Does the End Justify the Means? Will Our Politics Be Ever Free of This Maxim?

 

Every day, we see many examples of action and thought justifying the maxim that the end justifies the means. This notion has haunted our ethical positions for centuries, more the reason for revisiting the concept and repeatedly proving it wrong. 

If the end justifies the means, many acts of violence, cheating, and manipulation will acquire acceptance. We are familiar with this idea. The allusion is that harm can be done if it leads to a benefit that weighs more than the harm done. In other words, a noble outcome will justify even an unethical path to reach it.

For example, a few people might be justifiably harmed to save a hundred or thousand or to build a better society; a river might be polluted if it helps generate employment through a polluting industry on its shore; a leader can be assassinated if it leads to a better man replacing him to rule the country; thousands of civilians and soldiers of another country could be killed in a war if it leads to economic and security benefits for your country.    

The tricky question is who decides what is beneficial and who is entitled to compare harm and benefit and give them scores. Who commands the weighing scales? People who have access to implementing such decisions often are people who have the power. At the receiving end, we find people with no power and means. The scale is already tilted before we even approach the question.   

The common perception is that Niccolò Machiavelli originally pronounced this maxim. But he did not say exactly that. 

What he said was,

“Men judge more by their eyes than by their hands because everyone can see, but few can feel. Everyone can see how you appear, few can feel what you are, and these few will not dare to oppose the opinion of the multitude when it is defended by the majesty of the state. In the actions of all men, especially princes, where there is no recourse to justice, the end is all that counts. A prince should only be concerned with conquering or maintaining a state, for the means will always be judged to be honourable and praiseworthy by each and every person because the masses always follow appearances and the outcomes of affairs, and the world is nothing other than the masses.” (Machiavelli, The Prince)

In the above, there is a real suggestion of the maxim. Yet, he is talking about a general perception rather than an ethical position or a best practice. 

Machiavelli wrote this in the 16th century. We are such animals of opportunity that when it is convenient for us to use an idea, it does not matter how archaic it is. In the 16th century, people were bled in the name of curing illnesses, and they were hanged, drawn, and quartered as a punishment for treason. Come on! Are we to hang on to a dictum of those times?

Machiavelli placed politics in a place very close to warfare. The French and succeeding Marxist revolutions drew energy from this correlation. The colonisation and empire-building in the world, the crusades and the global wars against ‘terrorism’ that the West fought- all followed the same thinking. Political thought in the world is still governed by this violent streak. 

Mahatma Gandhi was a great opponent of this thinking. In his discourse, ‘Hind Swaraj Or Indian Home Rule’, Mahatma Gandhi wrote,

“Your belief that there is no connection between the means and the end is a great mistake. Through that mistake, even men who have been considered religious have committed grievous crimes. Your reasoning is the same as saying that we can get a rose by planting a noxious weed. If I want to cross the ocean, I can do so only using a vessel; if I were to use a cart for that purpose, both the cart and I would soon find the bottom. "As is the God, so is the votary" is a maxim worth considering. Its meaning has been distorted, and men have gone astray. The means may be likened to a seed, the end to a tree, and there is just the same inviolable connection between the means and the end as there is between the seed and the tree. I am not likely to obtain the result flowing from the worship of God by laying myself prostrate before Satan” (Hind Swaraj, Gandhi).

He further explains,

“If I want to deprive you of your watch, I shall certainly have to fight for it;

if I want to buy your watch, I shall have to pay you for it, and if I want a gift, I

shall have to plead for it, and, according to the means I employ, the watch is

stolen property, my own property, or a donation. Thus, we see three different

results from three different means” (Hind Swaraj, Gandhi).

No one else has so beautifully demolished the logic of this maxim we are considering than Gandhi. He was so sure that every step counts in our journey to freedom. History has taught us that peace cannot be won with war. 

Tailpiece

One can also argue that this maxim is a man’s contribution to a world ruled by men. We have yet to see a world where a woman’s thought is valued. No woman’s word so far has such far-fetched consequences as Machiavelli’s. 

In a more gender-equal world, maybe politics would not have been correlated with violence and manipulation. It would have been more about community and democracy. Machiavelli’s thought would have been thrown away as a less civilised way of understanding the world.