CHAPTER 5The Truth about the Elite

The Managerial Revolution predicted the inevitable collectivization of society. When Burnham wrote the book, collectivist Germany, the USSR, and Japan seemed destined to rule their regions of the world. The United States was technically neutral. But Pearl Harbor changed everything, both in the United States and in Burnham's mind. The United States now fought against the managerial collectivism Burnham believed represented the future. He went from a detached observer of events in Europe to a proponent of war.¹ In The Machiavellians: Defenders of Freedom (1943), Burnham expresses concern for the centralization that he believed was the wave of the future. The book provides specific ways to resist this process—even contending that thwarting tyranny depended on it.

Written in the same flat yet straightforward manner as Machiavelli's The Prince, The Machiavellians is a practical analysis of politics. It specifically seeks to raise consciousness about the raging power struggle that Burnham asserts existed in all societies. Using Machiavelli's method, Burnham tries to scientifically study how rulers obtain, use, and lose power. After all, politics is based on observable events, and these events can be recorded and analyzed. Subsequent theories can emerge, which can then be tested through future events. Burnham suggests that this empirical method reveals truths about the nature of power.

The work continues the reductionism that characterized Marxism. For Marxists, the history of the world can be reduced to a class struggle. For the new Machiavellian, the history of the world can be reduced to power struggle. The Machiavellians were the only ones with the wisdom and courage to tell the people the real truth: that everything was about power. Priests, humanitarians, soldiers, business leaders, bureaucrats, presidents, and feudal lords sought power.² These people exercise power and will not give it up.

The Machiavellians is a product of the gloomy James Burnham. After leaving Marxism, Burnham found a thinker that allowed him to project cynicism toward individuals, society, and politics. Machiavelli wrote in Discourses that the founders of any state must assume “that all men are bad, and will always, when they have free field, give loose to their evil inclinations.”³ Burnham adopted this assumption, applied it to the ruling classes, and provided a method to resist the duplicitous power-seekers in hopes of curbing extreme authoritarianism.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR) was Burnham's first subject. Before becoming president, FDR preached limited government, and the Democratic Party's 1932 platform demanded cuts in spending and a balanced budget. In The Machiavellians, Burnham calls these words the “formal meaning.”⁴ They were deceptive because, in reality, FDR expanded the power of government. His words masked his true intentions. Dante Alighieri's De Monarchia provided another example for Burnham. Dante preached a universal empire based on peace (the formal meaning). Burnham calls this “politics as a wish.”⁵ Although Dante employed concepts like peace, unity, and harmony, they meant nothing. In reality, Dante was a warmongering partisan. His work was a propagandist defense of a Renaissance political faction, the Ghibellines.⁶

Burnham argues in The Machiavellians that the “real meaning” of words and texts was often disguised in the formal meaning.⁷ He insists: “It is characteristic of De Monarchia, and of all similar treatises, that there should be this divorce between formal and real meanings, that the formal meaning should not explicitly state but only indirectly express, and to one or another extent hide and distort, the real meaning. The real meaning is thereby rendered irresponsible, since it is not subject to open and deliberate intellectual control; but the real meaning is nonetheless there.”⁸ Disputes about the nature of God at Nicaea were really about the authority of Rome over the Mediterranean region.⁹ Debates about balanced budgets were really about who regulated the distribution of currency.¹⁰ Discussions about movement in seas were really about who controls the seas.¹¹

The Machiavellians taught the people to distrust the words elites use because rulers seek to “confuse and hide.”¹² Burnham asserts that examining the action of rulers, not their rhetoric, reveals their true motivations because the ruling class never tells the truth. He declares: “In the hands of the powerful and their spokesman, however, used by the demagogues or hypocrites or simply the self-deluded, this method is well-designed … to deceive us, and to lead us by easy routes to the sacrifice of our or own interests in the service of the mighty.”¹³ The real levers of government are pulled by the elite. And they will do anything to maintain their positions of power, even resorting to force and fraud.¹⁴

Burnham continues by examining four thinkers he calls “The Machiavellians.” Like their forefather, these thinkers wrote during a time of social and economic upheaval. Noting that Machiavelli lived during the opening of the New World, Burnham contends that the first half of the twentieth century was equally transformative. According to Burnham, this explained Machiavelli's new-found popularity, after so long having been ignored or misunderstood.¹⁵ As World War I raged—one of the great power struggles in human history—ideas analyzing power relations bloomed. The Machiavellians Gaetano Mosca, Vilfredo Pareto, Georges Sorel, and Robert Michels were power theorists who wrote around the time of the Great War. Unlike Machiavelli, these men had four hundred years of human experience and scientific development at their disposal, allowing them to create a science of politics.¹⁶

Gaetano Mosca, an Italian political scientist and author of Elementi di Scienza Politica (1923, translated in 1939 as The Ruling Class), was Burnham's first Machiavellian, and the one he felt most sympathy toward.¹⁷ Mosca argued that societies were composed of two groups: the minority who rule and the majority who do not.¹⁸ True democracy was impossible because the masses cannot rule themselves; an elite inevitably emerges. Mosca maintains that this holds true in every conceivable form of government, including feudal, capitalist, socialist, collectivist, democratic, and aristocratic.¹⁹

In Mosca's view, the official head-of-state may not even be part of the real ruling class. He believed that below the highest stratum of society, a larger, more numerous group of people existed whose power often eclipses that of the rulers.²⁰ They direct the activities of the masses. Their integrity was vital because “any intellectual or moral deficiencies in this second stratum, accordingly, represent a graver danger to the political structure, and one that is harder to repair, than the presence of similar deficiencies in the few dozen persons who control the workings of the state machine.”²¹ This level of government that can supplant the rulers may be called the bureaucracy. It remained crucial for Burnham.

Burnham wrote that, according to Mosca, the best societies have an open pool of rulers, representing various classes and interests. The elites circulate from the masses to positions among the ruling class. How does one become part of the ruling class? The rulers and their spokesmen will insist that the rulers are wiser, or they have inherited superior traits, or they possess altruism, or they are willing to sacrifice for the community.²² Burnham writes that the Machiavellians know to distrust words. Ambition, hard work, and luck will propel one into the ruling class more easily than intelligence and virtue.²³ Most important, rulers will have an attribute that the society esteems. A skilled warrior will rise to prominence in a military society; an able priest in a religious society.²⁴ Mosca did not make moral judgments; he just studied things the way they really are.²⁵

For Mosca, all ruling classes display two tendencies: autocratic and liberal.²⁶ These principles regulate social and political life. They never exist in isolation, for all societies have some liberal and some autocratic features that inspire the ruling classes. According to Burnham, the United States may proclaim itself a democracy (or even a republic), but the bureaucracy and federal judiciary demonstrate autocratic features because its members are not elected.²⁷ Liberal and autocratic elements are indispensable because a completely autocratic society will be tyrannical, and a completely democratic society will not have security.²⁸ In the traditional of Aristotle, extremes must be avoided.

Following Mosca, Burnham affirms that both forms of government have strengths and weaknesses. Autocracies recognize that social hierarchies are natural. This explains their popularity throughout history among diverse civilizations, and why they tend to last longer.²⁹ They thrive when the rulers really are the best members of societies. But autocracies limit social activities and forces. Burnham argues in The Machiavellians that Classical Athens and Western Europe never could have prospered as autocracies.³⁰ Yet democracy had deficiencies, too. Parroting Mosca, Burnham insists that political leaders in democracies merely point out “with exaggerations, of course, the selfishness, the stupidity, the material enjoyments of the rich and the powerful; to denouncing their vices and wrongdoings, real and imaginary; and to promise to satisfy a common and widespread sense of rough-hewn justice.”³¹ Elected politicians have little choice but to play to the crudest instincts of the masses, making promises they could never really keep.

Whatever type of political system exists, the elite must be restrained or tyranny reigns. Mosca preached “juridical defense” as a means to check the powerful. This social mechanism helps rulers and the masses control their “wicked instincts.”³² It is a form of power against the elite that consists of the hallmarks of contemporary democracy: private property; due process; and freedom of assembly, speech, and religion.³³ Checks against the ruling elite lead to balance between the aristocratic and democratic tendencies. Without checks and balances, an aristocracy “produces a closed and inflexible caste system,” whereas extreme democracy leads to social disorder.³⁴ Citing Mosca, Burnham contends that history has revealed that civilizations thrive when guided by various political and social forces.³⁵ Freedom comes from conflict, not unity.³⁶

Burnham contends that Mosca was not utopian. In fact, Burnham maintains, Mosca believed that political doctrines that promise utopia are the worst of all. Justice is good, but not absolute justice. Those who prescribe it should be looked at skeptically. Again quoting Mosca, Burnham continues: “The idealists, utopians and demagogues always tell us that justice and the good society will be achieved by the absolute triumph of their side. The facts show us that the absolute triumph of any side and any doctrine whatsoever can only mean tyranny.”³⁷ When leaders of the governing class, without opposition, claim to be the exclusive interpreters of the will of the people in a democratic society, or the will of God in a religious society, oppression will ensue.³⁸

What governments most successfully promote freedom? Burnham suggests that Mosca argued that nineteenth-century parliamentary forms of government most effectively provided safety from tyranny. They had aristocratic elements, but these were checked by the “unprecedented ease with which vigorous new members were able to enter the ruling class.”³⁹ Consequently, commerce, arts, literature, science, and technology flourished.

Burnham's second Machiavellian was George Sorel, a fin de siècle French socialist and political theorist who authored Reflections on Violence (1908). Burnham states that Sorel, as a political extremist, cannot be a true Machiavellian. The Machiavellians repudiated any political extremism because they generally eschewed political activity and ideology to scientifically study the way things really are. Burnham, however, contends that Sorel did influence Machiavellians like Michaels and Pareto, so he must be examined along with them.⁴⁰

In The Machiavellians, Burnham writes that Sorel recognized humankind's desire for power.⁴¹ Sorel believed that the conquest of the political state by one party over another does not fundamentally change the state; it just changes who has power. The conquest of power by socialist parties, for example, will not give power to the people. It will just give power to socialist parties.⁴²

Burnham also notes that, according to Sorel, myths must exist to sustain civilization.⁴³ For Sorel, great myths should never be confused with the Noble Lie because the great myth can never be proven or disproven. Christianity and its ideas that Jesus will return, Marx's imminent socialist revolution, and Mazzini's nationalist propaganda all constitute great myths for Sorel. Contending that the successful myth binds the members of society together by arousing their energies toward a solution for any problem, Sorel held that the myth guides action.⁴⁴

The myth must be accompanied by violence. One section of The Machiavellians is titled “The Function of Violence.” Burnham argues that Sorel defended violence, especially on the part of the working classes. The elite, who rule by fraud, feign revulsion at violence so they can protect themselves.⁴⁵ Violence provides the best means for the masses to reclaim power, but they have been deluded by what the ruling classes deem humanitarian pacifism.⁴⁶ Sorel believed that strikes and violence were necessary for socialism because this was the only way to overthrow the existing power structure. He rationalized violence used in the context of class struggle.

The Machiavellians rejects any sort of idealistic approach to violence. Burnham holds that Sorel believed humanitarian and pacificist movements only cause social degeneration because they fail to recognize that “force is always a main factor regulating a society.”⁴⁷ These movements merely redirect force in more subtle ways, such as fraud, bribery, and deception. This can only lead to the destruction of society, either from without or within. Consistent with Machiavelli, elites who practice benevolence only get overthrown, to the detriment of all.⁴⁸ Their benevolence harms themselves and their societies.

Citing Sorel, Burnham insists that societies need violence to sustain themselves and their values: “An open recognition of the necessity of violence can reverse the social degeneration…. Myth and violence reciprocally acting on each other, produce not senseless cruelty and suffering, but sacrifice and heroism.”⁴⁹ Violence and force are ubiquitous in societies. Pacifists can do nothing to curb this, just as a doctor who ignores the existence of germs does not weaken their effects.⁵⁰ Burnham asks: what had pacifism actually accomplished? The eighteenth-century French aristocracy preached humanitarianism; revolutionary bloodshed followed. Peace movements swept across the West on the eve of World War I and World War II. This stopped nothing. In fact, pacifists had only made things worse because “they have, rather, in those countries where they were most influential, brought about a situation in which many more men have been killed than would have been if policy had been based on the fact that wars are a natural phase of historical progress.”⁵¹ As a Marxist, Burnham condemned pacificism. Here, as a Machiavellian, he uses Sorel to condemn it.

Sorel also allowed Burnham to project his usual pessimism. Burnham notes that Sorel decried optimists as a danger to society because they cannot understand the true nature of its corruption.⁵² This leads them to pursue misguided courses of action to correct things.⁵³ The Reign of Terror of the French Revolution took the lives of those who dreamed the most. The pessimists, in Machiavellian fashion, see things most clearly, and so they are the wisest. They will most successfully overcome obstacles.⁵⁴

Sorel's one-time friend and collaborator Robert Michels was Burnham's third Machiavellian. Burnham begins his chapter on Michels by contending that those who write about democracy operate under the assumption that democracy is good.⁵⁵ All books about democracy imply this, analyze why democracy has not been achieved, and then explain how it can he achieved. The same is true with peace, justice, and a host of other concepts. Burnham argues that the Machiavellians were different because before declaring an allegiance to a concept, they made clear exactly what the concept means.

As realists, the Machiavellians knew that real democracy—defined as the people having power—was impossible. According to Burnham, Michels recognized that if everyone tried to have an equal say in any committee or organization, nothing would get done.⁵⁶ Michels believed that every society must have an elite class because as soon as leadership emerges—and it inevitably does—democracy ceases. Rousseau recognized this first when he argued that democracy should mean more than just voting for whoever rules over you.⁵⁷ The will of the people is not transferable to a single individual, despite what the despots want us to believe.⁵⁸ Moreover, decisions must occasionally be made quickly during times of crisis, yet real democracy can never move quickly. According to Michels's “iron law of oligarchy,” in any group of people, only a small number of them will actually make decisions, regardless of how power is formally vested. The masses can never really rule.

Michels, Burnham tells his reader, proclaimed that even within democracy those with power will seek to extend it.⁵⁹ Burnham argues that the struggle against these power-lovers should continue.⁶⁰ Burnham quotes Michels: “Nothing but a serene and frank examination of the oligarchical dangers of a democracy will enable us to minimize these dangers, even though they can never be entirely avoided.”⁶¹ Consciousness must be raised. Oligarchical and aristocratic elements dominate political systems, but Burnham, like Michels, insists that extreme measures have to be resisted.

The book's final Machiavellian thinker is Vilfredo Pareto, the author of Trattato di Sociologia Generale (1916, translated in 1935 as The Mind and Society). Burnham writes that Pareto sought to uncover the “general laws” that guided society.⁶² Pareto, in Burnham's description, favored an objective study of society based on empirical data, not a utopian philosophy.⁶³ This was preferable, Burnham argues, because anyone can tell us how to save society; only a rare few can tell us real truths about society.⁶⁴

Burnham points out that Pareto emphasized the irrational side of man. Taboos, superstitions, myths, and even “empty verbalisms” pervade all civilizations.⁶⁵ Every civilization has its own irrational beliefs that it needs to thrive. Whether a society rises or falls depends little on its ability to use reason.⁶⁶ Pareto did not believe that reason could be used to improve society because most people were not rational.

Burnham writes that Pareto argued that the character of society was the character of its elites; the accomplishments of society are the accomplishments of its elite class.⁶⁷ A society must ensure that the elite class is open to everyone, equally.⁶⁸ According to Burnham, like Mosca, Pareto advocated an open rulership with circulating elites. This ensures dynamism and strength. Democracy promotes an open elite system more than aristocracy, in which elite status is merely acquired at birth. Elites can be found in all segments of society.⁶⁹

The Machiavellians promotes a pragmatic approach to political science. Values and ideals by themselves cannot effectively guide human conduct. For example, Burnham asks, what does freedom mean? There is no general freedom, just freedom from or for certain things. If I am free not to be murdered by individuals, then you are not free to murder me.⁷⁰ President Roosevelt, Burnham writes, described “freedom from want” as one of his central goals, but man is a wanting animal, so achieving this goal was impossible.⁷¹ Burnham maintains that the same holds true with equality: all men are equal in some respects, but men in general cannot be completely equal.⁷² These concepts sound nice and they do guide action, but rational action in the real world cannot be based strictly on concepts: “Thus, in all cases—and these include the majority that is relevant to social change—where goals are vague or ambiguous or meaningless, human conduct is non-logical.”⁷³ For Burnham, these so-called ideals resembled religious values. Each in its own way makes positive contributions to society, but their relevance to society is still limited because they remain subjective.⁷⁴

Burnham later characterized the writing of The Machiavellians as a form of post-Trotsky education that showed him the weakness of ideology, which prevented the acquisition of wisdom: “Having come to know something of the gigantic ideology of Bolshevism, I knew that I was not going to be able to settle for the pygmy ideologies of Liberalism, social democracy, refurbished laissez-faire or the inverted, cut-rate Bolshevism called ‘fascism.’ Through the Machiavellians I began to understand more thoroughly what I had long felt: that only by renouncing all ideology can we begin to see the world and man.”⁷⁵ Ideology was guided by core values, but Burnham makes clear that Machiavellians assumed nothing—they questioned all values. He argues that “peace,” “democracy,” and “justice” must constantly be examined to determine their usefulness.⁷⁶ Before advocating a concept, the Machiavellians always clarified what the concept means and what it will lead too.⁷⁷ Obviously, peace was not always desirable, or the United States would not have engaged in World War II. And true democracies can never really exist, so why call them that? And what is meant by justice? The Machiavellian did not base their philosophy on vague, abstract principles.⁷⁸

Does this mean that the Machiavellians and by extension Burnham reject all human ideals and morality? Burnham answers in the negative. In fact, he points out that the Machiavellians try more than anyone else to study real human ideals, such as truth, not artificial ones like “freedom,” “justice,” and “equality.” Recognizing the futility of studying humanity based on subjective, empty concepts, the Machiavellians study the true nature of humanity, not a romanticized version.⁷⁹

Some of Burnham's expositors have interpreted him as an amoral thinker.⁸⁰ This is incorrect. Burnham's morality revolved around seeing human nature as it really is. Liberating humans from their naivete was a moral act for the Machiavellian Burnham. His writings for the next three and a half decades following the publication of The Machiavellians tried to do exactly this. He begs his readers to see things the way they really are, not how they wished them to be. Burnham believed that no moralist could support disillusionment. His experience with Marxism taught him that utopianism was worthless—and it made the world a worse place for everyone involved. Jettisoning idealism from one's thought was moral for Burnham.

Sidney Hook called Burnham's The Machiavellians “the least known and most important of his books.”⁸¹ Another colleague deemed it “the key to everything he subsequently wrote.”⁸²And it is, particularly the end of the work. The last chapter of The Machiavellians titled “Politics and Truth” summarizes the relevance of the Machiavellian thinkers for the author, and it describes ways for the masses to resist tyranny, allowing for a small measure of democracy.

The concept of democracy vexed Burnham more than any other during the first part of his writing career. In The Machiavellians, he acknowledges that true democracy as traditionally defined—such as “self-government” or “government by the people”—was impossible.⁸³ But Burnham contends that something called “Bonapartism,” in which a leader or small group claimed to embody the will of the people, was gripping nations.⁸⁴ Stalin and Hitler provided recent examples. Their despotism allegedly is democratic because it is an expression of the people.⁸⁵ The rulers slyly use words to maintain their rule: “The century of the common man” instead becomes “the people's state” and the “classless society.”⁸⁶ But words belie reality. In truth, according to Burnham, this tyranny of the minority in the name of the people was the worst of all possible systems.

Burnham felt obliged to define democracy again, insisting that it had different meanings for different people. In The Machiavellians, he relates democracy with liberty. Democracy exists when there is liberty: “Democracy so defined, in terms of liberty, of the right of opposition, is not in the least a formula or myth.”⁸⁷ Everyone can agree that more liberty exists in the United States than in Germany or Russia.⁸⁸ This means it can be empirically studied, allowing for a science of politics.

The Machiavellians knew that social development depended on liberty.⁸⁹ And freedom must come from below. Machiavelli wrote in Discourses that elites seek to dominate, but “when the commons are put forward as the defenders of liberty, they may be expected to take better care of it.”⁹⁰ Only the people can defend their liberty. Liberty must include the ability to express one's thoughts, even when it goes against prevailing opinion because “even when [liberty] offends the sentiments of the few or of the many, even when it is generally reputed absurd or criminal, [it] always proves favorable to the discovery of objective truth.”⁹¹ Without liberty, Burnham suggests, societies only advance in ways that are consistent with fascism. A religious fascism will lead to advances in religion. A military fascism will lead to advancements in war. Overall, however, conformity will prevail, stultifying any “creative freshness.”⁹²

How can the powerful be restrained so liberty and democracy can triumph, even transitorily? Burnham proclaims in The Machiavellians that only power restrains power.⁹³ Public opposition to government is the best way to ensure freedom and therefore any semblance of democracy; it is the most effective check against the ruling elite.⁹⁴ The power theorist insists that “liberty or juridical defense, moreover, is summed up and focused in the right of opposition, the right of opponents of the currently governing elite to express publicly their opposition views and to organize to implement those views.”⁹⁵ Without opposition, tyranny thrives. Fortunately for Burnham, an opposition group can exert more power than its apparent strength because even a few thousand protesters can thwart the inevitable power grab by government.⁹⁶

Burnham emphasizes in The Machiavellians the public nature of the opposition because it destroys “the prestige of the governing élite by exposing the inequities of its rule, which it knows much better than do the masses.”⁹⁷ To curb public opposition, the ruling class makes concessions to the nonelite, limiting abuse.⁹⁸ The iron law of oligarchy means that the masses can never directly possess political power, but unless the people resist the elite, totalitarianism flourishes.⁹⁹ Burnham suggests that if the people do not exert force against the government, then it can be assumed that the government is exerting force against the people, limiting democracy.

The seemingly even-keeled philosophy professor wanted to raise consciousness about the raging power struggle and its relationship with democracy. He insists that to confront their enemies, the people must realize that those in power love power. Any benevolent act on the part of the government would be accidental.¹⁰⁰

Burnham predicted in The Managerial Revolution that an increasing amount of power would accrue to the state. As US armies advanced against nations with strong centralized states, he now asserts that the future of liberty depended on those who resisted. Without continued resistance, the powerful would swallow up small outposts of resistance.¹⁰¹ No one class or group preserves liberty; everyone who resists the government preserves liberty.¹⁰² Those fighting against government may be deemed extremists, or even traitors, but Burnham argues that it is their extremism that preserves freedom. Now defending extremism, he provides several examples: extremist “Black Republicans” during the Civil War exerted force against Lincoln, enabling the North to win the Civil War more quickly.¹⁰³ During World War I, more oppositional force in England would have led the English to adopt the tank sooner, thereby saving lives.¹⁰⁴ More freedom for an oppositional force in Germany would have prevented some Nazi strategic errors, such as the Russian campaign.¹⁰⁵ Burnham suggests that extremism in defense of liberty is no vice.

The defender of liberty believed that liberty and democracy require an armed citizenship because arms strengthen the citizens (Machiavelli says the same in chapter 14 of The Prince).¹⁰⁶ Burnham, however, maintains that force should never be used individually and arbitrarily. The Machiavellians know never to trust individual men because all men are guided by ambition and power.¹⁰⁷ For liberty to be preserved, Machiavelli recognized that no one person can be above the law, whether ruler or a citizen.¹⁰⁸

Burnham declares that only the Machiavellians speak the truth; they are the real defenders of freedom. He provides what he believed was the clearest description of Machiavelli's philosophy of power:

In any case, whatever may be the desires of most men, it is most certainly against the interests of the powerful that the truth should be known about political behavior. If the political truths stated or approximated by Machiavelli were widely known by men, the success of tyranny and all the other forms of oppressive political rule would become much less likely. A deeper freedom would be possible in society than Machiavelli himself believed attainable. If men generally understood as much of the mechanism of rule and privilege as Machiavelli understood, they would no longer be deceived into accepting that rule and privilege, and they would know what steps to take to overcome them.¹⁰⁹

For Burnham, Machiavelli's pernicious reputation among the powerful proves his verity.¹¹⁰ Possessing much skill in sizing up their opponents, the powerful ruling elite recognize an intransigent enemy. Burnham argues that Machiavelli must be placed in the same category as an executed Bruno, an imprisoned Galileo, and an exiled Einstein.¹¹¹ He asserts that while those men teach us about the universe, Machiavelli teaches us about ourselves.

The Machiavellians was Burnham's response to disenchantment with Marxist political philosophy, as applied in the USSR. Instead of being ruled by the working masses, a corrupt elite ruled the country. Regardless of what its rulers said, it was a sham democracy. Burned by Marxism, Burnham lashed out against many philosophical concepts at this time. He certainly opposed Marxism, socialism, communism, and even laissez-faire capitalism. Freedom and even democracy were simultaneously critiqued and defended. Burnham's thinking after Marxism could be inconsistent, and it opposed most political values. The one exception was power and the human desire to exercise power.

In this sense, The Machiavellians represented another synthesis for Burnham because, in it, he preserves the Marxist theme of power and conflict between groups, but he abandons the emphasis on the wealthy economic elite. Power was not economically determined. It became an independent force. Now, the powerful may appear in an array of costumes. No longer is reality reduced to a power struggle between the capitalist and bourgeoisie, instead a power struggle rages between the elites in society who have power and the masses who do not. Force and power struggles are ubiquitous in society, and in contrast to Marxist illusions, there was little reason for hope or optimism; no socialist revolution would wipe the old world away.

The book lacks the historical determinism that usually underlies Burnham's writings. The world was not moving toward the rule of the duplicitous elite; it had always been here. The pessimist suggests in The Machiavellians that the sin-ridden world was here to stay. The best one could hope for would be that he or she apply the force, instead of it being applied against him or her.

One wonders if, at least at some level, Burnham realized that his fundamental premises were open to the same critiques he levied against Marxism. Power, too, is an abstract concept that the alleged Machiavellian never fully defined. It resembles concepts such as freedom and democracy; Burnham recognized that these could be defined in different ways. His attempt to scientifically study society was fraught with inadequacies. His Machiavellian approach was philosophy, not science.

The Machiavellians may have been directly inspired by Sidney Hook's “The Fetishism of Power” (Hook claimed decades later that he introduced Burnham to Machiavelli's thought in the late 1930s).¹¹² Hook's 1939 article for The Nation reviewed the new English translation of Mosca's The Ruling Class. Writing in the midst of the Soviet tragedy, Burnham's former collaborator wrote: “Mosca, Pareto and Michels, writing in an age when optimism was as general as pessimism is today, raised all the crucial problems which have now come to the fore.”¹¹³ Hook defined politics as the process by which the minority ruling elites attempted to satisfy their own interests.¹¹⁴ Contending that the rulers play the role of saviors under the guise of new myths, Hooked argued that the masses always lose, however, because although the form of the rule changes, the content stays the same.¹¹⁵ He also asserted that checks against corruption and oppression could and should occur. One safeguard that would protect the masses against the worst abuses of tyranny is “conflict” in social life. Hook held that it would “require a treatise” to explore this theme fully.¹¹⁶

The Machiavellians, like The Managerial Revolution, was widely reviewed. The Atlantic called it “a work of high quality in its political and philosophical analysis” and praised Burnham for studying the conditions that maintained liberty.¹¹⁷ Benedetto Croce found Burnham's ideas about the nature of power and rulers plausible.¹¹⁸ He wrote that Burnham, however, focused too narrowly on the political; he analyzed liberty only in the context of politics while ignoring man's moral nature.¹¹⁹ For Croce, power was guided by morality; it was not an independent force. Reinhold Niebuhr was also critical in his review titled “Study in Cynicism.” Niebuhr reduced Burnham's “science of politics” to cynicism about all things political, particularly rulers and their words.¹²⁰ But if Burnham's premises are true—if everyone dissembles merely to acquire power—then how can we trust Burnham? Do not social scientists seek power? Niebuhr argued that if political leaders are subject to the laws of human nature, then so is everyone else. If Burnham is correct, then Niebuhr concluded that we cannot trust him either.¹²¹ Time magazine reviewed The Machiavellians with Sidney Hook's Hero in History (1943) in a review titled “Is Democracy Possible?” It unified the men by noting their Marxist heritage and how, in the wake of the Soviet fiasco, both wondered whether democracy could ever exist.¹²² Although Burnham in The Machiavellians presented the theory that true democracy was impossible, Hook believed it could be achieved, but only with difficulty.