the organisation. Nevertheless, having spent various periods of time in the German Army in very different areas of Germany over a number of years, I believe I have had sufficient experience of the relations between officers, N.C.O.s and men at least to be able to recognise that this or that method of exercising influence is possible, or that this or that method is difficult or impossible. As far as the Austrian Army is concerned, of course, I have not the slightest idea of what is or is not possible. If I have any impression at all of internal relations in the Austrian Army, it is only that the multi-lingual nature of the empire is simply bound to create enormous practical (sachlichen) difficulties.

THE SAME SPEAKERS

BERNARDO The nights are so long and the old normally sleep so little, that I have had several hours in which to turn over yesterday's discussion in my mind. The more I have thought about it, the truer many of the things I said to you seem to me to be. Yet because I could easily deceive myself, I would be pleased to hear your opinion - though not to argue with you if you disagree with me, since such a debate would be tedious, in view of the fact that the subjectmatter, both what was discussed yesterday and what you will add today, is clear enough. In any case you must dine here, so we have plenty of time. Don't be any more sparing with me than I was with you: I will listen to you willingly and even, if anything relevant occurs to me, ask you questions.

CAPPONI Our opinion must be known to you even without our speaking, because if we had thought the city would be better off under this power, Pagolantonio wouldn't have urged Piero de’ Medici to moderate it on Lorenzo's death, and I wouldn't then have worked so hard to expel him. There were things each of us disliked, but they weren't a matter of life or death, nor such as to make us risk so much danger just for that. It's madness to act simply for one's own personal interest, in view of the fact that it is extremely difficult for thoughts of revolution to succeed; and if they do, their effect is not limited to the particular interest of one revolutionary alone. One man cannot do it alone, and as he has to combine with others, he most often finds himself involved with madmen or bad types who know neither how to act nor how to keep quiet. And when you do find men who are suitable, you can see how dangerous conspiracies are from the fact that they require qualities that are the complete opposite of those normally sought for in all other deeds.

Certainly those who know how to manage any affairs safely win praise; yet in conspiracies the worst thing is to make this your prime consideration, for thinking about this takes time, involves more people and causes muddles, which is why such intrigues are likely to be revealed.

Although Guicciardini's Maxims or Ricordi have been translated in two editions, by Margaret Grayson in F. Guicciardini, Selected Writings∧ London, 1965, pp. 1-56, and by Mario Domandi, Maxims and Reflections (Ricordi), Philadelphia, 1965, I have re-translated some which relate directly to topics discussed in the Dialogue, using the critical edition of R. Spongano, Ricordi, Florence, 1951 and adopting his numeration. The relationship of the five redactions of these Ricordi - the first two written while he was on embassy in Spain in 1512, B in 1528 and C in 1530 (A being a composite version) - is discussed by M. Phillips, Francesco Guicciardini: The Historian 's Craft, Manchester, 1977, p. 40, n. 3, cf. N. Rubinstein in his introduction to Domandi's translation (Philadelphia, 1965).

13 If you want to see what the thoughts of tyrants are, read Cornelius Tacitus’ account of the last conversations of the dying Augustus with Tiberius.

18 Cornelius Tacitus is very good at teaching the subjects of tyrants how to live and survive under tyranny, and at teaching tyrants how to set it up.

21 I have said and written on other occasions that the Medici lost power in 1527 because they governed the state in many respects as though it was a free republic, and that I feared the people would lose their free republic because of governing it in many respects as though it was a narrow regime. The reason for these two conclusions is that to maintain itself, the Medici regime, which was hated by the people at large, needed to rely on the support of devoted partisans - men, that is, who on one hand stood to gain a great deal from the regime, and on the other recognised that they would be lost and unable to remain in Florence if the Medici were expelled. But this was impossible, in view of the liberal way in which the Medici distributed the paid and unpaid offices throughout the city, their unwillingness to show scarcely any special favour to their friends’ marriage alliances, and their attempt to treat everyone on an equal basis. It would have been very wrong if they had carried these matters to the opposite extreme.

Francesco Guicciardini was born on 6 March 1483 into one of the leading merchant families of Florence. His names reflect the influence of family tradition as well as the tradition of lay piety in Florence, since he was named Francesco after a great-grandfather Francesco de’ Nerli, and Tommaso after the saint on whose feast-day he was born, Thomas Aquinas. So his ‘special advocates and patrons', as he calls them, Francis and Thomas, associated him with the leading Mendicant Orders in Florence (Ricordanze, p. 53; for details of this and other works see Bibliographical note, p. xxxii). The choice of Marsilio Ficino, ‘the leading Platonic philosopher in the world at the time’ (ibid.), was less traditional, however. Francesco's father Piero had been a pupil of Ficino's and was the first member of his family to have a humanist education. Piero ensured that his son, too, studied the humanities as a boy, learning a little Greek as well as Latin, which would have prepared him for an ecclesiastical career. However, despite the possibility of following in the lucrative footsteps of his uncle, Bishop of Cortona, Francesco was discouraged from doing so by his father, who preferred to sacrifice the immediate profit this career would have offered his son for the sake of his conscience (Ricordanze, p. 56). Instead he studied law, initially in Florence, then in Ferrara and Padua, before returning to Florence. There he received a doctorate in civil law in 1505 (rather than the more prestigious doctorate ‘of both kinds', canon as well as civil law, which would have cost another twelve-and-a-half ducats, his education having in all cost his father more than 500 gold ducats, Ricordanze, pp. 56-7). He started work at once as a teacher in the university and as an advocate, acting for communes, private clients and for institutions like the Hospital of Santa Maria Nuova in Florence.

Francesco's writing career began in 1508, the year of his marriage to Maria, daughter of Alamanno Salviati. Thanks to his patrician status and his wealth, his family relationships and his ‘infinite number of friends', Alamanno was, in Francesco's eyes, ‘incomparably the first man in the city’ when he died in 1510 (Ricordanze, pp. 58, 66- 7).