More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
open recognition of the necessity of violence can reverse the social degeneration. Violence, however, can serve this function, can be kept free from brutality and from mere vengeful force, only if it is linked to a great myth. Myth and violence, reciprocally acting on each other, produce not senseless cruelty and suffering, but sacrifice and heroism.[*]
he is tempted to get rid of people whose obstinacy seems to him to be so dangerous to the happiness of all. During the Terror, the men who spilt most blood were precisely those who had the greatest desire to let their equals enjoy the golden age they had dreamt of, and who had the most sympathy with human wretchedness: optimists, idealists, and sensitive men, the greater desire they had for universal happiness the more inexorable they showed themselves.
When someone writes a book on democracy, we are accustomed to share with him the assumption, as a rule not even mentioned, that democracy is both desirable and possible.
No Machiavellian, however, makes such an approach to social and political subjects. A Machiavellian does not assume, without examination, the desirability of democracy or peace or even of “justice” or any other ideal goal. Before declaring his allegiance, he makes sure that he understands
what is being talked about, together with the probable consequences for social welfare and well-being.
Above all, no Machiavellian assumes without inquiry that the various goals are possible. A goal must be possible before there is a...
This highlight has been truncated due to consecutive passage length restrictions.
It is not the principal aim of science to create systems, but rather to promote understanding. It is not the purpose of sociological science to discover, or rediscover, solutions, since numerous problems of the individual life and the life of social groups are not capable of ‘solution’ at all, but must ever remain ‘open.’ ”
From these facts the Marxists concluded that the elimination of economic inequalities, through the building of an economically classless society in which no one should have special rights of ownership over the means of production, was a prerequisite for the attainment of genuine democracy. The reasoning of the Marxists was correct so far as it went. They failed, however, to demonstrate that it is possible to eliminate economic inequality and to organize a classless society.
If, on the contrary, we discover in these organizations, also, not democracy nor a tendency toward democracy but rather oligarchy and powerful tendencies toward oligarchy, this will be a decisive test in establishing the fact that democracy, as theoretically conceived, is impossible. It will, together with the corroborative testimony from the study of other organizations, demonstrate that oligarchy or a tendency toward oligarchy is inherent in organization itself, and is thus a necessary condition of social life.
However, as soon as the group becomes at all large (and the politically important groups of modern civilized society are very large) it is necessary, still retaining the democratic intention, to introduce arbitrary rules that are not wholly in
accord with democratic theory.
Secondly, since in larger groups we seldom get opinions that are both freely given and unanimous, it is necessary to accept the decision of a numerical majority as the decision of the entire group.
it is at once plain that, in the case of large groups, strict or “direct” democracy is impossible for mechanical and technical reasons.
To sum up: All of these causes work alike, and inescapably, to create within the organization a leadership. The leadership, a minority and in a large organization always a relatively small minority, is distinguished from the mass of the organization. The organization is able to keep alive and to function only through its leaders.
Thus the fact of leadership, obscured by the theory of representation, negates the principle of democracy.
But in practice, the mere fact that an individual has held the office in the past is thought by him and by the members to give him a moral claim on it for the future; or, if not on the same office, then on some other leadership post in the organization.
In truth, it is a powerful stroke whereby the leader forces his will upon the group. In the issue, the resignation is not accepted; it is the convention that gives up its opposition to the leader’s proposals, the parliament that votes “confidence.”
More fundamental than the right to office is the psychological need felt by the masses for leadership.
the bulk of the membership of any large organization is passive with respect to the organizational activities. Only a small percentage of a union’s membership comes regularly to meetings.
“Though it grumbles occasionally, the majority is really delighted to find persons who will take the trouble to look after its affairs. In the mass, and even in the organized mass of the labor parties, there is an immense need for direction and guidance. This need is accompanied by a genuine cult for the leaders, who are regarded as heroes.”
The masses have deep feelings of political gratitude toward those who, seemingly, speak and write in their behalf, and who on occasion suffer, or have suffered, persecution, imprisonment, or exile in the name of their ideals.
Machiavelli was aware, also, of this natural sentiment of gratitude. In his zeal for the protection of liberty, he warned against it, and praised the Romans for not taking into account past services when they were judging a present fault.
Among them, the chief is the force of will which reduces to obedience less powerful wills. [Again, Machiavelli’s virtù.] Next in importance come the following: a wider extent of knowledge which impresses the members of the leaders’ environment; a catonian strength of conviction, a force of ideas often verging on fanaticism, and which arouses the respect of the masses by its very intensity; self-sufficiency, even if accompanied by arrogant pride, so long as the leader knows how to make the crowd share his
own pride in himself; in exceptional cases, finally, goodness of heart and disinterestedness, qualities which recall in the minds of the crowd the figure of Christ, and reawaken religious sentiments which are decayed but not extinct.”
In short, the leaders—not every individual leader, but the leadership as a group, and a group with at least a considerable measure of stability and permanence—are indispensable to every important organization.
Their genuine indispensability is the strongest lever whereby the position of the leadership is consolidated, whereby the leaders control and are not controlled by the mass, whereby, therefore, democracy succumbs. The power of the leadership, organized as an informal sub-group independent of the mass of the membership, follows as a necessary
consequence of its indisp...
This highlight has been truncated due to consecutive passage length restrictions.
Cultural and psychological causes, thus, combine with the technical conditions of organization to bring about a division between the leaders, on the one hand, and the mass of the organization’s membership on the other. The leadership is consolidated as a group, relatively independent of the mass. The leaders are indispensable to the organization’s life and activities. In practice, in spite of the
forms and doctrines of democracy, the leaders are in a position to control and dominate the mass. Let us study further how the autocracy of the leadership expresses and maintains itself.
The leaders—mere “representatives,” according to democratic theory—have effective control of the organization’s finances. The funds are for the most part supplied by the mass. In theory and to some extent in fact, the mass can impose certain restrictions on what is done with the funds. But in practice the use and distribution of funds is under the direct control of the leaders.
This financial privilege marks the dominance of the leaders over the organization, and at the same time, through the greater resources, cultural as well as material, which the high income places at the leaders’ disposal, reinforces their dominance.
‘I feel our officers should be paid the same salary as the rank-and-file back in the shop,’ he shouted. ‘Pay them like bosses, and they begin to think like bosses!’
[Delegate Mazey is one step behind: the leaders, thinking like bosses already, logically demand to be paid like bosses.]
“To this, another delegate retorted: ‘We’re treating them like the bosses try to treat us when we ask for a raise!’
If the leaders are not well paid, they are more subject to temptation from without and less likely to be loyal to their own organization. Or, as often in democratic and labor politics, persons with independent means take over the leadership.
Second, collaborating with financial control, “the press constitutes a potent instrument for the conquest, the preservation, and the consolidation of power on the part of the leaders.”
“In all cases, the press [as well as publicity and propaganda generally] remains in the hands of the leaders and is never controlled by the rank and file.”
The case for the leadership and its policies, therefore, can be and is always the preponderant burden of the organization’s propaganda.
A third powerful instrument of control possessed by the leaders results from the fact that they administer, in part or altogether, the disciplinary mechanism of the organization.
We must be careful to distinguish the problem of government “by the people” from that of government “for the people.”
It may quite possibly be that this is, if not always, at least sometimes best “for the people”; that is, the interests of the members as a whole and of the majority of them individually, may be best served by leadership control.
These means consist in the right of controlling and dismissing their leaders.” (P. 156.) This brake on the leaders cannot be wholly disregarded, and it would be a mistake to suppose that it does not serve to differentiate democratic organizations from those completely subject to an autocratic structure.
All those organizational facts that we have been reviewing unite to show that where a definite conflict arises between the leaders and the mass, the odds are overwhelmingly in favor of the leaders.
In the first place, if a division occurs among the leaders, one section or both is forced to seek help from the masses of the membership, and is able to organize their strength.
Second, new leaders may, and do, arise as it were “spontaneously” out of the masses. If the existing leadership is unable or unwilling to crush or assimilate these
“outside” leaders, then it may be...
This highlight has been truncated due to consecutive passage length restrictions.
An opposition, whatever its theories, is compelled to rest to some extent on a democratic basis and to defend democratic practices. The existence of an opposition is the firmest and the only firm check on the autocratic tendencies of the leaders.
“psychological metamorphosis.”
“He who has once attained to power will not readily be induced to return to the comparatively obscure position which he formerly occupied.… The consciousness of power always produces vanity, and undue belief in personal greatness.… In the leader, consciousness of his personal
worth, and of the need which the mass feels for guidance, combine to induce in his mind a recognition of his own superiority (real or supposed), and awake, in addition, that spirit of command which exists in the germ in every man born of woman. We see from this that every human power seeks to enlarge its prerogatives. He who has acquired power will almost always endeavor to consolidate it and to extend it, to multiply the ramparts which defend his position, and to withdraw himself from the control of the masses.”
