With a far from accidental anticipation, much of the chief work of the modern Machiavellians was done in the period immediately preceding that war. Gaetano Mosca, it is true, had formulated many of his ideas as early as 1883, when he finished his first book, Teorica dei governi e governo parlamentare. However, his mature and finished thought is presented, with the war experiences close at hand, in the revised and expanded 1923 edition of Elementi di scienza politica, which is the basis of what has been translated into English as The Ruling Class.
