The Ruling Class XI: Collectivism

1. It is often not easy to work out the origins and history of religious and political movements, but in the case of social democracy, all roads lead to Rousseau.

The real parent of the sentiments, the passions, the manner of looking at social life and appraising it, that resulted practically in the birth and growth of social democracy was Jean Jacques Rousseau.

There have been throughout history movements, in China, India, Persia and the European Middle Ages that "are amazingly similar to the doctrines of modern socialism." And this is not surprising,

for the sentiments on which socialism proper, as well as anarchism, so largely rests are in no sense peculiar to the generations that are at present living in Europe and America.

But today's socialism and anarchism do not descend from the old doctrines.

They rest on purely rationalistic foundations and are a spontaneous outgrowth of the intellectual and moral conditions that prevailed in Europe in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

 Rousseau was the first to formulate the doctrine clearly that

Socialism and anarchism have a common seed in the doctrine which proclaims that man is good by nature and that society makes him bad, overlooking the fact that the structure of a society is nothing more than a resultant of the compromising and compensation and balancing that take place among the varied and very complex human instincts.

And it is Rousseau that

formulates the notion that absolute justice must be the basis for all political institutions

condemns, therefore, all sort of political and economic inequality 

[exhibits] feelings of rancor towards fortune's favorites, towards the rich and the powerful

 All of which are front and central to socialism today.

Rousseau wrote at the beginning of Part Two of his Discourse on Inequality that

The first man who fenced in a plot of ground and then thought of saying "this is mine"... was the real founder of civilized society.

But the most conclusive passages occur where Rousseau argues

that agriculture, and therefore private property and inequality in fortunes, preceded any social organization at all, and that there must, therefore, have been a period of anarchy when everybody was fighting everybody else and when the rich man had most to lose.

Here lie the assumptions behind the collectivist principle to abolish ownership to prevent exploitation, and the anarchist principle to abolish government to prevent rulers from exploiting the ruled. 

Just a year after Rousseau published the Discourse in 1754 a Code de la nature was published, proposing

(1) There should be no private property 

(2) Every citizen should be a public official 

(3) Every citizen should contribute to the public welfare

Thus, the author Morelli argued, "the state should feed every individual and every individual should work for the state." 

Then came Abbé Mably in 1776 who argued that "property has to be abolished" and Proudhon is 1778 that "property is theft." In the 1789 revolution, if socialist doctrines were not formally enacted, the times were certainly not good for "property owners and wealthy men." Then in 1796 came Babeuf's attempt "to end oppression and privilege by abolishing private property and concentrating all wealth in the hands of the state."

In 1826 Buonarroti rehearsed Babeuf's doctrines and influenced the revolutionaries of 1830. But meanwhile there were Fourier's books of 1808 and 1822 and Saint-Simon's Nouveau Christianisme of 1824. For Mosca, the socialist doctrines were pretty well worked out by the French before 1848. 

Then there was a "proletarian novel" the Voygage en Icarie by Cabet in 1840. It imagines "a country where there is not private property and describes the bliss that men enjoy under such a system,"

2. Given all this doctrinal development, what was left for Marx to do in 1848 and later? Mosca merely notes that "the socialism of today is a far more disquieting phenomenon than the socialism of sixty years ago."

Time was that revolutionary instincts focused on democratic movements, or liberation of subject nationalities. But now all concerns move "toward substantial reforms in the prevailing social order." There is a perception of social evil "and confidence in the possibility of promptly alleviating it."

There is a widespread conviction that there is a social question, that important reforms in property rights, in the family, in our whole industrial and capitalistic system, must inevitably come about, and governors and sovereigns do little else than make efforts and promises in that direction.

In this environment two churches have grown up. "The one is made up of believers in collectivism, the other of believers in anarchy."

3. Mosca now sets forth the postulates of collectivism, or "social democracy."

[T]he state represents the collectivity of citizens. It is sole proprietor of all tools of production, whether they be capital proper, machinery of land. The state is sole director and the sole distributor of economic products. Since there are neither owners of real property nor private capitalists, everybody works for the benefit of society as a whole; and the social organism provides for all[.]

In the older formula, the provision is made "according to the needs of the individual." This is the "communist" formulation. In a newer formula, the provision is made "according to the work that the individual does." This is the "collectivist" formulation. Ideally the collectivists prefer the first formula but recognize that it is "not immediately realizable."

The whole machine so organized is administered and directed by leaders who represent the people. The function of the leaders is to dole out to everyone the type of work for which he is best fitted, to see to it that the products of labor and social capital are not squandered or unduly exploited, and at the same time to distribute to every individual, with perfect equity and justice, the exact share that is due him either as the product of his own labor as honestly and infallibly calculated, or for his own needs, of which those in control will, with the same impartiality, furnish the exact estimate.

Ok, says Mosca, suppose we ignore the violence needed to implement this program, the hatreds it would provoke, and that the reforms have all been implemented and the centuries have dimmed the memories of the wars that forced the new social system. Suppose the wealth of society had not been too much reduced, "as the economists insist." Maybe the ethics trumps the economics.

But let us ask the "political" question:

[W]hether, with the realization of the communist (or the collectivist) system, justice, truth, love and reciprocal toleration among men, will hold a larger place in the world than they now occupy; whether the strong, who will always be at the top, will be less overbearing; whether the weak, who will always be at the bottom, will be less overborne. That question we now answer decidedly with the word "no."

[Mosca's 2nd edition of Elementi di Scienza Politica was published in 1923.]

Whatever the setup of the collectivist society, there is still going to be a guy on top to manage the public wealth and he would determine who gets what -- and be "far more powerful that the ministers and millionaires we know today." "[H]e will always be a despot."

Under collectivism, everyone will have to kowtow to the men in the government. They alone can dispense favor, bread, the joy or the sorrow of life. The great of the earth will be absolute masters of everything, and the independent word of the man who fears nothing and expects nothing from them will no longer be there to curb their extravagances.

And given that there would be no private capital, but only "commodities for private consumption,"

It would certainly always be possible to distribute such commodities either gratis or for a consideration, and so electoral corruption, and many other forms of corruption that feature bourgeois societies, would reappear.

4. The strength of socialist ideas is "their minute, pointed, merciless criticism of our present organization of society." The distribution of wealth leaves much to be desired. "Between the service that an individual renders to society and the reward that he receives there is almost always a wide, and often a glaring, discrepancy."

The economists have tried to fight back, and have failed. So Mosca tries another tack.

No social organization can be based exclusively upon the sentiment of justice, and no social organization will ever fail to leave much to be desired from the standpoint of absolute justice.

For everyone conducts his life upon a compromise between justice and personal interest. So the socialists say that their system will achieve "a radical change in human nature."

But there is really no evidence that such a change is possible. It is difficult to alter the moral level of people, and history does not indicate any successful experiments. Indeed if there have been improvements it is usually because a ruler has been "curbed and balanced by other men." There is a need for a multiplicity of social forces so that "various political forces can be balanced in the administration of the state.

Collectivism and communism, like all doctrines that are based on the passions and the blind faith of the masses, tend to destroy multiplicity of political forces.

They would lead to tyranny, as has always issued from "oversimplified political doctrines." Of course, legislative remedies have the potential of reducing social injustice. But no improvements could ever approach the perfect society promised by the socialists to their followers. Neither does the physician ever promise "an infallible remedy for all diseases." Only a charlatan does that.

5. The anarchists, of course, don't just want to transform society; one Italian anarchist wanted to kill everyone down to children of two or three. Anarchists want to abolish society, after Rousseau's doctrine that mankind is best in the state of nature.

Mosca attributes Rousseau's notion to years of degradation in his youth -- for which he blamed society.

But what would happen if society were destroyed? Mosca says that "arms and weapons" would still be there and also people willing to use them to enslave others. We would get a "feudal" society, just as happened when "the collapse of Charlemagne's empire disrupted such little social organization as had survived the fall of the Roman Empire."

Anarchism would result in wholesale slaughter, and depopulation, as prophesied in the novel Caesar's Column, published in 1890.

6. The doctrine of the class struggle, "common to all parties of subversion," is incomplete, trying to explain all history as ruling classes keeping themselves in power and lower classes trying to throw off the yoke. Of course, many events are completely outside the class struggle, such as ancient Greece against Persia, and the Italian Risorgimento that was "much more due to the influence of poets and novelists than to economic factors."

From time to time the lower classes have rebelled, sometimes due to "unbearable oppression." But rebellions by the manual workers are regularly repressed with relative ease. It is only newly influential elements that have succeeded in obtaining "a share in the government of the state which they thought was being held from them unjustly." The plebs in the later Roman empire succeeded, and also the Third Estate in the French Revolution -- and the lower class benefited too.

Indeed to divide up society into a "parasite class" and a "class that does everything" just for "the bare necessities of life" and to say that "the whole ruling class, made up of landowners, capitalists, businessmen, clerks, professional men" contribute nothing seems "supremely unjust." The modern economy requires the cooperation of all classes. Without the manual laborers, the directing class would decline, and without the directing classes, manual laborers would experience a severe decline in "moral and material status."

A great modern liner... was built through the cooperation of capitalists, naval engineers and working men, and... it operated through the cooperation of a number of officers and larger number of ordinary sailors and stokers.

Who gets the earnings of the liner? And who deserves it? "It is the combination of wealth, higher education and manual labor that produces what in sum is called civilization, and on the whole improves the condition of all."

Of course there are parasites in the ruling class that earn a lot more than they are worth. And the workers and those in the ruling class not in on the grift pay for it. Protectionism benefits the few and injure the many. Bad banking policy benefits those who get credit by favoritism; the rest suffer. It is ignorance in the ruling class that allows these exploitations. Exploiters come in all flavors, from the man that "squanders a fortune in luxury," to the politician who gets into office by duping the voters, the civil-service employee who runs "crooked errands for some politician." There are exploiters and exploited at all levels of society, although "the exploited in the lower classes are more wretched... and more to be pitied... [than]... the exploited in the middle and higher classes."

Many socialists have interpreted history as a conspiracy "to exploit the working classes." But this requires them to assume that the rulers knew what they were about.

Contrary to what some socialist writers seem to think, Christianity was not adopted because it was a religion that promised happiness in another life and guaranteed that the powerful could quietly enjoy their wealth in this life. Modern wars have never been waged in order to increase the public debt and hence the political influence of nonproductive capital.

The socialist historians generally cite laws "detrimental to those who live by manual labor" and then argue that the ruling classes have determined "to pauperize the lower classes consciously and purposefully." Mosca cites Marx in Das Kapital complaining about the Statute of Labourers of 1349 right after the Black Death. But governments are always making such efforts to stem the rise of prices after a war or a pestilence, efforts which they think "could either mitigate or prevent the serious economic disturbances that resulted from sudden or excessive rise in... prices... including human labor."

7. The question remains as to whether "socialism" could be beneficial to the great majority of people

even if it is not based on an accurate observation of the laws that regulate social life, and even if it aims at an ideal that cannot be attained until human nature has radically altered.

Possibly the "moral" influence of socialism can make things better. A spirit of brotherly love "breathes through the works of... Rodbertus or of Carlo Marlo." Henry George has a "noble and tender compassion for he weak." But then there is the other kind, with Bakunin, Marx, and Lassalle, where

the predominant sentiment is an aversion to the rich... [in] the form of unremitting irony, sarcasm and invective." 

And then when it gets down to the masses, the message gets garbled. The upshot is to regard the capitalist

as a man of virtually another race, another blood... a rival and an enemy...  through whose ruin alone the redemption and salvation of the working classes can be effected.

No doubt a political movement must appeal to "the savage passions," but to the virtual exclusion of all else? Is it a good idea to represent human happiness as purely issuing from material means? Is it a good idea to idealize the individual human and ascribe to the social order most of the individual vices and weaknesses in human nature?

There are many kinds of poverty: one kind is material poverty and want; another is envious poverty of the man envious of one who enjoys pleasures he can never hope to have; there is the poverty of economic catastrophe and its aftermath. There is no doubt that a material standard of living is a part of human happiness; but so are sentiments like "a kindly disposition."

Other political doctrines that deal with "the grave and tormenting problem of life" have proposed different remedies than the socialists. The Stoics taught their disciples to endure unhappiness bravely. Early Christianity taught its believers the "scorn of material pleasures and... the joys of the flesh."

Socialists are not the first to preach equality and absolute justice. But it may be better to bid the rich to "Give!" rather than encourage the poor to "Take!" It might "lead to significant differences in practical results."

8. Mosca now looks at the causes of the socialism phenomenon. An important factor is universal suffrage, that has encouraged candidates "to pamper popular sentiments and prejudices" and this alienates more conservative people from public life.

Another factor is the revolutionary tradition, still strong in Latin countries and encouraged by ruling classes. Still another is for young people to need a model of virtue and perfection. The model held up to them has not been "the knight who dies for his lady," nor "the public servant, the magistrate, the soldier," but the "militant revolutionist," the rebel. The only problem is that there are no "Bastilles are left to storm," so the rebels "storm institutions that have survived old revolution." And if the old revolutions achieved so much, who can doubt "that a still more radical reform of society is possible?"

But life cannot be all revolution, all the time.

[T]he methods by which governments, religions, or political parties are kept alive, and the sentiments and passions that have to be cultivated if they are to be kept alive are essentially different from the means and sentiments that have served to bring them into being.

It is true, also, that the exploits of speculators and the way in which the rich enjoy their wealth has become a scandal and "publicized by the daily press." Then there is the war on religion, excessive taxes, public debts, unproductive expenditures, the dishonesty of politicians and parliaments, all of which discredit the current system.

Social hygiene in the ruling class is just as important as hygiene in food, water, and housing. But is the ruling class up to the task?

9. It seems to many people in Europe and America that social democracy will eventually triumph. Educated people believe in a continuous arc of progress, and collectivists and anarchists just "believe" in the triumph as the early Christians believed in their paradise. The early socialists writers prophesied the triumph of collectivism at the end of the nineteenth century or the early twentieth century.

Of course, for Mosca, the implementation of collectivism is "impossible," although there remains a possibility for social democracy. The experiment "would weight grievously... on the... generations on which the experiment would be made" and would force a "return to a much cruder and more absolute form of government." Still, the prognosis is not certain, in Europe, and more complicated in the case of the "English colonies and the United States."

It would be hard to transform society given the the institutional strength of the current "bureaucracy and the standing army." But if the social revolution did succeed it is doubtful that the existing officials would continue to function. Anarchy would ensue, making the attempt to establish collectivism impossible.

Present society has immense powers of resistance: bankers, merchants, manufacturers, employees, bondholders, bank customers, property owners: a great army. People that sympathize with social equality would think otherwise when their personal interests were threatened. The government would also have enormous resources, including the police and the army.

However, the incessant propaganda of the social democratic cause might weaken the will of people to resist, since they are taught to "doubt the justice of their own case." 

But making predictions is difficult because any leap to social democracy will be "fixed by unforeseen events," such as a disaster in war, a "grave industrial and agricultural crisis or financial bankruptcy on the part of one of more great European powers." However, the longer the revolutionaries have to wait, the less likely is their revolution, since "it is difficult to keep up any sort of agitation in the masses for very long when nothing concrete is being done" to implement the glorious future. The longer the wait, the less likely there would be leaders "of the necessary experience and prestige in a position to direct the course of the revolution."

10. Suppose a violent movement is avoided. 

Even so, social democracy will not cease to be a violent disintegrating agency in modern society, and if the new doctrine is not subdued the order of things now prevailing will always remain in a state of instability and have be be upheld to a great extent my sheer physical force.

But force against the social democratic movement will not make it go away. Yet, if force is not used against the socialists European civilization will be on the defensive and forced into a decline. If force is used, it "will represent a real retrogression in the safeguarding of justice and in juridical defense."

Even if all abuses are done away with and justice "is made more equitable and effective, it will not end the problem. For

social democracy aspires to absolute justice, to absolute equality, and these can never be attained... Unlike the God of the Christians, the real socialist... wants the death of the sinner. He does not want him to reform and live.

One proposed remedy is more state control to cure injustices and sufferings from economic individualism and "merciless competition:" regulation of working hours and child labor, government involvement in assisting the poor. In the old days in Europe there were intermediate organizations between government and the individual, and these still exist in India, Muslim countries, China, and Japan. But in western Europe, the family is "practically the father, mother, and minor children." 

There is now widespread support for state control beyond "mere relief of distress," in effect taxing the rich to give it to the poor: even conservatives support this. But this is dangerous, it would "kill the goose that lays the golden egg." And it would make collectivism appear as an improvement.

There are other proposals, including a state obligation "to pay salaries to all the unemployed, to break up "great landed properties," a maximum eight-hour day, a minimum wage, a "heavily progressive income tax." These would "destroy private capital" in a few years.

Many people regard Christian socialism as a means of "neutralizing atheistic, materialistic and revolutionary socialism." But "Christianity and socialism are... two plants of a very different nature."

Vain, therefore, is the hope that a Christian shoot inserted into a socialist trunk will ever change the fruit, eliminating all its bitter flavor, its ever harmful quality, and leaving it sweet and wholesome.

11. The remedy to the socialist evil, "the intellectual malady of our age," is of a different order. Socialism has benefited from the disappointment of parliamentary democracy. "which set out to inaugurate a reign of justice and equality in the world, and has failed miserably to keep that promise."

Similar ideas to those that produced parliamentary democracy are now seeping us towards socialism and anarchy. Once faith in political equality and universal suffrage fails to produce political equality in the fact, it is natural to go the whole way and destroy all disparities.

Democratic doctrine has provided services to civilization. Representative government has "has contributed to important improvements in juridical defense" through a system of free discussion throughout Europe. But by carrying the notion too far, "the same doctrine is disorganizing the countries in which it prevails and forcing them into their decline."

This is because the premises of the democratic doctrine are not justified by the facts.

Absolute equality has never existed in the human condition. Political power never has, and never will be, founded on the explicit consent of majorities. It always has been, and it always will be, exercised by organized minorities... that impose their will on the multitudes. 

In the world in which we are living, socialism will be arrested only if a realistic political science succeeds in demolishing the metaphysical and optimistic methods that prevail at present.

 What is needed is "the discovery and demonstration of the great constant laws that manifest themselves in all human societies" and thereby demonstrate the impossibility of the democratic ideal. Only when the intellectual classes "get" this will social democracy fail.

So far, some social scientists -- notably economists -- have demonstrated the fallacies of certain socialist policies. What is needed is that 

A whole metaphysical system must be met with a whole scientific system.

And so far, in the social sciences in the latter half of the nineteenth century, metaphysics has been met with metaphysics. 

The task is immensely difficult, in part because the truths of the new science "will not be generally popular, since they will shock many passions and cross many interests." And will prompt opposition.

There is little likelihood that the new doctrines will find much support in our governments, or in our ruling classes... Interests, whatever their nature, love propaganda, not impartial discussion.

If science, the new political science, triumphs, it will be the achievement of honest scholars that "seek and expound the truth."

Next: Theory of the Ruling Class

Or return to Contents.

The Emperor's New Clothes and Race

One fine day, some kid is going to say it: Mommy! How come the emperor doesn't have any clothes on?

With respect to our ruling class and race.

Well, I am here to tell that kid, wherever he is, why it is that we have this remarkable culture where you are not allowed to say that

1. There has never been a society in history that cared about some ex-slave minority. Not till ours.
2. Without the race, race, race orthodoxy our ruling class and its bribed apologists would have nothing to say and nothing to do.

See, the religion of permanent white guilt and permanent black innocence doesn't do anything for anyone, except the white educated Gentry.

It doesn't do anything for the ordinary middle-class Commoner. He must still go forth and work and strive and wive and thrive, just as he does every other day.

It doesn't do anything for non-white victims, the Clients of the ruling class. They will continue going down the tubes as all Little Darlings of the ruling class do.

But, boy oh boy, it certainly gives our betters a chance to moralize and have a wonderful emotional experience. Did I mention that I was thinking of putting a yard sign out in front of my house with the following motto: "My Social Moralizing Yard Sign?"

See, the problem with a modern capitalist free market economy and free society is that it really doesn't require a magnificent ruling class, the heroic helmsman lashed to the wheel steering us all to safety through the storm.

Yeah, remember when they called Mao ZeDong the "Great Helmsman?" That's the fantasy of every lefty AntiFa basement-dweller. To be the great helmsman saving society from a fate worse than death. It could be the fate worse than death of racism, or climate change. Doesn't really matter.

That's why a common-or-garden novel virus epidemic has to be turned into a national crisis with politicians directing traffic while experts grind the data through their computer models and examine the entrails.

That's why the cruel inattention of a policeman arresting a drugged-up criminal has to be gussied up into a national crisis with weeping women and angry bomb-throwers, featuring that First Sacrament of the modern age, the "peaceful protest." And already several people, including policemen, have been sacrificed upon the Altar of Peaceful Protest.

Well, I have already ventilated for years about the left's fake Activism Culture, how it represents a replay of the medieval romance of robber barons -- the original robber barons -- as chevaliers sans peur et sans reproche. Hey, the barons liked to be serenaded by minstrels when dining and drinking and partying in their medieval castles. And they rather liked the idea of themselves as peerless knights riding their palfreys to the assistance of damsels in distress. Who wouldn't?

Likewise our modern scions of the ruling class like to think of themselves a revolutionaries activist-ing to the assistance of diverse helpless victims. It gives them a reason to get up in the morning.

Also, activism is much easier than real creative work. See, activism is not measuring by its results, but by its effect. Does it get on TV? Are the helpless victims mobilized to peaceful protest? The results are another matter, way downstream, and nobody really checks it out. But real creative work is hard, and will probably end in failure, whether in business, in the arts, or in politics.

You see that even in Les Mis where the dumb young well-born activist, Marius, wounded on the barricades of Paris, gets rescued by the reformed convict, Jean Valjean. And why does he do it? Because Valjean's adopted daughter, Cosette, is in love with the guy. Go figure.

Hey, you kids! Don't you realize that the emperor, our Gentry ruling class, is naked? Don't you realize that everything they have taught you, in school and college, is rubbish? That Activism is a crock? That racism is a crock? That peaceful protest is a lie? That government is a weight around our necks?

Then why don't you do something about it?

It starts with naively asking Mommy why the emperor isn't wearing any clothes.

The Ruling Class X: Parliamentarism

1. To recap, Mosca has tried to show that the understanding of human societies can only be discovered through the study of history; that a ruling class exists in any society and recruits members with qualities that give moral prestige to them; that a society is founded upon a complex of religious and philosophical beliefs that explain its type of organization; and that differences in societies issue from the "political formula" that dominates the majority of minds in the society.

[T]he highest grade of juridical defense, the greatest respect for law and morals on the part of those in power, can be obtained only through the  participation of many different political forces in government ad through their balancing one another.

2. Mosca now wants to investigate three problems: Will the existing "dogmatic religions" survive the drift towards revolution and rationalism? Will the current government by elected parliaments last very long? What is the future given how social democracy seems to be sweeping all before it?

Many people believe that science is bound to destroy dogma and the narratives of the Old and New Testaments, because people trained in science have an aversion to dogmatic doctrines and statements. But maybe religion responds not the the demands of reason, but other psychological needs. Maybe people need illusion.

It is notable that Catholic observance is falling off among the lower classes rather than the educated classes. But they have walked away from religion not because they have received and responded to scientific training.

They disbelieve, and they scoff, because they have been taught to disbelieve and to scoff. Instead of believing blindly in the priest they believe blindly in the revolutionary agitator. They pride themselves on being in the vanguard of civilization, and their minds are open to all sorts of superstitions and sophistries. 

3. "What religion meets today... in large portions of the European masses, is not a positivism, or an agnosticism... but a vulgar imitative atheism." So religious beliefs might easily regain their footing.

It may well be that within a few generations socialist doctrines and revolutionary impulses with openly have declared their bankruptcy.

And what about a return of hard times. People don't much need religion when things are going well, but "need its hopes and its comforts very urgently" when things go wrong.

Christianity enjoyed a decisive triumph once before in history when the upper and middle classes of the ancient world were smitten with the appalling catastrophes and the unutterable sufferings that follows upon the final victories of the barbarians and the fall of the western Empire.

Mosca notes that in France "revivals of pietism" have tended to follow epidemics -- in 1832 -- and wars -- in 1870-71. The same might occur in "an era of depression and comparative poverty." Nor are the churches likely to be destroyed. When things go wrong the losing party "resigns itself to at least tacit acceptance." The Catholic Church has experienced a number of such reverses in its history.

4. But then there is the antagonism between science and religion. Although faith is old and science is new there were glimmerings of science in the ancient world, but between the glimmerings were centuries of darkness. Science was brighter in Greece and Rome but it too faded. Modern science did not get started till the sixteenth century and did not take hold till the eighteenth century. Naturally there was a struggle between science and religion with religion trying to strangle its new rival and science discrediting religion.

But many institutions are forced to get along with each other, and science and religion have different worlds.

Scientific thought deal with the human intelligence. Faith has hits basis in sentiment.

Science is accessible only to small numbers of people that have the opportunity and the ability to live intellectual lives. "Religion exerts its influence upon the masses."

Religions, that compete in the same field, sometimes "end up by tolerating each other." The Chinese were pretty relaxed about this. (Before Mao, of course).

Thus Mosca expects some mutual toleration between science and religion.

In the long run, a mutual toleration may be established between the positivism, or, rather, the scientific skepticism, of the better educated and the beliefs... [of the] masses and... the well-to-do classes by which sex, habit, education and temperament is more responsive to sentimental impulses.

Skeptics need to accept the need for religious beliefs among people without original views of their own, and the Christian leaders need to accept that science is now an inevitable "part of the life of civilized humanity."

All this is just possibility, and will require "real political sagacity" to bring about. And there is, of course, "the democratic-socialist current today [that] amounts virtually to another religion." It fiercely competes with Christianity.

It is well to remember that freedom and toleration are unusual. Mostly humans live "for centuries upon some system of beliefs to which they have sacrificed all liberty of discussion and thought." So "bigotry... conflict and persecution" are the norm. This is the history; the great civilizations all declined back into barbarism. And so our own era is likely to be the victim of some new political formula that ends up victorious.

5. Mosca now analyzes the "crisis that representative, and especially parliamentary, governments" are experiencing. He experiences two intellectual currents that brought representative and parliamentary governments into being.

The first is the "liberal current" based on Montesquieu, that "sought to set up a barrier against bureaucratic absolutism by means of a separation of powers."

The second is the "democratic current" whose parent was Rousseau, that proclaimed that "the legal basis of any sort of political power must be popular sovereignty." Originally, in The Social Contract, Rousseau was opposed to "any delegation of sovereignty." But in practice, representative democracy was the form implemented, partly from the English constitution that had "derived the principle of representation from its feudal origins." It has produced, in addition, the theories of modern social democracy.

There are three objections to representative government in general. First, the endless "prattlings" and long-winded speeches with which parliaments busy themselves. Secondly, from the socialists, that parliaments only represent the interests of the wealthy classes. Thirdly, that the parliaments and especially individual member interfere in "the courts, in public administration" and in the distribution of wealth in various ways, including "banks, great industrial speculations and in public charities."

Obviously, the "continuous pottering, interloping and officiousness" of parliaments is a very "baneful thing." It has been called "parliamentarism."

6. Mosca suggests that these objections only appear grave to those "convinced that is possible for a country to have a political system that is exempt from the weaknesses inherent in human nature itself." Compared with what? Perhaps they are the "merest trifles" compared to an "absolute" or "exclusively bureaucratic" regime. Mosca hangs his hat on "the dangers and drawbacks involved in giving absolute predominance to a single political force" not subject to any limits, e.g., czarist Russia, or France under the old regime.

We take for granted the advantages of a system where the government's actions are subject to public discussion. The alternative is "violations of juridical defense, of justice, of everything that we commonly call 'liberty.'"

Nor is it accurate to say that a parliament is a "mob." They typically contain men of long experience who are a block against rash action. Indeed, the delays and confusions of representative assemblies are often beneficial.

Socialists and anarchists object to representative systems because of its subservience to organized interests and money. And this makes it difficult for the system to respond to the majority of "the people" as required by Rousseau. But for Mosca, the only important demand is that all social values shall have a part in the political system. Not an equal part, but a part, and the opportunity to "limit the influence of other social forces and the influence of bureaucracy in particular."

The limited influence of majorities does not depend on present social inequalities, but on the fact of the inevitable domination of "organized minorities over disorganized majorities." And those elected to office would always be people "actively devoted to political life."

The real problem with representative government is 

[the] constant... contradiction between the duty and the interest of the man who governs, and of the man who should judge and limit governmental action, the bureaucracy and the elective elements, which... end up corrupting and denaturing each other.

7. If we do nothing about the problems of parliamentarism, what will happen? The current beneficiaries of the system would embed themselves deeper.

The scions of today's celebrities in parliament, bank and governmental positions would in fact attain with increased ease the posts that are now occupied by the fathers... [creating]... a clique of influential families, into which it would be hard for newcomers to make their way.

As occurred in republican Rome and pre-Reform Bill England. The oligarchy "would drift farther and farther away from the sentiments and passions of the people" meaning both the poor and the "economic and intellectual" middle class.

So nothing would get solved by doing nothing. But what would improve things? Mosca investigates two remedies.

First, he proposes Increased independence of judges and make high ranking officials responsible to "really independent administrative tribunals." But nobody should doubt the difficulty of such an effort.

Second, he proposes a return to a "constitutional" system, where prime ministers do not resign when defeated in a chamber of representatives. The current system in England only got started in the middle of the eighteenth century. This would curb the irresponsible power of the legislature, but it would lead to more autocratic systems and would "leave the all-absorbing bureaucratic organization intact."

8. The best way of curing the "evils of parliamentarism would be extensive and organic decentralization.

It would imply shifting prerogatives from central bureaucracies to provincial bureaucracies, and from national parliaments to local assemblies. It would imply transferring many of the functions that are now exercised by bureaucracies and elective bodies to the class of public-spirited citizens.

These would be educated and unsalaried officials that do not seek posts in the civil service and do not run for parliament. 

The problem is the "shameful and hypocritical traffic in reciprocal indulgences and mutual favors, which is a veritable running sore in most European countries."

So a special class of volunteer unsalaried officials could be developed, with certain educational qualifications, and over time this group would develop "group cohesion and pride," eager to devote a part of their time to public business. Some would object to this as being no better than juries. But Mosca has in mind a better class of citizens than common jurors. It is, of course, arbitrary to select people of a certain education for volunteer public service, but we make arbitrary distinctions all the time, for instance, in defining the age at which a person becomes an adult.

But then we select politicians from a class with "a certain ease and a certain amount of education" that pass "through a ruinous process of selection downward" which bars from public life those

who will not buy votes or cannot buy them, men who are of too high a character to sacrifice dignity to ambition, or men who are too sincere and honest to throw out to left and right promises which they know they cannot keep, or an keep only by sacrificing the public welfare to private advantage.

A more serious objection is the "present economic situation in many European countries [after World War I]." There just are not enough people with the education and the means to serve as unpaid public servants, for in "many countries the middle classes can hardly maintain the margin of economic well-being which is indispensable if one it to acquire a higher education merely for reasons of personal dignity family standing, or social usefulness.

And even if these difficulties could be overcome, the idea of volunteer citizens engaged in public business comes up against the democratic philosophy "which recognizes no political act, no political prerogative, as legitimate unless it emanates directly or indirectly from popular suffrage."

Next: Collectivism

 Or return to Contents. 

The Ruling Class IX: Standing Armies

There tends to be, in ruling classes, a predominance of warriors. In some cases, warriors come exclusively from the dominant classes; in others the officers are upper class, and the rank and file from the lower classes.

In "savage or barbarous countries... all adult males are soldiers in the event of war," and that extends to "adventurous raids and forays."  Peaceful activities are for women and slaves; men hunt and make war. This sort of society has occurred throughout the world where the political organism is very small with "a de facto autonomy on the part of each little tribe or village" until it gets subsumed into a larger government.

But once government becomes more extensive, and "war ceases to the the most lucrative occupation" then a special warrior class arises supporting itself from tribute extracted from the toilers on the land, and Mosca finds this pattern all over the world, including in the feudal aftermath of the Roman empire.

States that advance in civilization trend towards centralization and bureaucracy, and the central power tries to obtain control of money and soldiers and thus control the smaller organisms in the state. Often the soldiers were mercenaries from another country. The English hired soldiers from Flanders, the kings of France their Swiss guards, the caliphs of Baghdad a Turkish guard. These soldiers defend the central government against the feudal lords.

The more citified a country became, the less its rulers have gone into the field themselves, and preferred to have mercenaries fight for them. Poor countries have tended to be the source of these mercenaries. However, as with Rome and its praetorian guard, the rulers that hire mercenary armies have often found themselves at the mercy of the soldiers they hired to protect them from the feudal lords. If the society is loosely organized then the local bands of warriors will dominate; if society is centralized, then the army will want to "dictate to the rest of society."

The huge modern armies of Europe are a remarkable exception to this rule, where the army is obedient to civil rule and is content to have "very little political influence." However some armies, occasionally in France and more often in Spain, have "overthrown the men in supreme power" in moments of crisis.

The historical process that has led to the modern army starts with the Middle Ages. Centralized monarchy, notably in France, "gradually replaced feudal militias with standing armies." However, even at the end of the Middle Ages, "armies were becoming so complicated in structure that many different social elements where represented in them and served to balance one another." Cavalry regiments were mainly from the nobility, and gradually the command of infantry regiments were entrusted to gentlemen. Various noblemen, down to the time of Louis XIV, organized units at their own expense, and then hired themselves out to some sovereign. In France, the last general call for the feudal nobility occurred early in the reign of Louis XIV and it was found that the lack of common training made the feudal host of little military value.

The mixing of social elements and nationalities in the developing national armies usually kept the sovereigns safe from overthrow but were undisciplined and notorious for plundering everywhere they went. Only when real standing armies of the modern kind developed at the turn of the eighteenth century and conscription began -- with peasants and workingmen as soldiers rather than criminals -- did undisciplined plunder decrease. Officers became, more and more, "a sort of bureaucratized nobility" combining civil service orderliness with the high sense of honor "traditional in the wellborn." The wellborn, of course, identify with the ruling class.

Many countries have maintained nonprofessional militias, especially the United States, but Mosca regards them as practically useless, and uncertain in their loyalty. For instance, in 1870-71 the "citizen militia of Paris became the praetorian guard of the Commune."

Standing armies have usually been officered by "the politically dominant ranks of society" ordinary privates and petty officers from lower classes This seems to be the pattern all over the world, even in ancient Egypt and modern China. It is notable that in the later Roman empire, senators and then knights were excused from service, so that in the 3rd century the period of the Thirty Tyrants "privates could become generals and even emperors."

The question arises as to whether some peoples "are naturally timorous and cowardly, others daring and courageous." Mosca seems inclined to credit military valor and success to a "special training." He notes that in World War I 

the soundness of an army depends very largely on the strength of the patriotic sentiments that have been instilled by long and careful education... in individuals belonging to the ruling classes and the masses.

But all peoples seem to have gone through eras when they conquered all before them, and others when they were conquered and despoiled by others.

"In our day" (right after World War I) a reaction has set in against large standing armies, ironically from "the subversive revolutionary elements" that are the most inclined to "assert themselves and impose their will on the rest of society by force." Mosca follows the ideas of the German General von der Goltz who predicts that huge armies of inadequately trained soldiers that can "be conquered by small armies of well-drilled professional soldiers." He wonders if the large complicated armies will be so expensive and deleterious to every family that the "moral aversions and the economic interests that are opposed to war might" weaken the willingness to make the huge sacrifices that war requires.

And if that occurs, then perhaps the dominant European nations might eventually give way to other nations that have "appropriated European methods and instruments of destruction."

When war has ended on a large scale, will it not be revived on a small scale in quarrels between families, classes, or villages?

Mosca wonders if war is not necessary from time to time if our western societies are "not to decline and retrogress to lower types of juridical defense." Then he worries that if the principle of division of labor were too strictly followed, it could easily upset the juridical balance, the balance between various dominant groups under law, with society subject to the group that practices for armed conflict dominating the intellectual and moral standpoints.

Next: Parliamentarism

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The Ruling Class VIII: Revolution

1. Mostly, political change happens on the initiative of the ruling class or with its consent. But sometimes it happens through

other social elements and forces, which succeed in defeating the previously ruling element... the thing that is commonly called "revolution."

In the old days, such change was one "clique" replacing another, as in classical Greece and Rome, or an ongoing war between rival gangs as in the Italian cities of the Middle Ages. 

2. With republican Rome and its solid "juridical defense" civil strife was only occasional. But after Octavian won the civil wars between regular armies the standing army thereafter assumed the power of changing the head of state. 

In feudal Europe civil conflict and revolutions were conducted as wars between factions of barons. In Germany the election of a new emperor would divide into parties and contest the election. In France, Burgundians and Armagnacs "fought for possession of the person of king or dauphin." And in England the feudal barons famously fought the Wars of the Roses in two factions.

3. Then there is China, that developed early from a feudal to a bureaucratic structure.

Whenever a dynasty had greatly declined in efficiency... some unruly governor, or some intrepid adventurer, would... defeat the government troops and... dispossess the old dynasty and found a new one.

The new dynasty would be energetic for a while, and then weaken, and the process would repeat itself.

4. In Europe there was a long era of "a subject people [rising] against its oppressors." Think "Sweden against Denmark... Holland against Spain... Spain against France." And then the American colonists and the Great Rebellion against Charles I in England,

5. Another type of rebellion is the "rural or peasant rebellion," such as revolts in Russia early in the reign of Catherine II, The Vendée in 1793, the Monmouth rebellion in England just before the Glorious Revolution of 1688.

6. But with today's states, with their "complicated organization, their bureaucracies, their standing armies", things are not as easy. The complicated French revolutions show why.

The revolution of 1789 "was a real collapse of the classes and political forces that had ruled France down to that time." It included a complete collapse of government authority and regiments in the army going over to the revolution. Power "belonged in turn to the clique, or to the man, who could get himself followed to Paris with a show of armed force, whether he were a Lafayette... or a Danton." What mattered was to impersonate "the symbol, or the institution" of France through various coups d'etat that led to the Napoleonic empire.

But what about the French revolutions of 1830, 1848, and 1870? It starts with a small battle against troops in the capital.

Next, the mob, armed and unarmed, puts sovereigns and ministers to flight, dissolves the assemblies and riotously forms a government.

Mosca attributes this repeated regime weakness to "over-bureaucratization." The army and the bureaucrats were perfectly happy to follow any government, "pleasing anyone who was seated at the top." What everyone wanted, including ordinary people, was "just a government, not any particular government." As long as the new government prevents any radical change, the conservative elements in society are content.

And, throughout the 19th century "young people in Europe were taught... that many of the most important conquests of modern life had been obtained as a consequence of the" revolution of 1789. So revolution was not experienced as an unmitigated evil. And, of course, in countries with a successful revolution, everyone  is "obliged to glorify the one good, the one holy insurrection from which they sprang themselves."

7. Revolutionary societies, like the Masons, do a lot to prepare "intellectual and moral foundations for revolutions", but are not helpful on the day, which requires some catalyzing event, such as "The disappointment of some great hope, a sudden economic depression, a defeat suffered by a nation's army."

If the rebellious group has developed a permanent organization, and knows how to take advantage of such a moment, it can hope for success.

However in our day, because of standing armies and their enormous expense, "no government can be overthrown by force unless the men who are in charge of it are themselves irresolute or lose their heads" or shrink from "repression involving bloodshed." And if the head of government is irresolute, so will be the underlings.

Written before the Bolshevik revolution in 1917, we can see how Mosca's ideas were applied in spades in the faltering last days of old Russia. 

Next: Standing Armies

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The Ruling Class VII: Churches, Parties and Sects

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

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The Ruling Class VI: Suffrage and Social Forces

1. In our day, those "that advocate liberty and equality" all view "universal suffrage as the foundation of all sound government, government "based on the will of the majority. For most, "all flaws in representative government were attributed to incomplete or mistaken application of the principle of representation and suffrage."

But Mosca begs to differ:

[T]he assumption that the elected official is the mouthpiece of the majority of his electors is as a rule not consistent with the facts; and we believe that this can be proved by facts of ordinary experience and by certain practical observations that anyone can make on the manner in which elections are conducted.

Now Mosca has previously argued that in all forms of government the ruling class, an organized majority, "imposes its will on the disorganized majority." This happens "and to perfection" under the representative system.

For in an election the voters do not "choose" their representative. They do not get to choose "the candidate of their heart;" that would be impossible.

If his vote is to have any efficacy at all, therefore, each voter is fores to limit his choice to a very narrow field... two or three persons who have some chance of succeeding... those whose candidacies are championed by groups, by committees, by organized minorities.

And how "do thse organized minorities form about individual candidates?" 

As a rule they are based on considerations of property and taxation, on common material interests, on ties of family, class, religion, sect or political party.

In fact, the representative system does not result in government by the majority, but it does allow certain social forces to "become organized and so exert an influence on government."

2. Mosca now looks at the details of how the suffrage system works out in practice. Even though the voters do not get the choose the candidate of their choice, the candidates still have to "win a weight of votes" to win the election and will make every effort to "win the good will of the voters."

 In this way certain sentiments and passions of the "common herd" come to have their influence in the mental attitudes of the representatives themselves, and echoes of a widely disseminated opinion, or of any serious discontent, easily come to be heard in the highest spheres of government.

And every representative "knows that the discontent of the masses may at almost any moment bring about the triumph of a rival." Of course if one group -- say the poor -- are not represented in the assembly, then it is almost impossible for them to get their interests represented. The opposite is also true. If the "better elements" are only a slim minority in a city then the masses under the control of "ward heelers" will run over them.

At their best representative assemblies can provide a real "juridical safeguard" with public discussion of disparate political forces; an small organized minority can often "control the conduct of a large majority" and curb the bureaucracy. But equally, they can fall under the irresponsible domination of those who win elections and "speak in the name of the people."

The referendum can be fairly effective, but is not a panacea. Government is more than managing changes in the laws; it is also a question of managing and influencing the bureaucratic machine. And improvements "will always be more readily appreciated by the governing class," however corrupt.

3. The question then arises as to "the extent to which the state should interfere in the various departments of social life, and more specifically in business."

Many people think that "state" and "society" are separate and distinct, but Mosca insists that the state is merely the "organization of all the social forces that have a political significance... The state is... merely that part of society that performs the political function." Some people "contrast state management with private initiative," that what is done by bureaucrats in Germany and France is done by private individuals in England, often of course, prominent individuals that perform without pay.

4. Mosca notes that state bureaucracies and other political parties participate in the management of economic activities, including banking, public works, but not the actual management of economic production in any moderately advanced country. Although, of course, the managers of economic production "form a part of the ruling forces of society."

In general the intervention in economic enterprise of elements that exercise strictly political, in other words, legislative, administrative, or judiciary, control over society, has been harmful, and a large share in the pauperization that is afflicting a number of modern countries can be ascribed to that interference. 

Managerial activities should be entrusted to those with the abilities required for performing them. But when activities are withdrawn from the bureaucracy or elected bodies, "there has to be present within society a class of persons who possess the capacities" to perform the task. For Mosca, juries, justices of the peace, and charity commissioners may not be up to the job.

On the other hand those who wish to broaden state activities ought to remember that the "state" is not necessarily the "organ of righteousness and moral progress." The "state" means "government officials and government clerks!... all very fine fellows... that nevertheless possess all human capacities and all human frailties." 

[A]mong their interests [is] an interest in keeping their jobs or even in slipping into better ones if the occasion offers.

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