The Machiavellians: Defenders of Freedom

by James Burnham

Independence, the first condition of liberty, can be secured in the last analysis only by the armed strength of the citizenry itself, never by mercenaries or allies or money; consequently arms are the first foundation of liberty. There is no lasting safeguard for liberty in anything but one’s own strength.

2nd amendment, anyone?

As protectors of liberty, Machiavelli has no confidence in individual men as such; driven by unlimited ambition, deceiving even themselves, they are always corrupted by power. But individuals can, to some extent at least and for a while, be disciplined within the established framework of wise laws.

no person and no magistrate may be permitted to be above the law; there must be legal means for any citizen to bring accusations against any other citizen or any official; terms of office must be short, and must never, no matter what the inconvenience, be lengthened; punishment must be firm and impartial;

Sociologically, therefore, the foundation of liberty is a balancing of forces,

This balancing clash of opposed interests will the more surely preserve liberty when the state guards against too great inequality in privilege and wealth.

Machiavellians, in their investigations of political behavior, do not accept at face value what men say, think, believe, or write. Whether it is the speech or letter or book of an individual, or a public document such as a constitution or set of laws or a party platform, Machiavellians treat it as only one fact among the larger set of social facts, and interpret its meaning always in relation to these other facts. In some cases, examination shows that the words can be accepted just as they stand; more often, as we found with De Monarchia, a divorce between formal and real meaning is discovered,

a primary and universal social fact the existence of two “political classes,” a ruling class—always a minority—and the ruled.

In reality the dominion of an organized minority, obeying a single impulse, over the unorganized majority is inevitable. The power of any minority is irresistible as against each single individual in the majority, who stands alone before the totality of the organized minority. At the same time, the minority is organized for the very reason that it is a minority. A hundred men acting uniformly in concert, with a common understanding, will triumph over a thousand men who are not in accord and can therefore be dealt with one by one.

While I dont see a counter example I don't like the reasoning to demonstrate it will 'always' be the case.

When we say that the voters ‘choose’ their representative, we are using a language that is very inexact. The truth is that the representative has himself elected by the voters, and, if that phrase should seem too inflexible and too harsh to fit some cases, we might qualify it by saying that his friends have him elected. In elections, as in all other manifestations of social life, those who have the will and, especially, the moral, intellectual and material means to force their will upon others take the lead over the others and command them.

I do like this wording, though.

From the point of view of the theory of the ruling class, a society is the society of its ruling class. A nation’s strength or weakness, its culture, its powers of endurance, its prosperity, its decadence, depend in the first instance upon the nature of its ruling class. More particularly, the way in which to study a nation, to understand it, to predict what will happen to it, requires first of all and primarily an analysis of the ruling class.

We should further note that in stating the theory of the ruling class, Mosca is not making a moral judgment, is not arguing that it is good, or bad, that mankind should be divided into rulers and ruled.

“The struggle for existence has been confused with the struggle for pre-eminence,

Competition between individuals of every social unit is focused upon higher position, wealth, authority, control of the means and instruments that enable a person to direct many human activities, many human wills, as he sees fit. The losers, who are of course the majority in that sort of struggle, are not devoured, destroyed or even kept from reproducing their kind, as is basically characteristic of the struggle for life. They merely enjoy fewer material satisfactions and, especially, less freedom and independence. On the whole, indeed, in civilized societies, far from being gradually eliminated by a process of natural selection so-called, the lower classes are more prolific than the higher, and even in the lower classes every individual in the long run gets a loaf of bread and a mate, though the bread be more or less dark and hard-earned and the mate more or less unattractive or undesirable.”

“To rise in the social scale, even in calm and normal times, the prime requisite, beyond any question, is a capacity for hard work, but the requisite next in importance is ambition,

Moral virtues aren't that helpful.

Thus, the growth of new social forces and the decline of old forces is in general correlated with the constant process of change and dislocation in the ruling class.

political formula. This formula rationalizes and justifies its rule and the structure of the society over which it rules.

“And yet that does not mean that political formulas are mere quackeries aptly invented to trick the masses into obedience. Anyone who viewed them in that light would fall into grave error. The truth is that they answer a real need in man’s social nature; and this need, so universally felt, of governing and knowing that one is governed not on the basis of mere material or intellectual force, but on the basis of a moral principle, has beyond any doubt a practical and real importance.”

often related to wider myths that are shared by a number of nations,

political formulas

the integrity of the political formula is essential for the survival of a given social structure. Changes in the formula, if they are not to destroy the society, must be gradual, not abrupt.

The liberal principle, conversely, stimulates more than the autocratic the development of varied social potentialities. At the same time, it by no means avoids the formation of closed cliques at the top, such as are usually found in autocracies; the mode of formation of such cliques is merely different.

410.) When the liberal system is broadly based (that is, where suffrage is widely extended or universal), the candidates for high office must proceed by exploiting the backward sentiments of the masses:

“It is not so certain, meantime,” Mosca adds, “that it would be altogether beneficial to the collectivity to have every advantage of birth eliminated in the struggle for membership in the ruling class and for high position in the social hierarchy. If all individuals could participate in the scramble on an equal footing, struggle would be intensified to the point of frenzy. This would entail an enormous expenditure of energy for strictly personal ends, with no corresponding benefit to the social organism, at least in the majority of cases. On the other hand, it may very well be that certain intellectual and, especially, moral qualities, which are necessary to a ruling class if it is to maintain its prestige and function properly, are useful also to society, yet require, if they are to develop and exert their influence, that the same families should hold fairly high social positions for a number of generations.”

Hmmm...

to be the best, a government must be first of all possible.

Once again, if you need angels...

that utopian programs may even be the most convenient of cloaks for those whose real aims are most rightly suspect.

The impossibility of attaining absolute justice, however, does not render useless an effort after what measure of approximate justice is possible in the actual social world

We believe that social organization provides for the reciprocal restraint of human individuals by one another and so makes them better, not by destroying their wicked instincts, but by accustoming them to controlling their wicked instincts.” (Pp. 126-7.) “Guicciardini defines political liberty as ‘a prevalence of law and public decrees over the appetites of particular men.’

“The freest country is the country where the rights of the governed are best protected against arbitrary caprice and tyranny on the part of rulers.”

sorry, canada (?)

Juridical defense, then, means government by law and due process—not merely formally, in the words of constitutions or statutes, but in fact;

Tyranny, the worst of all governments, means the loss of juridical defense; and juridical defense invariably disappears whenever one tendency or force in society succeeds in absorbing or suppressing all the others. Those who control the supreme force rule then without restraint. The individual has no protection against them.

I think this is what Malice was referring to the other day, you need the people/government to be united in order to have a tyranny

Freedom, in the world as it is, is thus the product of conflict and difference, not of unity and harmony. In these terms we see again the danger of “idealism,” utopianism, and demagogy. The idealists, utopians, and demagogues always tell us that justice and the good society will be achieved by the absolute triumph of their doctrine and their side. The facts show us that the absolute triumph of any side and any doctrine whatsoever can only mean tyranny.

men who are participating in a great social movement always picture their coming action as a battle in which their cause is certain to triumph.

“The myths,” summing up, “are not descriptions of things, but expressions of a determination to act.” (P. 32.) “People who are living in this world of ‘myths,’ are secure from all refutation.… No failure proves anything against Socialism since the latter has become a work of preparation (for revolution); if they are checked, it merely proves that the apprenticeship has been insufficient;

From another point of view, the lessening of overt acts of violence in social relations is merely the correlative of an increase in fraud and corruption. Fraud, rather than violence, has become the more usual road to success and privilege. Naturally, therefore, those who are more adept at fraud than at force take kindly to humanitarian ideals. Crimes of fraud excite no such moral horror as acts of violence:

hmm... I did not see this. idea coming... Interesting to say the least Less moral repulsion towards fraud, less drama on the media

Cunning, in the form of doctrines of “social peace,” “co-operation,” and “arbitration,” is in favor. An occasional act of violence by the workers is comfortably overlooked, because it can be used by the labor bureaucrats—or a government allied with the bureaucrats—to scare the employers, to win concessions for themselves, and to prove their indispensable role in controlling proletarian violence.

admired. The great object of the Trades Unions is to obtain a recognition of the right to employ threats disguised in diplomatic formulas;

pessimism. “The optimist in politics,” he writes, “is an inconstant and even dangerous man, because he takes no account of the great difficulties presented by his projects.… If he possesses an exalted temperament, and if unhappily he finds himself armed with great power, permitting him to realize the ideal he has fashioned, the optimist may lead his country into the worst disasters.

the “group” has to be re-defined in such a way as to exclude certain individuals who are nevertheless subject to its decisions: children up to a certain arbitrarily determined age, criminals, insane persons, and so on. Usually, it may be added, additional restrictions apply in practice even when not in theory—property

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. Both of these qualifications are obviously unavoidable, and no sensible person could object to them. Nevertheless, it should not be overlooked that they do contradict strict democratic theory,

A large group cannot itself directly decide about its own affairs because there is no place big enough to permit a large group to assemble for discussion and decision.

Bad reasoning... Although to be fair the Internet wasn't a thing back then, and there would be too much overhead on communications. I would be more worried about time than space.

it is impossible for a large group as a whole to make a quick decision; there is just no way for all the members to participate.

All of these causes work alike, and inescapably, to create within the organization a leadership.

Democratic theory is compelled to try to adapt itself to the fact of leadership. This it does through the subsidiary theory of “representation.” The group or organization is still “self-governing”; but its self-government works through “representatives.”

The truth is that sovereignty, which is what—according to democratic principle—ought to be possessed by the mass, cannot be delegated. In making a decision, no one can represent the sovereign, because to be sovereign means to make one’s own decisions.

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.

past. 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.

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.

once again, democracy/freedom from conflict.

At a typical stage in this psychological metamorphosis, the leader identifies himself with the group—party or nation or whatever the group may be.

Criticism of the group is personal libel against the leader; criticism of the leader is subversion and treason against the group.

The Bonapartist leader claims, with more than a show of justification, to be the most perfect embodiment of the will of the group, the people. Everything, therefore, is permitted to him, since he is merely the symbol of the group as a whole. The intermediary political organs—parliaments, for example—still continue; but they are now subordinate to the Bonapartist leader, for only he completely expresses the popular will; they are his agents, and only through him are they agents of the people. “Once elected, the chosen of the people can no longer be opposed in any way. He personifies the majority, and all resistance to his will is anti-democratic. The leader of such a democracy is irremovable, for the nation, having once spoken, cannot contradict itself. He is, moreover, infallible.… It is reasonable and necessary that the adversaries of the government should be exterminated in the name of popular sovereignty, for the chosen of the people acts within his rights as representative of the collective will, established in his position by a spontaneous decision. It is the electors themselves, we are assured, who demand from the chosen of the people that he should use severe repressive measures, should employ force, should concentrate all authority in his own hands.”

Anarchism, finally, which was the first movement to study in detail the autocratic tendencies of organization, draws the clearest and most formally consistent conclusion. Since all organization leads to autocracy, then, in order to achieve democracy, there must be no organization at all, neither state nor party nor union. This viewpoint, which the history of anarchism shows is capable of producing very noble human individuals, is wholly divorced from the reality of human society, which necessarily includes organizations. Anarchism therefore can never be more than a faith—and a completely unrealistic faith, able to integrate an individual’s own isolated life, but never a serious political movement.