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A HISTORY OF WESTERN POLITICAL THOUGHT A History of Western Political Thoughtis an energetic, engaged and lucid account of the most important political thinkers and the enduring themes of the last two and a half millennia. J.S.McClelland traces the development and consolidation of a tradition of Western political thought from Ancient Greece through to the development of the modern state, the American Enlightenment, the rise of liberalism and the very different reactions it engendered. He discusses how a tradition beginning before Socrates might be said to have played itself out in the second half of the twentieth century. McClelland’s aim is to tell a complete story: his definition of politics encompasses both power wielded from above and power threatened from below, and the sustained pursuit of this theme leads him to present an original and often controversial view of the theorists of the received canon and to add to that canon some writers he feels have been neglected unjustly. A History of Western Political Thought will inform, challenge, provoke and entertain any reader interested in what people have had to say about politics in the last two and half thousand years, and why it matters. J.S.McClelland is Senior Lecturer in Politics at the University of Nottingham. He has held visiting posts at the University of Indiana at Bloomington and Sacramento State University, California. His previous publications include The French Right: From De Maistre to Maurras and The Crowd: From Plato to Canetti. A HISTORY OF WESTERN POLITICAL THOUGHT J.S.McClelland London and New York First published 1996 by Routledge 11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge 29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001 Routledge is an International Thomson Publishing Company This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2005. To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk. © 1996 J.S.McClelland All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system without permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book has been requested ISBN 0-203-98074-3 Master e-book ISBN ISBN 0-415-11961-8 (hbk) ISBN 0-415-11962-6 (pbk) CONTENTS List of biographies vii Foreword ix Part I The Greeks 1 ANCIENT GREEK POLITICAL THOUGHT 3 2 SOCRATES AND PLATO 16 3 THE GUARDIANS OF THE STATE AND JUSTICE 29 4 ARISTOTLE AND THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS 48 Part II Romans and Roman Catholics 5 FROM POLIS TO COSMOPOLIS 67 6 CHRISTIAN COSMOPOLITANISM: ST AUGUSTINE’S CITY OF GOD 87 7 CHRISTENDOM AND ITS LAW: ST THOMAS AQUINAS 104 Part III Romans and humanists: the reinvention of sovereignty 8 THE REINVENTION OF SOVEREIGNTY: MARSILIUS OF PADUA 123 9 MACHIAVELLI: THE PRINCE AND THE VIRTUOUS REPUBLIC 142 Part IV The theory of the social contract 10 THE RISE AND EXTRAORDINARY PERSISTENCE OF THE THEORY OF 163 THE SOCIAL CONTRACT 11 SOCIAL CONTRACT I: THE HOBBESIAN VERSION 182 12 SOCIAL CONTRACT II: THE LOCKIAN VERSION 219 13 SOCIAL CONTRACT III: THE ROUSSEAUIST VERSION 238 Part V Enlightenment and the development of the modern state 14 THE MODERNITY OF THE MODERN STATE 265 15 THE POLITICS OF ENLIGHTENMENT 282 16 ENLIGHTENMENT AND GOVERNMENT THROUGH LAW: 301 MONTESQUIEU 17 THE AMERICAN ENLIGHTENMENT: JEFFERSON, CRÈVECOEUR, 324 HAMILTON, JAY, MADISON, PAINE 18 THE LIMITATIONS OF ENLIGHTENMENT: HUME AND BURKE 385 Part VI The rise of liberalism 19 THE RISE OF LIBERALISM 411 20 LIBERALISM COMES OF AGE: BENTHAM AND JOHN STUART MILL 432 21 LIBERALISM IN MATURITY AND DECLINE: SPENCER, SUMNER AND 464 GREEN Part VII Reactions to liberalism 1: Hegel—the state and dialectic 22 HEGEL AND THE HEGELIAN CONTEXT OF MARXISM 501 Part VIII Reactions to liberalism 2: socialism 23 MARXISM AND OTHER SOCIALISMS 524 24 SOCIAL DEMOCRACY: BERNSTEIN AND CROSLAND 548 25 THE SYNTHESIS OF JACOBINISM AND MARXISM-BOLSHEVISM: 565 LENIN, TROTSKY AND STALIN Part IX Reactions to liberalism 3: irrationalism and anti-rationalism 26 THE MORAL EXCLUSIVENESS OF NATIONALISM: HERDER 594 27 THE ELITIST CRITIQUE OF DEMOCRACY: PARETO AND MICHELS 616 28 LIBERALISM’S SPECIAL ENEMIES: THE CROWD AND ITS THEORISTS 637 29 THE LEADER AND HIS CROWD: SIGMUND FREUD’S GROUP 660 PSYCHOLOGY AND THE ANALYSIS OF THE EGO (1921) 30 FASCISM, OR BEING REVOLUTIONARY WITHOUT BEING MARXIST 687 31 CONSERVATISM: MAURRAS AND OAKESHOTT 714 32 THINKING ABOUT THINKING, AND THE LAPSE INTO DISCOURSES 760 Notes 770 Index 773 BIOGRAPHIES Plato 16 Aristotle 48 Zeno 67 Cicero 68 Marcus Aurelius 68 St Augustine 87 St Thomas Aquinas 104 Marsilius of Padua 123 Niccolo Machiavelli 142 Thomas Hobbes 182 John Locke 219 Jean-Jacques Rousseau 238 Montesquieu 306 Thomas Jefferson 324 Michel-Guillaume Jean de Crèvecoeur 325 Alexander Hamilton 326 John Jay 327 James Madison 328 Thomas Paine 329 Edmund Burke 385 David Hume 386 Jeremy Bentham 432 John Stuart Mill 433 Herbert Spencer 464 William Graham Sumner 465 Thomas Hill Green 466 Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel 501 Karl Marx 524 Friedrich Engels 525 Eduard Bernstein 548 Anthony Crosland 549 Vladimir Ilich Lenin 565 Leon Trotsky 566 Johann Gottfried von Herder 594 Vilfredo Pareto 616 Gustave Le Bon 637 Sigmund Freud 660 Adolf Hitler 687 Charles Maurras 714 Michael Oakeshott 715 FOREWORD This is an old-fashioned history of political thought. It gives an account of great texts. These texts are chosen either because they are great in themselves or because they have influenced other texts or the world. I have no particular story-line. I did try to keep one going, but it refused to work except intermittently. I began to try to write a history of political thought from the bottom up, so to speak, concentrating on the ruled as well as upon rulers. It has always struck me that there has never been enough attention paid to the nature of the people—sometimes the crowd, sometimes the mob—who are to be ruled. A particular thinker’s view of the raw material of government is bound to affect what that thinker thinks rule can and should be like. However, I found that line of approach difficult to sustain, because the views of particular thinkers about the human raw material of political communities are often so deeply buried in their texts that those texts would have to be put on the rack to yield up their secrets. And, as everybody knows, secrets revealed on the rack are notoriously unreliable. This book is the product of many years as a teacher of what used to be called ‘political theory’, and I have many debts. Richard King, Dennis Kavanagh and David Regan kindly read chapters and offered good advice. Robert Markus was, as ever, the soul of generosity, and the range of Peter Morris’s wit and wisdom is a constant surprise and delight to me. Mrs April Gibbon displayed her usual intelligence and patience with the typescript. I would like to thank two of my former students. Mr Lee Steptoe invented in a seminar the idea of a ‘bourgeois tank’, and this made me wonder whether there are any genuinely socialist means towards socialist ends, and Ms Elizabeth Walters turned my flank in a tutorial by showing that a rather complex argument of mine (and one of which I was rather proud) about the Guardians in Plato’s Republic was completely unnecessary. Finally, I would like to acknowledge the debt I owe to Tom Paulin. This book would never have been written if he had not encouraged and consoled me on Monday evenings over several years. John McClelland, Nottingham