Raymond Aron’s “Machiavellian” Liberalism

Recent interest in Raymond Aron in Anglophone scholarship has centered on his “Cold War Liberalism.”1 Often paired with Isaiah Berlin and Karl Popper, Aron is presented as an anti-Marxist and anti-Communist thinker who defended a “negative” or “minimum” version of liberalism, one sometimes associated with what Judith Shklar identified as the “liberalism of fear”: what needed to be avoided first and foremost was cruelty.2 As such, rather than propose a positive or indeed coherent political theory, Aron, like all good liberals, defended certain values, such as pluralism and tolerance, drawn from an idealized vision of England, and advocated for prudence and moderation in the face of perilous Cold War politics. Beyond that general characterization, Aron evades easy categorization.

articulate, on the one hand, his anti-Marxist critique of totalitarianism during World War II and the Cold War, and, on the other, develop his theory of democracy, which took as its basis the anti-Marxist "fact of oligarchy," that these authors had, on his account, first demonstrated.
The importance Mosca, Michels and in particular Pareto played in the development of Aron's thinking has been highlighted before, not least by Stuart Campbell's study of "The Four Paretos of Raymond Aron," and Serge Audier's more recent Raymond Aron: La démocratie conflictuelle. 8 The latter even develops what he calls a "Tocquevillian-Machiavellian" paradigm to interpret Aron's democratic theory. 9 Recognizing the role the Machiavellians play in identifying the hierarchical nature of modern society in Aron's thought, Audier adds a Tocquevillian dimension to underline how Tocqueville had identified a specific egalitarian dynamic to modern life. Whilst Audier is undoubtedly correct in underlining this Tocquevillian dynamic, he is mistaken to think that the Machiavellians did not see the disappearance of old aristocracies: quite the opposite, their whole point was to show that even in modern egalitarian democracies that had overthrown their aristocratic class, elites stilled ruled, either through their theories of the "ruling class" (Mosca), "circulation of elites" (Pareto), or the "iron law of oligarchy" (Michels). Moreover, these theories were developed in explicit contradistinction to the Marxist notion that once the proletarian revolution accomplished, all hierarchies would melt away -that the "government of people," as Engels, borrowing from Saint-Simon, put it, would leave way to the "administration of things" -which is why Aron, in his desire to criticize Marxism, was so taken by them. liberal for the twentieth century, 14 much like Tocqueville had been the for nineteenth, wiling to think politics in the "gros temps" of the Cold War, and he certainly attended the now infamous Colloque Walter Lippmann in Paris 1938, where the term was first coined. 15 But the epithet "neo", in particular in terms of what it has come to mean today, seems not to capture him well.
For one, many of the participants in the Colloque -Ludwig von Mises, Friedrich von Hayek, Wilhelm Röpke, Aron himself -rejected the term or did not use it. 16 What we now identify as neoliberalism developed later, in the 1970s, and is associated with the rising influence of Milton Friedman, Gary Becker's Chicago School, and the Virginia school of public choice theorists James Buchanan and Gordon Tullock. 17 But that type of neoliberalism, which wished, in particular in its Becker Chicago School incarnation, to extend economic logic to all aspects of life, is far removed from the type of political liberalism Aron wanted to defend, which formally drew from a group of Francophone liberal thinkers (Montesquieu, Tocqueville, Constant, Guizot) utterly foreign to the economic thinking of the Chicago School: a political liberalism premised on a clear separation between economic and political spheres.
Nor can Aron's thought be subsumed under the banner of Hayek's libertarianism. As Jan-Werner Mueller succinctly puts it: "Aron explicitly criticized Hayek's notion of liberty for being one-dimensional and ahistorical, and argued that the advanced industrial societies of the West had managed to find a synthèse from seeing him in his early days as an apologist of Fascism to a fellow-in-arms critic of totalitarianism and defender of democracy. The role the ex-Trotskyist James Burnham's now forgotten book, The Machiavellians: Defenders of Liberty (1943), played in this change of heart will be key, and it is he who will give the elite theorists the Machiavellian appellation Aron will subsequently make his own. The second section will turn its attention to Aron's often overlooked sociological writings of the 1950s and 1960s, where he developed, through his engagement with the Machiavellian thinkers, his concept of a "divided" ("divisée") and "unified" ("unifiée") elite, which was to serve as the basis for distinguishing liberal-democratic from non-democratic regimes. How Aron articulates the passage from political sociology to political philosophy, notably in Les étapes and Démocratie et totalitarisme, will be of particular interest. The French moment did not die, however, with Aron. The theme of "conflictual pluralism" is present throughout the work of many of the members of the Centre Raymond Aron that was founded in his name: not solely in Lefort's work, but also in the work of Pierre Manent, Bernard Manin and Pierre Rosanvallon, to name but three. Indeed, Rosanvallon's dialogue with Michels and Moisie Ostrogorski -a figure almost entirely forgotten today -dates back at least to his time as a young autogestionnaire. The third part will thus explore the legacy of Aron's Machiavellianism and how its figures were used to address new questions, notably that of representation.
In conclusion the article will ask whether such an account of democracy still has anything to offer us today.

I: Aron, Pareto and Burnham
Aron engaged with Pareto from early on, and that engagement was to continue throughout his productive career. His first published piece appeared in 1937, whilst he was still finishing his PhD. It was entitled "La sociologie de Pareto," and it was against revolutionary forces. Yet Aron also drew three key insights from his study of Pareto, which he retained throughout his life. First, that the sphere of politics was autonomous from the economic and social spheres -a highly significant move in a French context dominated by Marxist accounts of the primacy of economics, or Durkheimian views on the pre-eminence of the social. 28 Aron's view that it was politics that came first and foremost is crucial to understanding the fact that whilst the modern world is characterized by being an industrial society, the type of political regime that goes with it -democratic or not -is ultimately a political question, and it is that question that will mark the trilogy of lectures Aron will give at the Sorbonne in  30 Aron, "La sociologie," 516-9. 31 Aron, "La sociologie," 518-9. elites to cement their power before disposing of them, and it also offers Aron his third insight derived from Pareto: that liberalism has to be defended, sometimes even with force.
When the article was reprinted some forty years later in 1978 in the Revue européenne des sciences sociales, Aron explicitly distanced himself from his early piece, explaining in a brief preamble that the views expressed there no longer 43 "Souvent les prophètes de la société parfaite sont précisément ceux qui édifient la société la plus oppressive." Raymond Aron, "Histoire et politique" in Aron, Penser la liberté, penser la démocratie, 533. 44 "les élites les plus supportables son celles qui sont divisées…Il n'y a pas de société parfait, mais il y a des degrés dans l'imperfection." Aron, "Histoire et politique," 533. guarantors of freedom -Pareto and the Machiavellians, on Aron's account, fundamentally furthered the cause of modern liberty, as the subtitle to Burnham's book intimated. 45 As he will come to fully theorize in both his sociological and political writings of the 1950s and 1960s, liberty was to be found, for Aron, from the fact that different political, social and economic elites all compete for power. It is within the space opened up between these opposing forces that liberty can flourish.

II: Divided and unified elites
In the second chapter of Démocratie et totalitarisme, entitled "From philosophy to political sociology," Aron questions the relation political philosophy, which he defines as the exercise of judging political regimes, entertains with sociology, which comprises a factual study of different regimes. 46 He starts with Aristotle, whose Politics combined both political sociology, in its classification of regimes into monarchies, aristocracies and polities -alongside their corrupted versions tyranny, oligarchy and democracy -and political philosophy, in that it judged these regimes according to a human telos. 47 In a contemporary sociological text, one we'll have occasion to return to, Aron points out that when Aristotle comes to the detailed description of the ancient Greek cities, he leaves aside his abstract classification and posits instead a perennial conflict between oligarchy and democracy, between the rich and the poor, between the rulers and the ruled. 48 45 Aron, of course, might have gleaned counter-powers from Montesquieu, but the latter does not offer the reflections on elites within a modern industrial society that the Machiavellians do. 46 "De la philosophie à la sociologie politique." Aron, Démocratie, 38. 47 Aron, Démocratie, 38-41. 48 Raymond Aron, "Catégories dirigeantes ou classe dirigeante?" in Raymond Aron, Études Sociologiques (Paris: PUF, 1988), 88. service in charge of reconstructing the country, and in reality continues to furnish France with a large portion of its political class even today, notably Emmanuel Macron. There he explicitly cites Pareto, Mosca and Burnham as being the originators of this theory, but he does not leave it at that, arguing that once the oligarchic nature of democracy had been stated, then the question of how that oligarchy is constituted, and what its relation to the masses is, become the key political questions. 52 In Démocratie Aron goes further still, criticizing the "Machiavellian" conception as being too "cynical" -a throwback to our discussion of Pareto above -as it concentrates solely on the struggle for power, but overlooks the fact that one can still judge between regimes to see which one is best. 53 The type of political sociology, then, that Aron wishes to practice is one that does not simply affirm the Machiavellian struggle for power, nor indeed grounds itself on an Aristotelian telos of human nature. Instead, basing itself on the "fact of oligarchy" that modern sociology has brought to light, it desires to evaluate the different regimes in existence to see which one is more legitimate, which one can be considered the best. 54 This is precisely what Aron will do in the rest of Démocratie, comparing the Western European and American "Constitutional-Pluralist" regimes to the Eastern "Party Monopolistic" regime of the USSR, coming down heavily in favor of the former. But to get a better sense of the make-up of these regimes, we must return to Aron's sociological writings of the 1950s and 1960s, where he developed his theory of the "divided" and "unified" elite.
In three fundamental sociological texts of the 1950s and 1960s -"Structure sociale et structure de l'élite" (1950), "Classe sociale, classe politique, classe 52 Raymond Aron, Introduction à la philosophie politique: Démocratie et révolution (Paris: Éditions du Fallois, 1997), 55-8. 53 Aron, Démocratie, 51-3. 54 "la recherché du pouvoir légitime…du régime le meilleur." Aron, Démocratie, 51-3. dirigeante" (1960) and "Catégories dirigeantes ou classe dirigeante?" (1965) -Aron fleshed out his theory of elite rule. Building explicitly on Pareto, Mosca and Michels, and read again through Burnham, 55 Aron presented what he terms a "synthesis" of Marx and Pareto. 56 It is in the 1960 text, "Classe sociale, classe politique, classe dirigeante," that the notion of the "fact of oligarchy" -alongside Michels, its originator -first appears, 57 although Aron had already theorized the idea that if one can talk of democracy as government "for" the people, it would be a mistake, because of the fact that it is always the few who rule, to talk of government "by" the people. 58 The theme of Paretian "cynicism" returns here too, with Aron admitting that one could read -as he had done in the past -these Machiavellian thinkers as being, in their rejection of socialism, proto-Fascists. 59 The main notion Aron will develop over the course of these writings is the  , 1983), 34, 392-8. 57 Aron, "Classe sociale," 149, 155. 58 "Il y a des gouvernements pour le people, il n'y a pas de gouvernements par le people." Aron, "Structure sociale," 121-2. 59 Aron, "Classe sociale," 149, 161. 60 The Ruling Class is the English title given to Mosca's main work. 61  In elaborating this theory of elite rule, Aron builds on each of the earlier Machiavellian thinkers. From Michels he borrows the "iron law of oligarchy," but transforms it into a "fact" that itself needs to be evaluated, and from which other sociological questions -how is this oligarchy formed? who is it in and how are they Aron articulates the relation the ruling classes entertain with the political personnel through the notion of a "divided" or "unified" elite, namely whether political, economic, social, military or legal elites find themselves within the same institution, for example a unified political party, or whether they are divided within themselves, that they have their own, independent, institutions that are in competition with one another. 65 The question for Aron is whether all the political, economic, social etc. decisions will be taken by the same people, at the same time, and within the same institutions, or whether these decisions will be taken by different people, at different -and often conflicting -times and going in conflicting directions, in different settings.
That is, for Aron, the difference between a divided and unified elite, and the regime will be determined by how the relation between the different elites is organized constitutionally. Aron, however, is not of the belief that a unified elite will mean conflict will disappear. Quite the contrary: conflict is inescapable; it is part of the genetic make-up of society. And because all the interests are centralized in a common institution, it will manifest itself through extra-institutional and extraconstitutional ways, most probably through violence -already we see here how Aron will favor a divided over a unified elite. 66 Indeed, Aron will engage in these writings in a fruitful debate with C. Wright Mills's recently published The Power Elite (1956), which posits the existence of a united elite, one that takes all its decisions in common and for its own benefit, in cooperation and not in competition with itself, which was the opposing theory Robert Dahl developed in his answer to Mills in Who Governs? oligarchic character of the Constitutional-Pluralist regimes." 77 And the ideas developed in his sociological studies provide the bedrock upon which Aron constructs his own democratic theory: Mosca's political personnel, the "fact" of oligarchy and the further political questions its raises, government for rather than by the people, even ruling class conspiracies surrounding Jesuits, Free-Masons or petrol companies make an appearance. 78 His conclusions are the same too: he attributes directly to Mosca the thought that a divided "Constitutional-Pluralist" regime provides the "best guaranties for the governed." 79 As he explains in his Introduction à la philosophie politique lectures, if human nature, as the Machiavellians had pointed out, should be understood pessimistically, then democracy is the least worst regime because it legally regulates competition between groups, leading to what Audier terms the "conflictual balance of social forces:" 80 if one is looking for a "realistic" regime, then democracy, being the best of the worst regimes, is actually the best regime possible. 81 Yet keeping to his idea that extremes are to be avoided, if Aron had expressed fears about a too unified elite, he also in Démocratie expresses concerns about a too divided elite, one which would be too dispersed, unstable and inefficient to be able to rule in an effective manner. 82 Democracies have to find the right balance and not fall into demagogy. 83

III: The "Machiavellian Moment" and the Centre Raymond Aron
The emphasis on corruption and the imperfection of the political regime in   (1995) accepts the "oligarchic" or "elitist" nature of elections, which he readily attributes to Pareto. 99 And he also affirms Michels's critique of the oligarchic nature of modern mass parties, which bring about new elites cut-off from the general party membership. 100 Manin's argument, of course, was in part intended as a refutation of the elite theorists of democracy, in particular Schumpeter: 101 whilst modern democracy contains within it patently aristocratic elements, notably elections, it also contains democratic elements too -it is a 'mixed' regime -in the sense that elections are open to all. 102 It is the conflict between those two principles that determines the nature of our modern representative regimes.
The French Machiavellian themes, and their authors, are also highly present in the work of another prominent member of the Centre Aron, and now professor at the Collège de France, Pierre Rosanvallon. Rosanvallon has used these themes and authors to address what has been the guiding thread of his own reflections, namely that of the "crisis of representation." That crisis is the by-product of the decline of the political party, which at its apex at the turn of the twentieth century offered a synthesis between the anciens corps intermédiaires and modern forms of individualism and singularity. 103 Embedded within a pluralistic institutional framework, the political party, allied to rise of syndicalism, provided the stability to the Third Republic within which Rosanvallon thought he had found the synthesis of Lefort's understanding of democracy as conflict and Furet's quest to end the French Revolution. 104 As the new intermediary body, the political party had momentarily resolved, at the end of the nineteenth century, the conflicting legacy of the French Revolutionliberté et égalité -thus ensuring the stability of the regime.
That the political party should be so central to Rosanvallon's thinking means that Michels and Ostrogorski -whose legacy includes all the political terminology surrounding "party machine," "party boss," "omnibus party" and "Single-Issue" parties, and whose emphasis, much like Michels, was on the modern centralized, hierarchical and highly bureaucratized political party -feature strongly and consistently throughout Rosanvallon's work. Indeed, whilst he was still an autogestionnaire syndicalist in the late 1970s, he was writing of the dangers of centralization facing trade unionism that Michels and Ostrogorski had identified. In a series of texts -"Avancer avec Michels" (1977), "Trois textes pour un débat" (1978) and "Connaissez-vous Ostrogorski?" (1979) -in the syndicalist journal Faire he was editing, Rosanvallon affirmed the existence of an "iron law of oligarchy," but argued that this was a present political problem that needed to be resolved, presumably through his decentralized and self-organizing auto-gestionnaire movement, rather than a past historical preoccupation. 105 His engagement with Michels and Ostrogorski would not simply survive his transition into academia -and this transition was mediated, as Rosanvallon recognized in an interview with the Journal of the History of Ideas, through his encounter with Lefort, whose Machiavel resonated with the "realist" sociologists basis upon which to ground their proposals. 109 It is true that in its previous incarnation Raconter la vie took more the form of a literary "representation-narrative" than an indepth sociological study, 110 but in 2016 the Confédération Française Démocratique du Travail, Rosanvallon's old trade union, conducted a detailed sociological study of 200 000 of its members, and that project, entitled Parlons Travail, has now been merged with Rosanvallon's original Raconter la vie to create Raconter le travail, which might bring some much needed sociology to Rosanvallon's historical and political work.

Conclusion
Drawing directly from Pareto's critique of 1920s Italy, which he characterized as a "demagogic plutocracy", Aron applied his own theory of the key relation between the "personnel politique" and the "catégories dirigeantes" to his contemporary France.
And his conclusions were much the same: behind the façade of democratic politics, where rhetoricians dominate, lurk the rich financiers, because much money is needed to win elections and to govern. 111 It was thus the rich, the financiers, the industrialists, businessmen and entrepreneurs who dominate modern democracies. Aron was writing in the 1960s, but, with the political system awash with money, there is no reason to think that things have changed drastically since. Indeed, with the Occupy Movement and their rallying cry of the 1%, the election of Trump and Brexit, the relation elites entertain with democracy has been forcefully brought back onto the political agenda.
Are these elites divided or unified? What are the constitutional structures within