I recently learned that Machiavelli actually used the term "invisible hand" in The Discourses. He refers not to an invisible hand of economics, though, but an invisible hand of politics. Turning what was accepted thought at the time on its head, he argued against the Florentine Humanism School's belief in the primacy of unity.
Machiavelli thought, far from making stamping out disunity and dissension a priority, contemporary princes should try to emulate the trials and tribulations the Romans faced in sorting out the disagreements between "the rich" and "the masses." Machiavelli, though he would not have used these terms, was essentially saying that a process of dispute and dissension between the "people" and the "aristocrats" has a lower transaction cost than does the combination of methods required to attain total unity, punctuated by periodic government-shattering upheaval.
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2 comments:
This is simply false. I just did a keyword search of the Discourses and "invisible" does not appear once in the text. In fact, I couldn't find the word in any of his writings.
Please clarify what you meant and your source.
@ActionMan - Thanks for commenting. Two replies:
1) Machiavelli didn't write in English, so the word wouldn't necessarily be translated that way.
2) I think you are right in that he didn't actually use this term. What I probably should have said was, "used the concept" instead of "used the term." Specifically, he talks about how rulers, ruling in their self-interest, *become* good policy makers due to these invisible forces that align such interests. I'll find the specific part of the text when I have a minute.
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