The Machiavellians: Defenders of Freedom

by James Burnham

2. The recurring pattern of change expresses the more or less permanent core of human nature as it functions politically.

3. Machiavelli assigns a major function in political affairs to what he calls “Fortune.”

Fortune is all those causes of historical change that are beyond the deliberate, rational control of men.

4. Machiavelli believes that religion is essential to the well-being of a state.

He is analyzing, we might say in a general sense, “myth,” and myth he finds to be politically indispensable.

5. We have already seen that Machiavelli’s chief immediate practical goal was the national unification of Italy. In the review of his descriptive conclusions about the nature of political activity, no reference has been made to any more general goals or ideals to which Machiavelli adhered.

Machiavelli thinks that the best kind of government is a republic, what he called a “commonwealth.” Not only does he prefer a republican government; other things being equal, he considers a republic stronger, more enduring, wiser and more flexible than any form of monarchy.

“liberty,” as Machiavelli uses the word, means: independence—that is, no external subjection to another group; and, internally, a government by law, not by the arbitrary will of any individual men, princes or commoners.

Internally, also, liberty rests on force—on the public force of the state, however, never on force exercised by private individuals or groups, which is invariably a direct threat to liberty. Guaranteed by force, then, internal liberty means government by law, with strict adherence to due legal process.

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.

Only out of the continuing clash of opposing groups can liberty flow.

the distinguishing quality of Anglo-Saxon politics has always been hypocrisy, and hypocrisy must always be at pains to shy away from the truth.

Machiavellians, in their investigations of political behavior, do not accept at face value what men say, think, believe, or write.

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.

“What happens in other forms of government—namely, that an organized minority imposes its will on the disorganized majority—happens also and to perfection, whatever the appearances to the contrary, under the representative system. 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.

From the point of view of the theory of the ruling class, a society is the society of its ruling class.

the great mass of mankind leaves no record of itself except insofar as it is expressed or led by outstanding and noteworthy persons.