The Anti-Machiavelli

In good structures with good rules, people have the possibility of behaving well. In bad ones, they adapt to circumstances. That is not an excuse. It is an observation — and it has political consequences that weigh heavier than any moral teaching.

I. The Crown Prince and His Manuscript

In 1739, Frederick of Prussia, 27 years old and still crown prince, sat at Schloss Rheinsberg and wrote a book. He was an educated young man, enthusiastic about the Enlightenment, in correspondence with Voltaire, convinced that the rule of a prince must rest on justice, reason and the welfare of his subjects. The book he wrote was a direct refutation of Machiavelli’s Prince — chapter by chapter, thesis by thesis.

The prince, Frederick argued, is not the owner of his state but its trustee — its first servant. Power without morality is not only unethical but foolish: a ruler who lies and deceives squanders the trust on which his legitimacy ultimately rests. Machiavelli’s recommendation that the prince should be fox and lion at once is the description of a tyrant, not a ruler.

Voltaire was enthusiastic. He edited the manuscript and published it — without Frederick’s permission, which annoyed Frederick but did not truly bother him. Europe read it. The young Hohenzollern prince was celebrated as a standard-bearer of the Enlightenment, living proof that a prince could be virtuous.

II. The Accession Is Followed by Silesia

On 31 May 1740, Frederick William I died. Frederick ascended the throne. Europe waited eagerly for the enlightened ruler, the Anti-Machiavelli in person.

On 16 December 1740 — six months after his accession — Frederick marched into Silesia with 80,000 men. Without a declaration of war. Without a secure legal basis. In direct breach of the Pragmatic Sanction, to which he as Prussian crown prince had given his assent. In clear contradiction to everything he had written two years earlier.

Silesia was wealthy, strategically valuable and poorly defended. Maria Theresa, the new ruler of Austria, was inexperienced. The opportunity was there. Frederick took it.

He knew what he was doing. He even said so — in a letter whose candour is startling in a ruler: “Ambition, interest, the desire to establish myself in the world — these were the passions that drove me.” No attempt at justification. No claim that it was in the interest of Prussia or of justice. Just the bare description of the motive.

Frederick did not withdraw the Anti-Machiavelli. He left it standing — and acted nonetheless as Machiavelli had described. That is not hypocrisy. It is something deeper.

III. What It Is Not: Hypocrisy

The simple explanation is that Frederick was a hypocrite. He wrote what he did not mean in order to appear well. That is convenient — and wrong.

Frederick wrote the Anti-Machiavelli at 27, before he was a ruler. He had no power to defend, no interests to conceal. He was sincere. The correspondence with Voltaire, the letters to other Enlightenment thinkers, the way he thought about philosophy and governance — all of it shows a person who genuinely believed what he wrote.

The problem was not that Frederick lied. The problem was that he was right — and still could not act as he believed was correct. Between the crown prince at Schloss Rheinsberg and the king on the throne of Prussia lay not a change of character. It lay a change of structure.

IV. The Logic of Power

When Frederick became king, he did not merely inherit the crown. He inherited a system of expectations, threats and constraints that shaped his actions from within — regardless of his will. Prussia was a medium power in a European system in which great powers expanded, treaties were broken and weakness was punished. A ruler who acted virtuously in this system risked not only his career — he risked the state.

This is not excuse but explanation. Machiavelli had described it precisely: the prince who always wishes to act well must come to ruin among so many who are not good. It is not a recommendation to immorality. It is a description of systemic dynamics.

Frederick had not lied at Rheinsberg. He had underestimated — or suppressed — the systemic dynamics. When he could no longer suppress them, because he was sitting in the middle of them, he acted as the system logic demanded. And he was intelligent enough to know it.

V. The Proof of the Opposite

Machiavelli had not written a guide to evil. He had written a description of political reality — as it is, not as it should be. The Prince is not normative but descriptive. Machiavelli does not say: this is how you should act. He says: this is how it actually works.

Frederick wanted to prove that Machiavelli was wrong. That a virtuous prince is possible. That good will is sufficient. Instead he proved the opposite: even a prince who sincerely wishes to refute Machiavelli is driven by systemic logic into Machiavellian channels, when the structures that would limit him are absent.

That is the paradox of the Anti-Machiavelli: it is the strongest argument for Machiavelli ever written — by someone who wanted to prove the opposite.

Machiavelli had not described a prince. He had described a structure. Frederick proved it.

VI. Structures That Make People Good or Bad

Frederick is no isolated case. He is the sharpest example of a universal pattern: people do not behave according to their values — they behave according to the structures in which they find themselves.

The cum-ex bankers who defrauded the German state of billions were not born criminals. They were lawyers, financial specialists, career professionals — in a system that made cum-ex transactions possible, rewarded them and did not punish them. Those who did not participate were excluded. Those who participated became rich. The structure produced the behaviour — not the character.

The officials who fall silent when injustice occurs are not cowards by nature. They are people in a system that rewards silence and punishes contradiction. The state prosecutor who speaks out nonetheless — an Anne Brorhilker — is not more virtuous than her colleagues. She has the capacity to break the system logic. That is an extraordinary achievement, not a matter of course.

The politicians who lie are not by nature more dishonest than other people. They are in a system where lying has no consequences, where truth is politically costly and short-termism is rewarded. The system produces the behaviour.

VII. What Follows From This

If structures produce behaviour, then moralising is the wrong answer to political failure. It does not help to demand better people. It does not help to preach virtue. It does not help to denounce Frederick II as a hypocrite or cum-ex bankers as criminals — although they became criminals.

What helps is structural change. Rules that compel correct behaviour — not because people are good, but because incorrect behaviour has consequences. Institutions that limit power — not because those with power are by nature evil, but because unlimited power by nature corrupts. Incentives that reward correct behaviour — not as a moral appeal, but as a systemic necessity.

That is the lesson Frederick could have drawn had he not been trapped in the system himself: the Anti-Machiavelli is not a call to virtue. It would have been a call to institution-building. Not: be a good prince. But: build a system that prevents bad princes from being bad princes.

VIII. The Circle Closes

Cincinnatus was virtuous — but the constitution would have compelled him to virtue. Helmut Schmidt acted as one must act — and submitted to accountability afterwards, because he knew that was the condition. The democracy Schmidt had grown up in demanded it.

Frederick had no such constitution. He was absolute monarch in a system of European power politics without institutional brakes. His good will did not prevail against this structure — not because he was weak, but because good will against systemic logic never prevails when it stands alone.

That is the core. Not: people are bad. Not: people are good. But: people are malleable. In good structures with good rules, they have the possibility of behaving well. In bad ones, they adapt to circumstances — even if they themselves have written the Anti-Machiavelli.

Those who have understood this stop demanding better people. And start building better structures.