Only Power Restrains Power
On James Burnham’s “The Machiavellians: Defenders of Freedom”
Suppose ye that I am come to give peace on earth? I tell you, Nay; but rather division.
—Luke 12:51
The problem with modern democracies is that they’re not democracies. The good thing about modern democracies is that they’re not democracies. What most people consider to be democracy’s advantages are, for the most part, imaginary and nonexistent. Meanwhile, its real virtues are ignored.
The premise of James Burnham’s 1943 book, The Machiavellians: Defenders of Freedom, is that the idea of modern democracy is a myth, a “political formula” used to justify the rule of a tiny elite over the masses. The myth is useful for maintaining order, but its contents should not be confused for what actually enables a civilization to develop and thrive. The latter has nothing to do with the supposed notions of “self-government” or the “will of the people.” It depends, rather, on individual freedom, which is secured by curbing abuses of power by the ruling class. And these abuses of power can only be restrained through the division of the ruling class into opposing camps. “Only power restrains power.”1
Modern democracies have little in common with classical democracies. Classical democracies weren’t representative. Citizens didn’t elect a small minority to represent them in the legislative assembly—they themselves were the assembly. Athenian citizens, for example, would gather every month or so on a hill called the Pnyx to vote on important issues. Out of about 30,000–60,000 citizens, at least 6,000 had to attend to meet quorum. Though only a minority would attend, all could take part (women and slaves excepted). But perhaps what’s even more interesting is that public offices were doled out at random (like jury selection is today). A specially constructed device called the kleroterion was used to randomly pick tokens with citizens names to assign magistrates, councilors and other officials.
Modern democracy established universal suffrage at the cost of individual sovereignty. Direct democracy was changed to representative democracy. Because direct democracy is no longer possible for technical reasons—we no longer live in tiny city-states where the whole population can gather on a single hill—the solution is to elect a small number of people to represent the interests of the population as a whole.2 The problem is that sovereignty simply cannot be delegated. It cannot be delegated “because to be sovereign,” writes Burnham, “means to make one’s own decisions.” The fact that the representatives may be promoting their voters’ interests does nothing to negate their loss of sovereignty, for even a despot can (and always does) make that claim. As Rousseau famously put it in his comments on the British democracy, “the moment a people allows itself to be represented, it is no longer free: it no longer exists.”3
What we have instead is the product of what Robert Michels calls the iron law of oligarchy. The people do not and cannot govern themselves, they are always ruled by a tiny minority who “impose upon the rest of society a ‘legal order.’”4 It doesn’t matter how a society is officially structured—it may be democracy or tyranny, socialism or aristocracy—members of a small minority with an insatiable desire for power, whom Machiavelli calls the “ruler-type,” always rise to the top and organize some form of oligarchical rule. They then justify the form of their rule using what Gaetano Mosca calls a political formula: a myth that explains why they have a right to rule. The myth is of vital importance: it satisfies a subject’s need of “knowing that one is governed not on the basis of mere material or intellectual force, but on the basis of a moral principle.” In the 16th and 17th century, monarchy was justified using the idea of a “divine right of kings.”5 Today democracy is justified using the idea of self-government by means of the ballot box.
Though all governments are oligarchical in nature, some governments are better than others—if what is meant by better is their ability to raise and maintain what Mosca calls their level of civilization. “A civilization that has an active art, an active literature and commerce and science and industry, a strong army, and a progressive agriculture,” writes Burnham, “is higher than one that concentrates on only one or two of these, or one that is mediocre in most or all of them.” According to Mosca, the key to a thriving civilization is “juridical defense,” which means the prevalence of the rule of law over the whims of individuals, especially those in power. The rule of law makes a society free by protecting its citizens from the abuses of power by the elite. This freedom, in turn, allows art, science and industry to develop and thrive.
Democracy, understood as a system of government that makes this freedom possible, is not a political formula or a myth. What makes democracy different from other systems is the right of opposition. It permits the organization of opposing parties, along with a free press, which can oppose and criticize the ruling elite. A peaceful circulation of elites is then made possible by means of the ballot box. The ballot box is thus not a means of self-government, but a means of allowing the elites to take turns in power. Rather than overthrowing each other by force, the elites instead criticize one another and appeal to voters by making promises aimed at improving their lives. From time to time they even deliver on some of them. It is not the written constitution that makes freedom possible, but rather the very hunger for power of the people who want to rise to the top, which, if channelled into opposing camps, compels each camp to check and restrain the other’s abuses.
Burnham further suggests that the opposing camps don’t have to be equal, but they have to be active (I previously wrote about the effect of a single opposing voice in shattering conformity):
Only power restrains power. That restraining power is expressed in the existence and activity of oppositions. Oddly and fortunately, it is observable that the restraining influence of an opposition much exceeds its apparent strength. As anyone with experience in any organization knows, even a small opposition, provided it really exists and is active, can block to a remarkable degree the excesses of the leadership. But when all opposition is destroyed, there is no longer any limit to what power may do. A despotism, any kind of despotism, can be benevolent only by accident.6
This division depends on what Mosca calls the existence of independent social forces, which Burnham describes as human activities with “significant social and political influence,”—think religion, war, commerce, science, media, etc. The importance of every social force rises and falls in time, but during the time when it is important, those who are masters of it not only control the social force, but gain a measure of power over society as a whole. Thus, for example, if a time and place is religious, then the priests rule, if it is a time of war, then the generals, and so on. “A given ruling class rules over a given society precisely because it is able to control the major social forces that are active within that society.”
By allowing independent social forces to exist simultaneously, democracy creates a division of power. By struggling against one another, the powers restrain each other’s abuses, thereby establishing individual freedom (i.e. freedom from mistreatment by the ruling class). The greatest threat to that freedom is thus not so much the abuses of power by each of the camps—which will always happen and will always need to be checked—but rather the centralized control of independent social forces by the state (i.e. totalitarian control). If the state swallows up all the social forces, there will be no division of power, and, consequently, no freedom.7
All quotations, unless otherwise stated, are from James Burnham’s The Machiavellians: Defenders of Freedom. Robert Michels is quoted in Burnham from the 1915 English translation of Zur Soziologie des Parteiwesens in der modernen Demokratie. Gaetano Mosca is quoted in Burnham from the 1939 English translation of Elementi di scienza politica.
Direct democracy isn’t feasible even if we were to build some technical solution—say, a system to let everyone vote from their electronic device—because the questions and choices for these micro referenda would have to be set by public officials. And the only way to make that democratic would be to start randomly assigning public offices…
The Social Contract, Book III, Chapter XV (G. D. H. Cole translation, 1920). After pointing out that the idea of representation was unknown to the ancients, Rousseau wryly adds: “As for you, modern peoples, you have no slaves, but you are slaves yourselves; you pay for their liberty with your own. It is in vain that you boast of this preference; I find in it more cowardice than humanity.”
Gaetano Mosca explains that “the dominion of an organized minority, obeying a single impulse, over an unorganized majority is inevitable. The power of any minority is irresistible as against each single individual in the majority, who stands alone before the totality of the organized minority. … A hundred men acting uniformly in concert, with a common understanding, will triumph over a thousand men who are not in accord and can therefore be dealt one by one.”
A ruling class exists even in a tyranny, because the tyrant cannot act alone. By justifying a tyrannical rule, the ruling class that supports the tyrant maintains itself in power.
Though it does sometimes happen. Lee Kuan Yew, for example, turned Singapore from a Third World entrepôt into one of the most prosperous states in the world.
Plato famously observed that democracies degenerate into tyrannies. Tyrants are always “democratic” in nature—that is, they present themselves as leaders of the people, as a conduit through which the people express their will. Following this logic, a centralized state under a tyrant is the ultimate expression of people’s will. By exploiting the myth of the “will of the people,” the tyrant seizes their very real freedom.