1. When men fight, they typically do not fight as individuals; they form into groups, and then they fight. Deer do this too:
If a certain number of stags are shut up in a park they will inevitably divide into two herds which will always be in conflict with each other.
This herding and fighting instinct explains the conflicts between societies, "but it also underlies the formation of all the divisions and subdivisions -- all the factions, sects, parties, and in a certain sense, the churches -- that arise within a given society and occasion moral and, sometimes, physical conflicts."
Mosca describes the conflicts between and among the Arabs of Barbary, and also between "Guelph" and "Ghibelline" in Italy. Often "there was no moral and intellectual difference between the enemy parties to justify such conflicts."
2. In small and large societies foreign wars tend to reduce the appetite for internal "civil discords or internal strife." But within the societies, the political parties, the philosophical sects, the religious factions... everywhere... [demonstrate] the pugnacious instinct of herding and fighting." In particular religions and political movements are a source of discord and strife, down to the rationalistic conflict between liberalism and radicalism and social democracy.
These doctrines all seem to begin in the same way, with some individual appearing "with the conviction that he has something new to say with regard to the search for truth... or justice." With the right "endowments of character" and other incidental advantages a seed can grow into a tree "with branches spreading far abroad" over the world.
3. Each religious founder must have "a profound sense of their own importance or their message." They tend to stake their lives and efforts "on one card." Indispensable is "a capacity for instilling his own convictions and especially his own enthusiasms into others. Thus he can spur "converts to acts of daring and sacrifice" beyond the capacities of people in a "normal state of mind."
Mohammed "would say... 'Will do one ever free me of this dog?'" And straight away some fanatic would rush to commit murder. The nineteenth century socialists like Owen "never failed to find large numbers of people willing and eager to sacrifice their worldly goods."
Each great reformer seems to go through three stages. First, he is conceiving his doctrine in his mind, and is basically honest. Second, he begins to preach, and becomes a poseur. Third, putting his teachings into practice, "he is obliged to compromise on the side of morals if he wants to succeed" for the end justifies the means.
Mosca assumes that the religious or philosophical founder is a single individual, although this is not strictly true. Sometimes the doctrine is not completely developed by one person, and continuators complete the doctrine. Marx is considered the founder of socialism, but to Mosca the parent is Rousseau.
4. A religious founder needs apostles, to create a mini-society of the chosen to magnify his work.
Within this directing group... the original inspiration of the master is developed, refined, worked out, so as to become a real political, religious, or philosophical system[.]
Outside the nucleus of apostles "comes the throng of proselytes." They "supply the church or party with its material strength and its economic basis." It is hard to win the masses over to a new faith; it takes promotion and persistence, and a corps of proselytes that are "profoundly convinced."
Most people are born into a faith or a political loyalty; people take the faith of their parents. And those that do convert are persuaded in their youth.
But the success of a faith or party is not just up to chance. It is usually subject to three factors. First, "it must be adapted to the historical moment;" second, "it must satisfy the greatest number of human passions, sentiments and inclinations... [currently] rooted in the public;" third, "it must have a well-organized directing nucleus... of individuals who consecrate their lives" to the faith.
5. For a religious or political doctrine to succeed it must "correspond to the degree" of maturity of the minds in the culture. Thus monotheism:
A monotheistic religion will easily triumph when minds have progressed sufficiently to comprehend that all natural phenomena can be ascribed to one cause, and that the force that rules the universe is one.
Or modern rationalism:
Rationalism can be taken as the basis of successful doctrines when free inquiry and the results of the natural and historical sciences have undermined belief in revealed religions, and the conception of a God created in the image and likeness of man and intervening arbitrarily in human events has come to seem absurd to the ruling classes.
So, when Christianity was spreading in the Roman Empire the "pagan supernatural had become too gross and incoherent."
So, also with Rousseau. He emerged when the Christian and medieval world view had been discredited, so a "rational... explanation of political institutions was in a position to win acceptance."
For Mosca, a new religion finds fertile ground when society is not under pressure, when "a man's enthusiasms and ambitions, his love of combat, his instincts for leadership, do not find a ready outlet." Thus Christianity thrived in the Roman Empire after the excitement of the Republic and the war with Carthage. Thus the revolution in France over a century after the terrible wars of religion.
But an existing system is not easy to overthrow, for mankind needs illusion and hope as much as material things.
A system of illusions, therefore, is not easily discredited until it can be replaced with a new system.
This is true especially after a severe trial. Men "retain favorable memories of the days during which they suffered, and of the individuals that caused their sufferings." E.g., Napoleon.
6. A new doctrine must not just arrive at the right time, it must satisfy the heart.
[I]f a system of ideas, beliefs, feelings, is to be accepted by great masses of humans beings, it must address the loftier sentiments of the human spirit: it must promise that justice and equality will reign in this world, or in some other, or it must proclaim that the good will be rewarded and the wicked punished.
It doesn't hurt to appeal also to "envy and rancor" and "provide a refuge for good souls" and also provide opportunities for "abnegation and sacrifice." And don't forget "pride and vanity."
It helps for the Christian to believe that those not of the faith will be damned; for the Brahmin that he is descended from the head of Brahma; the Mohammedan that he is the true believer. And so,
The radical socialist must be convinced that all who do not think as he does are either selfish, money-spoiled bourgeois or ignorant and servile simpletons.
People need to esteem themselves and hate others and it is only a step from hatred to conflict. Every political party or religious sect has plans for war -- bloody or not -- upon those that do not believe. A struggle, after all, provides scope for the less noble appetites: luxury, lust for blood, women, command, and tyranny. There must be an appropriate fusion of "lofty sentiments and low passions," otherwise the movement won't succeed. Thus even criminal gangs blend in a little political and religious doctrine to decoy the naive.
Too much good -- as in monasteries -- or too much bad -- as in criminal gangs -- limits a group's appeal. So how do you design a group that can be applied to a whole people?
7. The belief system must be designed to deal with the average person, not just the high or the low. Mosca shows how Christianity, Islam, and Buddhism succeed in this.
[I]t seems certain that no belief will ever succeed in making the human being anything essentially different from what he is... [N]o belief will ever make men wholly good or wholly bad, wholly altruistic or wholly selfish. Some adaptation to the lower moral and emotional level that corresponds to the human average is indispensable in all religions.
8. An essential factor in a successful religion or political movement is the directing nucleus, the apostles and proselytes that can convert the masses. But then its cohesion and growth depends on "mimetism" or imitation: that each individual is formed by his environment, by "the currents that prevail in the environment in which he is morally formed and educated." A certain number of young people have the capacity to develop enthusiasms and lofty ideas.
If the young enthusiast is Catholic he may go to a Catholic seminary and "consecrate his whole life to the triumph of his faith." An aristocratic scion may go to military academy, serve his sovereign, and "get himself killed for his king."
Another... born into an environment of veteran conspirators and revolutionaries, who has thrilled and shuddered from this earliest days at tales of political persecutions and riots and the barricades, and whose mind has been fed largely on the writing of Rousseau, Mazzini or Marx, will deem it his sacred duty to struggle tirelessly against oppression by organized government and will be ready to face prison and the gallows in the name of revolution.
Of course, "the environment must be closed to all influences from the outside." For the Catholic, nothing but St. Aquinas; for the aristocrat, tales of the exploits of the great captains; for the revolutionary, tales of the glorious masses, the horrors of tyrants, the greed of the bourgeoisie. "Real history... must be completely banned."
Ordinary balanced individuals are not likely to get involved in movements. But they are not safe from enthusiasm.
The more sensible end very frequently by being swept off their feet by the more impulsive... Often the mad force the sane to keep them company.
9. Once the heroic period of the movement is over, normalcy returns. The nucleus of apostles and proselytes must then start to appeal to people of all types. "[It] must find a place within itself for all sorts of characters," the man who yearns to sacrifice and the man who wants to exploit his neighbor; the man who wants to look powerful and the one that wants to be powerful; the man who enjoys suffering as well as the man who likes to enjoy life.
E.g., the Catholic Church, which features
The seminary student, the novice, the sister of charity, the missionary, the preacher, the mendicant friar, the opulent abbot, the aristocratic prior, the rural priest, the wealthy archbishop... the sovereign prince, the cardinal... the pope... all have their place.
Its advantage over Protestantism is that the enthusiastic Protestant forms a new sect, while Catholicism directs his enthusiasm within the church. Nor does Catholic celibacy detract from the Church's strength, for it forces its celibates to stand apart from private affections and devote themselves to the institution.
Nor should he Church only succor the poor.
Instead, it has shrewdly found ways to enjoy the approval of both the poor and the rich. To the poor it has offered alms and consolation. The rich it was won with its splendor and with the satisfactions it has been able to provide for their vanity and pride.
The enemies of the Church should take counsel and learn from it.
10. There are two main methods for winning the masses to the faith. Persuasion and force.
[B]oth methods of propaganda that are based on gradual persuasion and education of the masses and methods that involve the resort to force yield good results.
In the nineteenth century they believed that "force and persecution were powerless" against the truth and the future. Mosca laughs at such naivete. "Scientifically speaking, all religious doctrines are false" regardless of their success. Popular doctrines satisfy widespread sentiments; intellectual doctrine has a more limited appeal. Doctrines may or may not have anything to do with "civilization and justice." But that has nothing to do with their popularity. For instance,
We believe that social democracy threatens the future of modern civilization, yet we are obliged to recognize that it is based on the sentiment of justice, on envy and on the craving for pleasures... it would be a great mistake to deny that socialist doctrines have very great powers of self-propagation.
The fact is that doctrines spread fastest by force. It took three centuries for Christianity to spread across the Roman Empire; Islam spread from Medina to Samarkand and the Pyrenees in eighty years.
All political parties and religions like to influence those in power, and if they can monopolize power. Force is the best way to spread a doctrine.
11. Movement that do not use force to maintain ascendancy over their supporters need "to adapt themselves to a fairly low moral level." It has to take advantage of their weaknesses: "states are not run with prayer books, said Cosimo dei Medici." The movement needs "to flatter passions, satisfy whims and appetites and inspire fear."
The artifices that are used to wheedle crowds are more or less the alike at all times and in all places, since the problem is always to take advantage of the same human weaknesses. All religions... have their special declamatory style... All of them have their rituals... Some parade with lighted candles and chant litanies. Others march behind banners to the tune of the "Marseillaise" or the "International."
All religions and parties create "ranks, offices, and distinctions." All like to create the martyr; they all create the "superman, the legendary hero, the 'man of honesty.'" And all know the art of "dissimulation, artifice, and stratagem" perfected by the Jesuits.
And then there is the stratagem of assassination, recommended by Bakunin: "poison, dagger, knout." In The Possessed, Dostoyevsky recommended embroiling neophytes in a crime. "Murder cements everything."
12. It is hardly likely that "conflicts and rivalries among different religions and parties will end." Maybe if the world belonged to a single social type and no more disagreements. The fact is that each new religion or party breaks up into sects "under pressure of the instinct for disputing and quarreling." The sects fight each other just as their parent religions fight other religions.
Anyway, such unity would not be desirable.
So far in history, freedom to think, to observe, to judge men and things serenely and dispassionately, has been possible... only in those countries in which numbers of different religious and political currents have been struggling for dominion.
Once a single sect or party has achieved dominance, "the isolated and original thinker has to be silent."
The Masons, and others, believe that we are all becoming saner and nobler, and that only ignorance and superstition drive us to "persecutions, massacres, and fratricidal strife." In fact, good and evil exist side by side. The year 1793 of Marat, Robespierre, and Carrier also knew Bonchamps, leader in the Vendée, who pleaded for the lives of republican prisoners on his deathbed.
The human race has contradictory qualities: a tragic destiny!
Aspiring ever to pursue and achieve what they think is good, they ever find pretexts for slaughtering and persecuting each other.
Perhaps tomorrow humans will kill each other "in an effort to banish the last trace of violence and injustice from the earth!"
Next: Revolution
Or return to Contents.
No comments:
Post a Comment