The Folly of Crowds
A Lesson from Iran
While most famous for his political treatise ‘The Prince’ (which is intended as advice for princes, monarchs, and dictators), Machiavelli’s magnum opus is arguably the more substantial ‘The Discourses on Livy’ (often referred to simply as The Discourses). Here Machiavelli makes no secret of his preference for a republican form of government, and even asserts plainly that “The multitude are wiser and more constant than a prince.” But Machiavelli is not blind to how easily the multitude can be misled, and how much more interested they are in the apparent virtues of a proposition than its likely outcomes. Machiavelli expounds on the Roman plebeians’ plan to settle in the nearby city of Veii after it had been conquered by Rome in the year 396 BC. They believed that the proximity of Veii would allow half of them to emigrate there, making use of its land and riches, without giving rise to political disorder in Rome. The Roman Senate, understanding the imprudence of this plan, was vigorously opposed. Consequently, they became the object of popular fury. Fortunately, Marcus Camillus, the dictator of Rome who had led them to victory at Veii was on the senate’s side. He delayed the implementation of the Plebeian scheme until it was eventually forgotten about. “Turning to consider” Machiavelli concludes, “When it is easy and when it is difficult to persuade a people, this distinction can be made: either what you have to persuade them of represents at first sight either a gain or a loss, or the proposal truly seems either courageous or cowardly. When profit is seen in matters put before the people, even though there may be a loss concealed beneath it, or when something seems courageous, even though the ruination of the republic may be concealed beneath it, it will always be easy to persuade the people to follow... it will always be difficult to persuade them to accept those decisions that appear to involve either cowardice or loss, even though salvation and profit may be concealed beneath them.” 1
Times change, but human nature does not; and the 1979 Islamic Revolution of Iran could fit perfectly into The Discourses as an example of a people’s pride and imprudence resulting in their own misery and ruin. In the decades preceding the revolution the Pahlavi dynasty ruled Iran, first under Reza Shah, and then under his son Mohammed Reza Shah, henceforth the Shah. Both father and son were obsessed with elevating Iran out of its backwater state, stifled and plagued as it was by uncivilised and backwards Islamic traditions (which they believed was imposed on proud Iranians by the invading Arabs all those years ago), into its proper place among the advanced Western countries. Their decades long campaign of modernisation and industrialisation had indeed brought prosperity to many people in Iran, and yet progress was patchy.
In his resolve to modernise Iran the Shah was unflinching, in his methods he was often ruthless and, until the latter part of the seventies, uninterested in criticism. With this attitude and conduct he had managed to anger three prominent groups of Iranians: the clergy (or the mullahs), the merchant class (or the bazzaris) and the emerging professional bureaucratic intelligentsia (the university educated students, academics, and professionals). The mullahs were opposed to the land reforms and the establishment of non-religious provincial courts which were key tenants of the Shah’s White Revolution2, begun in 1963 (they were also not keen on the extension of the right to vote to women, also enacted as part of the White Revolution). The bazzaris whose prosperity depended on the old mercantile economy in Iran were predictably opposed to the industrialisation that the Shah championed. Finally, the intelligentsia who were becoming an essential part of Iranian society as modernisation progressed demanded liberal social policies, such as freedom of expression and of the press, to go along with economic westernisation. On many occasions they organised demonstrations (often on university grounds) to make these demands known, only to be me with arrests, beatings, and gunfire. Moreover, the country was still fraught with nepotism and corruption. This agitated the meritocratic intelligentsia. Although discontent had been brewing among these three classes for decades, to almost all observers of Iran it seemed unlikely that they would band together to oppose the regime. Anthony Parson, the British ambassador to Iran from 1974-79, wrote in 1984 that “[We at the embassy] did identify the principal elements of resistance to the Shah, namely the religious classes, the bazzar and the younger generation of the intelligentsia... [Where] we went wrong was that we did not anticipate that the various rivulets of opposition, each of which had a different reason for resenting the Shah's rule, would combine into a mighty stream of protest that would eventually sweep the Shah away.”3
But the implausible came to pass. The mullahs, the bazzariz and the intelligentsia united against the Shah under the leadership of Ayatollah Khomeini, then in exile in Najaf, Iraq. Herein lies the greatest folly of the Islamic Revolution. Consider the student bodies and academics that backed Khomeini’s Islamic Revolution, staging walk outs and demonstrations in support of his demands and shouting “Khomeini is our leader.” They were in effect backing a movement whose success would spell the end for the Iranian intelligentsia. Not only was Khomeini disinterested in further liberalisation, he meant to install a theocracy which made impossible any semblance or allusion to the Western academic tradition that had made possible the very existence of the Iranian intelligentsia. Nor could the Iranian students and academics feign ignorance to Khomeini’s true intentions. The Ayatollah had authored several books outlining his views on Islam and Islamic government. Most notably, in his book ‘Velayat-e faqih’4 , his most influential, he presents an unequivocal defence of theocratic rule under an Islamic jurist. To his credit, once he ascended to power, he adhered to the principles expounded in these books, so his aims must have been clear to those wanting to learn them. Conversely, had a secular coalition of constitutionalists (such as the National Front or Iranian Freedom Front) came to dominate this rag-tag band of revolutionaries, then the marginalisation of the mullahs in Iranian society would have been accelerated. Both the intelligentsia and the mullahs were given a choice between two evils and they both chose the greater evil. Worse still, the were given a choice between the devil they knew and the devil they did not know, and they both chose the latter.
These extraordinary errors in judgment are all the more striking in light of the common misconception that an educated people are a wise people, that they can discern their own problems and level-headedly judge different solutions, yet the intelligentsia’s kamikaze style politics in Iran seriously undermines this prejudice. It is clear than education is not a sufficient safegaurd against the fickleness and folly of the multitudes.
In order for everyone to get rich, some people have to get rich first. Iran was not an exception to this rule. This had understandably caused discontent in urban areas. Here workers had flocked in from the provinces and rural areas, hoping to find well-paying work and to enjoy the new luxuries made possible by increased foreign trade as well as the growth of mass production within the country. For some migrants, their union factory jobs had satisfied these hopes, while others toiled in the northern suburbs of Tehran building glamorous homes for the nouveau riche, only to return to their own residences in the filth ridden shanty towns of south Tehran at night. Despite the Shah’s best attempts at creating a strong bond between his peasants and the Pahlavi dynasty [footnote: the White Revolution was part of this agenda. The Shah wanted to gain the peasantry’s loyalty to secure his son’s reign.], egregious inequality and poor living conditions had made the proletariat a tenuous ally of the Shah at best, and a fuse waiting to be lit against him at worst.
So, when in 1977-78 the mullahs began decrying the Shah and his regime in their sermons, their follower’s ears were primed for the talk. “He, the one sitting in the palace,” the mullahs would say “is a foreigner taking his orders from foreign powers. He is causing all your miseries; he’s making a fortune at your expense and selling out the country.”5 The people quickly assembled under the religious banner of the mullahs, but they still faced a choice between the reform-minded, constitutionalist clerics from Mashhad and Qom6 (such as Ayatollah Shariat-madari) and Khomeini’s simple message of “The Shah must go.” It seems then that there was still at this point some hope for the country. The reformist may have been successful, leading to a peaceful transition to a constitutional monarchy and a relatively secular state. But anyone familiar with the nature and conduct of crowds and populations will know that this could never be, that once the people united under the clerics’ banner, Khomeini’s message was always going to drown out other voices.
The reason for this is twofold. Firstly, as Machiavelli notes in ‘The Discourses’, the masses, when faced with a problem and offered different solutions, are always drawn to those suggestions which at face-value are most courageous and proud. To overthrow the shah is far more ambitious and daring than to simply restrain him through a constitution. Moreover, it offers to repair the damage done to the people’s pride by the (supposedly illegitimate) Shah’s purported exploitation of their labours. Secondly, as Rousseau remarks in ‘The Social Contract’ “Wise men who want to speak to the vulgar in their own language instead of in a popular way will not be understood. Now, there are a thousand kinds of ideas which it is impossible to translate into the language of the people. Views very general and objects very remote are alike beyond its reach.”7 Khomeini’s implacable resistance to the Pahlavi dynasty offered the multitude an instant gratification for the indignation they had suffered under the Shah, while Shariat-madari’s reform-mindedness had as its remote object a separation of powers and a more active role for the Iranian people in their own government. It is no surprise then that the vox populi abandoned Shariat-madari’s reformist message in favour of Khomeini’s cut and dried approach. Khomeini's message was simple, it was proud, and whereas Shariat-madari proposed sustainable governance in future, Khomeini promised instant gratification in the toppling of the Shah.
As of Septermber 27, 2021, more than 120,000 Iranians have perished from Covid-19, according to official figures. According to the Economist’s estimate of excess deaths, that number is likely less than half the true death toll, which stands between 230,000 and 260,000. Amidst this catastrophe, Ayatollah Khamenei, Supreme Leader of Iran, banned the import of vaccines originating from the U.S. or the U.K.8 (he later rescinded this edict). After a botched attempt at a homegrown alternative, Iran now depends on the less reliable Sinovac vaccine. As the Delta-variant ravages the country, the full immunization rate has yet to reach twenty percent. The Shah was a deeply imperfect king. He idealised and even revered Cyrus, but he fell far short of his ancient predecessor. Yet anyone who is remotely familiar with his governance philosophy and his policy outlines must agree that Iranians would be faring far better under his leadership than under their once beloved Islamic Republic. The current regime has led the country into a state of despair. But this state, or something very much like it, was entirely predictable in 1979. Still, when the Shah fled Iran, the people took to the streets to celebrate. Soon after, when Khomeini landed in Tehran, this man who would put their children in front of firing squads and use the rest as human shields against Iraq, they did not know whether to kiss his eyes or fall at his feet. Enchanted by that proud, stoic face, intent on expressing nothing but concentration, they could only discern the courage and righteousness in his words, and not the loss and ruin that was concealed beneath.
Nicollò Machiavelli, Discourses on Livy, trans. J C Bondanella, P Bondanella (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006), pp124.
A Parsons, The Pride and The Fall, (London: Jonathan Cape, 1984), pp 134.
R Kapuściński, Shah of Shahs, trans. C de Bellaigue, W R Brand, K Mroczkowska-Brand (London: Penguin Group, 2006), pp 38.
Mashhad is a city in the North-Eastern corner of Iran, near the borders with Afghanistan and Turkmenistan. Qom sits about one-hundred kilometres south of Tehran. They are both of great religious importance within Iran.
Citation to be added shortly. If you have an English copy, this quote can be found in the chapter of book II titled ‘The Legislator’.
"Iran leader bans import of U.S., UK COVID-19 vaccines, demands sanctions end,” Reuters, Accessed Sep 27, 2021, https://www.reuters.com/article/health-coronavirus-iran-int-idUSKBN29D0YC.
I am curious as to your thoughts about the current unrest within Iran