The Machiavellians: Defenders of Freedom

by James Burnham

All utopias would be excluded, all those mirages of permanent and universal peace and plenty and joy. Moreover, since the general pattern of social development is determined by technological change and by other factors quite beyond the likelihood of human control, a scientific élite would have to accept that general pattern. It was an illusion, in 1800, to think that society could revive the social structure appropriate to the pre-steam-engine era; so today is it an illusion to dream that the 19th century structure can be retained on the technological basis of the assembly line, the airplane, electricity, and radio. From this point of view, we may say that a scientific élite would have to be “opportunist”—not in the narrower sense in which opportunism means taking the easiest course today with no clear thought of tomorrow, but in the broader perspective of not trying to buck the main stream of development, not fighting for causes that are already lost when the battle begins.