The Machiavellians: Defenders of Freedom

by James Burnham

It is characteristic of De Monarchia, and of all similar treatises, that there should be this divorce between formal and real meanings, that the formal meaning should not explicitly state but only indirectly express, and to one or another extent hide and distort, the real meaning.

The real meaning is thereby rendered irresponsible, since it is not subject to open and deliberate intellectual control; but the real meaning is nonetheless there.[*]

The ostensible goals of the formal argument are noble, high-minded, what people often call “idealistic.” This serves to create a favorable emotional response in the reader, to disarm him, to lead him to believe in the “good will” of the author.

But what of these latter aims, what do they concretely amount to? When we dig behind the formal façade, they emerge as vengeful and reactionary.

Dante’s method, in De Monarchia,

outworn.

exactly that of the Democratic Platform with which we ...

method of nine-tenths, yes, much more than nine-tenths, of all writing and speaking ...

the general features of this method.

1. There is a sharp divorce between what I have called the formal meaning, the formal aims and arguments, and the real meaning, the real aims and argument (if there is, as there is usually not, any real argument).

2. The formal aims and goals are for the most part or altogether either supernatural or metaphysical-transcendental—in both cases meaningless from the point of view of real actions in the real world of space and time and history; or, if they have some empirical meaning, are impossible to achieve under the actual conditions of social life.

In all three cases, the dependence of the whole structure of reasoning upon such goals makes it impossible for the writer (or speaker) to give a true descriptive account of the way men actually behave. A systematic distortion of the truth takes place. And, obviously, it cannot be shown ...

3. From a purely logical point of view, the arguments offered for the formal aims and goals may be valid or fallacious; but, except by accident, they are necessarily irrelevant to real political problems, since they are designed to prove the ostensible points of the formal structure—points of...

4. The formal meaning serves as an indirect expression of the real meaning—that is, of the concrete meaning of the political treatise taken in its real context, in its relation to the actualities of the social and historical situation in which it functions. But at the same time that it expresses, it also disguises the real meaning. We think we are debating universal peace, salvation, a unified world government, and the relations between Church and State, when what is really at issue is whe...

We believe we are disputing the merits of a balanced budget and a sound currency when the real conflict is deciding what group shall regulate the distribution of the currency. We imagine we are arguing over the moral and legal status of the principle of the freedom of the seas when the real question is who is to control the seas.

5. From this it follows that the real meaning, the real goal and aims, are left irresponsible. In Dante’s case the aims were also vicious and reactionary. This need not be the case, but, when this method is used, they are always irresponsible. Even if the real aims are such as to contribute to human welfare, no proof or evidence for this is offered. Proof and evidence, so far as they are present at all, remain at the formal level. The real aims are accepted, even if right, for the wrong reasons. The high-minded words of the formal meaning serve only to arouse passion and prejudice and sentimentality in favor of the disguised real aims.

This method, whose intellectual consequence is merely to confuse and hide, can teach us nothing of the truth, can in no way help us to solve the problems of our political life. In the hands of the powerful and their spokesmen, however, used by demagogues or hypocrites or simply the self-deluded, this method is well designed, and the best, to deceive us, and to lead u...

No doubt European unification under Hitler would have been evil for the European peoples and the world. But this is no more proved by complicated deductions to show the derivation of Nazi thought from Hegelian dialectic and the philosophic poetry of Nietzsche than is the contradictory by Hitler’s own mystical pseudo-biology.

“Freedom from want” is very nearly as meaningless, in terms of real politics, as “eternal salvation”—men are wanting beings; they are freed from want only by death.

Political analysis becomes, like other dreams, the expression of human wish or the admission of practical failure.

All human activities have goals, usually several of them, open or hidden, whether or not admitted by the actor.

There are certain goals which are peculiar and proper to science, without which science does not exist. These are: the accurate and systematic description of public facts; the attempt to correlate sets of these facts in laws; and, through these correlations, the attempt to predict, with some degree of probability, future facts. Many scientific investigations do not try to go beyond these special goals; nor is there any need for them to do so.

In the field of historical, social, and political science, as in other sciences, these goals might be, and sometimes are, alone relevant. But without these goals, whether or not there are also others, an inquiry is not scientific.

though our practical goals may dictate the direction that scientific activity takes, though they show us what we are trying to accomplish by the scientific investigation, what problem we are trying to solve; nevertheless, the logic of the scientific inquiry itself is not controlled by the practical aims but by science’s own aims, by the effort to describe facts and to correlate them. In this respect, too, Dante violates the demand of science. His treatise is merely the elaborate projection of his wish. It tells us nothing.

Until the 15th century, the attempts of the kings to consolidate a firm governmental authority always met a strong and on the whole successful resistance from the lords.

the primitive economy, the lack of manufacture for the market, of money-exchange, of extensive foreign trade, of easy transportation and communication, meant the absence of a socio-economic basis for lasting large-scale political units. In the first stages of the breakup of feudalism, those who were aiming toward the national political system, which was later to win out, were working at a disadvantage. They were ahead of their times, trying to erect too weighty a structure on an unfinished foundation.

Machiavelli concluded that Italy could be unified only through a Prince, who would take the initiative in consolidating the country into a nation.

in this conclusion Machiavelli was undoubtedly correct. All of the European nations were consolidated through a Prince—or, rather, a succession of Princes—and

The feudal lords did not want nation-states, which in the end were sure to bring the destruction of their power and privileges. The masses were too inarticulate, too ignorant, too weak, to function as a leading political force. The Church knew that its international overlordship was gravely threatened if the national system were successful.

Almost all commentators on Machiavelli say that his principal innovation, and the essence of his method, was to “divorce politics from ethics.” Thereby he broke sharply with the Aristotelian tradition which had dominated medieval political thought. His method, they grant, freed politics to become more scientific and objective in its study of human behavior; but it was most dangerous because, through it, politics was released from “control” by ethical conceptions of what is right and good.

Shit. Spot on.

We have already seen enough to realize that this opinion is confused. Machiavelli divorced politics from ethics only in the same sense that every science must divorce itself from ethics. Scientific descriptions and theories must be based upon the facts, the evidence, not upon the supposed demands of some ethical system.

This very refusal, however, this allegiance to objective truth, is itself a moral ideal.

Machiavelli understood politics as primarily the study of the struggles for power among men.

men, and groups of men, do, by various means, struggle among themselves for relative increases in power and privilege.

There have been many critical discussions about Machiavelli’s supposed views on “human nature.” Some defend him, but he is usually charged with a libel upon mankind, with having a perverted, shocking, and detestable notion of what human beings are like.

Machiavelli is neither a psychologist nor a moral philosopher, but a political scientist.

Most people think that politics is ultimately a question of psychology, because, they argue, it is after all human beings who carry on political actions. This belief lies back of the common attempt to explain politics in terms of the character and motives of political leaders, or even of the “common man,”

The relation between psychology and politics is, however, by no means so direct.

the proper study of politics is quite plainly distinct from the study of psychology, and the laws of politics can in no way be deduced from the laws of psychology.

To understand politics, we must get our evidence directly, from the record of political struggles themselves. Those minor details which psychology is now able to tell us about reaction-times, conditioned reflexes, and infant peculiarities teach us nothing at all about how forms of government change or a ruling class is wiped out.

From studying the facts of politics, then, Machiavelli reached certain conclusions, not about ma...

First, he implies everywhere a rather sharp distinction between two types of political man: a “ruler-type,” we might call ...

The first type would include not merely those who at any moment occupy leading positions in society, but those also who aspire to such positions or who might so aspire if opportunity offered; the second consists of those who neither lead nor a...

how useless a thing the multitude is without a head.…” (Discourses, Book I, Chap. 44.)

Virtù is a word, in Machiavelli’s language, that has no English equivalent. It includes in its meaning part of what we refer to as “ambition,” “drive,” “spirit” in the sense of Plato’s θυμός, the “will to power.”

The ruler-type has, usually, strength, especially martial strength. War and fighting are the great training ground of rule, Machiavelli believes, and power is secure only on the basis of force.

a few wider principles of great influence in the later development of Machiavellism.

1. Political life, according to Machiavelli, is never static, but in continual change.

The very virtues of the good state contain the seeds of its own destruction.

The strong and flourishing state is feared by all neighbors, and is therefore left in peace. War and the ways of force are neglected. The peace and prosperity breed idleness, luxury, and license; these, political corruption, tyranny, and weakness. The state is overcome by the force of uncorrupted neighbors, or itself enters a new cycle, where hard days and arms purge the corruption, and bring a new strength, a new virtue and prosperity. But once again, the degeneration sets in.