Burnham, Machiavelli, and Republican Freedom
A familiar narrative goes something like this: back in 1958, Isaiah Berlin somewhat confusingly defined two (one positive, one negative) concepts of liberty. This set off a major debate trying to sort out the two concepts in a vain attempt to keep them distinct. Then a generation later Phillip Pettit and Quentin Skinner revived or recovered a third, republican concept of liberty in terms of non-domination or the absence of arbitrary interference. I call this the ‘revived concept of liberty.’
Recall that (here) a decade ago (2013), James Tully, in “"Two Concepts of Liberty" in Context” already showed that in context in 1958, Berlin had already skated over four interrelated senses of liberty. The first two comprise Constant’s framework “of negative liberty, the “liberty of the moderns” or “private autonomy,” and positive liberty, the “liberty of the ancients” or “public autonomy,” in its modern liberal form of the right to participate in representative institutions and the public sphere.” In addition, “"progressive liberals argued that….there is a third type, “social and economic liberty….and a fourth, international strand of liberty: the freedom of each and all.””
Today, I want to suggest that another version of republican freedom was already quite familiar to mid-twentieth century audiences. In 1943 James Burnham (then an ex-Marxist philosopher at NYU) published The Machiavellians: Defenders of Freedom as a follow up to his hugely influential The Managerial Revolution. And while The Machiavellians had less impact than The Managerial Revolution, we know that The Machiavellians wasn’t obscure; in particular, it shaped Raymond Aron’s strand of liberalism in France (see this piece by Audier and this one by Drochon).
Near the end of his chapter on Machiavelli, Burnham explains how he takes Machiavelli’s use of ‘liberty.’ This turns out to have a dual characteristic, one in relation to other groups and one in relation to the organization of a group. I quote from the John Day edition:
For any given group of people, "liberty," as Machiavelli uses the word, means: independence—that is, no external subjection to another group; and internally, a government by law, not by the arbitrary will of any; individual men, princes or commoners.—p. 69
In the first external characteristic, the independence must be maintained by the group itself and the “armed strength of the citizenry itself, never by mercenaries or allies or money.” (p. 69) So, in this sense, despite having a lot in common, a de facto protectorate like the Netherlands is not free, while (say) Switzerland is.
As an aside, there is a sense in which this property fits well with Schmitt’s account of the political. The survival of the group in its contest(s) with other groups is a sine qua non of liberty.
In the second internal characteristic, government by law, Burnham emphasizes the role of the principles of “due process” (p. 69) in securing it. In fact “no person and no magistrate may be permitted to be above the law; there must be legal means for any citizen to bring accusations against any other citizen or any official…punishment must be firm and impartial.” (p. 70) So, for example, a self-governing assembly or demos that creates current law in ad hoc (albeit majoritarian) fashion is not an instance of freedom, but a species of despotism (because arbitrary in character).
These two characteristics are jointly necessary and sufficient for Burnham. And what they have in common is that they rest on well grounded force, and, thereby, maintain the right sort of independence of the group and its members.
The internal composition of the group must obey certain characteristics: “the ambitions of citizens must never be allowed to build up private power, but must be directed into public channels.” (p. 70) Burnham emphasizes what in contemporary parlance is called the ‘limitarian’ character of the group, that is, without “too great inequality in privilege and wealth.” (p. 71)
In fact, even more important than these features of the composition of the group, is a sociological reality. The group most be constituted by a diversity of competing and potentially conflictual “social forces” or what John Kenneth Galbraith shortly thereafter called, ‘countervailing powers.’ (This is most clear in the later chapter on Mosca.) Conflictual group life contributes to liberty while too much harmony or social unity actively undermines Machiavellian liberty. (This is especially notable to any reader of the opening chapters of Discourses on Liberty where the creative, political turbulence of Rome secures its freedom.) I return to this below.
There are two notable, related features in Burnham’s account. First, freedom is constituted by group properties. In fact, individual characteristics (wealth, ambition, etc.) are themselves perceived as a threat to Machiavellian liberty (even if they can also advance it to some degree).
Second, individual freedoms are at best a by-product of Machiavellian liberty. This is rooted in the idea that it is only in the ordered nature of group-life that individual rights or justice are secured at all. No pre-existing natural or human rights are recognized in this account. As becomes clear in a later chapter on Mosca, many familiar rights (of speech, political participation, electoral competition, etc.) are useful to secure Machiavellian liberty but are not treated as ends in themselves.)
Okay, let me wrap up. It is often noted by informed commentators that the way Pettit, in particular, developed his account of the republican revived concept liberty he inserted all kinds of safeguards that brought it rather close to the kind of liberty articulated within liberal political philosophy. The reasons for this are fairly clear if one reflects on the risks to individual freedoms lurking Burnham’s Machiavellianism.
In fact, I suspect that the most fundamental contract between Burnham’s Machiavellian liberty and the revived concept of liberty is on the relationship between social unity and liberty. The revived concept is ultimately shaped by Rousseau’s and Hegel’s idea that the unity and harmony of social life does not merely secure individual freedom but helps constitute the individual, whereas for Burnham such harmony and unity fundamentally threaten the survival of the individual, and the group.