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The Machiavellians

June 5, 2009

A table of contents for the recent series onJames BurnhamsThe Machiavellians.1. All Essays are Equal but Some Essays are More Equal than Others.............. 12. Principle I: An Objective Science of Politics is Possible....................................................... 53. Principle II: The Primary Subject Matter of Political Science is the Struggle for Power.... 74.

Principle III: Political Utterances Cannot Be Taken At Their Face Value......................... 105. Principle IV: Rational Action Plays a Relatively Minor Part in Political Change............... 15

6. Principle V: The Social Division Between the Ruling Class and the Ruled is Key ............. 187. Principle VI: The Study of the Ruling Class, and Its Relation to the Ruled, is Key............ 208. Principle VII: The Key Objective of the Ruling Class is Maintaining its own Power......... 219. Principle VIII: The Ruling Class Maintains Power Through Force and Fraud.................... 2610. Principle IX: Ruling Class Dominance is Legitimated by Some Socially-Accepted Myth... 3011. Principle X: Ruling Class Dominance Tends to Coincide with the Interests of the Ruled.. 3312. Principle XI: Ruling Class Dominance is Maintained by Both Exclusion and Inclusion...... 3613. Principle XII: In the Long Run, A Ruling Class Includes Elements from the Ruled............. 3814. Principle XIII: Periodically, Ruling Class Composition/Structure Changes Rapidly........... 40

15. Coda: Is Democracy Doomed? .................................................................................... 43
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1. All Essays are Equal but Some Essays are MoreEqual than Others

November 10, 2008

James BurnhamsThe Machiavellians,which seems to anticipateWilliam Riker, Bruce Bueno de Mesquita, and otherpublic

choice theorypolitical scientists, offers very compelling

arguments that politics is fundamentally about the struggle for

power. Burnham and public choice theorists argue that the

behavior of politicians is best explained by the proposition that

politicians, in whatever form of government, from dictatorship to

democracy, act the way they do because of the need to stay in power once they

haveclimbed to the top of the greasy pole.They make a compelling argument but

they dont systemicatically define why some people do things that are crazy once

their in power. Just as neoclassical economicsandrational choice theorydoesntsystematically capture the richness of human irrationality, neither does the public

choice theory literature Ive sampled so far. The interaction between thecultural

OODA loop and the political OODA loop,between the prioritizing of values and the

division of power, just isnt specified.George Orwell, in hisessayreviewing The

Machiavellians, captures this weakness:

For quite fifty years [ed. before 1946] past the general drift has almostcertainly been towards oligarchy. The ever-increasing concentration ofindustrial and financial power; the diminishing importance of the individualcapitalist or shareholder, and the growth of the new managerial class ofscientists, technicians, and bureaucrats; the weakness of the proletariatagainst the centralised state; the increasing helplessness of small countriesagainst big ones; the decay of representative institutions and the appearanceof one-party rgimes based on police terrorism, faked plebiscites, etc: allthese things seem to point in the same direction. Burnham sees the trendand assumes that it is irresistible, rather as a rabbit fascinated by a boaconstrictor might assume that a boa constrictor is the strongest thing in theworld. When one looks a little deeper, one sees that all his ideas rest upontwo axioms which are taken for granted in the earlier book and made partlyexplicit in the second one. They are:

1. Politics is essentially the same in all ages.2. Political behaviour is different from other kinds of behaviour.To take the second point first. In The Machiavellians, Burnham insists thatpolitics is simply the struggle for power. Every great social movement, everywar, every revolution, every political programme, however edifying andUtopian, really has behind it the ambitions of some sectional group which isout to grab power for itself. Power can never be restrained by any ethical or

Tonight we're gonna

party like it's 1984
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religious code, but only by other power. The nearest possible approach toaltruistic behaviour is the perception by a ruling group that it will probablystay in power longer if it behaves decently. But curiously enough, thesegeneralisations only apply to political behaviour, not to any other kind ofbehaviour. In everyday life, as Burnham sees and admits, one cannot explainevery human action by applying the principle ofcui bono? Obviously, humanbeings have impulses which are not selfish. Man, therefore, is an animal thatcan act morally when he acts as an individual, but becomes immoral when heacts collectively. But even this generalisation only holds good for the highergroups. The masses, it seems, have vague aspirations towards liberty andhuman brotherhood, which are easily played upon by power-hungryindividuals or minorities. So that history consists of a series of swindles, inwhich the masses are first lured into revolt by the promise of Utopia, andthen, when they have done their job, enslaved over again by new masters.

Political activity, therefore, is a special kind of behaviour, characterised by itscomplete unscrupulousness, and occurring only among small groups of the

population, especially among dissatisfied groups whose talents do not getfree play under the existing form of society. The great mass of the people and this is where (2) ties up with (1) will always be unpolitical. In effect,therefore, humanity is divided into two classes: the self-seeking, hypocriticalminority, and the brainless mob whose destiny is always to be led or driven,as one gets a pig back to the sty by kicking it on the bottom or by rattling astick inside a swill-bucket, according to the needs of the moment. And thisbeautiful pattern is to continue forever. Individuals may pass from onecategory to another, whole classes may destroy other classes and rise to thedominant position, but the division of humanity into rulers and ruled isunalterable. In their capabilities, as in their desires and needs, men are not

equal. There is an iron law of oligarchy, which would operate even ifdemocracy were not impossible for mechanical reasons.

It is curious that in all his talk about the struggle for power, Burnham neverstops to ask why people want power. He seems to assume that powerhunger, although only dominant in comparatively few people, is a naturalinstinct that does not have to be explained, like the desire for food. He alsoassumes that the division of society into classes serves the same purpose inall ages. This is practically to ignore the history of hundreds of years. WhenBurnhams master, Machiavelli, was writing, class divisions were not onlyunavoidable, but desirable. So long as methods of production were primitive,the great mass of the people were necessarily tied down to dreary,

exhausting manual labour: and a few people had to be set free from suchlabour, otherwise civilisation could not maintain itself, let alone make anyprogress. But since the arrival of the machine the whole pattern has altered.The justification for class distinctions, if there is a justification, is no longerthe same, because there is no mechanical reason why the average humanbeing should continue to be a drudge. True, drudgery persists; classdistinctions are probably re-establishing themselves in a new form, andindividual liberty is on the down-grade: but as these developments are now
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technically avoidable, they must have some psychological cause whichBurnham makes no attempt to discover. The question that he ought to ask,and never does ask, is: Why does the lust for naked power become a majorhuman motive exactly now, when the dominion of man over man is ceasingto be necessary? As for the claim that human nature, or inexorable laws ofthis and that, make Socialism impossible, it is simply a projection of the pastinto the future. In effect, Burnham argues that because a society of free andequal human beings has never existed, it never can exist. By the sameargument one could have demonstrated the impossibility of aeroplanes in1900, or of motor cars in 1850.

The notion that the machine has altered human relationships, and that inconsequence Machiavelli is out of date, is a very obvious one. If Burnhamfails to deal with it, it can, I think, only be because his own power instinctleads him to brush aside any suggestion that the Machiavellian world offorce, fraud, and tyranny may somehow come to an end. It is important tobear in mind what I said above: that Burnhams theory is only a variant an

American variant, and interesting because of its comprehensiveness of thepower worship now so prevalent among intellectuals. A more normal variant,at any rate in England, is Communism. If one examines the people who,having some idea of what the Russian rgime is like, are strongly russophile,one finds that, on the whole, they belong to the managerial class of whichBurnham writes. That is, they are not managers in the narrow sense, butscientists, technicians, teachers, journalists, broadcasters, bureaucrats,professional politicians: in general, middling people who feel themselvescramped by a system that is still partly aristocratic, and are hungry for morepower and more prestige. These people look towards the USSR and see in it,or think they see, a system which eliminates the upper class, keeps the

working class in its place, and hands unlimited power to people very similarto themselves. It was only afterthe Soviet rgime became unmistakablytotalitarian that English intellectuals, in large numbers, began to show aninterest in it. Burnham, although the English russophile intelligentsia wouldrepudiate him, is really voicing their secret wish: the wish to destroy the old,equalitarian version of Socialism and usher in a hierarchical society wherethe intellectual can at last get his hands on the whip. Burnham at least hasthe honesty to say that Socialism isnt coming; the others merely say thatSocialism is coming, and then give the word Socialism a new meaning whichmakes nonsense of the old one. But his theory, for all its appearance ofobjectivity, is the rationalisation of a wish. There is no strong reason forthinking that it tells us anything about the future, except perhaps the

immediate future. It merely tells us what kind of world the managerial classthemselves, or at least the more conscious and ambitious members of theclass, would like to live in.

Whether Orwell is correct about the power of the machines banishing drudgery and

hierarchy from human existence is a strong rejoinder or not is besides the point. It

hasnt fully happened yet. Orwell was often penetrating in his diagnosis but


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indifferent in his treatment. The desire for power may exert an inexorable

gravitational pull on the human heart. However, Orwell reminds us

thatrealistthought, with its emphasis on the unchanging face of human behavior

over the ages, will, almost as inevitably as they propose human nature to be, be

surprised by the unpredictable manifestations of that behavior:

But, in any case, one should have been able to see from the start that such amovement as Nazism could not produce any good or stable result. Actually,so long as they were winning, Burnham seems to have seen nothing wrongwith the methods of the Nazis. Such methods, he says, only appear wickedbecause they are new:

There is no historical law that polite manners and Justice shallconquer. In history there is always the question of whose mannersand whose justice. A rising social class and a new order of society havegot to break through the old moral codes just as they must break

through the old economic and political institutions. Naturally, from thepoint of view of the old, they are monsters. If they win, they take carein due time of manners and morals.

This implies that literally anything can become right or wrong if the dominantclass of the moment so wills it. It ignores the fact that certain rules ofconduct have to be observed if human society is to hold together at allOnecannot always make positive prophecies, but there are times when one oughtto be able to make negative ones. No one could have been expected toforesee the exact results of the Treaty of Versailles, but millions of thinkingpeople could and did foresee that those results would be bad. Plenty ofpeople, though not so many in this case, can foresee that the results of thesettlement now being forced on Europe will also be bad. And to refrain fromadmiring Hitler or Stalin that, too, should not require an enormousintellectual effort.

But it is partly a moral effort. That a man of Burnhams gifts should havebeen able for a while to think of Nazism as something rather admirable,something that could and probably would build up a workable and durablesocial order, shows what damage is done to the sense of reality by thecultivation of what is now called realism.
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2. The Machiavellians: Principle I

May 1, 2009

The MachiavelliansbyJames Burnham (available for

downloadhere) may be the greatest work of political science youve never heard of. Burnham was aformerTrotskyitewho had a born again experience inthe wake of theMolotov-Ribbentrop PactandtheSoviet invasion of Finland. His two mostimportant books,The Managerial Revolutionand theaforementioned Machiavellians, came during thetransition between his previous life as a

Communist/Socialist party apparatchik and his latercareer as a prominent conservative intellectual andone of the original founders ofNational Review. This produced a curious fusion of

the worldview of the Old Left and the nascent vision of the New Right. He waslargely free from the orthodoxies of the Left and hadnt yet been overtaken by theorthodoxies of the Right.

Burham loomed larger as a thinker on the U.S. national stage in 1943 than he didlater. I even read somewhere that he would be ranked as one of the great politicalthinkers of the 20th century by everyone if hed died in 1944. TheMachiavellians even drew comment fromGeorge Orwell(Francis Sempa, last seenon this blog contributing akey essayonHalford J. MackinderandanotheronNicholas J. Spykman, has a niceoverview of Burnham). Burhamsinfluence may be wider than recognized. Its possible that Burham is the father

ofWilliam Rikersschool ofpublic choice theory. Rikers studentBruce Bueno deMesquitahas even claimed that Riker was the greatest political thinker sinceMachiavelli. Bueno de Mesquita himself has usedan evolved version of Rikers theory to makepredicitions about theoutcome of political events:

To verify the accuracy of his model, the CIAset up a kind of forecasting face-off that pitpredictions from his model against those ofLangleys more traditional in-houseintelligence analysts and area specialists.

We tested Bueno de Mesquitas model onscores of issues that were conducted in realtimethat is, the forecasts were madebefore the events actually happened, saysStanley Feder, a former high-level CIAanalyst. We found the model to be accurate90 percent of the time, he wrote. Anotherstudy evaluating Bueno de Mesquitas real-time forecasts of 21 policy decisions in the

James Burnham

William Riker
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European community concluded that the probability that the predictedoutcome was what indeed occurred was an astounding 97 percent. Whatsmore, Bueno de Mesquitas forecasts were much more detailed than those ofthe more traditional analysts. The real issue is the specificity of theaccuracy, says Feder. We found that DI (Directorate of NationalIntelligence) analyses, even when they were right, were vague compared tothe models forecasts. To use an archery metaphor, if you hit the target,thats great. But if you hit the bulls eyethats amazing.

Its interesting that, if public choice theory turns out to have predictive powers, it

would validate Burhams first principle of the Machiavellian school (the format I

will use will follow Burhams original scheme of first stating the principle and then

following it with the contrary view in parantheses):

1.An objective science of politics, and of society, comparable in itsmethods to the other empirical sciences, is possible. Such a science will

describe and correlate observable social facts, and, on the basis of the factsof the past, will state more or less probably hypotheses of the future. Such ascience will be neutral with respect to any practical political goal: that is, likeany science, its statements will be tested by facts accessible to any observer,rich or poor, ruler or ruled, and will in no way be dependent upon theacceptance of some particular ethical aim or ideal.

(Contrary views hold that a science of politics is not possible because of the peculiarity of human nature or for some similar reason; or that politicalanalysis is always dependent on some practical program for the improve-mentor destructionof society; or that any political science must be aclass sciencetrue for the bourgeoise, but not for the proletariate, as,for example, the Marxists claim.)

Im more of theNassim Nicholas Talebschool and believe that complex systemswithin thefourth quadrant resist efforts to subject them to conventional rationalanalysis. Burnham shares some of the thinking which preceded the chaos/complex-ity revolution of the 1970s. This mode of thought tended to think that complex andchaotic systems would surrender to rationalist/reductionist/mechanical solutionsgiven enough time. Isaac Asimovs originalFoundation trilogy, written in the 1940sand 1950s, featured weather control machines. This is beforeLorenzdiscoveredthebutterfly effectwhich basically ruled out the total weather control that the earlyAsimov envisioned. I tend to think that politics is too complex to reduce it to the

precision achieved by the physical sciences. Burham acknowledges this point butcontends that some general principles can be extracted from politics. Bueno deMesquitas work, following in the spirit of Burhams work, may suggest that there ismore to be found with Burnhams first principle than I might suspect.
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3. The Machiavellians: Principle II

May 2, 2009

James Burnhamssecond principle of the Machiavellians from his 1943 politicalscience classicThe Machiavelliansisthe fundamental truth of politics(Burnham first states the Machiavellianprinciple and then presents a contraryview):

2.The primary subject-matterof political science is thestruggle for social power in itsdiverse open and concealedforms.

(Contrary views hold that political thought deals with the general welfare, thecommon good, and other such entities that are from time to time invented bythe theorists.)

To paraphrase Clausewitz:

[Politics] is nothing but a duel on a large scale. Countless duels go to makeup [politics], but a picture of the whole can be formed by imagining a pair ofwrestlers. Each triesto compel the other to do his will; his immediate aim isto throw his opponent in order to make him incapable of further resistance.

The emphasis on struggle is key. Power is finite and desire is infinite. Everyonecant get everything they want. Some will get power. Others will not. Since thequestion of who gets the power to satisfy their desires is unlikely to be settledmerely by friendly discussion, struggle will inevitably result. Elsewhere in TheMachiavellians, Burnham elaborates his theme:

What are we talking about when we talk politics? Many, to judge by whatthey write, seem to think we are talking about mans search for the ideallygood society, or his mutual organization for the maximum social welfare, orhis natural aspiration for peace and harmony, or something equally removedfrom the world as it is and has been. Machiavelli understood politics asprimarily the study of the struggles for power among men. By so marking itsfield, we are assured that there is being discussed something that exists, notsomething spun out of idealists dreams, or nightmares. If our interest is inman as he is on this earth, so far as we can learn from the facts of historyand experience, we must conclude that he has no natural aspiration forpeace or harmony, he does not form states in order to achieve an ideallygood society, nor does he accept mutual organization is to secure themaximum social welfare. But men, and groups of men, do, by various

The Struggle for Power
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means, struggle among themselves for relative increases in power andprivilege. In the course of these struggles and as part of them, governmentsare established and overthrown, laws passed and violated, wars fought andwon and lost. A definition is arbitrary, true enough, but Machiavellis implieddefinition of the field of politics as the struggle for power is at least insuranceagainst nonsense.

Max Weberanticipated Burnhams definition earlier inPolitics as a Vocation:

Politics for us means striving to share power or striving to influence thedistribution of power, either among states or among groups within a state.

Christopher Bassfordexpands on the same theme inClausewitz in the Twenty-FirstCentury:

Politics is the highly variable process by which power is distributed in anysociety: the family, the office, a religious order, a tribe, the state, an empire,

a region, an alliance, and the international community. The process ofdistributing power may be fairly orderlythrough consensus, inheritance,election, some time-honored tradition, or it may be chaoticthroughassassination, revolution, and warfare.

Burnhams second Machiavellian principle reinforces Clausewitzs contention that war is the continuation of political intercourse with the addition of othermeans.Svechinprovides a bridge between Clausewitzs other means andBurnhams struggle:

The foreign and civil wars are not self-contained but form only a portion of

the continuous political interaction among human factions. During a war thepolitical life of the countries waging it continues rather than grinds to a halt.

War is only a part of political conflict. The art of politics lies in defending theinterests of a certain faction among all other factions. It operates in anatmosphere of the clash of many forces

Politics is the struggle for social power in its many forms. War is merely acontinuation of the struggle for power with the addition of force and fraud.

Burhams emphasis onsocialpower reinforces the point that politics pervades

society and every group (or social) activity. Families do politics, groups of smallchildren at play do politics, cheerleaders do politics, high school students reallydopolitics. Former House Majority Leader Dick Armey, previously a professor ofeconomics, joked that he ran for Congress because he was sick of cutthroat facultypolitics. Man, as Aristotle has been twisted to say, is a political animal.

Enumerating the forms of power as both open and concealed is important. Muchof the power exercised in society is concealed or invisible. Power shifts along a
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spectrum that ranges between the invisible whispers of influence and the visiblebang of violence. The invisible hand is sometimes the best route to politicalsuccess.


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4. The Machiavellians: Principle III

May 3, 2009

The third principle of the Machiavellian school ofpolitical science thatJames Burnhamlists in his 1943masterpieceThe Machiavelliansis a warning that, inpolitics, appearances can be deceiving (Burnham liststhe Machiavellian principle first and follows it with acontrary viewpoint):

3.The laws of political life cannot be discoveredby an analysis that takes mens words and

beliefs, spoken or written, at their face value.Words, programs, declarations, constitutions, laws, theories, philosophies, must be

related to the whole complex of social facts in order to understand their realpolitical and historical meaning.

(The contrary view pays chief attention to words, believing that what men say theyare doing or propose to do or have done is the best evidence for what they actuallydo.)

The illustration of this principle that Burnham starts The Machiavellians with is thatofDantesDe Monarchia, the only other work Dante finished in his lifetime besidestheDivine Comedy. In De Monarchia, Burnham argues, Dante set out to provethree points:

1. That mankind should be governed by a single empire or state.2. That this sovereignty is properly exercised by theHoly Roman Emperor

(conceived of as the continuator ofthe ancient Roman Emperor).

3. That the temporal, the politicalauthority exercised by Emperor isindependent of the authority of thePope and the Church (as Danteputs it, depends immediately onGod)

Dante supports the first point by arguingthat:

1. The ultimate goal of all mankind isthe full development of manspotentialities, which means in thelast analysis eternal salvation andthe vision of God.

Dante Alighieri

Primum mobile
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2. The aim of temporal civilization is to provide the conditions for achieving thisultimate goal, chief among which is universal peace.

3. The reaching of this goal can only be reached through unity of direction.4. God is Supreme Unity and, it being His intention that mankind should

resemble Him as much as possible, this can only be done if all mankind isalso unified under a single ruler.

5. The motion of the heavens is regulated by the uniform motion of the outersphere (the primum mobile) and men should strive, too, to imitate theheavens.

6. Only a unified political administration can check tyrannical governments andthus give men freedom, can guard the freedom of others by itself being free,can guarantee concord and harmony, which always presuppose unity.

7. These arguments are substantiated by the fact that theIncarnation ofChristtook under the temporal rule of theEmperor Augustus.

Dante supported the second point by asserting that:

1. The Romans can rightfully claimto be the seat of universalempire.

2. The Romans are descendedfrom the TrojanAeneasandhave many miracles from Godto support this claim.

3. The Roman public spirit showedthat they were aiming at theright, and thus must have righton their side.

4. The Romans had the effectivefaculty of ruling, the power torule, while other peoples failedin effective rule.

5. The sacrifice of Christ would not have been valid in erasing the stain oforiginal sin from all mankind unless Pilate, as the representative of Rome,had had valid authority to pronounce judicial sentence upon all mankind.

To support his third point, Dante argues that:

1. Christ limited the keys he gave to Peter to the things of Heaven, not of theearth.

2. TheDonation of Constantinewas false (as well as, unknown to Dante, aforgery) because it was contrary to nature forConstantineto make thedonation and Pope Sylvester to receive it.

3. The spiritual and temporal authorities are of two different kinds, and theindividual supreme in one order might be well be inferior in another order.

4. Christ, Paul, and even the angel who appeared to Paul acknowledged thetemporal authority of the emperor.

Aeneas Fleeing Troy
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5. It is in harmonious accord with the two-fold nature of man, both body andspirit, that God should have established, directly dependent only on Himself,two supreme authorities, one temporal and one spiritual.

Burnham dismisses Dantes arguments:

[T]he many arguments that Dante uses in favor of his position are, from apurely formal point of view, both good and bad, mostly bad; but, from thepoint of view of actual political conditions in the actual world of space andtime and history, they are almost without exception completely irrelevant.They consist of pointless metaphysical and logical distinctions, distortedanalogies, garbled historical references, appeals to miracles and arbitrarilyselected authorities. In the task of giving us information about how menbehave, about the nature and laws of political life, about what steps may betaken in practice to achieve political and social goals, they advance us not astep.

Burnham, however, does find something useful in De Monarchia: a demonstrationof the difference between the real meaning of literature and its formal meaning:

By real meaning I refer to the meaning not in terms of the fictional world ofreligion, metaphysics, miracles, and pseudo-history (which is the world of theformal meaning ofDe Monarchia) but in terms of the actual world of space,time and events. To understand the real meaning we cannot take the wordsat face value nor confine our attention to what they explicitly state; we mustfit them into the specific context of Dantes times and his own life.

Dantes own life was intensely political. He was a member of the White

Guelphfaction and a prominent official of the government of theRepublic ofFlorence. The Florentine Guelphs started out as a unified opposition to theFlorentineGhibellinefaction. The Guelphs (supporters of the Pope) had defeatedthe Ghibellines (supporters of the Holy Roman Emperor) and driven them out ofFlorence. The White Guelphs, who wanted greater autonomy from the Pope, andthe Black Guelphs, who wanted to stay closely allied with the Papacy, then beganfighting amongst themselves. The Whites initially had the advantage and expelledthe Blacks. This displeased the Pope, however, and he appointedCharles of Valois,brother ofPhillip IV the Fair, king of France, to settle the dispute between thefeuding parties. The White government of Florence sent a delegation, whichincluded Dante, to Rome to find out what the Pope was planning. While Dante wasin Rome, Charles of Valois entered Florence with the Black Guelphs and installedthem in power. The Pope had tricked the Whites. The Black Guelphs proceeded topurge the Whites from Florence, killing many of them and seizing their property.Dante was sentenced to exile with the stipulation that if he ever returned, he wouldbe burned at the stake.
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Dante participated in many attempts toregain Florence for the White Guelphsand take revenge on the BlackGuelphs. Most of these sputtered outdue to the weaknesses of the WhiteGuelphs leadership. Despairing of hisfaction, Dante eventually turned to hisold enemies the Ghibellines forsupport. Dante heavily promoted theintervention of the Holy RomanEmperorHenry VII into northern Italy.He pressed the Emperor to wipe outthe Black Guelphs and helpfully provided the names of his personal enemies to theemperor as potential victims. Henry VII assaulted Florence and defeated the BlackGuelfs. However, Henry VII died soon after and Dantes hopes were dashed,dooming him to an eventual death in exile.

This background is necessary for explaining Burnhams exposition of the realmeaning behind De Monarchia:

Eternal salvation, the highest development of mens potentialities,everlasting peace, unity, and harmony, the delicate balance of abstractrelations between Church and State, all these ghosts and myths evaporate,along with the whole elaborate structure of theology, metaphysics, allegory,miracle, and fable. The entire formal meaning, which has told us nothing andproved nothing, assumes its greater role of merely expressing and disguisingthe real meaning. The real meaning is simply an impassioned propagandisticdefense of the point of view of the turncoat [White Guelph] exiles from

Florence, specifically; and more generally of the broader Ghibelline point ofview to which these [White Guelphs] capitulated. De Monarchia is, we mightsay, a Ghibelline Party Platform.

[...]

The ostensible goals of the formal argument are noble, high-minded, whatpeople call idealistic. This serves to create a favorable emotional responsein the reader, to disarm him, to lead him to believe in the good will of theauthor. The unwary reader carries this attitude over to the practical aims ofthe real argument. But what of these latter aims, what do they concretelyamount to? When we dig behind the formal facade, they emerge as viciousand reactionary.

They are the aims of an embittered and incompetent set of traitors. Danteand his friends had failed miserably in their political careers. They had beendefeated in their attempt to take over the government of their country. Quiteproperly, in accordance with the customs of the time, and for the interests ofinternal security, they have been exiled. They then joined with thedisintegrated forces of earlier exiles, whose only wish was to revenge

Henry VII
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themselves on Florence, and to destroy herpower. The enlarged group also failed. Theythen crawled slavishly to the feet of theRepublics greatest enemythe Emperorbegging him to do what they were too weakand too stupid to have done. The aims of theEmpire in northern Italy were very far indeedfrom eternal salvation, universal peace, andthe highest development of manspotentialities. The Empire clutched greedilyafter the amazing wealth and resources ofthose remarkable cities, and dreamed ofreducing their proud, fierce independence tothe tyrannical rule of itsGautleiters.*

* All of these things about Dante are true. Burnham himself taught Dante toundergraduates and knew his subject well. Dante, however, had the last laugh.Most of his political enemies are only remembered because they appear, whilebeing subjected to various forms of eternal torment in Hell, in The DivineComedy(good book on that here). The Holy Roman Empire underCharlesVeventually squelched the Florentine Republic and ended the independence and

vibrancy of the states of northern Italy. TheHapsburg dynasty, which provided allof the Holy Roman Emperors from 1526 till theCorsican Ogre ended it in 1806,ruled over most of northern Italy (including Florence), untilReunification. Even inmodern day republican Italy, the political discourse of Italys endless sequence ofgovernments is conducted in the dialect Dante made the national lingua franca ofItaly. Dante may have ended up dead and disappointed, but he looms larger oversubsequent history than any Black Guelph. Burhams illustration, however, remainspertinent.

Dante's Revenge
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gauleiterhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gauleiterhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gauleiterhttp://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1593761244?ie=UTF8&tag=thecomofpubsa-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=1593761244http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_V,_Holy_Roman_Emperorhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_V,_Holy_Roman_Emperorhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_V,_Holy_Roman_Emperorhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_V,_Holy_Roman_Emperorhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Habsburg_Monarchyhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Habsburg_Monarchyhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Napoleon_I_of_Francehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Napoleon_I_of_Francehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Napoleon_I_of_Francehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Italian_unificationhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Italian_unificationhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Italian_unificationhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Italian_unificationhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Napoleon_I_of_Francehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Habsburg_Monarchyhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_V,_Holy_Roman_Emperorhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_V,_Holy_Roman_Emperorhttp://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1593761244?ie=UTF8&tag=thecomofpubsa-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=1593761244http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gauleiter


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5. The Machiavellians: Principle IV

May 4, 2009

James Burnhamsfourth Machiavellian principle from his 1943 political scienceclassicThe Machiavelliansshould be obvious but many times isnt (Burnham followsthe principle with a contrary view):

4.Logical or rational action plays a relatively minor part in politicaland social change. For the most part it is a delusion to believe that in sociallife men take deliberate steps to achieve consciously held goals. Non-logicalaction, spurred by environmental changes, instinct, impulse, interest, is theusual social rule.

(The contrary views assign an important or the primary place to rationalaction. History is conceived as the record of the rational attempts of men toachieve their goals.)

Burnham defines his terms following the lead of Machiavellian school theoristVilefredo Pareto:

A mans conduct (that is, human action) is logical under the followingcircumstances:

when his action is motivated by a deliberately held goal or purpose; when that goal is possible; when the steps or means he takes to reach the goal are in fact appropriate

for reaching it.

[...]

If, however, any one or more of the conditions for logical conduct are notpresent, then the actions are non-logical.

Burnham offers examples of that Paretocontends are non-logical actions:

Of actions not motivated by adeliberately held goal or purpose:

Almost all the actions of answers. Taboos and other superstitious acts. Many rituals, sports, and courtesies.

Non-Logical
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Of actions that are impossible:

Transcendent goals outside of the real spatio-temporal world of life andhistory like Heaven, Nirvana, or the duplication of the cube.

Goals that, while not completely illogical, are impossible in the real worldlike a Tower of Babel, a utopia of eternal peace and universal good will, a

dreamer of no aptitude who decides to become the greatest violinist inthe world, or a child, just learning numbers, who decides to count to abillion.

Of actions where the means used to achieve a goal are inappropriate:

If a carpenter decides to drive a nail with a sponge. A surgeon that uses a pickaxe for an appendectomy. An oppressed people who thinks they can overcome a despotic

government with an assassination or two. A democratic electorate who thought that changing the political party in

power would summon in a new era of endless prosperity.

This is an unchanging phenomenon:

Taboos, magic, superstition, personified abstractions, myths, gods, emptyverbalisms, in every culture and in every period express mans persistingnon-logical impulses. The forms change but the fundamentals remain. Godsand goddesses like Athena or Janus or Ammon are replaced by new divinitiessuch as Progress and Humanity and even Science; hymns to Jupiter give wayto invocations to the People; the magic of votes and electoral manipulationssupersedes the magic of dolls and wands; faith in the Historical Process does

duty for faith in the God of our Fathers.

Burnham tries to discover which types of human activity significantly related topolitical and social change are logical or non-logical and finds a mother lode:

such factors as climate, geography, or in general by biological andphysical characteristics are non-logical.

goals found in documents like Constitutions, Programs, Codes,Declarations, Charters, and so on that are too ambiguous to determineone line of conduct as against another since they are so vague, indeed,that whatever is actually done can be subsequently interpreted asconsistent with the alleged goal are non-logical.

men who profess a certain are just about as likely to take actionscontrary to it as in accordance with it. These cannot be attributed merelyto duplicity: those who act contrary to the goal can continue at the sametime believing sincerely in it, and not noting any contradiction. Non-logical.

groups can profess the same goals and yet take differing and oftendirectly conflicting lines of action while often times groups can profess


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different and contrary goals,and yet carry out the sametype of actions. Non-logical.

Yet the non-Paretos of the world(perhaps thefat-tailof theParetocurve) insist on rationality:

[A]ssuming that non-logicalconduct is, on the whole,predominant in those actionsthat affect the course ofhistory, we may legitimatelywonder why this has not beenwidely recognized. Paretoreadily grants that if non-logical actions are really as important as ourinduction so far would lead us to suppose, it would be strange indeed that

the many men of talent who have applied themselves to the study of humansocieties should not have noticed them in any way. The fact is that manywriters on society, and many plain men and politicians as well or even better,have observed the importance of non-logical conduct. Nevertheless, theyhave almost never been willing to generalize the legitimate inference fromtheir observations. Something seems to block them from accepting theconclusions of their own inquiries.

What is the something?

The desire to moralize: a desire to reform society seems to call for rationalaction so few writers on society are content to describe and correlate facts,but are always going on to tell what ought to be, and how to reform society.

The fact that we have a powerful non-logical impulse to make our own andother human actions seem logical. We are unable to accept non-logicalactions for what they are, so we conjure up rational explanation for them.

Perhaps its not logical action butmisplacedlogical action.Azar Gat, inWar inHuman Civilization, argues that human behaviors, while fundamentally focused ongetting food and water and reproduction, keep their forward momentum andoverflow into areas that exceed their functional role.Nassim Nicholas Talebarguesthat the human mind is optimized for the hunter-gatherer existence that made up99.999999% of human history. What worked in that environment runs intoproblems in the more complex environments that civilization has created. We act inways our brains believe are right but that the environment says is wrong. We canbarely comprehend reality because our brains are hardwired for a different reality.The brain is running legacy applications and that leads to systematic andwidespread blindness. Reality is a lot more crazy than were capable of imagining.

Pareto Curve
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6. The Machiavellians: Principle V

May 5, 2009

The fifth principle of the Machiavellian school fromJames BurnhamsTheMachiavellians:5.For an understanding of the social process, the most significant socialdivision to be recognized is that between the ruling class and the ruled,between the elite and the non-elite.

(Contrary views either deny such a division exists, or consider that is unimportant,or believe that it is scheduled to disappear.)

Thomas Jefferson declared that all men are created equal but George Orwell camecloser to the truth when he observed, All [men] are equal, but some [men] aremore equal than others. In many societies this is normal and accepted, even if

grudgingly, by the majority of the population. The ruling class agrees to oppressand the ruled agree to be oppressed. A virtuous circle is born and endures acrossthe generations.

Democratic nations operate under a different set of assumptions. The assumption ofdemocratic theory is the principle of self-government, that the persons belongingto a social group are, according to democratic theory, able to, and properly oughtto, govern themselves. Small groups may even be able to achieve this. However,as groups get larger and larger, most decisions end up being made by fewer andfewer.

Why?

Burnham provides some reasons why direct democracy is impracticable:

Groups are too large and too scattered for direct democracy. Only a few speakers can be heard in front of a large group of direct

democrats. Choices must be limited to a few simple options even though complex and

divergent views are held by various individuals to be practical for directdemocracy.

The devices of oratory, appeals to irrelevant sentiment, enthusiasm,boredom, and weariness sway the crowd while it remains together.

Votes areoften by acclamation in a direct democracy even though theremay be a large minority or even a majority who oppose the voted policy.

Some decisions must be made quickly in order to respond to a crisis. Directdemocracy lacks the ability to make split second decisions.

He then illustrates how leadership becomes necessary when an organization growslarge enough and its goals become sufficiently important:
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The conduct of the organizations business becomes highly complex. Many details must be seen to. This detail and complexity requires special talents. The bulk of the population, even if so inclined, cant get the required training

or give the required time. A division of labor develops. Certain individuals specialize in the tasks peculiar to the organization and its

operational life; they devote all or a considerable portion of their time andintelligence to the organization; they perfect themselves in the organizationalduties.

Burnham then echos Lenin without attribution by asking, who controls whom, themass or the leaders? Several reasons answer this question strongly in the leadersfavor:

Leaders develop a customary right to the office. People stick to familiarincumbents.

The majority of any organization tends to be passive, indifferent, and lazy.They are usually more than happy to have someone look after their affairs.

People feel helpless without their leaders. Burnham quotes Machiavelli: themost striking proof of the organic weakness of the mass is furnished by theway in which, when deprived of their leaders in time of action, they abandonthe field of battle in disordered flight; they seem to have no power ofinstinctive reorganization, and are useless until new captains arise capable ofreplacing those that have been lost. The failure of innumerable strikes andpolitical agitations is explained very simply by the opportune action of theauthorities, who have placed the leaders under lock and key.

People feel gratitude for past services by a leader. Personal characteristics like force of will which reduces others to obedience, awide range of knowledge, a catonian strength of conviction, a force of

ideas often verging on fanaticism, and self-sufficiency that can veer intoarrogant pride as long as the leader knows how to make the crowd share hispride in himself.

Specialized knowledge that the leader acquires that cant easily be replicatedby the mass.

Control of finances. Ability to manipulate the media. Ability to discipline dissident members of the organization.

Burham musters a formidable number of reasons for why the division into rulersand ruled is inevitable. But he provides hope, as we shall see.


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7. The Machiavellians: Principle VI

May 6, 2009

The sixth principle of the Machiavellian schoolfromJames BurnhamsThe Machiavellians:

6. Historical and political science isabove all the study of the elite, itsstructure, and the mode of itsrelation to the non-elite.

(Contrary views hold that history is primarily the study of the masses, or ofindividual great men, or purely ofinstitutional arrangements.)

Where do baby names come from? When I was young, we had solid names built onthe rock of the Bible and hardy English roots. These days we have names thatsound like the names of soft drinks and dotbomb startups. InFreakonomics,StevenLeavittandSteven J. Dubnerhint at a terrible tragedy, a sinister conspiracy by therulers to inflict stupid names on the ruled:

Once a name catches on among high-income, highly educated parents, itstarts working its way down the socioeconomic ladder. Amber, Heather, andStephanie started out as high-end names. For every high-end baby giventhose names, however, another five lower-income girls received those nameswithin 10 years.

Many people assume that naming trends are driven by celebrities. But howmany Madonnas do you know? Or, considering all the Brittanys, Britneys,Brittanis, Brittanies, Brittneys, and Brittnis you encounter these days, youmight think of Britney Spears; but she is in fact a symptom, not a cause, ofthe Brittany/Britney/Brittani/Brittanie/Brittney/Brittni explosionand hers isa name that began on the high end and has since fallen to the low. Mostfamilies dont shop for baby names in Hollywood. They look to the family justa few blocks over, the one with the bigger house and newer car. The kind offamilies that were the first to call their daughters Amber or Heather, and arenow calling them Alexandra or Katherine. The kind of families that used toname their sons Justin or Brandon and are now calling them Alexander orBenjamin. Parents are reluctant to poach a name from someone too nearfamily members or close friendsbut many parents, whether they realize itor not, like the sound of names that sound successful.

Crap rolls downhill.

The Bottom
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8. The Machiavellians:Principle VII

May 7, 2009

Principle seven of the Machiavellianschool fromJames BurnhamsTheMachiavellians:

7.The primary object of everyelite, or ruling class, is tomaintain its own power andprivilege.

(The contrary view holds that the primary object of the rulers is toserve the community. This view isalmost invariably held by allspokesmen for an elite, at leastwith respect to the elite for whichthey are speaking. Among suchspokesmen are to be numberedalmost all of those who write on

political and social matters.)

People often claim that their current ruling class is corrupt. Their solution: throwthe bums out and get people in who are honest, uncorrupted, and interested in thepublic good. Where they expect to find this untapped vein of pure citizenship is

never explained. Every faction in the ruling class tends to claim they represent thevein to be mined, if only they had enough power to do good (vote for me!). Theyusually explain that their opponents are evil incarnate (which is false because wealready know whosevil incarnate). The opposing factions usually dont let thisclaim go unchallenged and accuse the accusing faction of being the true face of evil(which is false because we already know who thetrue face of evil is). These claims,which seem to be taken at face value by a surprising percentage of the population,are stupid. The truth is that every member of the ruling class is out to get theirs.No faction has a monopoly on virtue. No faction has a monopoly on vice (thoughsome come close).

This is wherepublic choice theoryand the Machiavellian school most stronglyintersect. The core contention ofWilliam Riker and his studentBruce Bueno deMesquita is that politicians are rational agents because they have one goal: to keeptheir power and bling-bling. This allows their maneuvers to be calculated andpredicted. Burnham obviously agrees which is why it seems Burnham may be thefather or at least the grandfather of public choice theory. Riker and Bueno deMesquita elaborated the core of Burnhams theory more and more until it reachedits most mature phase: thetheory of the selectorate. FromWikipedia:

Evil Desires Power Above All Else
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The theory operates on two fundamental groups, the Winning Coalition andthe Selectorate, both drawn from the overall populace of a polity. TheWinning Coalition is a subset of the Selectorate, and the Selectorate is asubset of the overall population. The Selectorate is simply those within thecommunity that have a say in political outcomes. The Winning Coalition is theportion of the Selectorate that is sufficient to choose and sustain a leader inoffice.

The core operation of the political system is the allocation of goods:

Apublic good is a good that everyone enjoys non-exclusively. Aprivategood is a good that is enjoyed exclusively by a select few and cannot beshared. Everyone in the Selectorate (including the Winning Coalition) reapsthe benefits of public goods while only those within the Winning Coalitionenjoy private goods.

The allocation of goods determines

political survival:

A leader has the greatestchance of political survival in anautocracy, a system ofgovernment where theSelectorate is large and theWinning Coalition is small. Thisis because members of awinning coalition can easily bereplaced by other members of

the Selectorate who are not inthe Winning Coalition. The costof defection for members of aWinning Coalition can bepotentially largenamely theloss of all private goods.Similarly, the chances of achallenger replacing a leader arelow in an autocratic system because the chances of members of the WinningCoalition defecting to him would be low. More private goods are allocated inthis system relative to public goods than any other system of government.

In amonarchy, where the Selectorate is small and the Winning Coalition iseven smaller, the challenger has a greater opportunity to overthrow thecurrent leader. This is because most members of the Selectorate are also inthe Winning Coalition. Usually, if a new leader comes to power, chances arethat any given member of the Winning Coalition will remain in the WinningCoalition. The incentives to defect in order to get more private goods from achallenger are not, in this case, outweighed by the risk of not being included

Au Contraire
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_goodhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_goodhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_goodhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_goodhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_goodhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_goodhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monarchyhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monarchyhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monarchyhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monarchyhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_goodhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_goodhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_good


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in the new Winning Coalition. The proportion of private goods to public goodsis closer than in an autocracy.

A scenario where both the Winning Coalition is large and the Selectorate iseven larger provides the least amount of stability to a leaders hold on power(democracy). Here, the number of public goods outweigh the number ofprivate goods simply because of the sheer size of the Winning Coalition; itwould be far too costly to provide private goods to every individual memberof the Winning Coalition when the benefits of public goods will be enjoyed byall. Because the leader cant convince Winning Coalition members to remainloyal through private goods because of the cost, a challenger poses a greaterthreat to the incumbent than in any other governmental system.

This is important in that most polarized continuation of politics: war. War is thecontinuation of political intercourse with the addition of other means, as Clausewitzpoints out in Book Eight ofOn War. Politics, as Burhampointed out in Principle II, isthe struggle for power in its many forms. War, as a

tool of politics, is one form of the struggle for power.The nature of war is a direct reflection of the nature ofthe politics that launched it. Since much of politics canbe reduced to the struggle of elites to maintain theirpower and privilege, much of war can be reduced to astruggle between dueling elites for the preservation ofpower and privilege with the addition of other means,namely force and fra

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