Joseph Fouche enumerates the principles explored in James Burnham’s The Machiavellians:
- An objective science of politics, and of society, comparable in its methods to the other empirical sciences, is possible. Such a science will describe and correlate observable social facts, and, on the basis of the facts of the past, will state more or less probably hypotheses of the future. Such a science will be neutral with respect to any practical political goal: that is, like any science, its statements will be tested by facts accessible to any observer, rich or poor, ruler or ruled, and will in no way be dependent upon the acceptance of some particular ethical aim or ideal.
(Contrary views hold that a science of politics is not possible because of the peculiarity of “human nature” or for some similar reason; or that political analysis is always dependent on some practical program for the improvement — or destruction — of society; or that any political science must be a “class science” — true for the “bourgeoise,” but not for the “proletariate,” as, for example, the Marxists claim.)
- The primary subject-matter of political science is the struggle for social power in its diverse open and concealed forms.
(Contrary views hold that political thought deals with the general welfare, the common good, and other such entities that are from time to time invented by the theorists.)
- The laws of political life cannot be discovered by an analysis that takes men’s words and beliefs, spoken or written, at their face value. Words, programs, declarations, constitutions, laws, theories, philosophies, must be related to the whole complex of social facts in order to understand their real political and historical meaning.
(The contrary view pays chief attention to words, believing that what men say they are doing or propose to do or have done is the best evidence for what they actually do.)
- Logical or rational action plays a relatively minor part in political and social change. For the most part it is a delusion to believe that in social life men take deliberate steps to achieve consciously held goals. Non-logical action, spurred by environmental changes, instinct, impulse, interest, is the usual social rule.
(The contrary views assign an important or the primary place to rational action. History is conceived as the record of the rational attempts of men to achieve their goals.)
- For an understanding of the social process, the most significant social division to be recognized is that between the ruling class and the ruled, between the elite and the non-elite.
(Contrary views either deny such a division exists, or consider that is unimportant, or believe that it is scheduled to disappear.)
- Historical and political science is above all the study of the elite, its structure, and the mode of its relation to the non-elite.
(Contrary views hold that history is primarily the study of the masses, or of individual great men, or purely of institutional arrangements.)
- The primary object of every elite, or ruling class, is to maintain its own power and privilege.
(The contrary view holds that the primary object of the rulers is to serve the community. This view is almost invariably held by all spokesmen for an elite, at least with respect to the elite for which they are speaking. Among such spokesmen are to be numbered almost all of those who write on political and social matters.)
- The rule of the elite is based upon force and fraud. The force may, to be sure, be much of the time hidden or only threatened; and the fraud may not entail any conscious deception.
(The contrary views hold that social rule is established fundamentally upon God-given or natural right, reason or justice.)
- The social structure as a whole is integrated and sustained by a political formula, which is usually correlated with a generally accepted religion, ideology, or myth.
(Contrary views hold either that the formulas and myths are “truths” or that they are unimportant as social factors.)
- The rule of an elite will coincide now more, now less with the interests of the non-elite. Thus, in spite of the fact that the primary object of every elite is to maintain its own power and privilege, there are nevertheless real and significant differences in social structures from the point of view of the masses. These differences, however, cannot be properly evaluated in terms of formal meanings, verbalisms, and ideologies, but by: (a) the strength of the community in relation to other communities; (b) the level of civilization reached by the community — its ability, that is to say, to release a wide variety of creative interests and to attain a high measure of material and cultural advance; and (c) liberty — that is, the security of individuals against the arbitrary and irresponsible exercise of power.
(Contrary views either deny that there are any significant differences among social structures, or, more frequently, estimate the differences in formal or verbal terms — by, for example, comparing the philosophies of two periods and their ideals.)
- Two opposing tendancies always operate in the case of every elite: (a) an aristocratic tendency whereby the elite seeks to preserve the ruling position of its members and their descendents, and to prevent others from entering its ranks; (b) a democratic tendency whereby new elements force their way into the elite from below.
(Though few views would deny the existence of these tendencies, so would maintain that one of them could be suppressed, so that an elite could become either completely closed or completely open.)
- In the long-run, the second of these tendencies [i.e. the democratic principle] always prevails. From this it follows that no social structure is permanent and no static utopia is possible. The social or class always continues, and its record is history.
(Contrary views conceive a possible stabilization of the social structure. The class struggle, they say, can, should, and will be eliminated by Heaven on Earth or a “classless society,” not understanding that the elimination of the class struggle would, like the elimination of blood-circulation in the individual organism, while no doubt getting rid of many ailments, at the same time mean death.)
- There occur periodically very rapid shifts in the composition and structure of elites: that is, social revolution.
(Contrary views either deny the reality of revolutions or hold that they are unfortunate accidents that could readily be avoided.)