The Principles of Machiavellianism
Overview of The Machiavellians by James Burnham, pt.1/2
George Orwell once wrote that the best books tell you what you know already, but phrase it in a way much better than you could have. Your intuitions get drawn out in their full form and are expressed in elegance. What is there to say about The Machiavellians? I can tell you that out of all the books I’ve read to date, this is the book on political science that makes the most sense to me.
It’s maybe ironic to bring up Orwell here, since his own take on Burnham is not exactly glowing. Still, the fact that Orwell contended with his ideas shows, at the very least, that Burnham was an intellectual heavyweight in his own right.
What I’ve found in The Machiavellians is a beautiful introduction to a school of political thinking that values the scientific approach over ideology and mysticism. The book reads as a tour through the philosophies of several thinkers who, to Burnham, follow in the tradition of Machiavelli himself. They carrying the torch of rigorous, dispassionate reasoning about the laws that govern our political world.
This overview is split into two parts: first, I’ll list out the principles of Machiavellianism as Burnham outlines them in the last chapters of the book. Part 2 will be all quotes.
Principles
These are the principles of Machiavellianism, as Burnham sees them. They serve as the core of the book.
First, to do any kind of empirical political science at all, we have to assume that a science of politics is possible, as hard and rigorous as that of physics, chemistry, neuroscience, etc. We must assume that it’s possible to generate and test hypotheses and to create generalized models that have predictive power. “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 political analysis is always dependent upon some practical program for the improvement—or destruction—of society.”
We can think of political science as the study of social power (as opposed to welfare, the common good, etc) and how such power is distributed in groups.
There exists a difference between the formal (i.e. symbolic) and real (i.e. functional) meaning of a political act. You can’t preform political analysis based on what people say, or on the ideals they claim to strive towards (the formalities). Outcomes speak louder than words, and constitute the real meaning of a political act. A high-minded ideal is often veiled advocacy for power. “Words, programs, declarations, constitutions, laws, theories, philosophies, must be related to the whole complex of social facts in order to understand their real political and historical meaning.”
Political decision-making is typically non-logical. Just as behavioral economics has shown us that you can’t model economic agents as rational, so too in political science we see that decision-makers cannot be modeled as logical. “For the most part it is a delusion to believe that in social life men take deliberate steps to achieve consciously held goals. Non-logical action, spurred by environmental changes, instinct, impulse, interest, is the usual social rule.”
History – through the lens of political science – is primarily the study of the elite (i.e. the ruling class). Furthermore, the most significant social division is that between the elite and the non-elite (i.e. the ruled). These ideas fall under the umbrella of what is commonly known as elite theory. “Contrary views hold that history is primarily the study of the masses, or of individual great men, or purely of institutional arrangements.”
The central goal of the elite is to maintain its own power and privilege. “The contrary view holds that the primary object of the rulers is to serve the community. This view is almost invariably held by all spokesmen for an elite, at least with respect to the elite for which they are speaking.”
The rule of an elite is based in force and fraud. Force – an ability to enact change. Fraud – fictions put in place in order to maintain power. “The contrary views hold that social rule is established fundamentally upon God-given or natural right, reason, or justice.”
Social structure is upheld by what’s called a political formula – a story people believe that causes them to support the elite. This story is typically correlated with a religion, ideology or myth popular with the public.
Differences between social structures (say, countries, communities, etc) can be measured by their relative strength (military), level of civilization (a hazy term that includes creativity, quality of life, GDP, technological progress) and liberty (“the security of individuals against the arbitrary and irresponsible exercise of power”).
No social structure is permanent; no static utopia is possible. “The social or class struggle always continues, and its record is history.” Visualized beautifully by Thomas Cole.
Among the elite, there exist both aristocratic and democratic tendencies. The aristocratic tendency seeks to preserve the structure and composition of the elite, while the democratic seeks to disrupt it (by way of new people forcing their way into the elite). These tendencies are quite similar to notions of order and chaos — forces that are ever-present in politics.1
Social revolutions are inevitable, and result in the circulation of elites – one group of elites getting replaced by another. The democratic tendency eventually wins over, and a new aristocracy is established.2
Burnham also notes that the Machiavellians are doers:
…these Machiavellian principles are much closer to the more or less instinctive views of “practical men” who are themselves active in the social struggle than to the views of theorists, reformers and philosophers. This is natural, because the principles are simply the generalized statement of what practical men do and have been doing; whereas the theorists, most often comparatively isolated from direct participation in the social struggle, are able to imagine society and its laws to be as they would wish to have them.
Furthermore (emphasis mine):
The Machiavellians are the only ones who have told us the full truth about power. Other writers have at most told the truth only about groups other than the ones for which they themselves speak. The Machiavellians present the complete record: the primary object, in practice, of all rulers is to serve their own interest, to maintain their own power and privilege. There are no exceptions. No theory, no promises, no morality, no amount of good will, no religion will restrain power. Neither priests nor soldiers, neither labor leaders nor businessmen, neither bureaucrats nor feudal lords will differ from each other in the basic use which they will seek to make of power. Individual saints, exempt in individual intention from the law of power, will nevertheless be always bound to it through the disciples, associates, and followers to whom they cannot, in organized social life, avoid being tied.
Only power restrains power.
Part 2 will be published soon! Subscribe to be the first to know when it drops:
Order and chaos can be seen in today’s ideas of conservatism and progressivism. Conservatism typically has a greater tendency toward order that acts to conserve the structure, while progressivism tends more toward chaos and disruption, acting to evolve the system into some future state.
Though the composition of a social hierarchy is dynamic (gradually changing until the top circulates completely), the notion of a hierarchy itself appears to be permanent – it is emergent and unavoidable.